THE ADVENTURES OF LANDO CALRISSIAN
by
L. Neil Smith

     Based on the characters and situations created by George Lucas A
Del Rey Book BALLANTINE BOOKS, NEW YORK

      CONTENTS

     LANDO CALRISSIAN AND THE MINDHARP OF SHARU

     LANDO CALRISSIAN AND THE FLAmEwIND OF OSEON

     LANDO CALRISSIAN AND THE STARCAVE OF ThONBOKA - AND THE MINDHARP 
OF SHARU  This book is dedicated to Robert Shea and Robert Anton 
Wilson.

      PROLOGUE

     "SABACC!
     It was unmercifully hot.  Tossing his card-chips on the table, the 
young gambler halfheartedly collected what they'd earned him, an 
indifferent addition to his already indifferent profits for the 
evening.  Something on the unspectacular order of five hundred credits.
     Perhaps it was the heat.  Or just his imagination.
     This blasted asteroid, Oseon 2795, while closer to its sun than 
most, was as carefully life-supported and air-conditioned as any 
developed rock in the system.  Still, one could almost feel the 
relentless solar flux hammering down upon its sere and withered 
surface, feel the radiation soaking through its ironnickel substance, 
feel the unwanted energy reradiating from the walls in every room.
     Especially this one.
     Apparently the locals felt it, too.  They'd stripped right down to 
shorts and shirt-sleeves after the second hand, two hours earlier, and 
looked fully as fatigued and grimy as the young gambler felt.'He took a 
sip from his glass, the necessity for circumspection regarding what he 
drank blessedly absent for once.  No nonsense here about comradely 
alcohol consumption.
     Most of them were having ice water and liking it.
     Beads of moisture had condensed into a solid sheet on the 
container's outer surface and trickled down his wrist into his 
gold-braided uniform sleeve.
     What a way to live!  Oseon 2795 was a pocket of penury in a 
plutocrat's paradise.  The drab mining asteroid, thrust cruelly near 
the furnace of furnaces, orbited through a system of pleasure resorts 
and vacation homes for the galaxy's superwealthy, like an itinerant 
junkman.
     The gambler was wishing at the moment that he'd never heard of the 
place.  That's what came of taking advice from spaceport attendants.  A 
trickle of moisture ran down his neck into the upright collar of his 
semiformal uniform.  Who said hardrock miners were always rich?
     He shuffled the oversized deck once, twice, three times, twice 
again in listless ritual succession, passed it briefly for a 
perfunctory cut to the perspiring player on his right, dealt the cards 
around, two to a customer, and waited impatiently for the amateurs to 
assess their hands.  Real or imagined, the heat seemed to slow 
everybody's mental processes.
     Initial bets were added to the ante in the middle of the table.
     It didn't amount to a great fortune by anybody's standardsexcept 
perhaps the poverty-cautious participants in the evening's exercise in 
the mathematics of probability.  To them the gambler was a romantic 
figure, a professional out-system adventurer with his own private 
starship and a reputation for outrageous luck.  The backroom 
niicrocredit plungers were trying desperately to impress him, he 
realized sadly, and they were succeeding: at the present rate, he'd 
have to drain the charge from his electric shaver into the ship's 
energy storage system, just to lift off the Core-forsaken planetoid.
     Having your own starship was not so much a matter of being able to 
buy it in the first place (he'd won his in another sabacc game in the 
last system but one he'd visited) as being able to afford to operate 
it.  So far, he'd lost money on the deal.
     Looking down, he saw he'd dealt himself a minus-nine: Balance, 
plus the Two of Sabres.  Not terribly promising, even at the best of 
times, but sabacc was a game of dramatic reversals, often at the turn 
of a single card-chip.  Or even without turning it-he watched the deuce 
with a thrill that never staled as the face of the electronic 
pasteboard blurred and faded, refocused and solidified as the Seven of 
Staves.
     That gave him a minus-four: insignificant progress, but progress 
nevertheless.  He saw the current bet, flipping a thirtycredit token 
into the pot, but declined to raise.
     It also meant that the original Seven of Staves, in somebody's 
hand or in the undealt remainder of the deck, had been transformed into 
something altogether different.  He watched the heat-flushed faces of 
the players, learning nothing.  Each of the seventy-eight card-chips 
transformed itself at random intervals, unless it lay flat on its back 
within the shallow interference field of the gatning table.  This made 
for a fast-paced, nerve-wracking game.
     The young gambler found it relaxing.  Ordinarily.
     "I'll take a card, please, Captain Calrissian."  Vett Fori, the 
player in patched and faded denyms on the gambler's left, was the chief 
supervisor of the asteroid mining operation, a tiny, tough-looking 
individual of indeterminate age, with a surprisingly gentle smile 
hidden among the worrry-lines.  She'd been betting heavily-for that 
impecuni crowd, anyway-and ous losing steadily, all evening, as if 
preoccupied by more than the heat.  An unlit cigar rested on the table 
edge beside her elbow.
     "Please, call me Lando," the young gambler replied, dealing her a 
card-chip.  " 'Captain Calfissian' sounds like the one-eyed commander 
of a renegade Imperial dreadnought.  My Millennium Falcon's only a 
small converted freighter, and a rather elderly one at that, I'm 
afraid."  He watched her for an indication of the card she'd taken.
     Nothing.
     A nasal chuckle sounded from across the table.  Arun Feb, the 
supervisor's assistant, took a card as well.  There was a hole frayed 
in the paunch of his begrimed singlet, and dark stains under his arms.
     Like his superior, he was small in stature.  All the miners seemed 
to run that way.  Compactness was undoubtedly a virtue among them.  He 
had a dark, thick, closely cropped beard and a shiny pink scalp.  
Drawing on a cigar of his own, he frowned as he added what he'd been 
dealt to the pair in his hand.
     Suddenly: "Oh, for Edge's sake, I simply can't make up my mind!
     Can you come back to me, Captain Calrissian?"  Lando groaned 
inwardly.
     This was how the entire evening had gone so far: the speaker, 
Oudefa Osuno Whett, for all his dithering, had been the consistent big 
winner, perhaps owing to his tactics of continuous annoyance of the 
others.
     Fully as much a stranger in the Oseon as the young starship 
captain, at the moment he was operating on considerably less goodwill.
     "I'm sorry, Ottdefa, you know I can't.  Will you have a card or 
not?"
     Whett assumed an expression of conspicuous concentration that 
might have been a big success in his university classes.
     Ottdefa was a title, something academic or scientific, Lando 
gathered, conferred in the Lekua System.  It was the equivalent of 
"Professor."
     Its owner was a spindly wraith, ridiculously tall, grayheaded, 
with a high-pitched whiny voice and a chronically indecisive manner.
     It had taken him twenty minutes to order a drink at the beginning 
of the game-and even then he'd changed his order just as the chink 
arrived.
     Lando didn't like him.
     "Oh, very well.  If you insist, I'll take a card."
     "Fine," Lando dealt it.  Either the academic had an excellent 
poker face, or he was too absentminded to notice whether the resulting 
hand was bad or good.  Lando looked to his right.
     "Constable Phuna?"
     The squat, curly-headed tough-guy he addressed was T. Lund Phuna, 
local representative of law-and-order under the Administrator Senior of 
the Oseon.  It was not, apparently, the happiest of assignments in the 
field.  The uniform tunic hanging soddenly over the back of his chair 
looked nearly as worn as his companions' work clothes.  He lit 
cigarette after cigarette with nervous, sweaty fingers, filling the 
cramped, already stifling room with more pollution.  He wiped a 
perspirationsoaked tissue over his jowls.
     "I'll stand.  Nothing for me."
     "Dealer takes a card."
     It was the Idiot, worth zero.  Given the circumstances, Lando felt 
it was altogether appropriate.  If only he'd headed for the Dela System 
as he'd planned, instead of the Oseon.  He'd.seen richer pickings in 
refugee camps.
     Bets were placed again.  Vert Fori took another card, her fourth, 
as did her assistant, Arun Feb, asking for it around the stub of his 
cigar.  Ottdefa Whett stood pat.  A Master of Sabres brought the value 
of Lando's hand up to a positive ten, as a final round of wagering 
commenced.
     Arun Feb and Vert Fori both folded with a nine and minusnine 
respectively.  The cop Phuna hung grimly on, his broad features misted 
with sweat.  Lando was about to resign himself, when Whett excitedly 
cried, "Sabacc!"  slapping the Mistress of Staves, the Four of Flasks, 
and the Six of Coins down on the worn felt tabletop.
     The Ottdefa raked in a meager pot: "All ... not exactly the 
Imperial Crown jewels, nor even the fabulous Treasure of Rafa, but@' 
"Treasure of Rafa?"  echoed Vert Fori.
     She might as well ask, thought Lando, she isn't doing herself any 
good playing cards.
     "I've heard of the Rafa System," the mine supervisor continned, 
"everybody has.  It's the closest to our own.  But I haven't heard of 
any treasure."
     The academic cleared his throat.  It was a silly, goose-honk 
noise.  "The Treasure of Rafa-or of the Sharu, as we are now compelled 
to call it, not for the Rafa System, my dear, but for the ancient race 
who once flourished there and subsequently vanished without a trace-is 
a subject of some interest."
     This had been delivered in Whett's best professional tones.
