Special deliverance

the long version

It all started when Professor Edward Lansing wanted to know who really wrote that great term paper on Shakespeare and learned that his student had bought it from a slot machine. Going to investigate, the good professor found the machine, which gave him two keys and sent him in search of other slot machines. The third machine he tried took his money and transported him to a strange new world. Here Lansing meets up with an odd assortment of fellow travelers-including a take-charge Brigadier, a pompous Parson, a female engineer, a lady poet and Jurgens, a caretaker robot—all of whom are as mystified as he at finding themselves on a strange new world. Plucked from their own timelines, they were players in a game without rules and, seemingly, without a goal. Thus begins an extraordinary quest by these unwilling adventurers, one that leads them to an immense featureless blue cube and into an ancient and mysterious city, reveals and tempts them with even stranger worlds, and, finally, provides them with a life-or-death challenge which, if success fully met, will guarantee them a role in the development of a galactic society.