Lana the bobcat needs to get off Earth and meet her sister on a colony on Europa. Unfortunately, her only way there might involve taking a very unorthodox job for the good of the colony.

Technically a commission for  kairyu-shin but he gave me free reign beyond some certain details, so I almost consider it just an original story. Writing science fiction stuff is so much fun, I should do more on here.

Enjoy! Comments are appreciated!

Part 1: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/27272910/
Part 2: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/27283967/
Part 3: http://www.furaffinity.net/view/27296027/
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Lana’s consciousness came back to her in waves. She was dimly aware of lying in a warm, soft, small space with dully pulsing lights. She then shifted her legs underneath the blanket, wiggling her toes and flicking her ears on either side of her head. Her body felt pleasingly heavy and warm on the soft mattress of the bed, but her muscles also felt oddly weak and she had trouble moving her arms. When Lana’s eyes fluttered open, she was staring up through the glass canopy of the cryo-bed at the dull blue lights far above her. The mattress itself had lowered her down, meaning that she was lying somewhere at floor-level. Her vision blurred and she tried to blink it away and examine her surroundings.

If she wasn’t so groggy from sleep, she would have been more alarmed by the sight of the thin IV tubes sticking out of both of her arms. She tried to move them, but found she didn’t have the strength yet to do more than shift her biceps. As if in response, a ring of soft, yellow lights pulsed to life around the inside of the bed and the needles slid out of her arms, leaving a small amount of medical foam to seal the punctures. Once they’d receded into the walls, Lana felt energy surging back into her body and finally could lift her arms again.

The first thing that seemed strange once she’d returned to consciousness was the uncomfortable weight pressing down on her torso. She hadn’t noticed it at first, but she felt pinned down to the mattress like large rock had been gently left there. When she hand the strength to raise her arms, she shifted and tried to push it away, only to find her fingers coming into contact with a firm, rounded lump beneath the blanket. She prodded it with her fingers, trying to move it, but found as feeling crept back into her body that she was, miraculously, touching herself.

Lana’s eyes widened and she used all of her strength to lift her head and look down at herself. Sure enough, there was a rounded bulge beneath the soft blanket that hadn’t been there when she went to sleep. She clenched her teeth and tossed aside the blanket to confirm what she had already known: it was her own stomach, rounded out with a large and healthy pregnancy, that had grown while she was asleep. The bobcat shook her head in disbelief. The doctor was right: she had gone to sleep alone in her own body and woken up pregnant. The size of her belly told her months must have passed with her asleep, but it felt just a day ago she’d boarded the ship and met her fellow surrogates.

While she laid there in the bed and blinked down at her gravid body, she sharply gasped as a slight, wiggling flutter came from inside the taut globe her stomach had become. Lana put a hand over her mouth as she pressed her other palm flat against her belly, feeling the kick of whatever it was she’d been impregnated with. It was small, but distinct enough that she could feel it against her hand, like something trying to force its way out of her through her thin skin, stretched to its limit around her packed womb. Lying back against the pillow, she clenched her teeth and shuddered at the strange feeling of something moving inside her body that wasn’t her.
It’s just a baby, she reminded herself. It’s not an alien or a parasite, just a little kitten.

With a whir of machinery, the mattress beneath her began to rise up toward the glass canopy. Approaching it made Lana feel claustrophobic, especially given her new size. As she neared the top, she shifted under the blanket and prepared to roll over to keep her protruding belly from bumping against the glass. But the bed seemed to be intelligent enough to sense this and stopped just a few inches from Lana’s popped navel. She sighed in relief and wrapped her arms around her belly, still in shock that she was looking at her own body.
Outside the cryo-bed, the soft, blue lights had been replaced by the same white, fluorescent lighting as when they’d boarded. With a hiss, followed by a click, the glass canopy of the bed suddenly flung open as the mattress was raised a few more feet until the bed felt more like a table. Lana tried to sit up, but found the extra weight to her middle was more than she’d anticipated. She did her best to roll over onto her side and flop down from the bed to the floor, her legs almost giving out from underneath her.