     Vert Fori's weathered face, impassive enough when it came to 
playing cards, plainly displayed annoyance at being patronized.
     She picked up her cigar, stuck it between her teeth, and glared 
across the table.
     "Without a trace?"  Arun Feb snorted with disbelief.  "I've been 
there, friend, and those ruins of your-what'd you call lem?-'Sharu,' 
are the biggest hunks of engineering in the known galaxy.  What's more, 
they cover every body in the system bigger than my thumbnail.  They 
"Are not themselves the Sharu, my dear fellow, of whom no trace 
remains," Whett insisted, his tone divided between pedantry and 
insulted reaction.  "I certainly ought to know, for, until recently, I 
was a research anthropologist for the new governor of the Rafa System."
     "What's a bureaucrat want with a tame anthropologist?"  Feb asked 
blandly.  He blew a final smoke ring, mashed his cigar out on the edge 
of the vacuum tray, and took a long drink of water.  It dribbled down 
his chin, soaking the collar of his soiled shirt.
     "Why, I suppose," sniffed Whett, "to familiarize himself 
thoroughly with all aspects of his new responsibilities.  As you are no 
doubt aware, there is a native humanoid race in the Rafa; all of their 
religious practices revolve about the ruins of their legends of the 
long-lost Sharu.  The new governor is a most conscientious fellow, most 
conscientious indeed."
     "Yes," Lando said finally, wondering if the anthropologist was 
ever going to deal the next hand, "but you were speaking of treasure?"
     Whett blinked.  "Why, yes, yes I was."  A shrewd look came into 
the academic's eyes.  "Have you an interest in treasure, Captain?"
     More interest than I've got in this game, Lando thought.  I wish 
I'd steered for the Dela System, no matter how much easier it is to 
land a spaceship on an asteroid than a full-scale planet.  Soon as this 
farce is over, that's precisely what I'm go im ing to do, win or lose, 
even if the astrogational calculations take me twenty years.
     "Hasn't everybody?"  Lando answered neutrally.  He extracted a 
cigarillo from his uniform pocket and lit it.  Treasure, eh?  Maybe 
there was something to be learned here, after all.
     "Not quite everybody.  Speaking for myself," the scientist in-, 
toned, beginning at last to shuffle the thick seventy-eight-card deck, 
"my interest is purely scientific.  What use have I for worldly wealth?
     One for you, one for you, one for you, one for you, and one for 
me.
     One for you, one for you, one for you .  .
     "Well, you surely came to the right place, then!"  Vett Fori 
guffawed, picking up her cards.  "No worldly wealth to get in your way 
at all!  What are you doing here, anyway?  We didn't hire any 
anthropologists."
     Lighting another cigarette, Constable Phuna spoke bitterly.
     "Seeing how the other half lives, that's what!  I saw his entry 
papers.  He's studying life among the poor people of a rich system@n a 
fat Imperial grant, speaking of worldly wealth.
     We're specimens, and he@' "Please, please, my dear fellow, do not 
be offended.  I aspire only to increase our understanding of the 
universe.  And who knows, perhaps what I learn here can make things 
better in the future, not just for you, but for others, as@' Vett Fori, 
Arun Feb, and T. Lund Phuna spoke almost simultaneously: "Don't do us 
any favors!"
     "Do me one," Lando suggested in the embarrassed silence that 
followed, "tell me about this treasure business.  And kindly deal me a 
card while you're about it, will you?"
     Bets were placed again and additional cards dealt out.
     Lando, having actually lost interest in the increasingly slim 
pickings the game afforded, watched absently as the card-chips in his 
hand transmuted themselves from one suit and value to another.  He paid 
a good deal more attention to what the anthropologist had to say.
     "The Toka are primitive natives of the Rafa System.  As Assistant 
Supervisor Feb has so cogently pointed out, they and the present 
colonial establishment co-exist among the ruins of the ancient Sharu, 
enormous buildings which very nearly occupy every square kilometer of 
the habitable planets.  I'll see that, and raise a hundred credits."
     Arun Feb shook his head, but tossed in a pair of fifty-credit 
tokens from a dwindling stake.  Vert Fori folded, a look of disgust on 
her face.  She placed her still unlighted cigar back on the table's 
edge.
     Phuna raised another fifty.  "Yeah, but the really important thing 
about the Rafa is the life-crystals they grow there."  He fingered a 
tiny jewel suspended in its setting from a slim chain around his sweaty 
neck.
     Whett nodded.  "Important to you, perhaps, good Constable.
     It is true, the life-orchards and the crystals harvested there are 
the chief export product of the colony, but my interest-and what I was 
paid to be professionally interested in-were the Toka legends, 
especially those bearing upon the Mindharp."
     Glancing at his cards, Lando saw he had a Mistress of Coins, a 
Three of Staves, and a Four of Sabres.  He dropped the requisite number 
of tokens into the pot just as the Three turned into a Five of Flasks: 
twenty-three, but it didn't really matter; Fives were wild anyway.
     "Sabacc!  " He gathered in the largest pot of the evening thus 
far.
     "Mindharp?"  the gambler asked.  "What in the name of the Core is 
that?"
     Ottdefa Whett wrinkled his nose, passing the rest of the deck to 
Lando.  "Oh, just a ridiculous native superstition.  There is supposed 
to be a lost magical artifact designed to call the Sharu-with whom the 
Toka identify in some strange fashion-to call the Sharu back when the 
Toka need them.
     Silly, as the Toka could not possibly ever have been contemporary 
with a civilization millions of years in the past, any more than human 
beings and dinosaurs-" "I've seen dinosaurs," Arun Feb interrupted.
     "On Trammis Ill."  The gigantic reptiloids of Tramniis III were 
famous the galaxy over, and a chuckle circulated around the table.
     "I take it, however," Lando said as he shuffled and dealt the 
cards, then watched the bets pile up again, "that you have your own 
theories."  Somehow the talk of treasure seemed to have loosened up the 
pursestrings a bit, except perhaps for Vett Fori and her assistant.
     The gambler took a puff of his cigarillo.
     "Would you mind talking about them?"
     The anthropologist looked .  as if he wouldn't mind at all, even 
if requested to discourse standing barefoot on a large cake of ice 
while his ample gray hair were set on fire.
     "Well, sir, the ruins, for all that they are ubiquitous, are 
impenetrable, closed completely on all sides without a sign of 
entryway.  I daresay that all the collected treasures of a million 
years of advanced alien culture await the first adventurer to gain 
admittance.  I don't mind confessing to you all that I attempted it 
myself on several occasions.  But the ruins are not only impenetrable, 
they are absolutely obdurate.  No known tool or energy yields so much 
as a smudge upon their surfaces.
     I'll see that, and raise five hundred.  Constable?"
     Grudgingly, the policeman threw in five hundred credits' worth of 
tokens.  Lando saw the bet with @id amazement and raised it a hundred 
credits himself.
     "Sabacc!"
     Hmmm.  Things were looking up a little.  He was now ahead two 
thousand credits.  He dealt the cards a third time, wondering what 
prospects for a gambler might be met in the Rafa.
     The idea was tempting: only a handful of straight-line lightyears 
to navigate across, and, if he recalled correctly, a major spaceport 
with good technical facilities-which to him meant landing assistance 
from Ground Control.  The Millennium Falcon was completely new to him.
     He'd be playing cards in the Dela System this very moment if he 
weren t such an abysmally amateurish astrogator and ship-handler.  He'd 
balked at the long, complicated voyage and reputedly tricky approach to 
a mountaintop landing field, despite well-founded rumors of rich 
pickings in an atmosphere friendly to his profession.
     But the Rafa ...
     He won the third hand and a fourth, was now ahead some fifty-five 
hundred credits.  The prospects of action seemed to be encouraging him, 
and he wasn't noticing the heat as much anymore.
     "Oh, I say, Captain Calrissian It was Vihett again.  As the 
stakes- mounted, the anthropologist seemed the only one whose interest 
in desultory conversation hadn't lagged.
     "Yes?"  Lando answered, shuffling and dealing the cards.
     "well, sir, I ... that is, I find myself somewhat embarrassed 
financially at this moment.  You see, I have exceeded the amount of 
cash I allowed myself for the evening's entertainment, and I-" Lando 
sat back disappointed, drew on his cigarillo.  it was too much, he 
reflected, to have expected to get rich off this emaciated college 
professor.  "I move around too much to extend credit, Ottdefa.1' "I 
appreciate that fully, sir, and wish to ... well, how much would you 
consider allowing on a Class Two multi-phasic tohot, if one may ask?"
     "Once may indeed ask," the gambler replied evenly.
     "Thirty-seven microcredits and a used shuttle pass.  I'm not in 
the hardware business, my dear Ottdefa."  There was an idea, however: 
he could rent a pilot droid to get the ship from here to the Rafa-or 
wherever else he decided to go.  He reconsidered.  A Class Two was 
worth a good deal, perhaps half again the value of his spaceship.  In 
these circumstances ...
     "All right, then, a kilocred-not a micro more.  Take it or leave 
it."
     The Professor looked displeased, opened his mouth to bargain Lando 
up, examined the determined expression on the gatnbler's face, and 
nodded.  "A kilo, then.  I haven't any use for the thing in any event, 
it was attempting to help me break into the Sharu ruins, and I-"' "Will 
you have a card, Supervisor Fori?"  Lando interrupted.
