Shrunken women board

To Keep the Ship artwork by Henry Richard Van Dongen, 1978 for the novel by A. Bertram Chandler.
I've never read the novel -- but the artwork is intriguing.

So I found a summary on Goodreads. The author might have been out of his mind...

"Although this was a low point in the ever-changing space career of the legendary John Grimes, it was not without its surprising moments. Between jobs, between loyalties, Grimes was owner and pilot of a small auxiliary vessel whose principal oddity was that it was made of gold. But precious metal or not, Grimes was running errands with it.

Until he fell into the clutches of terrorists. Susie and her comrades had a Cause and it was going to take all his efforts to keep the one thing he had to have—his ship

Especially since they left the ship infested with a constantly increasing horde of mini-Susies—vicious little homunculi that looked exactly like their sexy prototype except that they were hungry, sharp-toothed, and their only Cause was to eat Grimes alive!"