Grimes did not anticipate that Susie and Hodge would be returning to the ship at night. Had he known, he would have stayed up to welcome them—or he would have made sure, before retiring, that the radar alarm was switched on. As a matter of fact he did remember that he had failed to actuate this warning device but he was already in bed, and drowsy. On this planet, he told himself, there was no need to take precautions against nocturnal attack. Furthermore the airlock door was closed and only the three humans knew the code that would open it from the outside. The last that Balaarsulimaam had told him was that he would be allowed to see the girl and the engineer the following day. He fell asleep wondering what she would look like, which star of the Bronsonian entertainment screens she would have remodeled herself to resemble.
He fell asleep without having to work hard at it.
He did not dream—although at first he thought that it was a dream that he had awakened to.
The light in his bedroom came on.
He opened his eyes, blinked muzzily and then stared at the woman who stood just inside the doorway. She was quite naked, slim, fine featured, auburn haired. There was a beauty spot, a mole, over her small, firm left breast. This minor blemish seemed unusually distinct.
He was dreaming. He knew that he was dreaming. Maggie Lazenby could not possibly be here, on this world.
(But she might be, he thought. She just might be. Perhaps a Survey Service ship, with herself among the officers, had landed. Perhaps he had slept through the cacophony of its descent.)
Maggie (Maggie?) walked slowly into the cabin. She seemed to have lost the grace with which she usually moved and the smile that curved her wide mouth was not quite right.
(This is a dream, Grimes thought, oddly relieved.)
The scent of her, the muskiness of a sexually aroused human female, was wrong, wrong yet familiar. And her skin was too pale.
(But I don't want to wake up just yet, he thought.)
She came to his bed, stooped to plant a kiss (it tasted wrong) on his mouth. Her erect nipples brushed his bare chest. She straightened, turned slowly around until she faced him again. (Maggie would have pirouetted.)
She asked, "What do you think of the new me, John?"
He gasped, "Susie!"
"On stage live, in person, singing and dancing." She stared down at his face. "Aren't you pleased?"
He said weakly, "It's a surprise. . . ."
"But aren't you pleased?"
He was not. He realized then that, however much he might philander, his essential loyalties lay to one woman only—and Susie most certainly was not she.
"Aren't you pleased?"
Suddenly anger supplanted all other emotions. He growled, "So that's where my solidograph of Maggie went. You stole it. . . ."
"I did not. Lania threw it out after she caught Paul leering at it."
"You must have known that I valued it. You should have given it to me."
"And had her looking at us from the top of your desk every time that we made love? With you making odious comparisons and me knowing that you were doing just that? If it's any consolation to you, I used her as my model only because there was nothing else around—unless you count that tawdry calendar in the Third Mate's cabin. In any case, whose bright idea was it that I should have a body change?"
"But you aren't Maggie. . . ."
"I know bloody well I'm not. And Hodge isn't Trevor Carradine, but he looks like him and that'll be good enough for me. This was to have been a sort of thank-you-for-everything, farewell session, John—but you've ruined it." She snatched the sheet from off his body. "Look at you! When I came in you were making a tent but now. . . . Like one of those slime-eating slugs in the algae tanks. . . ."
"But. . . ."
"You've said enough, John. I'll go where I'm appreciated. Hodge has been trying hard to get some place with me ever since they dragged us out of their tubs and rinsed us off."
"But. . . ."
"But we have the same father? So bloody what? Some planets get all hot and bothered about incest, some don't. And in any case we're starting afresh with brand new identities.
"So this is good-bye, John. Hodge is wiping the auto-log for you now and all that I have to do is to pick up the money from the safe in my office. We'll leave you to your sweet dreams of Maggie—what a name!—and you can get off this world and back to your precious Little Sister as soon as you like.
"Good-bye."
As she turned to go Grimes jumped out of the bed, caught her by the slim shoulders, pulled her back to him. His erection grew again. No matter what or whom she looked like, no matter how much weight she had shed, she felt like Susie. She did not struggle as he forced her round to face him, as he pressed his mouth to hers. With the full frontal contact there was only the faintest hint of the girl that she had been—but it was enough.
As long as he kept his eyes closed.
He took her brutally on the disordered bed and she did not resist. She was there too and she made him fully aware of it.
When he was fully spent and she sated, she slithered from under him, tottered rather than walked to the door. She turned, supporting herself with one long, slim arm on the door frame.
She said, "All right. This is good-bye. I'm glad that it was with a bang and not with a whimper—and I'm sorry that you aren't staying here to take your chances with us. . . . You still could. . . ."
He said, "I'm sorry that you can't come back to Bronsonia with me. I could use a purser aboard my own ship, when I get her back. . . ."
She said, "You just used a purser. Oh, well. Goodbye, good luck and all that. And give my love to Little Sister."
He said, regretting the words as soon as he had uttered them, "And give mine to your half brother."
She called him a nasty, sarcastic bastard and then was gone.