“Lana!” called a familiar voice. Dr. Schafer approached from behind and crouched next to her, helping the bobcat up. “Well, thank goodness your kind tend to always land on your feet, but don’t get up so quickly. Your muscles are still weak, you’ve been asleep for a long time.”
“O-okay…” Lana whispered, her throat sore. The deer helped her upright, where she could fully appreciate the full size of her pregnant belly as it comfortably filled the extra fabric of her jumpsuit. Her eyes wide in shock, she slid her hands over her round stomach, gingerly pressing her palms against her sensitive body.
“Look at you,” Dr. Schafer said, smiling pleasingly while patting Lana’s belly with a look of pride. “I don’t think you’ll leave any of those colonists disappointed.”
“I’m…I’m really…” Lana panted, her hands shaking as she gripped the sides of her belly. “H-how many are in there?”
“We won’t know until we check,” Dr. Schafer said, cocking her head as she measured Lana’s belly with her fingers. “But if I had to guess…no less than seven.”

“S-Seven?” Lana breathed, staring down at her protruding, gravid stomach. There were more people inside of her than had been in her entire family.
“We’ll know for sure during the ultrasounds,” the doctor said. “Let’s get the others awake, first.” As the deer left her, Lana glanced around the room to find the other cryo-beds had simultaneously opened, awakening the other surrogates within. The bobcat had been the first to stand, while the others were still waking up and audibly gasping at their changed bodies. Rita, the otter, dropped down to her paws after Lana, shaking her head and flexing her hands to get blood flowing into her body. She seemed to be the most used to cryo-sleep, so Lana copied her flexing movements.

“Holy shit,” Rita swore in a hoarse voice, gripping her own swollen, pregnant belly with both hands, as if she’d just noticed it was there. “Jesus…Holy fucking Christ…That’s…I’m actually fucking pregnant.” She shuddered and pressed her hands to her belly before shouting again. “Jesus, they’re fucking moving!”
Angie was up next, waddling around her bed with one hand braced against her back and the other holding her belly as she gazed down at herself in shock. Her tail was tucked between her legs and she seemed far from the self-assured woman she’d been when they’d gone to sleep.
“I gotta sit down,” she said quietly as she sank into one of the cushioned chairs in the corner of the room, her enormous belly filling her entire lap and forcing her to lean back in order to breathe.

As the other surrogates awoke, Lana’s attention turned back to herself as she held her hands to her kitten-heavy belly and felt more of the babies inside begin squirming and kicking as they woke up alongside their surrogate mother. Lana shuddered, feeling a strange chill go up her spine. In a panic, she jerked her hands away from her belly and pulled at the straps around her shoulders and tugged down her uniform. She didn’t quite know why she was doing it, but she needed to see her own body to be sure of what was happening. As she jerked her arms out of the sleeves and pulled the jumpsuit away from her chest, she suddenly gasped in slight pain as the zippers brushed against her breasts, which had grown a full cup size larger than before and were as sensitive as ripe fruits. Lana more carefully tugged down the pink uniform until she peeled it away from her middle, like unwrapping a gift.

There, just below her breasts and above her hips, was her own pregnant body. She recognized her own spots and fur markings, stretched and warped by the growing of her belly. She touched her hands to her stomach, her fingers sliding through the familiar territory of her own fur but in a very unfamiliar shape. Lana felt warm, almost hot to the touch, and seemed more sensitive to every nerve around her belly. It was bizarrely uncanny to feel her own body in such a different way.

Movement to her left caught Lana’s attention and she looked up from the bare fur of her pregnant belly to find Layla shakily climbing down from the bed, holding onto the edge for balance. One she’d touched her paws to the floor, she put on her 3D-printed glasses and gazed down at her own rounded stomach, similar in shape to Lana’s, but sitting lower in her hips and distinctly smaller. She let go of the bed with a shaking hand and stroked her belly with delicate fingers, her breathing heavy as her tail wagged behind her. The collie glanced up from herself and stared at Lana’s bared belly before blinking and smiling up at the bobcat. Lana suddenly realized her nakedness and quickly turned to pull up her jumpsuit as she watched Mitsuru wake up, her pregnant body more full and fluffy than Layla or Lana’s.

