But all of the dangers proved, in the end, to be chimeras. The shushers went through disinfection without the slightest problem at all, they dutifully subsisted on bouillon and dried fruits. This made them a lifelong enemy in Zeleny, who had a taste for fruit himself and had to spend the last months of the expedition getting his vitamins from pills in order to ‘feed the mice.’

Over the course of the long flight back to Earth the Shushes gave birth to six kits. As a result the ship reached Earth orbit filled to the gills with shushers and shusher kits. They turned out to be quick witted little animals and, other than Zeleny, none of the crew suffered the slightest unpleasantness or inconvenience.

I remember the historic moment when the expedition landed back on Earth, when, under the glare of the television and film cameras the airlock opened, and, instead of the spacemen, first through the orifice was an astonishing, furry animal. And after that came several more, just smaller. You could hear the gasp of astonishment around the world, but it cut off a moment later when a laughing Poloskov followed the shushers from out of the ship. In his hands he had one of the kits, condensed milk still smeared on its fur.

One part of the contingent of animals ended up in the zoo, others remained with spacemen who refused to give them up. Poloskov’s shusher kit finally reached Alice. The Lord alone knows how my daughter charmed the spaceman out of the shusher.

Shusher lived in a large basket right beside Alice’s bed; he got along fine without meat, slept nights, made friends with the cats and the large Martian Mantis, and he purred in a low, quiet voice when Alice petted him or told him how good he was or what he had done wrong.