Undercover Pets

The Undercover Pets Detective Agency puts Smart Pets where nobody looks twice: a cat asleep on a desk, a rabbit in a corner. People leave a mascot alone with the paperwork. At Eden Space Habitat, the paperwork is where the secrets are. Agent Barsik has usually read it first. Bubochka, the trainee, is learning that a missing form can say as much as a filled-in one.

These are stories about small warm creatures and what they notice. Training that looks like sitting very still. A creature nobody can put a name to. Animals the agency never recruited, who noticed things anyway. The habitat has its own police, and the agency works quietly underneath them, not against them. Superintendent Oyelaran's bureau does the official work, and on her books the agency's animals are listed as livestock. That suits the agency fine.