“This doesn’t feel real,” Layla said once Lana turned around. She was looking up at the bobcat, but still affectionately stroking her belly. “It feels like I’m still asleep and dreaming.”
“I know,” Lana said, feeling one of the kittens squirm inside her.
“May I?” Layla asked, reaching a hand toward Lana’s belly. She didn’t answer at first, puzzled by the fact that this was a question she’d have to consider, but nodded and felt the gentle touch of the collie’s hand against her taut belly. The two of them jumped as one of the babies inside Lana pushed out and they laughed nervously.
“I don’t think mine are awake yet,” Layla said, cupping her hands around her belly. She glanced up with wet eyes and a broad grin on her face. “Lana…this is…this is amazing…I’m really pregnant…It’s really happening.” She leaned back against the bed and wagged her tail while excitedly petting her gravid, puppy-filled belly.

Once all the surrogates had woken up enough to be lucid, Dr. Schafer returned with the medical cart from before. She herself seemed groggy, her eyes slightly bloodshot and her fur messy, but otherwise looked exactly the same. Aside from the women’s rounded bellies, it might have felt like only a day or two had passed.
“How long has it been?” asked Carla, sitting in a nearby chair with her arms wrapped around her belly like a basketball.
“Almost a year,” the doctor said as she booted up a device on the cart. “But you were inseminated only once we were halfway, so you’re all about six months along. We probably only entered slip-space a few hours ago.
“Jesus Christ…we really did wake up pregnant,” Rita swore again, one hand gripping a glass of water from the kitchen.
“I told you it was a shock,” Dr. Schafer said. “You’ll get used to it in a few days.”
“Only six months?” Layla said to herself quietly before glancing to her smaller belly and comparing it to Lana’s. The bobcat easily looked well into her third trimester and was proportionately even larger than the beefy Angie. Lana recalled anxiously that Dr. Schafer had said ‘no less than seven.’

“God, this feels so weird…” Sofia said as she sat on the edge of her cryo-bed and held her belly, her hands sinking into her plush fur. “I kind of wish we’d had time to get used to it.”
“That tends to be the big drawback,” Dr. Schafer nodded. “You get to sleep through most of the gestation period, but it leaves you less time to get used to being pregnant.”
“I don’t think I’ll complain about these uniforms anymore,” said Hana, pulling at the stretchy fabric that her sizable belly had filled in.
“It’s really been a year?” Carla breathed, bracing her hands on her hips as her own belly, a little smaller than Layla’s, rounded out her body. “It only feels like yesterday we were getting on board!”
“It fucks with you, right?” Rita smirked, stroking her hand over her belly absentmindedly.
“Okay ladies!” Dr. Schafer called out and the conversations came to a sudden stop. “We’ll be doing an early checkup and preliminary ultrasounds before you can leave. Get an idea of how many you’re all carrying.”

“Anyone feel like taking bets?” Rita asked, making the rest of the surrogates chuckle. Lana noticed that Angie was still sitting in the chair in a daze, her hands wrapped around her newly-pregnant body.
“This isn’t a competition,” Dr. Schafer said, gently, as she crossed the room to the otter with the medical cart hovering behind. “But we can start with you. Lie back on the bed, if you can.”
As Rita swallowed and awkwardly climbed back on the bed, Dr. Schafer took a small, white wand from the pocket of her jacket and flicked on a little switch that glowed a dull blue, matching a light on the machine. The end of the wand secreted a small, clear gel as it hummed to life. By peeling away an adhesive strap on the uniform, Dr. Schafer exposed the brown, furry swell of Rita’s pregnant belly before touching the wand to it. The otter trembled slightly and crossed her hands over her chest while she and a few other surrogates curiously looked up at the screen.

