“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 most 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…”