“They don’t care about taking ginger,” she said. “I bet they’d like the money they’d make for smuggling it-you’ve said that yourself. Of course, we haven’t got any ginger to give them, so it doesn’t matter.”

“Of course,” Johnson and Stone agreed together.

Johnson didn’t know for sure whether the Admiral Peary carried ginger, whatever his suspicions. He could think of three people who might: Sam Yeager, Lieutenant General Healey, and Walter Stone. He didn’t ask the senior pilot. He was sure of one thing-the Lizards thought the humans’ starship was full of the stuff from top to bottom.

Come to think of it, Dr. Blanchard might know the truth about the herb, too. Had she just come out and told it, or was she operating on the principle that the Race might have managed to bug the Admiral Peary and needed to be told what they already wanted to hear?

She said, “I’m going to go below and make sure I’ve got everything I’ll need down on the surface of Home. In the meantime…” She glided over to Johnson and gave him a hug and a kiss. Then she did the same thing with Walter Stone. And then, waving impartially to both of them, she was gone.

“Damn,” Johnson said: a reverent curse if ever there was one. The memory of her body pressed against his would stay with him a long time. At his age, sex wasn’t such an urgent business as it had been when he was younger. That didn’t mean he’d forgotten what it was all about.

Walter Stone looked amazingly lifelike as he stared toward the hatchway down which Dr. Blanchard had gone. He shook himself like a man coming out of cold water. “Now that you mention it, yes,” he said.

“Lot of woman there,” Johnson observed. “I’d run into somebody like that, I probably would have stayed married and stayed on Earth.”

He waited for Stone to point out that he’d be dead now in that case. The other man didn’t. He only nodded.

With a sigh, Johnson added, “Of course, you notice she isn’t married herself. Maybe she’s not as nice as she seems.”

“Or maybe she thinks men are a bunch of bums,” Stone said. “You’ve got an ex-wife. Maybe she’s got an ex-husband or three.”

That hadn’t occurred to Johnson. Before he could say anything, a Lizard’s voice spoke from the radio: “Attention, the Tosevite starship. Attention, the Tosevite starship. We have launched a shuttlecraft to pick up your physician. This is the object you will discern on your radar.”

Sure enough, there it was: a blip rising from Home toward the Admiral Peary. “We thank you for the alert, Ground Control,” Stone said in the language of the Race.

A little later, the shuttlecraft pilot’s face appeared in the monitor. As Johnson had guessed, he was (or perhaps she was) a dark-skinned, short-faced Rabotev with eyes on stalks, not in turrets. “I greet you, Tosevites,” the pilot said. “Please give me docking instructions.”

“Our docking apparatus is the same as the Empire uses,” Stone said. He had, no doubt, almost said the same as the Race uses, but that wouldn’t do with a Rabotev. “Lights will guide you to the docking collar. Call again if you have any trouble.”

“I thank you,” the shuttlecraft pilot replied. “It shall be done.”

The Rabotev was certainly capable. He-she? — docked with the Admiral Peary with a smooth efficiency anyone who’d flown in space had to respect. With the duty in the control room, Johnson couldn’t give Dr. Blanchard another personal good-bye. He sighed again. Memory wasn’t a good enough substitute for the real thing.