“I’m definitely carrying more than one,” Layla said excitedly as she cupped her belly in her hands. She pulled at the same adhesive strap and exposed the cream-colored fur of her middle, rounded out into a pudgy, fertile bump that she seemed to relish playing her fingers against. She barely seemed willing to pull her hands away and didn’t spend longer than a few seconds without at least on hand cradling her baby bump.
“You’re enjoying this,” Lana remarked, glancing at the collie’s wagging tail.
“I am,” Layla breathed, blushing slightly. “I guess I…I guess I’m just happy to be…happy to be the starting point for so many new families.” She smiled again, but seemed hesitant.
“You’re kidding me!” Rita shouted from the other end of the room as she stared at Dr. Schafer with her hands over her belly. The deer was nodding with a sly smile on her face, using the end of the wand to tap the screen and count the number of otter pups Rita was carrying.

“Holy fuck…” she sighed, flopping on the bed as her belly trembled from the impact. “That’s half a goddamn baseball team.” The other surrogates watched and laughed at Rita’s reaction before Dr. Schafer handed the otter a towel and moved down to the other bed, pointedly leaving Angie where she was in the corner.
Dr. Schafer used the machine on the other surrogates across the room, scanning each of their full bellies to see how many they’d been impregnated with. They kept the exact numbers to themselves, but it left every one of them in shock to see just how many lives they carried in their bellies. After a while, Angie stood up with a dazed look on her face and moved back to her bed, cradling her belly in her arms and walking with a slow, ponderous waddle as her bare paws clicked against the floor. Dr. Schafer took the machine to her once she was finished with Hana. Angie sat quietly through the entire ultrasound and stared wide-eyed at the screen as the doctor counted the number of puppies she carried. Judging by the number of taps Dr. Schafer made against the glass monitor, the number was high.
Once she’d finished the Angie, the deer moved to Carla next. Layla’s tail fanned behind her and she glanced excitedly at Lana with a sparkle in her eyes. The way she shifting in place made her round belly bounce slightly.

“I’m next,” she hissed, like she was in line for a ride at an amusement park. She was the only one not to react with fear at the idea of seeing what was living inside her womb. Carla, meanwhile, chewed on the tip of her thumb as Dr. Schafer counted out the three pups on the monitor. Once she was done, the terrier took deep, deliberate breaths while rubbing her hands on either side of her belly and silently counting where the triplets were.
Before Dr. Schafer could ask, Layla had climbed up onto her bed, scraping the side of her belly against the edge in the process, and eagerly laid back with the flap pulled aside and her baby belly exposed.

“Oh…well uh…” Dr. Schafer paused, blinking at the excited collie. “Thank you for being so…accommodating.” Layla simply nodded, her eyes bright and energetic as she stared at the wand in the doctor’s hand. Dr. Schafer paused, then made a slight shrug before stepping between Lana and the bed to press the wand against Layla’s belly.
“O-oh,” she giggled. “It’s cold.”
“You must be sensitive,” Dr. Schafer smiled, probing the wand over the collie’s belly with one hand and twisting some kind of tuning dial next to the monitor. Layla’s excited breathing went silent as she stared in awe at the first sight of a small, canine face on the monitor. As Dr. Schafer moved the wand and the image followed with it, more and more tiny shapes became visible, all packed together inside the warm, cramped space of Layla’s womb.
“There they are…” Layla marveled quietly. “Oh my gosh, there they are…”
On the monitor, one of the pups shifted and kicked a leg out, which made the collie burst into a fit of giggles and grip the sides of her belly.
“I felt that,” she gasped in ecstatic glee. “I felt them move!”

“So, counting the number of fetal heartbeats…” Dr. Schafer said, thinking out loud. She tapped her finger on the screen and began to count, making sure she wasn’t missing any. “You’re having five puppies, in total.”
“Five!” Layla gasped, her eyes widening as she trembled on the bed. Behind her thick glasses, her eyes became misty and she grinned. “Five puppies?”
“Looks like it,” Dr. Schafer nodded. “All mid-size breed canines, by the way. Carla and Mitsuru carry smaller breeds while Angie has the big ones.”
“Puppies…” Layla sighed wistfully, touching the monitor just below the short muzzle of what might have been a collie like herself. She sighed as Dr. Schafer pulled the wand away and handed Layla a hand towel to wipe away the excess gel from her fur.
“Alright, Lana,” she said to the bobcat before patting the bed. “Your turn.”

