Free Meet Me at Infinity by James Tiptree Jr.

finish, son.” He belched comfortably. “We fix, eh, boys?”
    “Oh, God.” Quent squinted at them. He gulped some more coffee. “Mr. Pomeroy, you will explain yourself.”
    “Well, you can forget about that newsman and all that,” Pomeroy told him. “When he gets to Sopwith he’ll find the Rosenkrantz and he’ll find Miss Appleby all right—but he won’t find you. Nobody‘11 find you.”
    “Why not?” Quent glared around nervously.
    “Because you are no longer on the Rosenkrantz,” said Svensk.
    “Brilliant, really, your notion of disappearing. Since we could scarcely remove you from the Rosenkrantz, we simply removed the Rosenkrantz from you.” He stretched pleasurably. “Solves everything.”
    “What have you done now?”
    “Observe!” Sylla pointed to the sealed log certificates.
    Quent pulled himself over, eyes wary.
    “P-B 640T J-B,” he read. “But’s that’s wrong. That’s not—”
    “Peebee Jasper Banks, that is.” Pomeroy chuckled. “We’re the Jasper Banks now, see?”
    “What?” Quent pawed at the case. “Those are official seals. You—”
    “Not to worry, it’s just temporary. Jasper owed us a couple of favors. They were glad to oblige. Fact, they wanted to head back to Central anyway. So we just traded registry and log officers and gave them our mail. They took over the Drakes, see?”
    “But that’s—”
    “Beautiful.” Pomeroy nodded. “Gal News can pull the Jasper apart, they never heard of you. No one ever actually saw you on Rosy, did they? He’ll figure it’s some garble. Has to—there’s Appleby, all as advertised. And the Drakes. He’ll have to be satisfied with that.”
    Quent took some more coffee. He felt like a man trying to shake off a bad dream.
    “And the beauty part,” Pomeroy went on, “Jasper’s an all-Human peebee. That’ll really befuddle them.”
    “No integration aspect left,” said Svensk. “Gal Eq will be dashed.”
    “It can’t work. It’s—what about Appleby?”
    “I hope this one so good cook,” muttered Imray.
    “Appleby’s fine—she never heard of you,” Pomeroy assured him. “Morgan let her have these crystals she’s always wanted, see?”
    “Uh. But—they’re going back to Central as us? What happens there? Personnel. My father,” Quent yelped.
    “Personnel,” Pomeroy scoffed. “They’re dingled up half the time. They won’t get their circuits flushed till we’ve swapped back.”
    “But my father—when do we trade back?”
    “When we intersect, bien sure,” said Sylla.
    “When’s that? Hold it. Wasn’t the Jasper headed on some job way out?”
    “That’s right,” said Pomeroy. “The wild sector. Thirteen-zed, they
    call it. Wasn’t due to start patrol there for a while but they got this emergency call. So they sent out the Jasper. That’s us, now.”
    “Quite remote and unexplored, really,” said Svensk, stretching. “Challenging.”
    “New patrol good job,” Imray grunted. “You want be spacer, son, vernt? Nobody mess your career out there.” He scratched his broad chest contentedly. “Integration program? Pfoo! Never catch.”
    “You mean we start patrolling out there? And they take our old one. When do we trade back with Jasper?”
    “Assuming our circuit is, say, twice the length of theirs,” Svensk ruminated, “and assuming they keep near schedule, the perinode should precess around—”
    “Spare me.”
    Quent’s big jaw began to grind and he breathed forcefully. The reaction pushed him slowly out of his console. He hooked one leg around his seat back and hung over them scowling.
    “My career,” he said tensely. “Your unspeakable solicitude… Sixty days on my first duty, I find myself involved in an actionable conspiracy. First officer of a vessel under fraudulent certification, on an illegal course in defiance of orders—without one clobbing prayer of ever getting back into anything resembling legal status. My career. Who’d believe me? What happens