"Why not? I speak Lhari better than Dad ever did. And my eyes can stand Lhari lights. You said yourself, it's going to be a dangerous job just calling off all the arrangements. So let's _not_ call them off. Just let me take Dad's place!" "Bart, you're only a boy--" "What was Dave Briscoe? No, Raynor. Dad left me a lot more than Vega Interplanet, and you know it. I'll finish what he started, and then maybe I'll begin to deserve what he left me." Raynor Three gripped Bart's hand. He said, in a voice that shook, "All right, Bart. You're your father's son. I can't say more than that. I haven't any right to stop you." CHAPTER SEVEN "All right, Bart, today we'll let you look at yourself," Raynor Three said. Bart smiled under the muffling layers of bandage around his face. His hands were bandaged, too, and he had not been permitted to look in a mirror. But the transition had been surprisingly painless--or perhaps his sense of well-being had been due to Raynor Three slipping him some drug. He'd been given injections of a chemical that would change the color of his skin; there had been minor operations on his face, his hands, his feet. "Let's see you get up and walk around." Bart obeyed awkwardly, and Raynor frowned. "Hurt?" "Not exactly, but I feel as if I were limping." "That's to be expected. I changed the angle of the heel tendon and the muscle of the arch. You're using a different set of muscles when you walk; until they harden up, you'll have some assorted Charley horses. Have any trouble hearing me?" "No, though I'd hear better without all these bandages," Bart said impatiently. "All in good time. Any trouble breathing?" "No, except for the bandages." "Fine. I changed the shape of your ears and nostrils, and it might have affected your hearing or your breathing. Now, listen, Bart: I'm going to take the bandages off your hands first. Sit down." Bart sat across the table from him, obediently sticking out his hands. Raynor Three said, "Shut your eyes." Bart did as he was told and felt Raynor Three's long fingers working at the bandages. "Move each finger as I touch it." Bart obeyed, and Raynor said neutrally, "Good. Now, take a deep breath and then open your eyes." Impatiently Bart flicked his lids open. In spite of the warning, his breath went out in a harsh, jolting gasp. His hands lay on the table before him--but they were not his hands. The narrow, long fingers were pearl-gray, tipped with whitish-pink claws that curved out over the tips. Nervously Bart moved one finger, and the long claw flicked out like a cat's, retracted. He swallowed. "Golly!" He felt strangely wobbly. "A beautiful job, if I do say so. Be careful not to scratch yourself, and practice picking up small things." Bart saw that the long grayish claws were trembling. "How did you make--the claws?"