Lana wrung her fingers together and took a shuddering breath before clambering up onto the mattress, her belly too heavy to comfortably move around. Once she was on her back, she began to struggle to breath under the heavy weight that pressed down on her.
“S-So…” Lana asked before Dr. Schafer started. “Did they…did they end up…um…putting extra in me?”
“I’ll check,” the doctor nodded. She pulled out a tablet and tapped it with the end of her pinkie, her eyes scanning the list. Her ears stood up high on her head as she smiled and nodded at Lana. “Every feline embryo we had was implanted successfully, even those on the waiting list.”
“Oh…” Lana said, swallowing. “How many?”
“Let’s check,” Dr. Schafer said, pulling away the flap and smoothing the fur down around Lana’s belly. Lying on her back, the bobcat couldn’t see the rest of the room past her bulging middle. Was she really supposed to be only six months in?
Lana glanced at Layla’s bed to find the collie lying on her side, her hands over her belly, and watching Lana’s ultrasound curiously. Mitsuru had also come to the other side of the bed and watched the screen curiously.
“Y-you said at least seven, right?” Lana asked, shakily.
“Just an estimate,” Dr. Schafer said calmly while guiding the wand over the bobcat’s belly. “Everyone carries differently.” She stopped on the left side of Lana’s stomach and carefully turned the wand up toward her ribs. On the screen, out of the formless shapes, emerged the body of a kitten, curled into a ball with a long tail wrapped around its legs.

“There’s one,” Dr. Schafer smiled. She turned a dial up and a speaker on the came to life with a cacophony of dull thumps, pounding away above one another. “Oh…wow…That’s a lot of heartbeats.” Lana shuddered, her ears twitching at the sounds of the lives pulsing away inside her belly, just a few feet away.
“According to the Doppler…” Dr. Schafer said, reading a tablet screen. She paused, then glanced back at Lana with her eyebrows raised. “Excluding yours…we detect…ten distinct heartbeats.”

“Ten!?” Lana shouted, sitting up on her elbows as her voice carried across the room.
“Jesus,” Rita chuckled, her hands around her belly. “Glad we weren’t better, after all.”
“Ten.” Lana said, gripping her stomach with both hands and becoming acutely aware of the number of moving bodies in her womb. “Ten. Ten babies.”
“That’s what I’m seeing,” Dr. Schafer nodded as she continued to prod the wand against Lana’s overwhelmingly full middle. “That’s all the feline embryos we had in storage, too.”
“Lana…” Layla breathed in amazement. She climbed down from her bed and soothingly slid her palm over the bobcat’s bulging stomach. “You really are having a litter…”
“That’s… I don’t know…I don’t know about this…” Lana panted, staring up at the doctor. “I didn’t know I’d…is there something…”

“Lana, please, calm down,” the doctor said, gently placing her hands on Lana’s shoulders. “It’s a big litter, yes, but far from the biggest we’ve had come through here. And the beds are connected to supercomputers that analyze your biology for months before the embryos are implanted. They never give you more than you can handle. At worst, you’ll feel a few extra kicks than you would have if you’d capped out at seven.”
“So…so it’s okay?” Lana breathed, her hands roaming her belly and feeling for the ten kittens inside as they stretched and moved.
“It is,” Dr. Schafer said, smiling. “We’ve got millions of dollars worth of equipment to make this as comfortable as possible for you all. And if that doesn’t help, just think about the parents on Europa that will get to start a family because of you. We almost never get to tell parents on the waiting list about good news.” The deer smiled behind her glasses before patting Lana on her belly and rounding the bed to check on Mitsuru.

