by Mack Maloney
Erx and Berx had never seen anything like it. It didn’t make sense.
“Can we be disqualified for… sorcery!” Erx asked, still holding the burning match in hand.
“If this is not real, they’ll have our heads!” Berx bemoaned.
“It is not sorcery nor illusion, my brothers,” Calandrx told them. “Now, I’m not sure exactly what it is — but it doesn’t matter. Hunter has won. It will be verified that his flying machine traveled the course and mastered the obstacles.”
“And that means…” Erx began to say. He was still a bit dumbstruck. The match had not even burned down to his fingertips yet.
“That we are all very wealthy?” Berx finished for him.
“Wealthy?” Calandrx asked. “Yes, we are wealthy! We are wealthy in heart, in spirit! In goodwill… but, you see, we had those things already.”
He thrust his arms skyward and let out a howl. It was possible that he was even happier now than back when he’d won his own Earth Race.
“We are wealthy because we’ve been allowed to live in such an interesting time!” he bellowed. “The only difference is, now we’ve got some coin to go along with it!”
It was just about this time that the million-plus crowd began to realize what had happened. The maccus has won the race? they asked. Yes, the maccus has won the race! And at such a tremendous speed, it seemed as if it had never left the arena at all.
As this information made its way through the stadium, the combined energy of one million people about to cheer at once began building like a thunderstorm.
“We must make haste!” Calandrx told Erx and Berx now. “Our brother will soon be at the center of the Galaxy. He will soon be trafficking with the Specials themselves! It is our duty to usher him through to this newfound celebrity!”
“Bingo that!” Erx and Berx replied as one.
It took just a few seconds for a team of officials to complete their postrace scan of Hunter’s aircraft.
The six men had run their quadtrols up one side of the flying machine and down the other. Then they did a kind of group shrug and made the official hand signal to each other. Six thumbs went straight up. Hunter had indeed run the race. He had bested the obstacles and was the first to cross finish line. That’s all that was required.
His time for the twenty-five-thousand-mile course, however, was an astonishing 2.7511 seconds. This handily beat the old record — by more than an hour.
By the time Erx, Berx, and Calandrx finally got through to the winner’s circle, a gaggle of race officials, military officers, and Very Fortunates were crowded around Hunter’s aircraft. They were all craning their necks, pushing in on one another, trying to get a look at the Galaxy’s new hero.
The three friends forced their way through the gawkers and helped Hunter climb from his cockpit.
Another huge cheer went up. Erx and Berx grabbed Hunter so tightly, he nearly lost his breath. Calandrx began kissing the top of his helmet.
“You did it, brother!” Erx was screaming. “You did it for all of us!”
The roar of the crowd became deafening. Excitement and no little chaos filled the air. No one could really hear or say anything, the noise was that loud.
But this did not stop Calandrx from trying to ask a very important question.
“What do you remember, my brother?” he yelled in Hunter’s ear. “What did you see inside the thirteenth dimension?”
Hunter tried to block out all of the noise and think a moment.
Not here. Not now, a voice inside him said.
Finally he yelled back to Calandrx: “Let’s talk about it later!”
It took two squads of Earth Police to hustle Hunter and his friends over to the award ceremony.
It all happened very quickly. One moment Hunter was being mobbed in the winner’s circle; the next he was standing at the foot of the zadora, looking up at the quartet of Imperial thrones, his flying machine hovering a few feet behind him.
He couldn’t tell if it was intentional or not, but a ray of the midday sun was streaming through an opening in the arena wall in such a way that it was blinding him. He tried to make out the faces of the Imperial Family twenty-five steps away from him, but their features were hazy at best.
Erx and Berx were standing at attention on either side of him. However, Calandrx was not there. Loath to steal any of Hunter’s thunder, he’d left to cash in their wagers. Surrounding the bottom of the zadora was a huge coterie of Empire military officers and their various forms of female companionship. They were all staring in at Hunter, almost as if they were studying him. At the same moment, his picture was being beamed to the tens of thousands of viz-screens floating around the arena. Transmissions were being sent across the Galaxy as well. Trillions were watching him at this moment.
And all this made Hunter acutely aware of just one thing: He was the oddest-dressed person in sight. He was wearing the old uniform he’d found himself in back on Fools 6—and just by style alone it certainly marked him as being not of this place. From his crash helmet to his combat boots — he could almost see the thousands of billions of people around the Empire staring at him in bewilderment.
If someone out there did know him, he certainly wouldn’t be hard to recognize now.
On a whispered prompt from Erx, Hunter went to one knee and bowed. The Emperor must have made some sort of gesture, as the crowd erupted once again with cheering, chanting, screams of delight. A bag of aluminum coins had materialized on the step in front of him; two more appeared before Erx and Berx.
The crowd roared again. The echoing bassy music began pumping through the stadium once more.
Then the Emperor raised his hand again and the crowd calmed down very quickly. Hunter heard a voice speaking slowly, quietly, but the words made no sense to him. They had a complex rhythmic cadence to them and featured a number of syllables that were repeated over and over again.
