Plot Summary Sirens of Titan

United Hotcake Preferred Summary

The headquarters of Magnum Opus, Inc in Los Angeles is described. Magnum Opus, founded by Malachi Constant's father, Noel, occupies the top three floors of the thirty-one story building. The others are leased out to companies that it controls. Malachi Constant approaches the heliport on the roof of the building by helicopter.

He has come to meet with Ransom K. Fern, the president of the company. Fern waits in Constant's office at the top of the building. The office has grass for a carpet and levitating furniture. Fern is a very thin man, dressed all in black. He is wearing his coat and hat. He is standing looking out the window when Constant enters. He is surprised by the floating furniture, which Fern tells him is made by a company that Constant told him to buy.

Fern is described as a watchful man who reads two books a day but is none the wiser when it comes to understanding human nature. He had worked for Constant's father as well as for Constant and is described as superior to both of them in every way except one. Both Noel and Malachi Constant seem to have amazing luck. Constant's luck seems to have run out, however.

Looking at the floating furniture, Constant is impressed. He imagines out loud that the furniture should sell well and that the company was a sound investment. Fern responds sarcastically that the furniture is virtually useless, as it is impossible to sit in one of the chairs without falling out, and the floating desk moves around the room.

Acquiring the company is the latest in a string of poor decisions made by Constant that have led to the downfall of his company. Fern informs him that all the employees have been let go, and that he and Constant are the only two left in the building. The company is completely wiped out.

The narrator embarks on a history of the company Magnum Opus. It is started by Noel Constant, a traveling cookware salesman from Massachusetts. One day, while staying in a tiny hotel room in Los Angeles, Noel Constant decides to begin speculating in the stock market. For his initial capital, he has some $8,000 in an inheritance from his father. Within a year, he has made a fortune of over a million dollars. His investment technique is simple. He takes a copy of the Gideon Bible left in his room and writes out the first sentence in two-letter pairs, such as I.N., T.H., E.B., E.G., I.N., N.I., N.G., and so on. Then he looks for companies with these initials and buys stock in them. The first stock he buys is International Nitrate. Somehow this method results in Noel Constant buying stocks just as they are about to skyrocket. Other investors imagine he must have a network of industrial spies, not imagining that he is simply relying on luck.

Noel Constant seldom leaves his small hotel room. His only visitor is a maid he pays to spend the night with him occasionally. After two years of investing, Noel Constant is very rich. One day he receives a visit from a man from the IRS. It is Ransom K. Fern. Fern announces that he has quit his job with the Internal Revenue Service and intends to work for Constant. Fern ascertains that Constant knows nothing about the companies he buys, but cannot determine how Constant makes such shrewd decisions.

Fern convinces him that he could make even more money taking Fern's advice and building a large corporate bureaucracy that will protect his investments from too much scrutiny. Constant agrees, and allows Fern to build the large Magnum Opus headquarters. He himself refuses to leave the small hotel room.

The narrator refers to two books on the subject of the rise of Magnum Opus. He relates how the maid that Constant paid to stay with him became pregnant, after which Noel married her, gave her a mansion and a million dollars, and asked her to continue to visit him but not to bring the child. The child is Malachi Constant.

Noel Constant reveals his investment technique to nobody except Malachi, on the occasion of his twenty-first birthday. Inviting Malachi to his hotel room, he tells him that when he dies and Malachi takes over, he is to look at a chronological list of his recent investments and determine where in the Bible to start up again. Their meeting is awkward, as it is the only time father and son have ever met.

Malachi Constant takes over the business and continues with the same success for five years before the current downfall. Constant is still incredulous that everything is gone. Fern tells him that indeed, everything is gone. Furthermore, MoonMist Cigarettes, one of his recent acquisitions, have been found to cause sterility and Constant is facing the possibility of numerous lawsuits.

Fern tells Constant that he is leaving, but that he has one more duty to perform. He has a letter written by Constant's father that he was instructed to give to Malachi if his luck should ever go bad. He has placed the letter under the pillow of the bed in the small hotel room where his father lived until his death, according to his father's instructions.

The hotel room is in the Wilburhampton Hotel, across the street from the Magnum Opus building. In the lounge of the Wilburhampton two slightly strange people sit at the bar, trying different drinks and checking their watches regularly. They have introduced themselves to the bartender as retired schoolteachers, a man and a woman named George M. Helmholtz and Roberta Wiley. In fact, they are both men in disguise. They are actually Martian army operatives, lying in wait for Constant as their spacecraft hovers high above.

Constant enters the hotel and is noted by the two Martian agents, one of whom presses a button on his watch, starting a timer. The agents have no intention of using force to take him to Mars. They are usually able to convince their recruits into coming with them by explaining that their help is needed in a "government project". They have pressed thousands of people from Earth into service on Mars. Once on Mars, the new recruits' memories are usually erased and radio antennas installed in their heads to control them. Those who show the right temperament and loyalty to Mars do not have the antennas implanted. The two agents in the bar are two of these types.

Constant makes his way to the small room that had been his father's and finds the letter. In it, his father pleads with him to try to find out if there has been any reason for his incredible luck or if it was actually just as random and "crazy" as it appeared to him. He also gives the advice to Constant that if he is broke and someone comes along with a crazy proposition, that he should take it. It is just as he finishes the letter that Helmholtz and Wiley enter the room. Helmholtz announces that Mars is inhabited and has a large city and army, and that they are offering Constant a position as a lieutenant colonel in the Martian army. The next day, Malachi Constant's helicopter is found crashed in the desert, with no sign of Constant.

A few days later, Beatrice Rumfoord sits in her home in Newport watching on television the ceremonies before the firing of the spacecraft The Whale, which has been re-christened The Rumfoord. She sits smugly, assured that she has proven her husband's prediction wrong. She is also smug because she has come up with a scheme to keep herself afloat financially by selling tickets to her husband's materializations. She sits with two of the mortgage holders of the estate, watching the launch of the spaceship.

The two mortgage holders are actually Helmholtz and Wiley. Helmholtz asks Beatrice to tell them about the outbuildings of the estate, which she begins to do. Helmholtz asks her about the new metal building, which puzzles Beatrice. There is no new metal building, she tells them, but they insist there is. Wiley whispers that to her that it looked like a flying saucer.