Backcover
I am Crawford MacAdam. My life was quite ordinary until the odd-looking man at my door announced I had won a luxury spaceship in the Grand Galactic Lottery. To say I was incredulous would be an understatement. The strange being was persuasive and I was forced to accept he was telling the truth.
However, to collect my prize I had to travel to Geretimal in the Capellan system where I would appear on the Galactic Lottery trivee show, meet the President of the Capellan Theocracy and participate in the Breeding Programme. Oh, and I had to leave now. I balked at this. While I could abandon my job, family, friends and home I would not abandon my cats. They had to come too.
It had all sounded easy back on Earth but the reality was somewhat different. The bizarre world I encountered was a minefield of intrigue, corruption, conspiracy, bureaucracy, a potentially lethal environment and some anonymous beings who believed the galaxy would be a better place if I wasn't in it. Even the Lottery turned out to be a sham whose sole function was to induce me to take part in the Breeding Programme.
I could buckle under the pressure or I could fight. I fought, and along the way I found friendship, love and tragedy. But I'm still alive. I have the support of loyal friends. I will survive.
I Won A Spaceship
Harrison Park
Direidi Publishing
[email protected]
All rights reserved. This story may not be reproduced in any form for profit without the written permission of the publisher and author except where permitted by law.
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
First Printing, March 2011
Made in the United States of America
Copyright © 2010 by Harrision Park
ISBN: 978-1-4580-4326-9
Cover art and design by Iván Marti
Gallery: www.flickr.com/photos/ivanmarti/
E-mail: [email protected]
Disclaimer
This story is intended as adult entertainment. While it is primarily a work of science fiction it does contain sexually explicit scenes. If you are offended by sexually explicit content or language, please do not read any further.
This story is a work of fiction. The characters are fictional and not based on any person living or dead. The author does not necessarily condone or endorse any of the activities described.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
About The Author
Other Books Published by Direidi Publishing
Introduction
This story was intended to be a light-hearted space opera full of the adventures of an ordinary Earthman with an extra-ordinary spaceship in an even more extra-ordinary galaxy. Somewhere along the way that idea got lost as I became more and more intrigued by the machinations of the Galactic Lottery Commission and the bizarre world in which the hero had been summarily plunged. Such are the perils of writing. Perhaps, in a subsequent volume, our hero really will manage to explore the galaxy and become involved in feats of derring-do… once he extracts himself from his current predicament, of course.
Chapter 1
It was approximately eight thirty in the evening of the twenty-seventh of April when the doorbell rang. I was not expecting anyone so I was slightly cautious when I opened the door.
“Wheet whup whoofle whuffle fizz floofle flupplewhiff. Twheef ploowhup plup plup poot whuzz plooflewhufflup whubblebeeble,” said the man on the doorstep.
It wasn’t any language I recognised, but the city had seen an influx of people from Eastern Europe so perhaps it was Polish or Serbo-Croat or something. In the orange glow from the streetlights and the dim light from my hall I couldn’t make out his features, but he seemed… odd. He was wearing an overcoat and trilby, unusual in itself, but the evening was chilly and perhaps his head was sensitive to the cold. His posture was not aggressive, he didn’t seem to be drunk or stoned and his coat was clean and respectable. Still, there seemed to be something not quite right about him, other than the fact he spoke gibberish, that is.
He looked at me with an expectant smile. Clearly my look of suspicious astonishment was not what he expected for his face fell. I was debating whether to close the door and hope he would go away when he thumped the side of his head with the heel of his hand and tried again.
Another string of gibberish emerged. The smile was more quizzical this time. If he was a nutter, at least he seemed harmless. He thumped his head a few more times in a frustrated manner.
“Fucking translator,” he muttered. He must have caught my expression at hearing English for he straightened and beamed. “Congratulations, sir or madam. I have the honour to announce that you have won the Grand Prize in the recent draw of the Galactic Lottery – a fully equipped Mark 3 Zofi-Brennan ‘Interspacialle’.”
His words were so preposterous that it took me a moment to work out that he was actually speaking English.
“I don’t do the lottery,” I growled.
Not, perhaps, particularly original or witty, but it was all I could think of at the time. My brain seemed to have seized up.
His eyes crossed for a moment. “You are Crawford MacAdam of 42 Chandlers Road, Edinburgh, Midlothian, Scotland, Great Britain, Europe, Earth?”
“Edinburgh’s not technically in Midlothian. It’s a city.”
“Oh,” he looked crestfallen. “Then perhaps I have been mistaken. There is another Edinburgh in Scotland, Great Britain, Europe, Earth?”
“No.” I sighed. “I’m Crawford MacAdam and this is 42 Chandlers Road, etc. as you said.”
“But you said that Edinburgh was not in Midlothian. This means that the address is not precisely correct. It is a very valuable prize and I am duty bound to see that it is delivered to the correct being.”
