When Pauline B. Jones and I were putting together the first Pets In Space anthology in 2016, I wrote a story for the volume about a kidnapped alien empathic priestess, who was found as a stowaway on my interstellar cruise ship, the Nebula Zephyr, and her adventures fighting her way free of the Combine (Star Cruise: Stowaway). She escaped the villains almost by accident, because she had help from my spaceship crew (and the pets).

I realized after I finished that novella that I wasn’t done wit...