“How do you feel?” Layla asked as Lana gingerly climbed down from the bed. She didn’t realize how many lives she’d put in danger when she fell out of it.
“I…I don’t know…” Lana breathed, rocking back and forth to test the bizarre way weight was distributed by her gravid belly. “It feels like I’ve only been pregnant for twenty minutes.”
“That’s the strangest part,” Layla nodded, but she smiled as she poked her fingers into her swollen middle. “But I think I’ll get used to this.”
“I don’t know if I ever will,” Lana sighed, measuring the size of her belly with her hands. “God, if I’m this big now…Ten kittens, holy shit…”
“At least we’re still built for having litters,” Layla offered, optimistically. “Y’know…species-wise.”

Dr. Schafer finished with Mitsuru and moved to the mouse girl in the next bed. Lana and the shiba made eye contact. Without her Babel Box in, Mitsuru communicated with her hands by poking a finger into her bulging belly and holding up six fingers with an eager smile. Lana made the same motion and held up all ten of her fingers, at which Mitsuru’s jaw dropped open and her eyes widened. Lana nodded with a wordless grimace and looked down at her stomach. Was this really worth getting to Europa?
Once she’d finished with the preliminary ultrasounds, Dr. Schafer walked to the middle of the room with her tablet in hand and beamed at the surrounding room filled with heavily pregnant women.
“I have good news,” the doctor said gleefully. “You all are carrying every single embryo we’d been given from the colony, including every parent on the waiting list. I’ve been working on this ship for fifteen years and that’s only happened once.” She sighed and glanced around before adding, “I’m proud of all of you. Truly.”
“Why?” asked Sofia. “All we did was sleep and get knocked up by a robot.”

“You’re going to make some parents very, very happy once we can send communications to Europa. A lot of them already had children that died from birth defects that the fetuses you carry are immune to. You’re sacrificing a lot.”
Lana felt the stirring of the huge litter she carried and glanced down at her belly and couldn’t help but feel a little proud of herself, too. Layla beamed and seemed to glow with motherly light as she listened intently to the doctor.
“And I’ve got more good news,” Dr. Schafer said. She turned to the floating machine and picked up a stack of ID cards that shimmered in the light. “I’ve managed to convince the ship’s administration to upgrade all of you to first-class. With caveats, of course.”
The surrogates all drew in breath and talked excitedly among one another.
“First class?” Layla whispered to Lana. “I’ve never been first class on anything before!”

“Of course, you have your restrictions,” Dr. Schafer said, holding up her tablet to read off of. “First, all meals have to be eaten on the medical level dining hall, exclusively. Your diets are exclusively tailored to each one of you and it’s important that you stick to them. Second, maintain the exercise regimen assigned to you. You can get that done on any gym on the ship. The swimming classes are popular with the surrogates, usually.”
“I’m in,” Rita said, waving enthusiastically.”
“Third is all the obvious things. No alcohol, no drugs, no fatty foods. Don’t exercise too hard, don’t spend too much time in the mating center, try not-”
“The what?” Carla asked. “Mating center?”
“The sex parlor,” Hana answered with a shrug. “If you need to get laid.”
“What?” Carla gasped.
“That’s, like, standard on long-distance ships, y’know?” Rita said. “Might pop on up there myself sooner than later…”
“Sexual health is an important factor in deep-space travel, especially for the psychological benefits,” Dr. Schafer nodded. “If you feel the need, it’s there, and not as seedy as it sounds.”
“And that’s safe?” Layla asked, nervously rubbing her belly. “Y’know, if we’re…”
“Perfectly safe,” Dr. Schafer smiled. “Just don’t overdo it.”

The surrogates glanced at one another, some in shock while and some with devious smiles on their faces.
“Swap these out with your old cards before you go,” Dr. Schafer said, spreading the new first-class IDs across the table. “You can use them on anything you want in the ship, barring the restrictions we talked about, with unlimited credit. I’ll be keeping tabs on your activities, though. Until we get to Europa, you’re carrying company property in those bellies.”
The phrase stuck with Lana and she hesitated before shuffling forward to the table to find her card.