I sighed again. Me and my big mouth. I really didn’t want to stand on the doorstep on a chilly April evening and argue the niceties of local geography with a nutcase, harmless or otherwise.
“Never mind,” I said. “It doesn’t matter. Technically, both are correct. Now, if we’ve quite finished this charade, would you please leave. I’m getting cold.”
“Thank you for your patience, sir or madam. I will see that our records are adjusted accordingly. Now…”
As he was showing no signs of leaving, I stepped back into the house and prepared to shut the door.
“But, sir or madam,” he wailed. “There is much yet to be done before I can deliver your prize.”
“I’ve already said I don’t do the lottery,” I said with exaggerated patience. “And if you don’t do the lottery, you can’t win it.”
“Oh,” he said brightly. “You don’t have to subscribe to the Galactic Lottery, sir or madam. All sentient beings throughout the galaxy are automatically eligible.”
I opened and closed my mouth a few times before I could speak. “Look, I’m no astronomer, but even I know that the Sun is in an obscure little system at the end of one of the spiral
arms of the Milky Way. If there’s sentient life out there, we’re hardly going to be in the forefront of Galactic Civilisation. Added to that, we can barely stagger as far as the Moon never mind the nearest star. So, pray tell me, how can I have come to the attention of the Galactic Lottery?”
“Forgive me for asking, sir or madam, but are you a typical Earthman?”
“I don’t know. I suppose I’m pretty average. Why?”
He sighed. “I have had the honour of presenting the Grand Prize for three centuries. I have had the pleasure of greeting dozens of recipients from Aldebaran to Betelgeuse and never have I been greeted with such mistrust and suspicion. Sir or madam, I think you fail to realise just how small your chances of winning the star prize are. The odds have been calculated at approximately 1 in…” his eyes crossed briefly, “…56,987,992,876,877,870,005,815,715,781,991,446,732,221,910. I say approximately for, of course, the exact number of qualifying sentient beings changes momentarily.”
“Whew,” I whistled. “That’s pretty long odds.”
“I’m glad you appreciate it, sir or madam. Consequently, the star prize is commensurately valuable. In your local currency it is worth…” his eyes crossed again, “…$4.5 billion in round figures.”
“$4.5 billion?” I gulped. “A single prize?”
“Indeed, sir or madam. Perhaps you now appreciate why recipients are generally, to use one of your expressions, over the moon, to discover they are winners.”
“I’m beginning to get the idea,” I said dryly.
The suspicion was beginning to dawn on me that this was not some practical joke; that Jeremy Beadle, God rest his soul, would not suddenly appear from round the corner and crow condescendingly at the poor sucker who was dumb enough to fall for his imbecilic practical jokes that always seemed to involve the maximum humiliation for the victim.
“I assume you can prove who you are?”
He clapped his hand to his mouth, his face a picture of consternation. “Forgive me, sir or madam. I can only apologise and blame the vagaries of my translation unit for the oversight.”
He fumbled in a pocket and produced a small piece of something that resembled plastic slightly larger and thicker than a credit card. On it was a perfect three-dimensional representation of his face, a very impressive logo and lots of squiggles I assumed were writing. On the back were more squiggles. I held it up to the light. It seemed to shimmer and subtle colours chased around just under the surface like an oil-slick on the surface of water. It was so simple yet so sophisticated that I knew for certain it hadn’t been manufactured on this world. The reality of the situation began to sink in and I felt my knees tremble.
“Perhaps you’d better come in,” I said, handing the card back. “I think I need to sit down.”
“Are you unwell, sir or madam?” he said with concern.
“Just a little faint,” I said, holding the door open to let him in. “It’s just beginning to dawn on me that you really are an alien and all this is real.”
He frowned. “It is true we are strangers. We have never met before.”
“I meant an alien in the sense of a being from another planet. We don’t get many round here.”
I took his coat and hat. Under them he wore a conventional dark suit and open-neck formal shirt. His shoes were formal and highly polished. Somehow, perhaps I was in a state of shock, it didn’t matter that his shoulders were impossibly wide, his elbows and knees in the wrong place, his well-oiled hair a very strange shade of brown verging on orange, his ears too large, his jaw too long and his mouth too close to his too-short nose. I gestured at an armchair and sat heavily in mine. He sat, entirely at his ease, with one ankle crossed casually over the other knee. His eyes crossed. “I believe you are right, there has never been a winner of the Lottery from your world before or, indeed, from this arm of the galaxy.”
“I meant more that there has never been an authenticated record of any human being ever meeting someone from another planet.”
“You surprise me. I know you’re a bit out of the way, here, but I would have thought that someone would have at least paid a courtesy call.”
“Perhaps. If so, they kept very quiet about it. In fact there are many people who believe that humans are the only intelligent life in the universe.”
He made a strangling noise. I realised he was laughing. “Forgive me, sir or madam, but that is a very arrogant assumption.”
