"What's the pay range?" he asked.
"Ten dollars a day on Caesar's Moon. Fifteen on New Arcady or Von Neumann Two. Twenty-five on Jordan's."
Asa raised his eyebrows.
"Why such a difference? Everyone knows about muck men living in the mud while they hunt Slider eggs. But don't your conversions make the changeling comfortable in his new environment?"
"Sure they do," said the doctor. "We can make you think mud feels better than chinchilla fur and we can have you jumping like a grasshopper despite the double gravity. But we can't make you like the sight of yourself. And we can't guarantee that a Slider won't kill you."
"Still," Asa mused aloud, "it would mean a nice bankroll waiting at the end of the year."
He leaned forward to fill in the necessary form.
Since it was cheaper to transport a normal human than to rig special environments in a spaceship, every planet operated its own conversion chambers. On the space freighter that carried him from Earth Asa Graybar was confined to a small cabin that was opened only for a guard to bring meals and take out dirty dishes. He was still a prisoner.
Sometimes he could hear voices in the passageway outside, and once one of them sounded like a woman's. But since women neither served on spaceships nor worked in the dome settlements on harsher worlds, he decided it was his imagination. He might have been dead cargo for all he learned about space travel.