"Rat? Don't worry about him. He's in my cabin, chewing his nibbling-stick. I can assure you it tastes a lot better to him than your bony ankles." Alan yawned deliberately. "Now how about letting me rest?"
She looked wounded. "If you want it that way. I just thought I'd tell you about the doings in the Enclave when we land. There's been a change in the regulations since the last time we were here. But you wouldn't be interested, of course." She started to mince away.
"Hey, wait a minute!" Judy's father was the Valhalla's Chief Signal Officer, and she generally had news from a planet they were landing on a lot quicker than anyone else. "What's this all about?"
"A new quarantine regulation. They passed it two years ago when a ship back from Altair landed and the crew turned out to be loaded with some sort of weird disease. We have to stay isolated even from the other starmen in the Enclave until we've all had medical checkups."
"Do they require every ship landing to go through this?"
"Yep. Nuisance, isn't it? So the word has come from your father that since we can't go round visiting until we've been checked, the Crew's going to have a dance tonight when we touch down."
"A dance?"
"You heard me. He thought it might be a nice idea—just to keep our spirits up until the quarantine's lifted. That nasty Roger Bond has invited me," she added, with a raised eyebrow that was supposed to be sophisticated-looking.
"What's wrong with Roger? I just spent a whole afternoon crating dinosaur meat with him."
"Oh, he's—well—he just doesn't do anything to me."