Erx thought about this for a moment. “I think ‘abusing’ myself is the more likely consequence.”
Berx nodded. “Bingo, that.”
Calandrx waved them off and turned to Hunter.
“They could probably behead him for it,” he began. “But Multx told me a bit about your skill in saving the BonoVox. You must have extraordinary pluck to face down a Blackship with a shuttlecraft. I’ve never heard of anything so deliciously mad.”
“If you mean ‘mad’ as being insane, I’m beginning to agree,” Hunter said, tasting his slow-ship wine.
“Do you want to hear about our crash on Fools 6?” Berx asked Calandrx with a straight face. The old pilot simply waved him off again. He was intent on asking Hunter all the questions.
“They say your flying ability was rather mind-boggling,” Calandrx said to him. “With a swiftness of maneuver not seen before. What are you hiding, my son? Were you trained by some anonymous master pilot? Someone who is no longer with us? Or perhaps you found a brain ring left over from the Third Empire. Containing long-lost starfighter techniques? Is that it?”
Hunter was used to hearing such questions now.
“Someday I hope I’ll remember,” he replied. “And when I do, I promise I’ll sit here and tell you everything.”
Calandrx smiled broadly. “Well said,” he declared, tapping Hunter’s kneecap with the butt of the wine bottle. “I will look forward to that day.”
They toasted and drank and Calandrx refilled their glasses. This time Erx got a full measure.
“Now for the matter at hand,” Calandry announced.
The three visitors pulled their chairs closer to Calandrx. There was no hum beam to rely on here.
“I have secured a position for you in the race,” the old pilot revealed. “It’s the thirteenth slot, the last one available, meaning you’ll be on the pole. But you will be entered without any qualifying stints or prerace interrogation. Your presence will be known to only a very few people until the day of the race itself.”
Hunter was stunned. This seemed to be everything that Multx could have wished for. He would not have to pre-qualify. He would not have to answer a million and one questions for race officials prior to the contest. It seemed too good to be true.
And, in a way, it was.
“By what bargain were you able to secure these advantages for us?” Erx asked. “We must be giving something away…”
Calandrx shot him a stern glance. “He will fly in the race, won’t he?”
“If you say so, brother,” Erx replied.
“And that’s the important thing, do you agree?”
Erx nodded uncertainly. “If you say so…”
Then Berx leaned over to him and stage-whispered one word: “Maccus.”
Erx thought about this for a moment, then shook his head. “Of course…”
But Hunter wasn’t really paying attention. He tended to agree with Calandrx. He could have cared less how he was able to enter the race, just as long as he could compete.
But he did have one big question. He was surprised that no one had brought it up before now.
“So I am in the contest,” he said. “But what will I be flying?”
Erx and Berx just looked at each other. They had just assumed Hunter would be driving a radically adapted star-fighter, like most of the other racers, maccus or not.
But apparently Multx had had something else in mind when he hatched this scheme — and Calandrx was in on it.
“My brother Zap has sent me the craft in which you will ride,” the old pilot said with a cackle.
Erx and Berx looked around them.
“It is here?” they asked at once.
“You have room for a starfighter in here?” Erx added.
“What’s up in your attic?” Berx demanded with a laugh.
Calandrx just looked at them and shook his head. “What’s up in your attic?” he asked Berx. “I told you two that you were spending way too much time out on the Fringe. It’s making you dumber, not smarter.”
“Who else said that to us recently?” Berx asked Erx.
Erx shrugged and sipped his wine.
“Beats me,” he replied.
Calandrx just shook his head, then reached inside his jacket pocket and came out with a tiny green box.
He held it up to the candlelight for all of them to see. It was glowing.
“Here is your vessel,” he told Hunter dramatically.
Hunter looked at the little box for a few moments.
“Either this wine is very good, or you’re holding a little box in you hand.”
Calandrx’s face wrinkled in a wide smile. “I believe them when they say you are not from around here.”
Erx and Berx sat forward a bit and studied the tiny box.
“My God, Petz, you’re suddenly trafficking in the tools of espionage, too?” Erx said. “Spying, gambling? In the old days they’d call an intervention for you.”
Calandrx waved him away again. But Hunter was still confused. What was the tiny green box?
“It’s a ‘twenty and six,’ ” Berx said to him. “An old spy trick — but a good one.”
He picked up the box and held it before Hunter’s eyes. His crashn’ glow was causing it to pulse with an odd emerald hue.
“Brother Calandrx is correct,” Berx declared. “Whatever you are going to fly is here. Inside this tiny box.”
Hunter looked to Erx; in this group he stood out as a beacon of reason.
“ ‘Twenty and six’ is an archaic term for the twenty-sixth dimension,” Erx explained, taking the box from Berx. “Few people bother with any dimension beyond thirteen or fourteen these days, but this one has some fairly interesting properties.”
“You can hide things there,” Calandrx said simply. “And no one will ever find them…”
“Have you looked at what’s inside yet?” Erx asked the veteran space pilot.
“I couldn’t bear to,” he said. “Not before you came.”
He looked around his expansive library.
“I don’t think I can retrieve it in here,” he said. “This room is just a bit too small and there might be a problem if I can’t get it to go back into the twenty-six again.”
He stood up, drained his wine goblet, and announced, “So then, gentlemen — to the garden!”
Calandrx’s garden was more like a small woods with a clearing in the middle.
It was a rather large piece of real estate on what was actually a very crowded part of the planet — another benefit of winning his Earth Race so long ago. The trees ran on either side of the expansive lawn. Living sculptures and glowing plant pots dotted the top of the finely trimmed terranium grass.
The four starmen staggered out to the side of an old weathered cottage that was tenuously attached to the main house.
“Here, the perfect place,” Calandrx declared, placing the small green box down on the ground about fifty feet away from the rest of them. Above, the sky was dancing with color from all the StarScrapers in use down in central Big Bright City, twenty miles down the main canal.
Once the green box had been put in position, Calandrx activated an electron torch and sent a long, thin beam of red light crashing into it. A small storm of sparks came cascading from the box. A strange mist filled the air. Then there was a sharp crack, and then a distinctive odor filled their nostrils.
A moment later, the contents of the small box popped into their existence.
“My God,” Calandrx said with a gasp. “What is it?”
Hunter was stunned. Long, thin, rugged. A wing. A canopy. Wheels…