“I’m surprised I don’t have to piss,” Angie said, the shock of waking up heavily pregnant seeming to be weighing on her. “I always had to take a leak coming off ice in the Army.”
“Oh, the beds took care of that for you while you were asleep,” Dr. Schafer said nonchalantly. The room full of women stopped to stare at her with disgust on their faces. “Astronauts have been using tubes since the dawn of space travel. We couldn’t have your bladders rupture while you were asleep, could we?”
“Are there...showers we can take?” Sofia asked, raising her hand.
“In your rooms, yes.”
“We get rooms?” Hana asked, surprised. “I just thought we were going to sleep here.”
“This isn’t a hostel. Of course you get your own rooms, but they’re all on the medical level so you’re close by in case of an emergency.”

Lana picked up her card, staring at her own uncomfortable face in the photo she took almost a year ago, but felt like only the day before. One of the kittens in her crowded womb kicked her softly just below her hand and triggered a chain reaction of movement between all the others. It was the strangest thing she’d ever experienced.
“So uh…” Rita began, drumming her hands on her belly. “What now?”
“Well, technically you’re free to go but…” Dr. Schafer paused, glancing at the twelve women surrounding the table, each with rounded pregnant bellies and hungry looks on their faces. “The medical dining hall is that way.”
There was a pause as recognition sunk in. As if only just then realizing it, Lana realized how ravenously hungry she was, as did the other surrogates. They crowded toward the door in an awkward shuffle to get out first as all twelve of them headed down the corridor in the direction Dr. Schafer had pointed.

The group of surrogates separated in the crowded corridor, some moving faster and some moving slower under the burden of their fertile bodies. Lana noticed how each one of them had a slight waddle to their steps, including her. She kept one hand trailing against the wall as she tried to get used to her altered center of gravity. Layla, meanwhile, strode easily and happily at her side, leaning back slightly with her hands resting gently over her belly, like the perfect ideal of motherhood.
“Are you alright?” she asked, holding Lana’s shoulder as she stumbled. The bobcat panted, bracing a hand against her stomach and feeling very, very aware why falling would be a bad idea in her condition.
“You make this look so easy,” she panted, glancing at Layla’s bump. The collie brushed hair out of her eyes and smiled bashfully.
“Oh, I just…took to it, I guess,” Layla shrugged, her paws slightly spaced apart to hold her balance and her hands resting atop her belly.
“Have you done this before?” Lana asked, leaning against the wall and feeling her belly jut out even farther from her body. “Been pregnant?”
“No,” Layla said, looking down at herself and gently wagging her tail. She added, quietly, “I don’t know why I waited so long, though…”

Lana flicked her ear while peering inquisitively at the canine before regaining her strength on the way to the dining hall.
It resembled a cafeteria a little too much for Lana’s taste. The communal seating made her feel like she was back in high school all over again. Of course, the six-month-pregnant belly she carried broke that illusion effectively. There were multiple lines going by food dispensaries and Lana watched as each employee swiped their card against a large scanner and were given a pre-packaged meal already hot. Even with the lines long, Lana noticed that the pink jumpsuits of the other surrogates far ahead at the front with a couple of them already sitting down to eat. She wondered how they’d gotten there so fast as she and Layla got into line. Lana, misjudging her new size, accidentally jabbed her belly into the back of the woman standing in front of her.

“Oh, uh…sorry,” Lana mumbled. The fox, a young nurse in lime green scrubs, turned to glance at them, her eyes darting from their ID cards to, inevitably, their pregnant bellies.
“Oh, no, you go first,” she said, standing aside and gesturing.
“No, that’s alright, we can wait.”
“I’m not being polite, the surrogates have meal priority.”
“They- We do?” Lana blinked.
“Well yeah,” the fox smirked. “You’re the ones eating for two, right?”

