Oh my, this story has been much better received than I expected! Thank you!
Please enjoy this next chapter.
Three weeks went by. Amelia mentioned nothing to Doppler about any of the recent goings on between them, except when he visited her to check up on her health.
Probably all for the best. Wouldn't want anything to go wrong outside of her body while she was taking care of what's going on on the inside! Doppler thought with a hint of frustration. He often thought, although now it was more along the lines of Amelia and the children she was going to have rather than astrophysics and the voyage.
He wondered how many there were. He pondered whether they'd be all girls, all boys, or somewhere in between. He worried that something could be going wrong at any moment. He thought about the remote possibility of cross-breeding. And if the fetus (or fetuses) did not cross-breed, would they be Felinids or Canids? How would everyone react? These and other anxieties swam through his mind in a constant barrage of mental exhaustion.
Surprisingly, all this worrying wasn't picked up on by the crew. Doppler would have thought at least Jim would have noticed something. After all, he felt like a complete wreck on the inside. And doesn't that normally show on the outside too?
But, all things considered, it was fairly easy to keep her…condition a secret. Amelia did a good majority of the pretending herself, and all he had to do was follow along.
He both admired and scorned her for this. On one hand, he admired her for not allowing the nausea, cramps, and cravings that she complained to him about overpower her, but on the other, he wasn't absolutely sure she had even accepted that she was going to have children, despite the increasingly obvious signs to the contrary.
Not to say keeping secrets was easy all of the time. There had been a great many close calls.
One morning, he went onto the deck to see Amelia up on one of the masts with Mr. Hands, mending a fraying rigging. She was easily twenty or thirty feet off the ground! Without any lifeline! If she fell… it was all Doppler could do to keep from screaming at her, hoisting himself up there, and dragging her down himself.
About a week earlier, she had spent the entire day in her quarters. The crew whispered and wondered where she was. The ship almost stalled to a standstill. Mr. Arrow responded to this by yelling, "The captain is feeling unwell because she is disgusted by the appalling lack of any sort of competency on this ship! In fact, you all are making me ill at this moment! Carry on!" The crew grumbled back to work, and the voyage progressed as planned.
Most frightening was the encounter that Doppler had just had with Mr. Scroop.
That evening, he went to visit Amelia. She had been complaining about stomach pain, which he soothed with a cup of solaris seed tea. As he crossed the deck to return to his own quarters, he heard a hissing from above him. He started in fright and looked up. Mr. Scroop was crawling down the rigging towards him.
"Hello Doctor," he hissed.
"Ah, good evening Mr. Scroop," Doppler replied, uneasy. What was he doing awake at this hour?
"Fine evening, isssn't it?"
"Yes. Very nice. Perfect seafaring weather."
"Ssssspeaking of perfect ssssseafaring; how is the Captain?"
Oh no. Had he been spying on them? "F…fine. How else would she be?"
"I've jussst noticcced that she's been acting…bizzzzzare lately. Any idea what that would be about?" Mr. Scroop smiled. His teeth gleamed in the starlight.
Doppler gulped. "Just a stomachache, that's all. A cup of solaris seed tea has impoved her intensely…immensely! Yes, she should be fine in the morning."
Scroop chuckled. "I ssssee. Thank you Doctor. What ever would we do without your exxxpertissse on board?"
Doppler chuckled nervously. "Yes…whatever would we do. Goodnight Mr. Scroop." He backed away to his cabin, careful not to turn his back on the Arachnopod.
"Yesss. Goodnight Doctor. Oh, and sssay hello to Missster Hawkinsss for me."
Doppler nodded and went back to his cabin.
The minute he shut the door, he exhaled and sunk to the ground. What was that about? How long has Mr. Scroop been there? Has he been spying on us this entire time? Does he know everything? And has he told the rest of the crew?
If he was correct, if Mr. Scroop knew everything, Amelia would never forgive him. And any chance of her even associating, much less falling in love, with him would be gone. And so would his newborn children. Even if he tried to get custody of them, the Galactic Council almost never awarded custody to single fathers. And the adoption process was tricky. Unless given permission by the parents, he would not be allowed into contact with them. Which is what he so desperately wanted. And he wanted it with Amelia.
Dejected, he crawled into his bed and fell asleep. If there was a storm coming, he may as well be well rested for it.