Ralph Garvey is seconds away from launching his private space yacht when a Customs inspector arrives to search for contraband, threatening to uncover the illegal cargo hidden aboard. Garvey fears he's been caught smuggling a forbidden sexual surrogate under the strict Sexual Morality Act, but the inspection takes an unexpected turn when the inspector turns out to be his old college friend, Eddie Starbuck. What begins as a tense confrontation becomes a relaxed reunion over drinks, even as the missing surrogate's true nature begins to seem far more ominous than merely illicit. When Starbuck leaves, Garvey presses on with his secret voyage and prepares to activate the mysterious crate he has smuggled into deep space. The story unfolds to reveal the history of the surrogates: android women originally created to ease loneliness in isolated space colonies, then banned on Earth after proving too alluring and too disruptive to accepted social norms. Garvey soon receives an emergency warning that his stolen companion is not an Earth model at all, but an Algolian surrogate built for a species far stronger than humans. At first he feels relieved, but when the crate starts to burst apart and a towering, breathtaking woman emerges, he realizes he has brought aboard something irresistibly desirable—and potentially lethal. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.