“A lot more than that…” Lana sighed to herself before smiling to the fox and cutting ahead in line. None of the other crew members protested as she and Layla waddled past and more than a few glanced at them with friendly smiles. Soon, they had cut at the front of the line and swiped their cards under the scanner. There was a pause, longer than the others, before an enormous container, closer to a bucket than a bowl, dropped out of the dispenser with a heavy thud.
“What is this?” Lana said, hefting the bowl in her arms as Layla scanned her card and received an identical item. “I’m supposed to eat all of this?”
“I guess so,” Layla said, pulling up her glasses to try and peer through the semi-translucent lid. “Well, it’s like that nurse said. We are eating for… a lot, right?”
The pair shuffled heavily through the cafeteria, glancing around for an open table. Layla seemed undisturbed, but Lana felt more exposed than ever before. Their pink jumpsuits stuck out almost as much as the heavy bellies they covered and she noticed how many other crew members stopped to glance in their direction. They were met with smiles and nods, more often than not, but it was still unnerving to be the center of attention.

“Hoof,” Layla sighed, rubbing her lower back. “No more walking.” She waddled toward a table filled with older doctors, but with enough room for two more and asked. “Would you mind if we sat here?”
“Of course not, help yourselves,” said an old tiger woman in a lab coat as she slid to make room. Lana and Layla sat across from one another, both realizing simultaneously that they could barely move without the tops of their bellies scraping the bottom of the table. “How are you girls feeling?”
“Pretty good,” Layla nodded as she popped the lid of her meal. “Hungry.”
“I think we all are after being on ice for a year,” the tiger smirked. “Though you two have a bit more reason to be.” Lana jumped as she felt a hand caress her belly gently and realized the tiger was feeling her stomach from beneath the table. “Do you know how many you’re carrying?”
“Five!” Layla said proudly as she took a plastic fork from a box in the middle of the table and began eating whatever was in the bowl in front of her.

“Um…I’m carrying…ten,” Lana said, quietly. The tiger blinked at her with raised eyebrows.
“Ten? You’re kidding!”
“They didn’t have enough feline surrogates for the embryos so…um…” She swallowed and pressed her hands to her belly. “They gave me all of them.”
“What’s your name, dear?”
“Lana…”

“Lana…that is very kind, noble thing of you to do,” the tiger said, gravely serious. “You’ll be giving lives to ten children when we get to Europa. That’s at least half a generation of colonists that will branch off from that.” The woman spread her fingers out and patted Lana’s belly while smiling. “This is the future you have in here, Lana. Take good care of it.”
“Um…I…” she swallowed, staring the tiger in the familiar, feline eyes. “Okay…”

She turned away to her bowl of…something and picked up her own fork. It looked like a kind of semi-translucent rice that steamed and was covered in a thick sauce. Lana hesitantly shoveled a bit into her mouth and found it…not exactly terrible, but not delicious. But as she ate more and more, her tongue seemed to grow more accustomed to the taste and she started to detect notes of flavor that hadn’t been in the first bite. Soon, before she even knew it, half the bowl was already gone and she was hungrily gorging herself on more. The bowl was empty minutes later and Lana leaned back in her seat to catch her breath, her body feeling more full than she’d ever imagined. The litter in her belly seemed to appreciate the meal as well, as the flurry of activity inside her was more energetic than ever.

“They’re kicking,” Layla giggled from across the table, wrapping her arms around her belly and smiling. “I guess they were hungry, too.”
“I don’t think I can get up,” Lana said, shaking her head and allowing herself a laugh. The tiger beside them smiled at the pair of pregnant women and chuckled to herself while finishing her meal.

“It seems like everybody’s looking at us,” Layla said, glancing around.
“The surrogates are very popular on these trips,” the tiger explained. “You all are the only pregnant women on the ship, for one thing. The other passengers have contraceptives in their food. So be prepared to stand out with bellies like those.”
“I don’t know if I like that…” Lana said, hesitantly.
“It’s meant to be a compliment, Lana. Trust me. When you’re out in the middle of space surrounded by all this…machinery, seeing women like you carrying the next generation sort of reminds us of what we’re all working for.”

“The colonies?” Lana asked.
“Not just the colonies,” the tiger smiled. “The future.”