Is jumped lightly onto the bed, bracing her stiff-furred paws on Molly's chest. Was tore into the room, looked around and—was. Molly affectionately patted Is on her well-placed shoulders, put the other hand firmly over Bill's mouth to shut him up.
"Well, why not?" she said reasonably. "We can live on this ship the rest of our lives. Eternity's a long time, Bill. Just you, me, the dogs and—" she broke into a grin—"a pup or two!"
It didn't turn out so bad at that. Molly had always been a self-sufficient, perky little blonde, well able to live with herself. Bill's dislike of civilization turned out to be a built-in part of his personality. He didn't miss people. He didn't miss shows. He didn't miss phony excitement. It was quite a discovery that he was perfectly content reading, puttering, making love to Molly, taking care of the foxes.
He did have a couple heart-qualms when he dared to think about the condition of the universe. Not that there was much to be seen outside the ship. Apparently they were accelerating into time at an enormous rate, so fast, indeed, that individual celestial bodies could not be observed.
Relative to the ship, the universe was vibrating fast enough to produce sensations of color. It started at violet. At present it was a shattering yellow that hurt the eyes to look at. When these color effects moved down the scale to infra-red—?
Maximum entropy? The heat-death of the universe? He wondered.
"So what?" he asked Molly when his mood became lighter. "By this time Earth and all the planets and the Sun and every other star and constellation and galaxy is dust. Less than dust, maybe. Maybe we're near the end of time, when all the matter in the universe is broken down into nothing but pulses of energy. Maybe the pulses will get to the place where there isn't even any pulse anymore. When all energy is distributed equally over all of space. When there's no motion at all. What are you doing, Molly?"
Molly was smiling to herself. She was on her knees, fitting a fancy frilled checked-wool jacket over Is. Bill stared thunderstruck while she buttoned it down the length of Is's spine.
"There!" said Molly, standing back and giggling. "I made it on the sewing machine. Is gets so cold sometimes she shivers. She drags around. I think she's going to have pups."