Time Ship

A meteor is about to destroy the planet Entamida, a light year from Earth. A human population has existed there for untold centuries. Gano and Elantra were bought as infants by Tyre from a business that sold reproducing human clones. Tyre and wife, Loua, raised the couple, educated them and hired them out. Elantra is a mathematician working in space science and is a space ship instructor. Gano is a doctor and an archeologist. They have two children, Lee, age 14 and Broni, 12.

Elantra and Gano are virtual slaves although Tyre is not cruel, letting them live together with their children as a family. Elantra develops a space ship that can move through time. Gano discovers radio signals from Earth and Elantra studies wormholes. The family secretly deciphers them and thinks Earth would be a wonderful place to live without the stigma of being clones.

Knowing of the meteor, only a few citizens and no clones are to be saved, by sending them to a nearby planet, The Farm. Elantra takes the family in a time ship, TC, to Earth through a wormhole she has discovered, landing at Area 51 in 1978. General Bob Simons agrees to trade them citizenship papers for TC and their help in reproducing it. They meet Bob's wife, Mable. Later they find Kara, whose Entamidan spaceship had crashed on Jim Hogan's farm near Roswell in 1947. Jim, who was four at that time was raised by Kara and is now a lieutenant colonel at Area 51.

Lee and Broni meet Bob's son, Bill and neighbor, Betty.
Tyre and Loua follow Elantra to Earth with the help of one of her flight students, Jantu. Bob confiscates their ship, TC2, and ignores Tyres claim that Gano is a clone.
Tyre and Loua refuse to declare a suitcase of stolen diamonds they have brought from Entamida and die in time ship TC2, trying to leave with them.

Gano and Elantra realize that if people acquire copies of TC and begin manipulating time, the American dream will become a nightmare. They talk to Bob about it and go with him to Entamida to see how the survivors, if any, are coping with time-travel, and if they pose a threat to the US

They find no answers, but they bring Nelda, a clone friend, back with them. Bob has been temporarily replaced by Major General Hafton and a government committee is waiting to arrest them. The committee thinks they are spies and rejects their story about coming from another planet. To force them into confessing, the committee orders them to go to Entamida and bring two of the time ships back with them, promising US citizenship if they succeed.

Unknown to them, the committee's assault team on the ship, led by Sergeant Logan, has orders to bring back a fortune in diamonds. Bob goes with them and sees evidence that Gano and Elantra might be clones. No diamonds and few people are found, and Sergeant Logan verifies Bob's report. So the committee leaves, taking no action.

Lee and Bill want to marry, but Bob wants proof their parents are not clones. Elantra takes everyone into the past, where Jantu, having been a thief, steals records showing they aren't clones. Elantra's mother, Gesine, is found and Bob approves the marriage.

On Earth, Jantu is missing. Looking for him, Bob discovers he has been recruited to pilot a mission to The Farm in TC. Bob goes with Elantra, Gano and Nelda and they find TC, out of fuel. A young lieutenant led the mission, which destroyed the time-space-ship factory that existed underground.

Gano discovers a family trust has been set up anonymously in his and Elantra's names. A few days later a letter arrives from Jantu, apologizing for yielding to temptation when he saw the diamonds in a safe on The Farm.

After many years, Jim's farm is a large estate. The Trustees of Elantra and Gano's Family Trust are the wedded couples living there: Bill and Lee, Jim and Mable, Bob and Kara, Hafton and Gesine, Jantu and Nelda, and Broni and Betty. Betty is helping Broni write ...