Star King

Gersen is taking a short holiday at Smade's Tavern, the only settlement on Smade's Planet, which is a “neutral ground” hostelry for crook and honest man alike in the Beyond. Here he meets an explorer with a problem: Lugo Teehalt has discovered a beautiful and unspoiled world – but he has learned that his employer is the notorious criminal Attel Malagate, “Malagate the Woe”, and Teehalt cannot bear to see his planet despoiled by him. However, some of Malagate's minions murder him and steal the spaceship parked nearby. By chance, Gersen's spaceship is the same common model as Teehalt's; the thieves have taken the wrong ship. Gersen departs in the deceased man's ship and thus comes into possession of the navigational device that contains the planet's coordinates.

Gersen goes in search of the identity of Teehalt's employer. He quickly establishes that his mission was sponsored by someone at Sea Province University, an important institution on the planet Alphanor in the Rigel Concourse, and narrows Malagate's alter ego to one of three men, all senior officials at the university. All deny specific knowledge of Lugo Teehalt. By now, Gersen has encountered two of Malagate's chief henchmen, whom he saw earlier at Smade's Tavern: Tristano the Earthman, and Sivij Suthiro the Sarkoy. He knows that Malagate is aware of what he carries, though not his motivation.

He has also deduced that Malagate is not, as widely assumed, human, but rather a "Star King", a member of a species that can rapidly evolve in a few generations to resemble its most successful rival. After contacting humans, the Star Kings began changing their appearance to look more and more like Man. The most successful can readily pass for human.

During his visit to the University, Gersen makes the acquaintance of Pallis Atwrode, a clerical assistant. While the two are enjoying an evening out, they are attacked by another of Malagate's lieutenants, the hideous Hildemar Dasce. Gersen is left unconscious and Pallis abducted. Through a combination of detective work and good luck, he traces her whereabouts to a secret base belonging to Dasce. He takes the three officials to see Teehalt's world, which they are interested in purchasing, and along the way, Gersen opportunely stops to rescue Pallis and capture Dasce, along with a prisoner Dasce has tortured for years, Robin Rampold.

Gersen convinces Dasce that Malagate betrayed him and then allows Dasce to overpower him. Dasce's attempt to avenge himself on Malagate reveals the Star King's identity. In combination with strong circumstantial evidence, this convinces the other two men to accept Gersen's accusations. After Dasce's unsuccessful attack and flight, Gersen tells Malagate that he is to be summarily executed. Malagate however succeeds in escaping himself, only to be horribly killed a few minutes later by one of the native lifeforms on Teehalt's world. At his own request, Rampold is left behind. He subsequently turns the tables on his former torturer and begins a long-term program of revenge.

The Star Kings are an asexual alien species whose highly successful strategy is to evolve at a furious rate to become like their most successful competitors. According to Kirth Gersen, their development on their homeworld, which they call "Ghnarumen" (Lambda Gruis III), was profoundly influenced by the artificial introduction of Neanderthal men in prehistory. In the ensuing millennia, Neanderthals proved to be the fittest species, so the Star Kings grew first to resemble them, then to outcompete and eventually exterminate them from Ghnarumen. Thus, when the Star Kings later came in contact with spacefaring humanity, they immediately began to imitate homo sapiens, driven by their age-old instinct to excel and outdo.

Their temperament and motivations are far different from those of humans, but the most highly evolved (that is, the most human) are able to venture into human society without notice. However, Malagate is an atypical Star King. A notorious criminal with an outstanding reputation for callousness, he himself states shortly before his death that his career is not one that his kind would respect or endorse.

Dave Langford reviewed Star King for White Dwarf #99, and stated that "The revenge plot is banal in the extreme, but the pace is headlong and it's impossible not to admire the backdrop."[1]

• Star King title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• Star King at Open Library
• The Star King parts one and two on the Internet Archive