Palm greasing there was.

As a Purser of long standing I thought that I knew all that there was to be known about that ancient and not-so-honorable art.  As a shipowner - like the others, I was being paid in shares of the enterprise - I soon discovered that I didn't know the half of it.  It was the certificates of clearance and spaceworthiness that were the most expensive, especially since, insofar as the astronautical regulations of Elsinore were concerned, there was no legal recognition of the Ehrenhaft Drive.

Lloyd's, by the way, never did get around to affording us coverage.  They knew all about the Ehrenhaft Drive, it having been high on their black list for years.  Furthermore, only starships with Mannschenn Drive can be fitted with the Carlotti communication and position-finding equipment; time-twisting radio devices are useless unless the vessel carrying them can be maintained in phase.  So, not unreasonably, the underwriters considered that we, out of touch with the galaxy whilst en route and unable to avail ourselves of the latest navigational aids, would be altogether too heavy a risk.

But before there were all these troublesome details to worry us there were the formalities of the sale to conclude.  We had cause to bless the currency regulations of Elsinore; had O'Hara been able to take his money with him when he left the planet he would, it is certain, have stuck out for a far higher price.  As it was, he was able to buy a small hotel on the outskirts of Port Fortinbras with what was left over after the passages of himself and his entourage to Earth had been booked.

His aide, Commander Moore, who had had Space in a big way, even as a passenger, was installed there as manager, the idea being that the place would be a home for the so-called Admiral in the unlikely event of his returning to this sector of the galaxy.

Frankly, I rather envied the Commander and told Alan that if he had any sense at all he would have done the same, bringing Veronica to Elsinore to help run the establishment.  I told him I would willingly have served as barman.  But he refused to listen to reason.  His dream was coming true, and his dream belonged to the black emptiness between the stars, not to the warmth and light and comfort of any planetary surface.

Meanwhile, Alan and old Jim Larsen had their share of technical worries.  To begin with, it was practically impossible for a ship fitted with Ehrenhaft Drive to lift from Port Fortinbras.  I never really understood the whys and wherefores of it, but this was the way in which they explained it to me:

The Ehrenhaft Generators do not generate electricity; they generate a magnetic current, a flow of free magnetic particles.  The ship becomes, in effect, herself a huge magnetic particle, strength and polarity of field as determined by her Captain.  Like poles mutually repel - and so she lifts along the lines of magnetic force, repulsion and attraction being maintained in nice adjustment so as to avoid too fast an ascent with consequent overheating of the hull by atmospheric friction.