     "I'm out; this game's gotten too rich for me, and I'm on shift in 
fifteen minutes."  Much the same was true for Arun Feb.  They sat 
through the hand, enjoying watching somebody else lose for once.
     Osuno Whett, however, bet heavily with his borrowed thousand, 
perhaps in an attempt to tap the gambler out.  He was assisted in this 
by Constable Phuna.  The money on the table grew and grew as Lando met 
their every raise, increasing the stakes himself.  He wanted the game 
over with, one way or the other.
     He'd dealt himself a Two of Sabres and a Four of Coins, taking an 
additional card after his two opponents had accepted them.  Abruptly, 
the Four became a Three of Flasks, and his extra, which had been a Nine 
of Staves, transformed itself into the Idiot.
     "Sabacc!"  Lando cried in double triumph.  To judge from the money 
on the table before him, and the lack of it in front of Whett and 
Phuna, that was the game.  "Where can I pick up that droid, Ottdefa?
     I'm going to put it to work immediately as a naviga@, "On Rafa IV, 
Captain.  I left it in the custody of a storagelocker company, 
intending to sell it there or send for it-now, please don't get angry!
     I have here the title and an official tax assessment indicating 
its true value.  You may take these with you, or use them to get a fair 
price for the robot here!"
     Lando had risen, violence flitting briefly-very brieflythrough his 
mind.  That he had been gulled like any amateur was his first coherent 
thought.  That he had a small but powerful pistol secreted beneath his 
decorative cummerbund was his second.  That he could wind up dead, or 
in jail, on this sweltering fistful of slag was his third.
     There wasn't time for a fourth.
     "Hold on there, son!"  the Constable said, seizing Lando's arm.
     "No need for any uproar.  We're all friends here.  He pointed with 
his free hand to the papers Whett had preferred.
     "The Ottdefa here can post bond to you in the full amount of-say, 
what's thist' Lando felt something small, round, and cool thrust up 
beneath his embroidered sleeve.  He glanced down just as Phuna was 
pretending to remove it, and groaned.  It was a flat, smooth-cornered 
disk a centimeter thick, perhaps four centimeters in diameter.  He knew 
precisely what it was, although he'd never owned one in his life.
     "A cheater!"  the indignant Constable exclaimed.  "He had a 
cheater all the time!  He could change the faces of the cards to suit 
him any time he wanted!  No wonder-" With a feral snarl, Osuna Whett 
took advantage of the asteriod's minimal gravity, launching himself 
across the table at Lando.  Just as his skinny frame was halfway to its 
target, a dirty denym jacket flopped over his head, followed by a 
knobbly set of knuckles belonging to Arun Feb,s right hand.
     There was a dull thump of contact and a muffled squeak from the 
anthropologist.
     "Get out of here, kid!"  Feb shouted.  "I saw Phuna plant the 
cheater on you!"
     The lawman whirled on Feb, fist upraised.  Apparently Vert Fori 
trusted her assistants judgment-and knew how to maneuver in the absence 
of gravitic pull.  She snatched up the nearest solid object-which 
happened to be the anthropologist's already battered head-and dashed it 
sideways against the startled cranium of the police officer.  Eyes 
crossed, he collapsed, drifting slowly to the floor.  Still holding 
Whett by the occipital region, Fori pried the wad of official-looking 
papers from the unconscious scientist's fingers.
     "Fake these and get your ship out of the Oseon, Lando.  I'll talk 
sense with Phuna when he comes around.  He's crooked, but he isn't 
crazy.  Besides, in theory, he works for me."
     It wasn't the first rapid exit Lando had made in his brief but 
eventful career.  However, it was passing rare for those whose money he 
had taken to assist him at it.  With a pang of gratitude-and the 
feeling he'd regret it later-he made to toss his winnings back on the 
table beside the insensate Ottdefa.
     "Don't you dare!"  Vett Fori growled.  "You want us to think you 
didn't win it fair and square?"  Behind her, Arun Feb tapped Phuna on 
the pate again with a stainless steel water carafe, tunk!  He looked up 
from the pleasant occupation and nodded confirmation.
     Lando grinned, waved a wordless farewell on his way out the door.
     Twenty minutes later, he was aboard the Millennium Falcon, bolting 
down a very hastily rented pilot droid.  Ten minutes after that, he was 
above the plane of the ecliptic, blasting out of the Oseon System and 
headed for the Rafa.  It was the last place Whett would look for him.
     He told himself.
     GOLD-BRAIDED FLIGHT CAP carefully adjusted to a rakish angle, a 
freshly suave and .  debonair Captain Lando Calrissian bounded down the 
boarding ramp of the ultra-lightspeed freighter Millennium Falcon-and 
cracked his forehead painfully on the hatchcoaming.
     "Ouch!  By the Eternal!"  Staggered, he glanced discreetly around, 
making sure no one had seen him, and sighed.  Now what the deuce was it 
Ground Control had wanted him to look at?
     They'd put it rather ungenteelly ...
     "What's that garbage on your thrust-intennix cowling, Em Falcon, 
over?"
     Well, it had been something they could say without insulting 
references to the amateurish way he'd skidded, setting her down on the 
Teguta Lusat tarmac.  Atmospheric entry hadn't been anything to brag 
about, either.  Gambler he may have been, scoundrel perhaps, and what 
he preferred thinking of as "con artiste."
     But ship-handler he was definitely not.
     He frowned, reminded of that rental pilot droid he'd wasted a 
substantial deposit on, back in the Oseon.  Let 'em try to collect the 
rest of that bill!
     Stepping-gingerly this time-around the hydraulic ramp lifter, he 
backed away from under the smallish cargo vessel (which invariably 
reminded him of a bloated horseshoe magnet), shading his eyes with one 
hand.  Intermix cowling ... intermix cowling ... now where in the name 
of Chaos would you find"Yeek!"
     The noise had come from Lando, not the hideous leathery 
excrescence that had attached itself to his ship.  It merely flapped 
and fluttered grotesquely, glaring down at him with malevolent yellow 
eyes as it scrabbled feebly at the hull, unaccustomed to the gravity of 
Rafa IV Two hideous leathery excrescences!
     Four!
     Lando pelted back up the ramp, slamming the Emergency Close lever 
and continuing to the cockpit.  The right-hand seat was temporarily 
missing, in its place bolted the glittering and useless Class Five 
pilot droid, its monitor lights blinking idiotically.
     "Good evening, ladies and gentlemen," the robot smirked, despite 
the daylight pouring through the vision screens from outside, "and 
welcome aboard the pleasure yacht Arleen, now in interstellar transit 
from Antipose IX t@' The young gambler snarled with frustration, 
slapped the pilOt'S OFF switch, and threw himself into the left 
acceleration couch, just as one of the disgusting alien parasites began 
suckering its way across the windscreen, fang corrosives clouding the 
transparency.
     "Ground Control?  I say, Ground Control!  What the devil are these 
thinlaq.?"
     A long, empty pause.  Then Lando remembered: "Oh, yes ... over!"
     "They'@e mynocks, you simpering groundlubber!  You're supposed to 
shake them off in orbit!  Now you've violated planetary quarantine, and 
you'll have to take care of it yourse@.nobody's gonna dirty his-" With 
a growl of his own, Lando punched the squelch button.
     If they weren't going to help him, he could do without their 
advice.  Mynocks ... ah, yes: tough, omnivorous creatures, capable of 
withstanding the rigors of hard vacuum and Absolute temperatures.  They 
were the rats of space, attaching themselves to unwary ships, usually 
in some asteroid belt.
     The Oseon System was nothing but asteroids!
     Hitching a ride from sun to sun, planet to planet, mynocks 
typicallyGood grief!  He jumped up, banging Ws head again, this time on 
the overhead throttle board-stupid place to put it!-and made quick, if 
clumsy progress aft to the engine area.  He'd just remembered something 
else he'd read or heard about mynocks: subjected to planet-sized 
gravity, they collapsed, dying rapidly ...
     After reproducing.
     In a locker, he found a vacuum-tight worksuit, also scrounged up a 
steamhose and couplings.  Shucking into the greasy plastic outfit-a 
pang of regret: he was ruining his mauve velvoid semiformals!-he 
ratcheted the steamline to a reactor let-off, cranked open the topside 
airlock, and, trailing hose, clambered out onto the hull.
     A mynock waited greedily for him, alerted by the unavoidable 
rumble of the hatch cover, its spore sacs shiny and distended.  It was 
ugly, perhaps a meter across, winged like a bat, tailed (if that was 
the proper word for it) like a stingray, poison-toothed like a"Yeek!"
     The mynock, this time.
     It floundered toward him, dragging itself along by a ventral 
sucker-disk.  The only thing uglier than mynocks, Lando thought, were 
the larvae they spawned on planet surfaces.  He leaped as it flicked a 
clawed wingtip at him, his awkwardness aboard ship bred more of 
unfamiliarity in a new environment than any native lack of agility.  He 
twisted the hose nozzle, spraying the monster with superheated vapor 
from the Falcon's thermal-exchange system.
     It screamed and writhed, flesh melting away to expose the 
cartilage it used instead of bones.  This, too, reduced quickly, washed 
down the curved surface of the ship, leaving nothing but gelatinous 
slime steaming on the spaceport asphalt.
     A noise behind him.
