The basic facts are simple enough.

 By 2091 it was possible to forge a duplicate of any starship from a single
 sheet of the original ship's metal exterior. This applied to the large ships
 as well as the small, even one as big as the Ranger, an interstellar explorer
 ship. Similar operations, involving the creation of duplicate human beings
 from a single cell of another human being, had of course been common practice
 since 1978, when the first such instance was recorded.

 And on the morning when the huge duplicate of the starship in question sped
 through the heavens, Gromml Deetrius's telescanner began to glow brightly,
 indicating that a huge mass of matter had gone by at faster-than-light speed.

 Alarmed, Deetrius turned to his cooler-headed assistant, Pygaart, and asked
 him, "What was that mysterious mass, man?" Pygaart, always the model of
 serenity, answered quietly, "That was no ordinary mass, man. That was the
 clone, Ranger."