“In some cases, yes. There are those who believe that man occupies a special place in the universe by virtue of being descended from a divine being. More realistically, scientists argue that we are here because of a fluke. Our planet has a peculiar history and occupies a particular orbit around a particular sun. As the parameters for life are very tight, the chances of exactly these conditions occurring across the galaxy are very small.” I grinned. “Almost as small as the chances of winning the Galactic Lottery. Others say that, if there were other civilisations, we’d be able to hear their radio and TV broadcasts, and we can’t. Yet others say that, in galactic terms, the life of intelligent beings is very short compared with the life of stars and planets so the chances of two civilisations existing at the same time are very small.”
“Hmm. I cannot fault the reasoning. It is a pity it is based on false premises. I can assure you life abounds in the universe, both intelligent and otherwise.”
“If it didn’t you wouldn’t be here. Ipso facto. May I ask you a question?”
“Certainly.”
“Why do you keep saying ‘sir or madam’?”
He looked startled. “I understood it was the correct honorific in your culture when the respondent was a stranger.”
I laughed. “Sorry. It is, but only when you don’t know the gender of the respondent. If you knew me as C MacAdam, you wouldn’t know whether I was male or female. Once you’ve established my gender, you use ‘sir’ or ‘madam’ on its own accordingly.”
“Forgive me if I have offended your mores.”
“No offence taken. However, you may call me by my given name if you wish.”
“Given name?”
“Crawford. It was the name given to me by my parents. The other bit, MacAdam, is my family name.”
“You mean you don’t choose your own name?”
“Not usually, no.”
“I am signally honoured. In my society, personal names are generally only revealed to close friends.”
“We’re rather informal, I’m afraid. At least in this part of the world. Customs differ.”
“Indeed. How true.” He paused. “Since you have honoured me with your given name, I shall reciprocate. You would not be able to pronounce my name in my native tongue. Do your names have meaning?”
“Many of them yes.”
“Then do you have a name that means ‘a bringer of tidings’?”
“An appropriate name for you. The only one I can think of off-hand is Hermes – the messenger of the Greek gods.” I gave a wry smile. “As I recall, his tidings weren't always joyful and there was an element of cunning in his make-up. I suppose a message from the gods is always a two-edged sword and I suspect yours is no different.”
He nodded sagely. “Though I hardly come from the gods, I believe your mythology is that gods are powerful beings, though often exhibiting human frailties, who live in the heavens so perhaps there is some poetic justification. Hermes it is, then.”
“Before you tell me all about this wonderful win, would you like a drink?”
“Oh, yes, water please.”
“Nothing stronger?”
“While my constitution is adaptable, I am not of your world and many of your foodstuffs could be poisonous to me. Water is fairly universal, though, and should be acceptable.”
“Bottled water, then. It’s supposed to be purer.”
“That would be agreeable, thank you.”
For the next half hour, while I sipped a very large Scotch and he his water, he described the prize I had won. To my utter astonishment I
discovered it was a spaceship. And not just any spaceship. I had won a top-of-the-range, state-of-the-art, last-word-in-luxury spaceship. Terms like ‘phaser cannon’, ‘fully inertialess drive’ and ‘intelligent bio-computer’ floated past my ears like thistledown… and made as much impact. It certainly sounded like an impressive piece of kit and I could see why it was worth the amount it was. I sort of gathered it was the James Bond of spaceships; stuffed with gadgets and gizmos, operated by some sort of artificial intelligence, was armed to the teeth and fitted out with sybaritic luxury. I could live with most of it, but the ‘armed to the teeth’ bit gave me pause. The presence of lots of big guns suggested that navigating space was not as safe as a trip to the supermarket.
I had fallen into a half-doze until he said, “You’ll be presented with the keys, purely symbolic of course, at the ceremony on Geretimal.”
I was suddenly wide awake. “Run that past me again.”
“It’s a big occasion. The star prize is only awarded once every decade. You’ll travel to Geretimal in the Capellan system and stay in a luxury hotel, all expenses paid of course. It’s a gala occasion and everybody who is anybody will be there; trivee stars, politicians, businessmen, the works. The Chairman of the Lottery will present you with your prize, you’ll say a few words, the media will interview you and that’s that. You’ll be famous – at least for a few days.”
“I’ve got a better idea. You give me the keys now, I shake you by the hand and express my grateful thanks and you take off back to wherever it is you come from.”
He looked appalled at the idea. “I can’t do that. The ceremony is part of the whole thing. It is one of the conditions of accepting the prize.” His face took on a crafty look. “Just think… if you behave well you could put your planet on the map.”
“I don’t think our governments would be too pleased with a flotilla of thrill-seekers descending from the skies. They’re likely to think they’re enemies and shoot them down without asking why they’re here. I don’t think I’d like to be the cause of an inter-galactic diplomatic incident.”
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