     Side vision impaired by the suit, Lando whirled just in time to 
ram the nozzle into a second mynock's gaping maw.  It swelled and 
burst.  Fastidiously, he played steam over himself to remove the 
dissolving organic detritus, then stalked grimly forward, finally 
destroying seven of the sickening things in all.
     "Good going, Ace!"  Teguta Lusat Ground Control sneered through 
his helmet receiver as he wiggled back through the upper airlock 
hatchway.  "Didn't you get an instruction booklet when you sent your 
box-tops in for that pile ofjunk you're flying?  Over" Pile of junk?
     The only pile of junk in the neighborhood, thought Lando, sweating 
in his bulky armor as he cranked the hatch back down and stowed the 
stearnlines, was that brainless rent-a-hot up forward.  Hmmm.  That 
gave him an idea.
     "Hello, Ground Control," he warbled pleasantly from the cockpit 
only seconds after worming back out of the plastic vac-suit.  "I'll 
have you know that this stout little vessel's often made the run to 
your overrated mudball in record-breaking time. Once upon a time.  At 
least that's what her former owner claimed, trying to bid up the 
battered freighter's pot value in a sabacc game he was losing badly.
     Lando's rented droid had failed miserably to coax anything near 
the advertised velocities out of the ship.
     Probably some trick to it.
     "By the way," Lando continued, "I seem to have the knack of 
handling this baby now.  Would anyone care to purchase a practically 
new pilot droid?  Over?"
     "We've heard that one before, Millennium Err.  That rental outfit 
in the Oseon may not maintain offices here, but they've got treaty 
rights.  You'll have to send it back fast-,freight.  Expensive.  Over 
and out.
     It wasn't quite as bad as he'd expected.
     Lando shipped the droid back slow-freight, balancing the extra 
rental time against the transportation costs.  Evening had begun to 
fall before he'd taken care of that, plus all of the complicated 
official paperwork attendant upon grounding an interstellar spacecraft 
anywhere the word "civilized" is considered complimentary.
     Tonight, he'd relax.
     He needed it, after traveling with that confounded robot.  Get a 
feel for the territory-by which he meant identifying potential marks, 
locating those social gatherings that others foolishly regarded as 
games of chance.
     Tomorrow, he'd take care of business.
     The Rafa System was famous for three things: its "lifecrystals"; 
the peculiar orchards from which they were harvested; and what might 
have been called "ruins" if the colossal monuments left by the Sharu 
hadn't remained in such excellent repair.
     The crystals were nothing special-as long as you regarded 
quadrupling human life expectancy "nothing special."  Varying from 
pinhead to fist-sized, their mere presence near the body was said to 
enhance intelligence (or stave off senility) and to have some odd 
effect on dreaming.
     They could be cultivated only on the eleven planets, assorted 
moons, and any other rocks that offered sufficient atmosphere and 
warmth, of the Rafa System.
     The life-orchards themselves were nearly as famous-dter the manner 
of guillotines, disintegration chambers, nerve racks, and electric 
chairs.  It was not the sort of agriculture amenable to automation-the 
crystals were harvestable only under the most debilitating and menial 
of conditions.  However, the operation was attractive financially 
because,it came with its own built-in sources of cheap labor, two, to 
be exact: the subhuman natives of the Rafa, plus the crin-dnal and 
political refuse of a million other systems.
     The Rafa was, among its other distinctive features, a penal colony 
where a life sentence meant certain death.
     That much was known by every schoolchild in civilized space-at 
least that minority with an unhealthily precocious bent for unwholesome 
trivia, Lando reflected as he secured the Falcon for the night.  He 
strolled across the still-warm asphalt to the fence-field surrounding 
the spaceport, intending to catch public transport into Teguta Lusat, 
capital settlement of the system-wide colony.
     An old, old man dressed only in what appeared to be a tattered 
loin-cloth, hunched over a pushbroom at the margin of the tarmac.  He 
looked up dully for a moment as Lando strode by, then back at the 
ground, and resumed pushing dead leaves and bits of gravel around to no 
apparent purpose.
     Slanting sunset caught odd angles of the multicolored alien 
architecture that constituted foreground, background, and horizon 
everywhere one cared to look on this planet.  Pyramids, cubes, 
cylinders, spheres, ovoids, each surface was a different brilliant hue.
     The least of the monumental structures was vastly larger than the 
greatest built by living beings anywhere in the known galaxy.  What 
passed for a town lay wedged uncomfortably into the narrow spaces 
between them.
     Under a scattering of stars, Lando stepped lightly aboard the 
open-sided hoverbus, arrayed in his second-best blue satyn uniform 
trousers, bloused.  over bantha-hide knee boots.  He wore a soft white 
broad-sleeved tunic, dark velvoid vest.  Tucked into his stylish 
cummerbund was enough universal credit to get him into a semihealthy 
table game-and the tiny five-charge stingbeam that was all the weapon 
he ordinarily allowed himself Those who carried bigger guns tended, in 
Lando's brief but highly observant experience, to think with them 
instead of their brains.
     Alone aboard the transport, he leaned back ortthe outwardfacing 
bench, unsure whether he enjoyed the unique scenery or not.  Traffic 
was a modest trickle of wheels, hovercraft, repulsor-lifted speeders.
     Not a few pedestrians clumped along the quaint and phony 
boardwalks that fronted the human buildings, and among them Lando 
spotted many more like the old man at the port.  Perhaps they were old 
prisoners who had served out their sentences.  The bus wheezed into the 
center of Teguta Lusat.  Lando paid the droid at the tiller, 
dismounted, and stretched his legs.
     The colony was an anthill built on soil scrapings in the cracks 
between ancient, artificial mountains.  Whatever effort had been 
invested decorating the place (and it didn't amount to much), it 
remained drab by comparison with the polychrome towers surrounding it.
     Streets were narrow, angling oddly.
     Human-scale homes, offices, and storefronts merely fringed the 
feet of titanic nonhuman walls.
     Lando walked into the least scruffy-looking bar.  The usual crowd 
was there.
     "Looking for a cargo, Captain?"
     The mechanical innkeeper of the Spaceman's Rest polished a glass.
     Bottles and other containers from a hundred cultures gleamed 
softly in the subdued lighting.  A smattering of patrons-not very many: 
it was the dinner hour and Four was mostly a family planet-filled the 
unpretentious establishment with an equally subdued burble of 
unintelligibility.
     Lando shook his head.
     "Too bad, Captain, what else can I do for you?"
     "Anything that burns," Lando said, childishly pleased to be 
recognizable as a spaceman.  He was puzzled, however, over the robot's 
commercial pessimism.  This was a healthy, thriving colony, with 
enormous and growing export statistics.  "Retsa, if you've got it."
     In one dark corner, what might have been the same uhderclothed old 
man leaned on the same old pushbroom.
     "Coming up, Captain."  Deft maneuvering with glassware followed.
     Lando turned his back, put elbows on the bar, inquired over his 
shoulder: "Where could a fellow find some action around here?"  He'd 
put it in a colonial accent-when in hick city, act hickier than the 
hicks.  Civilized polish scares money away- "I just got in from the 
Oseon; my evening's free."
     "How free?"  The machine's optic regarded Lando appraisingly.
     "There's Rosie's Joint, down the street.  Has a real nice revue.  
Just turn left at the big red neon@' Lando shook his head.  "Later, 
maybe.
     Perhaps a gamesabacc?  Folks back home used to say I was pretty 
good."
     Cynicism in its voice, if not upon its unyielding features, the 
automaton put on a show of thinking deeply.  "Well, sir, I don't know .
     . ."
     Lando offered twice the going price for retsa.
     "I might know of a game-my memory stacks just aren't what they 
used to be, though, and .  . ."
     Lando placed another bill in the bar-top.  "Will this cover having 
them rO-charged?"
     The bill seemed to evaporate.
     "Don't go away, Captain.  Make yourself comfortable.  I'll be 
right back."
     The 'tender vanished almost as impressively as had Lando's money.

     THE FLEDGLINC; STARSHIP owner/operator had scarcely picked up

     his drink, selected a dark, heavy, quasiwood table, and seated 
himself, carefully adjusting the creases in his trousers, when another 
figure appeared, a tall, cadaverous, nearly human individual wearing 
something loose, with polka dots.
     They clashed badly with his mottled orange complexion.
     "Allow me to introduce myself, sir: I am the proprietor of this 
establishment.  " The creature stroked its moustaches-two separate 
levels filling the inhumanly broad space between nose and upper 
lip-took a chair to the gambler's left, and lit a long green cigarette.
     The young gambler noticed with amusement that the fellow hadn't 
really introduced himself at all.
     "I understand," said the alien, "that you have expressed an 
interest in the scientific theories regarding the phenomenon of 
probability."
     Lando had wondered how the subject would be broached.
     He settled back with a grin, assuming the facade, once again, of 
an overconfident colonial, put his feet up on the chair opposite, and 
winked knowingly.
     "Purely scientific, friend.  I'm a spacer by profession, an 
astrogator, so my interest's only natural.  I'm especially intrigued by 
permutations and combinations of the number seventyeight, taken two at 
a time.  Fives are wild."
     "Ah ... sabacc."  The owner took a long drag of orange smoke, 
exhaled softly.  "I believe you could be inducted'into the, er, 
research foundation practically instantaneously.' He paused, as if 
embarrassed.  "But first, Captain ... well, a small formality: your 
ship name if you please, sir, strictly for identification purposes.
