To Keep The Ship by A. Bertram Chandler

Author:A. Bertram Chandler
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction, Fiction, Space Opera, Action & Adventure
Publisher: DAW Books
Published: 2018-01-21T17:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nineteen

“It’s a good solution to your problems,” said Grimes with as much conviction as he could muster. “Balaarsulimaam will help. He assured me, before he left Adder, that he would be at my service if ever I returned to his world.”

“Shipboard friendships,” said Susie, “are woven from even flimsier threads than shipboard love affairs.”

Grimes didn’t like the way that she was looking at him as she said this and didn’t like the way that Hodge chuckled.

He went on, “In any case, you can pay. …”

“As long as it’s not too much,” said Hodge grudgingly. “But just what do you have in mind?”

“A complete change of physical characteristics for Susie and yourself—even, to be on the safe side, to fingerprints and retinal patterns. One beauty of the Joognaan technique is that it doesn’t take anything like as long as the body sculpture on human planets—so I’ll stay around until I’m sure that the two of you will be all right, hoping that no odd star tramp blows in to find Bronson Star sitting there. An All Ships broadcast must have gone out, asking everybody to keep their eyes skinned for us, as soon as we vanished from Bronsonia.

“When I’m happy—and when you’re happy, of course—I lift off, leaving you on Joognaan. You stay there—you’ll have no option—until the next tramp drops in. Then you buy passage in her to wherever she’s going next. Your story will be that you’re clones, that the Joognaanards, after they’d performed regenerative surgery on one or two spacepersons, retained cell cultures for their own experimental purposes. Balaarsulimaam will fix you up with the necessary papers.”

“Nobody likes clones,” stated Hodge dogmatically.

“Not when they know that they’re clones,” said Grimes. “Come to that, clones with money are no more unpopular than anybody else.”

“A complete making over. …” said Susie thoughtfully. “Tell me, John, is the process painful?”

“I’ve been told that it’s not.”

She kneaded the flesh of her right thigh, below the hem of her shorts, with pudgy fingers. “Of course, it could be worth a little discomfort. I am just a bit overweight. …”

“I like you the way that you are,” said Grimes gallantly—then wondered why he should remember that slim woman in his dream.

“And Hodge,” she went on, “is no Adonis. …”

“I like me the way that I am,” growled the engineer. “But I’m willing to sacrifice my beauty in return for safety.”

“So it’s decided, agreed upon,” said Grimes.

“I don’t altogether like it,” muttered Susie. “And you haven’t told us about your end of it. What story will you have to account for the long time it took you between Dunlevin and Bronsonia? How will you account for your being alone in Bronson Star? Everybody in Dunlevin will know by now that you weren’t alone when you lifted off. Apart from anything else I handled the conversations with the Air Force and with the orbital fort.”

“My story will be,” said Grimes, “that the pair of you decided to take your chances in one of the ship’s

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