Although he could not see his lips moving, Hunter assumed that this was the Emperor himself speaking — and that the dialect was the archaic language few people on Earth understood anymore. The proclamation went on and on — so long, Hunter’s mind began to wander. He thought back to what he had just done. The ultraspeedy takeoff. Hitting the screens. Battling the obstacles. Seeing the Blackship.
And its pursuer.
It all seemed like such a blur now.
He lifted his head slightly and squinted. Finally he was able to see the entire top of the zadora and the four people sitting there. And as the last ray of the sun moved away, his eyes fell not upon the Emperor, who looked almost transparent, or the Empress and the Prince, who both seemed bored — but upon the Emperor’s incredibly beautiful daughter. Of the four, only she was looking back down at him.
Oh, my God…
Suddenly the crowd was cheering again. The Emperor had finished his invocation — if indeed it had been he speaking all along. The ceremony was drawing to a close.
Hunter glanced around at Erx and Berx, who were still standing ramrod straight right behind him. He gave them a look as if to say: What now?
That’s when he heard a voice whisper in his ear: The race might be over… but the games have just begun …
Flash!
The next thing Hunter knew, he was sitting at a corner table inside a huge, low-lit room. It was a club of some sort, with at least a thousand people crowded in. Music was blaring. There was much laughing, drinking, carousing. Erx and Berx were sitting next to him. They were just as stunned as he.
“My God, where are we now?” Berx exclaimed.
Erx took a quick look around. “Could this be… the Vegasus!” he asked excitedly.
Berx began looking about the room. “If that is so, then we’ve suddenly come up a lot in this world.”
Hunter was still shuddering from the sudden transport.
“The Vegasus?” he managed to ask.
“An entertainment craft run by the Very Fortunates,” Berx explained to him. “It’s so exclusive that only the m
ost connected of the upper class ever get on board.”
Erx scanned the room with his quadtrol. It confirmed that they were indeed aboard the Vegasus.
“And at a such a good table, too!” he added. “Calandrx will be furious he missed out on this…”
Hunter wasn’t so sure. This just didn’t seem to be the elderly pilot’s scene.
Word was moving quickly through the enormous flying nightclub that the winner of the Earth Race was in the house. Bottles of ‘cloud wine began arriving on their table at a rate of one a second.
But how did they get here? And why?
Hunter looked to his left to discover that the answer was sitting right next to him. He was a young man, maybe ten years less than Hunter. He was wearing a shiny black military uniform, not Space Forces or Solar Guards or Double X Corps. This uniform appeared to belong to a branch of the military all its own.
The person had popped in so quietly during their first few moments in the nightclub, they did not realize until now that he was sitting with them.
This person was looking back at them, grinning widely. It was Erx who recognized him first.
“By the Lord,” he said with a gasp, “you honor us with your presence, sir.”
Hunter looked over at Erx and then back at the man sitting next to him. Then it hit him. It was the Emperor’s son, the Prince. His name was S’Keem.
Hunter began babbling some flowering greeting — apparently a requirement when suddenly in the presence of a Special. But the Prince simply waved away his clumsy attempt.
“It is I who should be praising you,” he told Hunter. “What you just did in the race was awesome…”
Hunter mumbled a words of thanks, and that’s when he realized that their table was actually surrounded by huge armed guards wearing an approximation of the Prince’s unusual uniform. Apparently S’Keem never went anywhere without his private army.
Hunter looked over at Berx as if to say, What should I do? Berx made a quick motion to his lips. Talk to him — quick! was what he was trying to say.
Hunter turned back to the Prince. His face was handsome if still boyish. There was, however, a deviant twinkle in his eye.
“I’m very glad you enjoyed the race,” Hunter began stuttering. He was not good in situations like this.
How he wished Calandrx were here now!
“Enjoyed it?” the Prince replied, grabbing one of the dozens of bottles of ‘cloud wine on the table.
“There has never been anything like it ever before in the history of the race. Do you realize that the other contestants are now just crossing the finish line?”
To prove his point, the Prince snapped his fingers and a huge viz-screen appeared. Sure enough, they were instantly looking at the arena somewhere below. It showed the other twelve racers rocketing across the finish line, a series of wild streaks and the sound of electron beams being broken heralding their return. Some of the racers were smoking heavily. Others had had their elaborate color schemes distorted by the trio of transdimensional leaps.
The trouble was, few people were on hand to see them arrive. By the time the last racer crossed the finish line, the vast majority of the huge crowd had already left the building. In fact, in the background they could clearly see a brigade of robots beginning the postrace cleanup.
The Prince shook his head.
“Now, that’s sad, isn’t it?” he said with a cruel grin. The viz-screen vanished, and he turned back to Hunter. “I guess they just didn’t know what they were up against.”
Hunter shrugged, but in a very polite way.
The Prince finished off one bottle of wine and quickly opened another.
“What would your reply be if I asked you how you were able to win this race with a time of barely two seconds?” he asked Hunter directly.
Erx, Berx, and Hunter went straight up in their seats. They could almost hear Calandrx in their ears urging them: Don’t say a thing!
Yet Hunter could only wonder: What was the penalty for lying to the son of the man who ruled the Galaxy?
But before he could find out, the Prince drained his second bottle of wine — once again, no goblet, straight from the bottle — then reached for another.