     There are certain regressive, antiscientific enemies of free 
inquiry@, Falcon, berth seventeen.  I'm Calrissian, Lando Calrissian."  
"Who carry badges and blasters?"  He laughed.  "Millennium The 
proprietor consulted a data-link display on his oddly jointed wrist.  
"A pleasure, Captain Calrissian.  And your credit, I observe, is more 
than sufficient to support this, er, research program of ours.
     If you will follow me."
     It's the same the galaxy over, Lando thought.  A small back room, 
emerald-color dramskin tabletop, low-hanging lamp, smoke-filled 
atmosphere.  In an honest game, there was a modest house percentage, 
and the cops were all paid off-that routine of the tavern owner's had 
merely been a chance to check Lando's credit rating.  Only the 
particular mingling of smoke odors varied from system to system, and 
that not as much as might be expected.  He might be out of his depth at 
the controls of a starship.  For that matter, he didn't know very much 
about asteroid mining or needlepoint.  But here-wherever "here" 
happened to be-he was at home.
     He -took his place at the table.
     There were three other players, and a tiny handful of spectators 
currently more interested in their drinks and breathing down each 
other's necks than the game.  He placed a few creds on the firm green 
surface.  Card-chips were dealt around.  He received the Ace of Sabres, 
the Four of Flasks, and Endurance-which counted as a minus-eight.
     That made eleven.
     "One," said Lando neutrally.  He drew a Seven of Staves, which 
promptly flickered and became the Commander of Coins.
     Twenty-three.
     "Sabacc!  Dear me, beginner's luck?"  He allowed excitement to 
tinge his voice as he raked in the small pile of money, accepting the 
deck and dealing.
     He carefully lost the next three hands.
     It wasn't easy.  He'd had to dump two perfect twenty-threes and 
might have drawn to a third if he hadn't stood pat with a 
fourteen-point hand, praying that the card-chips would keep the faces 
they'd begun with.
     The local talent thought they had a live one.
     In a manner of speaking, they were right-but not in any manner of 
speaking they'd find pleasant or profitable.  It was one of those 
evenings when the young gambler felt made of luck, filled to the brim 
with spinning electrons and subnuclear fire.  He ran the pot up 
gradually, so as not to frighten the others, conspicuously losing on 
the low bets, making steady, quiet gains.
     Drinks flowed freely, compliments of the polka-dotted proprietor.
     This may have been a spaceman's bar, but at least two of the 
players were townies, likely splitting with the boss what they skinned 
from visiting sailors.  The same glass of mesa Lando had begun with, 
diluted now with ice he kept having added, stood sweating on the 
plastic table-edging near his elbow.
     "Sabacc," breathed Lando, flipping the trio of card-chips face 
upward.  It was a classic: the Idiot's Array, lead-card worth the zero 
printed on it, plus a Two of Staves and a Three of Sabres-an automatic 
twenty-three.
     "That cleans out my tubes," grunted the player opposite Lando, a 
dough-faced anonymous little entity with slightly purplish skin.  Like 
the gambler, he wore the uniform of a starship officer.  Despite the 
coolness of the evening, there was a fine sheen of perspiration across 
his forehead.  "Unless I can interest you in a small cargo of 
life-crystals."
     Lando shook his head, adjusted an embroidered cuff.  First a 
beat-up freighter, then a robot he hadn't even had time to inspect, now 
a holdful of trouble with the local authorities.
     "Sorty, old fellow, but it's cash on the tabletop or nothing.
     Business is business-and sabacc is sabacc."
     Born of fatigue, this partial transformation from toughedged (if 
preternaturally fortunate) amateur into no-nonsense professional 
startled at least one of Lando's opponents, a stalky, asymmetrical 
vegetable sentient from a system whose name the young gambler couldn't 
quite recall.  It placed three broad leaflike hands on the table-Lando 
thought the contrasting shades of green looked perfectly terrible 
together-and garbled through an electronic synthesizer fastened to its 
knobbly stem.
     "Awrr, Captainshipness, being a sports!"  It turned a petalfringed 
face toward the small technician.  "Negatordly give these person ill 
considerations.  Cargo of value, inarguability.  " The third player, a 
hard-bitten bleached blonde with a thumb-sized oval life-crystal 
dangling from a chain around her wattled neck, hooted agreement.
     "Sure, Phyll," Lando replied, ignoring the woman.  "Is that how 
you obtained that marvelous translator you're wearing-in lieu of 
credits in a sabacc game?"
     The plant-being shivered with surprise.  "How thou understanding 
these?"
     "With considerable difficulty."
     He paused, thinking it over, however.  To a gambler, particularly 
one who was both reasonably honest and consistently successful, good 
will represented an important stock in trade.
     "Oh, very well, Chaos take me!  But only this once, understood?"
     The amorphous-featured fellow nodded enthusiastically; he lasted 
only two more hands.  On his way out the door, he reached into a pocket 
of his coveralls, presented Lando with a bill of lading and a few 
associated documents.
     "You'll find the shipment at the port.  Thanks for the game.
     real sport, Cap'n Calrissian, honest to Entropy, you You're a 
are. Lando, now some seventeen thousand credits ahead, and ready to 
bow out of the game as gracefully as he could@r as firmly as he 
must-scarcely heard the little nonentity.  He had blessedly near the 
price of the Millennium Falcon, right there on the table before him.  A 
plague on interstellar freighthauling!  Let somebody else worry over 
landing permits and cargo manifests.  He was a gambler!
     It sure beat scraping mynocks off a starship hull!
     Shortly after midnight, strolling the few boardwalked blocks 
toward the modest luxury of Teguta Lusat's "finest hotel"-the droid 
bartender's recommendation-Lando kept one hand on the credits in his 
pocket, the other on his little gun.  It didn't seem to be that kind of 
town, still, there were that kind of people everywhere you went.
     Beside him shambled the weirdest apparition of the mechanical 
subspecies he had ever seen-or even wanted to.
     "Vuffi Raa, Master, Class Two Multiphasic Robot, at your service!"
     The transport station with its dozens of storage lockers had been 
on Lando's way to the hotel.  Desiring an early start on the morning's 
business, the gambler had thought it a good idea to pick up the droid 
he'd won immediately.  Now he wasn't sure.
     Some things are better faced in daylight.
     It stood perhaps a meter tall, about level with Lando's hip 
pocket-hard to judge, as it could prop its five tentacles at various 
angles, achieving various heights.  It was the shape of an attenuated 
starfish with sinuous manipulators-which served both as arms and 
legs-seamed to a dinner-plate-size pentagonal torso decorated with a 
single, softly glowing many-faceted deep red eye.  The whole assemblage 
was done up in jointed, glittering, highly polished chromium.
     Utterly tasteless, Lando thought.
     "Most people," he had observed, watching the thing unfold itself 
from the rental locker, "have forgotten that 'droid' is short for 
'android,' meaning manlike."  It stretched its long, metallically 
striated limbs almost like a living being, carefully examined the tips 
of its delicately tapered tentacles.  "And what kind of name is that 
for a robot, anyway: 'Vuffi Raa'?  Aren't you supposed to have a 
number?"
     It regarded him obliquely as they squeezed past a geriatric 
janitor and left the ten-ninal through automatic glass doors, headed up 
the boardwalk.
     "It is a number, Master, in the system where I was manufactured-in 
the precise image of my creators.
     "I wish I could recall exactly where that is: you see, I was 
prematurely activated in my shipping carton in a freight hold during a 
deep-space pirate attack.  This seems to have had a bad effect on 
certain of my programmed memories."
     Wonderful, thought Lando, keying open his hotel room.  A ship he 
couldn't fly, and now a robot with amnesia.  What had he done to 
deserve this kind of-never mind, he didn't want to know!
     The Hotel Sharu wasn't much, but it was regarded locally as the 
best, and he had certain standards to uphold with what he thought of as 
his public.  He mused: in this age of wide-ranging exploration, it was 
entirely possible for a commodity such as Vuffi Raa to change hands 
many times, be bought, sold, resold, won, or lost, winding up half a 
galaxy away in a culture totally unknown where the product had 
originated.
     Or vice versa, as seemed to be the case here.  He couldn't recall 
any sapient species shaped even remotely like Vuffi Raa.
     Somehow, he hoped he'd never run across them.  In any event, he 
thought, that'll make two white elephants for sale in the morning.
     He'd already come to a decision about the Millennium Falcon.
     Tablt talk during the sabacc game had been understandably sparse, 
but one thing was obvious even before he'd accepted those crystals for 
cash.  The life-orchards operated on a combination of unskilled labor 
supplied mostly by the near-mindless natives of the Rafa-he wondered if 
he'd see any of the creatures while he was there, but came to the same 
decision about that that he had concerning Vuffi Raa's 
manufacturers-and supervision by offworld prisoners.  The whole 
enterprise was a monopoly of the colonial government.
     As nearly as Lando could determine, consignments of lifecrystals 
traveled only via the Brother-In-Law Shipping Company (whatever its 
local equivalent was actually called), and free-lance haulers were 
simply out of luck.  There would be no cargo for the dashing Captain 
Lando to write manifests on.
     Well, that suited him.  He'd trade off the cargo tomorrow.
