Jack Chalker - Melchior's Fire

“He was indeed. He was also a doctor of astrophysics, and had been a classmate and university research partner with McGraw until something caused a big change in Woodward and he dropped out of science and got religion. Not sure of the story there, and McGraw never understood it, but they stayed friends, or so it appears from the notes. I have a ton of voice diary reminiscences by McGraw of old Doc Woodward, but it was their last meeting that suddenly got me to sit up and take notice. Woodward, it seems, had come across a stuck pirate band and a derelict old ship that pointed him directly to the Three Kings. How to get there, that is. Woodward wanted McGraw to run the physics and get it exact as possible. McGraw wanted to talk Woodward out of it. He didn’t; he did the figures and gave ’em to Woodward, who promptly took off in his tent-meeting spaceship and vanished, apparently forever. I have McGraw’s calculations. Everything else is still there, and it checks out. I’ve had it looked at. We even think we know why Woodward’s ship couldn’t have survived the trip, at least two ways. I think the problem’s solvable, and so do the brains I hired to look at it. I want you to go there and stake it out for me.”

There was absolutely no apparent reaction from any of the others there, unless you counted the unsuppressed belch Lucky Cross gave. Finally, Jerry Nagel said, “You have the figures from the smartest guy who’s ever lived in our lifetime, the stuff used by Woodward? And it didn’t work for Woodward? And you think that, decades later, those same figures that this smart guy with his supercomputers and whole university brain machine got not quite right can be made right by lesser brains? Who are you kidding? Things are getting worse every year, breaking down more and more. We’re on the skids, not the way up. You’re offering us a one-way trip to a sure death.”

Sanders shrugged. “I’m offering you a way out, a chance to make a bundle, get free of all debts and clear your reputations, and no strings. I’ve got money and position, but you can’t have too much, and I’ve always dreamed of owning my own studio, top to bottom, without regard to cost. Risk? Sure. Lots of it. A hundred times more than the usual salvage-type job, but you know that going in, something you didn’t last time. Right? Blank check on equipment, whatever you need. And nobody’s gonna follow you and try and collect one way or the other, I can guarantee that.”

An Li looked at her companions and sensed that they weren’t nearly as dead set against this as they were making out. You couldn’t tell about the Doc, particularly after what she’d been through, but maybe, just maybe, there was real interest there.

“Let me talk to my former crew in private for a few minutes,” she suggested to the producer. “Let me see if things can be worked out.”

Sanders shrugged. “Take some time. But my time is valuable, and there are a lot of other crews here that can be put together. My offer won’t be on the table indefinitely.”

“We’re just gonna step outside for a bit and talk,” An Li told him, ignoring the implied threat. “Then we’ll give you an answer.”

He nodded, and dismissed them with a near-regal nod, getting up from his chair and, with his two too-good-to-be-true companions, vanishing back into that bedroom or whatever it was.

“Li—” Queson began, but she waved her hand and shook her head to indicate that there was to be no talking here. They all got the message, and, as a group, trooped out and went down to the lobby area.

An Li led them to a particularly noisy part of the reception area and then said, “We were almost certainly bugged in there, probably still are, but between the ambient noise here and the small leaky communicator I have in my pocket we should be reasonably secure. If not, it’s better than nothing.” She looked at each one of them in turn, then asked, “So? What’re your thoughts?”

Cross shrugged. “No different than most other jobs, except the getting there. I also don’t like this split. Standard in this business is fifty-fifty, financing and crew, after expenses. He thinks he’s got us ’cause there’s nobody else gonna hire us right now, but that’s bullshit. We all know that. There’s nobody else better to do this kind of job, and if he plunks down a few million on a throwaway crew he’s throwin’ money down a hole. We’re the best chance he’s got and he knows it.”

Sark and Nagel nodded. Only Randi Queson seemed a bit hesitant. “You really think we can do this?” she asked them all. “I mean, nobody’s ever come back that went looking with a chance of finding it. Not one. That tells me that either you die on the way there or there’s no way back once you get there.”

An Li looked at all of them carefully. “Honest opinion? I think we can do it, yes, but there’s more to it than meets the eye here. I looked into that damned gem that’s supposed to be from the Three Kings and something or somebody looked back.”

“Huh? What?” They were all interested now.

“You can see things in it. Strange things. Some of it’s out of your mind, some of it is no place you’ve ever been, but I don’t think those things are natural. I think they’re set up to collect information on us, or maybe anyone or anything. Like alien-type ferrets. Only we take them around. We wear them like jewelry, and the public and the rich and famous actually stare into them.”

“More than ferrets,” Queson said, thinking things over. “Baited hooks. I’d love to actually see one of those.”

“Ask him. I think he loves showing off all the things he has and you don’t. It’s part of the fun of being rich and powerful,” An Li responded. “Still, you won’t sleep good when He shows up in your mind.”

“ ‘He’?”

Quickly she told him of the sensation.

Queson now had her anthropologist’s hat on. “Makes me wonder. We’re being baited and hooked by these empty ships with just enough treasure to make sure we’ll keep coming. You seem to think we’re being scouted, but it sounds more to me like we’re being studied, in small and manageable groups. Hey, rats! Here’s some great cheese! Come to our maze! Let’s see how clever you are!”

“If that’s true, then there’s no bankable treasure over there,” Jerry Nagel pointed out. “Just bait and a trap. That really lowers the odds.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. We just outsmarted a creature that had the collective knowledge and wisdom of an entire human colony,” An Li reminded him. “And we’re no colony or group of Holy Joes. We’re salvagers.”

“I don’t like it,” Nagel said firmly. “If they’re that technologically ahead, and we’re in their own den or trap or maze or whatever it is, then we haven’t got a chance in hell of getting out of there.”

Randi Queson was deep in thought. Finally she almost breathed, “I wonder…”

“Huh? Wonder what?”

“How many ships are on record as having returned from the Three Kings with bait but no people? What kind of ships were they? If they weren’t cyberships, then we may have an edge they didn’t.”

“That first scout who reported the place was a cybership,” Cross noted.

“Yeah, that’s right. Only I wonder if they got any more reports from it on other discoveries after they got the Three Kings report. An, give me a little time this afternoon to research this stuff and see what I can come up with. Set up a late dinner, on Mr. Megabucks, with all of us to settle things once and for all. The later the better. By then I hope I’ll know just what kind of chance we might have, however slim, of pulling this thing off.”