What Price the Stars? Part 1

Michael Von Ekaterinburg noticed the strange craft as soon as he stepped out of his rental flyer. Parked on a little greensward to the left of the Montevideo Grand Hotel, it looked exactly like a stereotypical flying saucer from an ancient twodee, complete with spindly landing legs, ramp, and metallic silver paint job. The young Novaruskeen financier chuckled at the sight. He made a mental note to take a closer look after his mysterious meeting was over.

A month ago, a strange man had approached Michael on the street outside his home and silently presented an invitation. He held the selfsame card in his hand today. It was no less mysterious now than it had been then:

Mister Jorgen Pangloss
Cordially requests the presence of the Estimable Michael Borisovich Von Ekaterinburg, Esquire, at the Langsdorff Room of the Grand Hotel, Montevideo, on December 1st at one o’clock for a technology demonstration.

Afterwards, tea will be served at Shigueva’s Space Case Tea Room, Pournelle City, New Earth. The sun of New Earth is significantly brighter than Sol. Please plan accordingly. A hat and sunglasses are highly recommended.

The invitation was absurd on its face. It was impossible to have tea at a venue on New Earth, humanity’s only interstellar colony. New Earth orbited Gliese 832 in the constellation Grus. The only way to get there was a fifty-year voyage in stasis aboard a sleeper ship. Inquiries after Jorgen Pangloss had come back empty. There was no such person, either on Earth or Mars. The invitation appeared to be a strange joke.

Michael chose to attend anyway. His family had built a fortune by following the road less travelled. If the demonstration was a prank, at worst he would spend a balmy summer afternoon in Uruguay.

Leaving the flying saucer behind, he entered the hotel. The Langsdorff Room was at far end of the lobby. A handful of people awaited him there. He recognized all but one of them, a white-haired man in a dated black suit and cheap straw hat. He sat by the patio doors with his back to the room. Michael assumed that he was a local sheltering from the blazing heat, and he promptly forgot about him when he heard a welcoming female voice.

“Mishka! How good to see you! I didn’t imagine I’d meet you here,” said Alexandra Petavia, the tall blonde attached to the voice, one of Michael’s oldest and most attractive friends.

“I might say the same to you, Alexi. My invitation didn’t mention anything that shoots or explodes,” Michael replied playfully.

She grinned, and discreetly flipped him off. Her grandfather had made his name selling weapons to the late, unlamented Second Soviet.

“She’s bored. We all are, or else we wouldn’t be here,” said John Roerich, renowned space systems developer and the only starborn man known to Michael. Roerich’s family had returned from New Earth a century prior.

“What do you think this is all about, John?” Alexi asked.

“Who knows? But I couldn’t help but notice the implication that some sort of hyperdrive is going to be demonstrated.”

“That was my impression as well,” said Tuan Li, the stern president of Daiginga Spacecraft Corporation. “I’m intrigued, but skeptical. Everyone knows that it is impossible for an object with mass to exceed the speed of light. Even negative mass counts. You can’t fool the gods of the Unified Law.”

“But you can always fool people, hence this charade,” announced Professor Chandra Rosencrantz, theoretician and dean of panspectrum physics at Tycho University. “Ibn Yaghi’s law of Unified Scalar Progression is inviolable. What intrigues me is how this charlatan Pangloss intends to trick us. We are the smartest people on the planet.”

Of course, Rosencrantz meant that he was the smartest man on the planet. He made no secret of his record-breaking IQ, and his mastery of nonstandard dynamic holographic geometry was uncontested. Nevertheless, Michael’s estimate of his business acumen put him somewhere below a common street vendor. His contacts at Tycho University held the professor in contempt, blaming his ego for the physics department's financial woes.

The snick of a lock drew Michael’s attention. The old man in black had closed the doors to the lobby. He laid aside his battered hat–belatedly revealed to be a prop–and addressed the group.

“Good afternoon my lady, and gentlemen. Thank you for coming. I am Jorgen Pangloss. I am disappointed that only five of you chose to attend, but we shall make do. It will make the game all the shorter.”

“Game?” Li said irritably. “Mister Pangloss, we are people of business, and our time is valuable. We are not here to play parlor games. Who are you, and why have you brought us here?”

“No one’s time is as valuable as mine, Mister Li,” Jorgen replied. “But I must beg your pardon. A proper introduction would take for time than any of you have. Suffice it to say that if you knew who I am, you would not have come. The demonstration you are about to witness precedes a game that will keenly interest all of you. The winner will become the sole distributor of a machine that will change the course of history, and my vassal in perpetuity. The rest of you—assuming you survive—will remember nothing but a boring presentation on trans–Saturnian actinide futures.”

Alexi latched on to his most alarming pronouncement. “Vassal? What do you mean?” she demanded.

“Exactly that, Alexandra Alexovna. Servant, if you prefer, or slave, if you choose not to mince words.”

Alexi laughed. “Do you really expect any of us to accept those terms?”

“I do. Please come. We shall travel swiftly, but not more quickly than Madam Shigueva will give away our table if we are late for tea,” Jorgen replied. He opened the patio door and stepped outside.

Michael followed, but Alexi grabbed his wrist. “Mishka, no. He’s a madman. Let him go.”

“Aren’t you even the least bit curious about his ship?”

“It’s nothing but a charlatan’s prop!” exclaimed Rosencrantz.

“Remember what you said earlier? If he thinks he can fool us, he must have a good game. I want to see what it is.”

“A good point. I will join you,” said Roerich.

“I guess I will, too,” Alexi said. “If it’s a confidence game, I might learn something from it. If it’s for real...”

“If it is real, we would be fools for walking away,” Li muttered.

Michael chuckled to himself. Charlatan or no, Jorgen had them all hooked.

They caught up with him on the greensward. The silver flying saucer loomed over their heads. Jorgen motioned towards the ramp. “I present you the Inscrutable,” he announced.

“What is this thing?” asked Li.

“My own design, of course. Twin fusion motors, dual redundant zed reactors, luxury accommodations for fourteen, gourmet kitchen, wet bar, and a fully functional Spooky engine.”

“A what?”

“The object of today’s demonstration. It does no good to describe it. Come aboard and see it for yourself.”

There was an exchange of dubious glances among Jorgen’s guests, but all five of them followed him up the ramp into his peculiar flying saucer. The demonstration, whatever it was, had begun.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6