     Door-field humming securely, and the bed turning itself down with 
cybernetic hospitality, Lando undressed, carefully supervising the 
closet's handling of his clothing.  Vuffi Raa offered its services as a 
valet, the appropriate skills being well within the capacities of its 
Class Two architecture, which supposedly approached hum response.  . an 
levels of intellectual and emotional But Lando declined.
     "I haven't had servants for a very, very long time indeed, my fine 
feathered droid, and I don't intend starting again with you.  I'm 
afraid you're to change hands once more, first thing in the morning.
     Nothing personal, but get used to it."
     The robot bobbed silent acknowledgment, found an unoccupied corner 
of the room, and lapsed into the semiactivation that in automata 
simulates sleep, its scarlet eye-glow growing fainter but not 
altogether dimming out.
     Lando stretched on the bed, thoughts of ancient treasure dancing 
through his head.  Of course, he considered, lifecrystals weren't the 
only possible cargo he could take away from this place.  The ancient 
ruins were supposedly impenetrable, but whatever race had built them, 
it hadn't stinted on strewing the system with more portable artifacts.
     Museums might be interested-and possibly in the crude statuettes 
and hand-tools fashioned by the savage natives, as well.  High 
technology past and primitive present: quite a fascinating contrast.
     But the treasure ...
     Come to think of it, there were also a few colonial manufactured 
goods.  But that meant he'd have to chase all over the Rafa just to 
line up a single decent holdful-with a messy, embarrassing, and 
possibly dangerous takeoff and landing at each stop along the way, he 
reminded himself.
     Of course, there was always the treasure ...
     No.  Better stick to the original plan: find a buyer for the 
Falcon.  It had been fun for a short while, but he was no real space 
captain, and she was far too expensive to maintain as a private yacht, 
even if he'd wanted one.  Find somebody to give him a fair price for 
Vuffi Raa, as well.  Perhaps the same suck@ustomer.  Then ship out, 
tens of thousands of credits richer, on the very next commercial 
starliner.
     He whistled the lights out, then had an afterthought.  "Vuffi 
Raa?"
     The faintest whine of servos coming back to full power.
     "Yes, Master?"  Its eye shone in the darkness like a giant 
cigarette coal.
     "Don't call me Master-gives me the creeps.  Can you, by any 
chance, pilot a starship?  Say, a small converted freighter?"
     "Such as your Millennium Falcon?"  A pause as the droid examined 
its programming.  "Why, yes, er ... how should I call you, sir?"
     Lando turned over, the smug look oA his face invisible in the 
darkened room.  "Not too loudly, Vuffi Raa, and no later than 
nine-hundred in the morning.  Good night."
     "Good night, Master."
     KRAAASH!
     The door-field overloaded, arced and spat as the panel itself 
split and hinges groaned, separating from the frame.
     Lando awoke with a start, one foot on the floor, one hand reaching 
for the stingbeam on the nightstand before he was consciously aware of 
it.
     Four uniformed figures, their torsos covered with flexible 
back-and-breast armor, helmet visors stopped down to total anonyn-tity, 
stomped over the smoking remains of the door as the room lights came up 
of their own accord.  Their body armor failed to conceal the sigil of 
colonial peacekeepers.  They carried ugly, oversized military blasters, 
unholstered and pointing directly at Lando's unprotected midsection.
     He removed his hand from the nighttable, hastily, but without 
sudden, misinterpretable movement.
     "Lando C@ssian?"  one of the helmeted figures demanded.
     He eyed the wreckage of the door.
     "Wouldn't it be embarrassing if I weren-um, on second thought, let 
me revise that: yes, gentlebeings, I am Captain Lando Cahissian, in the 
flesh and hopeful of remaining that way.  Always happy to cooperate, 
fully and cheerfully, with the authorities.  What can I do for you 
fellows?"
     The bulbous muzzle of its weapon unwavering, the imposing armored 
figure stepped closer to the bed, its companions immediately filling up 
the space behind it.
     "Master of the freighter Millennium Falcon, berth seventeen, 
Teguta Lusat Interstellar-" "The very same.  l@' "Shut up.  You are 
under arrest."
     "That's fine, officer.  Just let me get my pants@r not, if it's 
inconvenient.  I'll be happy to answer whatever questions His Honor may 
wish to ask.  That's my policy: the truth, the whole truth, and nothing 
but the truth.  Support Your Local-Umph!"
     The big cop hit Lando in the stomach with his blaster, followed it 
with the empty hand, balled into a mailed fist.  A second figure went 
to work on the hapless gambler's legs.  The other two swung crisply 
around the bed, started in on him from the other side.
     "Ow!  I said I'd go peaceably-ghaa!  1-unhh!  Vuffi Raa, help me!"
     The robot cowered in its corner, manipulators trembling.
     Abruptly, it collapsed, curled up into a ball.  Its light went 
out.
     So did Lando's.
     SQUAT.
     Squat and ugly.
     Squat and ugly and powerful-at least locally, Lando reminded 
himself with an inward groan as two of the helmeted officers dragged 
him into the presence of Duttes faer, colonial governor of the Rafa.
     Lando hadn't had time yet-nor the inclination-to inventory the 
indignities inflicted on him by the Colonial Constabulary.  He seemed 
to be one solid, puffy bruise from neck to ankles.  Avoid trouble with 
the cops in one system, get it in the next when you least expect it.
     It hurt, rather a lot.
     Yet nothing really serious had been done to him, he realized, 
nothing broken, nothing that would show if they ever gave him back his 
clothes.  A thorough, workmanlike, professional beating, it had been, 
and, for all that it had seemed to go on and on forever, apparently a 
purely educational one, a few wellplaced contusions meant to underline 
the fact that he was totally at their mercy.
     He'd bloodied his own nose, stumbling against the jamb as they'd 
frog-marched him over the broken door of his hotel room.  In hopes of 
not acquiring any further damage, he wished they'd put a plastic sheet 
under him now, to keep him from getting blood all over the governor's 
fancy imported carpet, the only extravagance apparent in an otherwise 
spare and utilitarian office.
     There was a useful clue, there, if only Lando's head would begin 
working well enough to ferret it out.
     The governor blinked.  "Lando Cahissian?"
     At least everybody seemed to know his name.  It was a startlingly 
high-pitched, feeble voice, considering the ponderous bulk it issued 
from-and perhaps a touch more nervous, Lando thought, than current 
circumstances seemed to warrant.  Gamblers make much more careful 
studies of such nuances than psychologists.  They have to.
     Thickly muscled, improbably broad, resembling more than anything 
else a deeply weathered tree-stump crowned in fine, almost feathery 
hair, the governor looked like the kind to play his cards close to the 
chest, never to take wild chances, to be a merciless, implacable 
player.
     Turn the tables and he'd holler like a baby.  Lando knew the type 
well.
     In the present context, he felt the information wasn't terribly 
helpful.  He glanced uncomfortably at the armored visorwearers either 
side of him, then back at the governor.  It doesn't matter a whit if a 
bully's a coward at heart-as long as he has all the guns.
     The governor blinked, lifted a blocky arm, repeating the 
salutation-or, more likely, the accusation: "Lando Calrissian?"
     "Flatten the first A a bit," Lando answered, more bravely than he 
felt.  "A little more accent on the second syllable of the last name.
     Keep trying, you'll get it right."
     He ran a tongue across his lips, tasted blood.  His head hurt.
     So did everything else.  Egg-sized eyes under the silly 
headthatching regarded him coldly from behind a small, uncluttered, 
impossibly delicate-looking desk of transparent plastic.
     "Lando Calrissian, we have here a list of very serious charges 
against you that have been brought to our attention.
     Very serious charges indeed.  What, if anything, have you to say 
for yourself?"
     The governor blinked again as he finished, this time as if the 
very sight of Lando was painful to him.  The young gambler bit back a 
ing illegal he had done.
     Lately, anyway.  He hadn't any qualms, particularly, about 
breaking the law: there were a lot of silly little planets with a lot 
of silly little laws.  It was just that he'd rather-as an aesthetic 
point, mostly-be caught when he'd actually done something.
     He decided, more or less experimentally, to add truth to the 
courteous obsequiousness that had failed with the cops.  One never 
knew, the combination might work on this fat tub of"Sir-Your 
Excellency-I know nothing about any charges.
     To the best of my knowledge, I haven't done anything to be charged 
with."
     He left it at that; a complaint would be carrying things too far.
     The governor blinked.
     Lando opened his mouth to speak.  A loop of fabric from his 
tattered pajamas chose that moment to slip embarrassingly from his 
shoulder and swing.  He sniffed, lifted it with whatever dignity the 
occasion afforded, attempted to smooth it back in place.
     The governor blinked.
     it was not a large room they were in.  There was a wide door-but 
then, it was a wide governor@ither side of the desk.  Like the door 
facing the desk, through which Lando had been escorted, both were 
framed in plain undecorative alumabronze, the spare motif echoed in 
wainscotting, baseboards, and a border around the high, somehow 
intimidating ceiling.  The pace was tinted a bilious yellow to match 
the governor's eyes.  Instead of draperies, the windows displayed 
recorded scenes Lando recognized from other systems: greenish gravelly 
beaches, deep orange skies, scarlet vegetation.  Entire worlds done up 
in bad taste.