“I realize that all winners strive to keep their secrets secret,” he said, slurring his words a bit now. “That has to be the history of this thing, I suppose.”
He grabbed another bottle of free wine, popped it open, and began guzzling it. Hunter sensed that some of the Imperial bodyguards were getting wary.
“But there’s no sense denying it,” the Prince went on, his voice getting louder, more rowdy. “At this moment, you are probably the most celebrated person on Earth — that’s a feeling I know well. Your notoriety, spreading throughout the entire Galaxy at great speed. You’re soon to be a hero, my friend; another sensation I have experienced.”
He took another massive gulp of ‘cloud.
“It’s that ‘prime domicile’ in Big Bright City that really makes me envy you,” he went on, the words coming a bit more difficult now. “I’m stuck way up in the sky! Can you imagine how boring that is?”
He drank some more; his slurring got worse.
“And soon you will be able to pick your rank and any assignment, anywhere in the Empire.” The Prince shook his head. “Soon many riches will be yours.”
Hunter just stared back at the kid. He’d never seen anyone get so drunk so quickly.
“Now, I know I can’t compete with all the booty my father’s realm can throw at you,” the Prince went on, struggling to pronounce every last syllable. “God knows I’ve had that shoved down my throat all my life.”
He slugged the bottle again.
“But besides bringing you up here, I have my own token of appreciation to give you,” he said, adding:
“And some things are better than a nice home or money.”
With that he made a gesture to one of his many bodyguards. Through the haze of the celebration now, Hunter saw this man glide over and have a whispered conversation with the Prince. The man then handed a small yellow device to the royal son, gave Hunter a friendly wink, and disappeared back into the crowd.
The Prince examined the lemon-size device for several moments. He was very interested in the series of numbers blinking in the tiny window at the top the gadget.
“Excellent! This is an Echo-323,” he proclaimed. A murmur went through everyone within earshot. Even Berx stopped consuming his mug of wine to listen in.
“Really, my Prince? A three-two-three? I thought they were impossible to acquire…”
The Prince waved the device in front of Berx’s face and pointed to the numbers.
“Have you forgotten that I am a man of many powers?” he asked Berx somewhat sternly.
But Berx was ignoring him. He was captivated by the device he held in his hand.
“Someone in here really likes you,” he said to Hunter.
The Prince took another huge gulp of wine, then turned back to Hunter himself.
“Have you ever seen an Echo-323?” he asked him with an Imperial air.
“How?” was all Hunter could reply. He had no idea what any of them were talking about.
The Prince finished his bottle, broke open another, and then pushed Hunter farther along the seat. This opened up a space big enough for another body. Then the Prince hit a button on the small device. The next thing Hunter knew, a beautiful female… projection was sitting next to him.
Hunter stared at her, mouth agape, a bit of sweat forming on his sunburned brow.
“Echo… this is Mr. Hunter,” the Prince said with a drunken laugh. “Mr. Hunter, this is Echo…”
Hunter went to shake her hand, but his appendages were slow in responding. Or at least some of them were. He couldn’t stop staring at her — and she was staring right back. Finally she took his hand in hers, and for an instant he thought he’d be able to pass his fingers right through it. But nothing could have been farther from the case. Her hand felt warm, sof
t… friendly.
“Hello, Mister Hunter,” she said with a sly smile.
Hunter had only heard of holo-girls; he’d yet to see one in the flesh, or at least he didn’t think he had.
(There was no way to really tell, of course.) But this one before him was perfect. Face and shape.
Perfect. Her hair, blond and flowing. Perfect. Her voice, sweet, melodic. Perfect. Her eyes, blue and sparkling.
Perfect.
“Watch this,” the Prince said. He pushed something on the device. Echo’s breasts began to grow. And grow. And grow. She was giggling, almost embarrassed. Just as it became clear that her top was about to burst, the Prince pushed something else. Her breasts began to shrink, almost until they were nonexistent. Echo giggled again.
The Prince gulped more wine, then pushed something else. Echo’s hair turned from blond to red.
Another push, her tight silver top became a simple white blouse. Push. Her skin-tight pants became a skin-tight skirt. Push. Her purple boots disappeared to reveal two very beautiful bare legs and feet.
Hunter was speechless.
This sure ain’t Fools 6, he thought.
The Prince went to push another button — but one of his entourage leaned over and froze his hand in place.
“Better to give it to ‘im, sire,” the man half growled. “He’s the one who won the race. It’s his gift, not yours…”
But the Prince shoved the man’s hand away.
“I have to see if this thing is working properly, don’t I?” he bellowed at the bodyguard. “Our friend here is new at this. He might run into complications. You don’t want his first experience to be a bad one, do you?”
The hulking bodyguard replied: “My orders are to not let you ever—”
But the Prince cut him off with an icy, drunken stare.
“And I’m countermanding those orders,” he said. The tone in his voice indicated this was not the first time he’d barked those words.
Once again he turned back to Hunter.
“You don’t mind, old boy, do you?” he asked.
Hunter didn’t know what to say. He still had a hold of Echo’s hand, and he really didn’t want to let go.