     The governor, apparently deciding Lando had been sufficiently 
intimidated by the longish silence, lifted a thick arm from his desk, 
regarded the troopers half-holding the muchabused starship captain 
erect.
     "You are advised," Duttes Mer squeaked menacingly, "to improve the 
best of your knowledge, then, young @screant."
     Miscreant?  Lando thought, did people really say miscreant?
     The governor perused a printout lying on his desk, raised downy 
eyebrows.
     "Quite a record!  Reckless landing procedures.  Illegal 
importation of dangerous animals.  Mynocks, Captain-really?
     Unauthorized berthing of an interstellar "But, Governor!"  Lando 
forgot himself momentarily, struggled free of the policeman on his 
left-then remembered where he was and clamped the astonished man's 
armored hand back around his elbow with a short-lived sheepish grin.
     He'd realized, with a sudden, stifled gasp, that the transparent 
desk the governor occupied was composed entirely of gigantic, priceless 
life-crystals@nough to extend the life-spans of hundreds of 
individuals.  Power, then, was the key.  It explained the barren 
office.  Money and display wouldn't impress the malevolent lump of 
wasted hydrocarbons sitting before him; he would be motivated only by 
the prospect of controlling and disposing of the lives of others.
     "Sir, I had all the clearances and permits.  I-" "Truly, Captain?
     Where?  Produce them and the charges against you may be reduced 
some small but measurable fraction."
     Lando looked down, seeing his own frame-the thought whisked by 
that this might be an qnfortunate choice of words@raped in pocketless 
pajamas much the worse for their recent intimate acquaintance with 
Teguta Lusat lawenforcement procedures.  He looked back up at the 
governor.  "I don't suppose you'd let me go back to my hotel ... no, I 
didn't think so.  Well, better yet, check with the Port Authority.
     They should be able-2' "Captain," the governor sighed with 
affected weariness, "the Port Authority have no record whatever of any 
permits being granted to either a Lando Calrissian, or a .  . ."  He 
checked the list again.  a Millennium Falcon.  Of this I assure you, 
sir.
     in fact, you might say I ascertained the data in the matter 
personally."
     "Oh," Lando answered in a small voice, beginning to understand the 
situation.
     "There is also," the governor continued, satisfied now that he had 
a properly attentive audience, "conspiracy to evade regulations of 
trade.  You see, we know of your attempts to obtain an unlicensed 
cargo.  Carrying a concealed weapon-my, MY, Captain, but you are a bad 
boy.  Finally: assaulting a duly authorized police officer in an 
attempt to resist arrest."
     The governor got a thoughtful look on his face, looked down at the 
list again, picked up a stylus and made a note.
     "And failure to settle your hotel bill as you departed those 
premises.
     "Now what have you to say?"  The governor blinked, licked fat lips 
in anticipation.
     "I see," Lando said, barely concealing his glee.  His spirits had 
begun to lift considerably in spite@r because-of the fist of charges 
against him.  The governor was someone he could deal with, after all.
     Ante: "My gun was on the nighttable, it wasn't concealed.
     And if 'assault' consists of willfully striking a constable in the 
fist with my stomach, then I'd say you've got me, fair and square.
     Governor.  Sir."
     Raise: "Very well, Captain.  Or ought I to make that 'Mister 
Calrissian'-you will not likely be doing very much more captaining from 
now on.  What have you to say to the probability of finishing your days 
doing stoop-labor in the life-orchards amidst other criminals, 
malcontents, and morons like yourself?"
     Lando saw that and raised with a grin: "In all truth, sir, I 
wouldn't like that very much.  I've heard that the life-orchards tend 
to take it out of you."
     The governor nodded, not exactly an easy feat for someone without 
a discernible neck: "If you had it to begin with, Captain-if you had it 
to begin with."
     Call: "I'd also say you're about to offer me some lessunpleasant 
alternative.  That is, unless you make a custom of trumping up silly 
charges against every independent skipper who makes your port.  And I 
guess I'd have heard about that long before I got here."
     The governor resembled a frowning tree-stump covered in feathers.
     "Don't anticipate me, Captain, it, takes all the fun out of 
occasions such as this."
     He blinked, then pressed a button on his desk.
     Lando replaced the cup on its saucer, leaned back in the large 
soft chair a servant had been ordered to bring him, and drew deeply on 
one of the governor's imported cigars.  Yes, indeed, all of life was one 
big sabacc game, and he was corm'ng out ahead, just as he had done the 
night before.
     The servant@the of the Rafa System's "natives"@ffered to pour more 
tea.  That had come as a surprise (the native, not the tea).  It stood 
there with a look of worshipful expectancy on its seamed, vacant, 
elderly gray-hued face.  Lando shook his head.  One more cup and they 
could float him out of there.
     Another puff.  "You were saying, my dear governor?"
     "I was saying, my boy-by the way, are you finding that dressing 
gown adequate?  Your baggage should be here from the hotel by now.  But 
I'd rather we didn't interrupt ourselves at this point in the 
conversation.  I was saying that, among the intelligent species of the 
galaxy, we humans are a most prolific, preternaturally protean people."
     "And alliterative as all get-out, too, apparently."  Lando flicked 
two centimeters of fine gray ash into the vacuum tray on the governor's 
desk.
     Mer ignored the jibe, indicated the stooped and withered servant 
as it quietly shambled through the main office door behind Lando.
     "Consider, for example, the Toka-known locally as the 'the Broken 
People.' Entirely devoid of intellect, passion, or will.  Subhurnanoid 
in intelligence.  Every one of them bears what would be the signs of 
advanced age among our own kind-white hair, sallow, wrinkled faces, a 
bent, discouraged gait.  Yet these are but superficialities of 
appearance@r are they?  --they carry each of these dubious attributes 
from birth.
     "Domestic animals, really, nothing more.  Useful as household 
servants, they're too unintelligent to be anything but discreet.  And 
in harvesting the life-orchards.  But nothing else."
     Lando stirred uncomfortably in his chair, adjusting the front of 
his borrowed bathrobe to conceal his discomfiture.  The fabric was 
velvoid, a revolting shade of purple, sporting bright green-and-yellow 
trim.  If everyone took to using the fabricand with such egregious 
taste-he'd have to reassess his entire wardrobe.  He wondered precisely 
what all the palaver was leading up to.  He'd heard slavery justified a 
thousand different ways in a thousand different systems, yet it did 
seem to him that the Toka lacked some spark, some hint of the 
aggressive intelligence that made people people.
     "You said 'for example': 'Consider the Toka for example'don't you 
mean 'by contrast'T' The governor signaled for yet another cup of tea.
     "Not at all, my dear boy, not at all.  With offworld prisoners as 
overseers, a few droids for technical tasks the Toka are content to eat 
food intended for animals, and @ill quite willingly work themselves to 
death if it's demanded of them."
     Lando allowed himself a small, cynical snort.  He'd heard that 
working in the orchards had some kind of drainage effect.
     Most human prisoners had purely supervisory positions, as the 
governor had suggested.  Ditto for nonhuman sapients that had gotten 
themselves into trouble.  Those unfortunate few "special" prisoners of 
both classifications, condemned to menial lahot, wound up sub-idiots 
within a year or two.  Apparently it didn't affect the Toka that way.
     They were already sub-idiots.
     "All that must be highly convenient," he said, "for the owners of 
the orchards."
     Mer looked at Lando closely.  "The government owns the orchards, 
my boy, I thought you understood that.  The point is, the Toka are 
quite as human as ourselves."
     Lando's jaw dropped.  He scrutinized the servant as it poured the 
governor's tea, oblivious to the highly insulting things being said 
about it.  How could this acquiescent, wizened, hunched, gray-faced 
nonentity, with its tattered homespun loincloth and thinning white 
hair, be human?
     The governor blinked, managing to look smugly proprietary in spite 
of it.  He opened his mouth to speak ...
     WHAAAM!
     The air was split by an explosion that rocked the office.
     There was a blinding flash; a column of blue-black smoke boiled 
into existence, floor-to-ceiling, at the right of the governor's desk.
     Oh, brother, Lando thought, what now?

      IV

     "ENOUGH OF THIS!"  The blue-black smoke column shrieked, 
evaporating into tiny orange sparks that winked and disappeared.
     A Sorcerer of Tund, Lando groaned inwardly, how quaint.
     Members of an allegedly ancient and rather boringly mysterious 
order from the remote Tund System, they were all given to flashy 
entrances.  The rest of the column condensed into a vaguely humanoid 
figure about Lando's height and general build.  The old boy had 
probably tossed his flash-bomb into the office, then stepped through 
the door quite casually into the center of the smoke.
     Nobody was quite sure what species the Tund wizards were, or even 
if they were all members of the same species.  Swathed entirely in the 
deep gray of his order, the newcomer wore heavy robes that brushed the 
carpet, totally concealing the form beneath.  A turbanlike headdress 
ended in bands of opaque cloth across the face.
     Only the eyes were visible.  To his surprise, Lando found himself 
wishing fervently that they were not.  Despite the absurdity of the 
sorcerer's melodramatic actions, the eyes told a different, more 
sobering story: twin whirling pools of-what?
     Insane hunger of some sort, the gwnbler decided with a shiver.
     Those ravenous depths regarded him for a moment as if he were an 
insect about to be crushed, then turned their malevolent power on the 
governor, Duttes Mer, who blinked and blinked, and blinked.
     "You prolong these preliminaries unnecessarily!"  a chilling voice 
hissed through the charcoal-colored wrappings.  Lando couldn't quite 
determine whether it was a natural utterance or one produced by a vocal 
synthesizer.  "Tell the creature what it needs to know in order to 
serve us, then dismiss it!"
     The governor's composure disintegrated completely.  He swiveled 
his enormous bulk in his chair, short stubby arms half-lifted in 
unconscious and futile defense, his large yellow eyes rolling with 
abject terror.  His walnut-shaded skin had paled to the color of maple.
     Even his feathery hair seemed to stir and writhe.
     "B-But, Your Puisssance, l@' "Tell the tale, you idiot," the 
sorcerer demanded, "and be done!"
     Lando spat out a bit of ceiling plaster jolted loose by the 
intruder's showy appearance.
     With a terrible effort, the frightened governor turned partially 
toward Lando, never quite daiing to take his eyes altogether off the 
sorcerer.
     "C-Captain Land-do Calrissian, p-permit me t-to introduce Rokur 
Gepta, my ... my .  . ."
     "Colleague, " the sorcerer supplied with an impatient hiss that 
sent goosebumps up the starship captain's spine.  It didn't seem to do 
the governor much good, either.  He nodded vaguely, opened his mouth, 
then slumped in his chair, unable, apparently, to utter another word.
     "I see," the sorcerer hissed, taking a step forward, "that I shall 
have to finish this."
     Another step forward.  Lando fought the urge to retreat through 
the back of his own chair.  "Captain Cahissian, our friend the 
governor, in his slow, humbling way, has informed you of the failings 
of the Toka.  They are manifold, I shall warrant, and conspicuous.
     What this oaf has not seen fit to mention thus far-and the very 
heart and soul of the matter before us-is their most interesting and 
singularly redeeming feature.
     "For you see, despite their humble estate, they observe and 
practice an ancient system of beliefs which, if taken literally not 
only explains the present unenviable condition of the Toka, but 
promises more for the properly prepared and sufficiently daring.
     "Much, much more."
     The inhuman voice died with a hiss, as if its owner expected some 
question or remark from the gambler seated before him.
     Instead, Lando simply looked at the odd figure, forcing himself, 
despite an inner cringing, to gaze calmly into the lunatic eyes of the 
sorcerer.
     Meanwhile, the governor had managed to recover enough to press a 
button on his desk, order the Toka servant it summoned to obtain 
another chair for his "colleague."  But the elderly creature could not 
be induced by kind words (of which the governor uttered but few) or 
threats (of which he had many in supply) to come near the threatening 
gray-swathed figure.
     In the end, after an embarrassing impasse, Mer himself was forced 
to rise from his oversized office swiveler, bring the chair in from the 
next room, and place it for the robed magician.  To Lando's amusement, 
the fat executive had nearly as much difficulty as the Toka forcing 
himself to come near Rokur Gepta.
     Lando himself attempted to relax, settled back, and regarded his 
cigar, which had long since expired from inattention.
     Again, seemingly from nowhere, the Toka servant materialized to 
light it, then, still cowering under the baleful gaze of the sorcerer, 
vanished once again with a shuffle of bare feet on plush carpet.
     "Promises precisely what?"  Lando asked after a long time, somehow 
managing to sound casual.  Half a hundred wild speculations formed in 
his mind as he said it, but he repressed them savagely, waiting Gepta 
out.
     "Among other things," the sorcerer whispered, "the Ultimate 
Instrument of Music."
     Great, thought Lando, his fantasies collapsing.  It could have 
been diamonds, platinum, or flamegems; it could have been immortality 
or Absolute Power; it could have been a good five-microcredit cigar.
     The guy wants zithers and trombones.
     "The Mindharp of Sharu"@epta explained as he seated himself, "has 
been an article of the simple faith among the Toka for centuries 
uncounted.
     "As you are not doubt aware, the current human population of 
Rafa-not to mention numerous representatives of many other associated 
species-dates from the early days of the late, unlamented Republic.
     What is not generally appreciated by historians is that, in the 
chaotic, erratically recorded era preceding, a respectable amount of 
exploration and settlement was also earned out, albeit haphazardly.
     Thus, when Republican colonists arrived in the Rafa for the first 
time, they discovered it already occupied by human life.
     "The Toka.
     "I must explain that, for some decades, I have employed 
others-anthropologists, ethnologists, and the like, many of them 
incarcerees of the penal colony here and thus anxious to reduce the 
burden of their sentences-to observe, record, and analyze the ritual 
behavior of the Toka, believing that, in the the long run, such an 
effort might produce some particle of interest or profit.  I have made 
many such investments of time and wealth throughout civilized space.
     "The Toka, savages that -they be, have little or nothing in the 
way of social organization.  Infrequently, however, and at 
unpredictable intervals, they gather together in small bands for the 
purpose of ritual chanting, to all appearances the passing-on of a 
purely verbal heritage.
     "Fheir legends acknowledge that they came, originally, from 
elsewhere in the galaxy-would-be pioneers and explorers, employing a 
technology which they subsequently somehow discarded or lost.  They, 
too, found the Rafa already occupied.
     Their tradition speaks of the Sharu, a superhumaniod race perhaps 
billions of years advanced in evolution, too terrible to look upon 
directly or contemplate at any length.
     "The Sharu were, of course, responsible for the monumental 
construction which characterizes this system, a style of architecture 
betraying a bent of mind so alien that, for the most part, even the 
purpose of the structures cannot be guessed.  It is unclear whether 
mere contact with the Sharu 'broke' the Broken People, or whether it 
was the Sharu's later hasty departure.
     "For depart they did.
     "Legends maintain that their flight was in the face of something 
even more terrible than they, something they feared greatly, although 
whether another species, some disease, or some unimaginable something 
else, we cannot so much as conjecture.  They left their massive 
buildings, they left, apparently, the life-orchards whose original 
function is as obscure as everything else regarding the Sharu, and they 
left the Toka, crushed and enfeebled by some aspect of their experience 
with the Sharu."
     Lando reflected on Gepta's words while he let himself be offered 
another cigar.
     It seemed to him that the question of what broke the Broken People 
was of considerably less pragmatic interest than whatever put such a 
scare into their superhuman masters.  He hated to think of something 
like that still hanging around the galaxy.
     A starship captain's life (he knew better from vicarious 
experience than from any of his own) carried him through many a long, 
lonely parsec in the darkness.  And many a ship has disappeared without 
so much as a trail of neutrinos to mark its passing.
     The Toka servant, skirting Gepta, lit Lando's cigar.
     The latter said, finally, "What's all this got to do with me?"
     From within the voluminous folds of his ash-colored robes, Gepta 
extracted an object about the size of a human hand, constructed of some 
lightweight, bright untarnished golden metal.
     It was Lando's turn to blink.
     Viewed from one perspective, the device seemed to be a large, 
three-tined fork-until the gambler looked again.  Two tines or four?
     Or maybe three again?  The thing just wouldn't settle down in his 
field of vision, giving him, instead, the beginnings of a headache when 
he stared at it too closely or for more than a few seconds.
     Gepta placed the object carefully on Duttes Mer's crystalline 
desk, where it seemed to writhe and pulse without actually moving.  The 
governor gazed down at it with an uninterpretable expression on his 
face-somewhere between dismay and greed.
     "We have reason to believe," Rokur Gepta hissed, "that this object 
is a Key-perhaps it is a miniature of the Mindharp itself, although 
that is only surmise.  It was ... shall we say, obtained in an 
altogether different system, from a small, shabby museum.  But it came 
originally from the Rafa System and is a Sharu artifact.  Of that there 
is not the slightest doubt."
     Somehow, without being told, Lando knew that there were volumes of 
adventure, betrayal, and deceit behind the sketchy explanation Gepta 
had just given.  He had no doubt it was a story best left untold.
     "A key," he repeated.  "What the blazes does it unlock, if one may 
ask?"
     "One may ask," the sorcerer replied in a threatening whisper, "but 
with a great deal more deference and respect in the future than is your 
customary practice!"
     "A thousand pardons!"  Lando tried to keep the sarcasm he felt out 
of his voice, with only partial success.  "Pray what does it unlock, 
noble magician?"
     Gepta paused as if trying to gauge Lando's sincerity, then 
shrugged it off as of no practical consequence.  "There is evidence to 
indicate it provides access to the Mindharp of Sharu.
     The Mindharp is the focus of a thousand Toka rituals.  The fools 
believe it produced music so sweetly compelling-isn't that just 
precious!-that it was capable of swaying the most unfeeling of hearts, 
even across vast distances of space."
     The Rafa was a multiplanet system, but, given the millions of 
nfiles of hard vacuum between planets, Lando reserved judgment.  He'd 
seen legends come to nothing before.
     Gepta mentioned that some versions of the legends had the Mindharp 
as the principal means of communication between the mighty Sharu and 
their human "pets."  What the Mindharp looked like and precisely where 
it might be found, these questions remained unanswered.
     It was up to Lando to answer them.
     Or else.
     For his part, Lando wondered what the value of such an instrument 
might be to a system governor or a Sorcerer of Tund.
     And he wondered again about the terrible unnamed agency which had 
caused the presumably powerful Sharu to flee their home system like so 
many panicky mice.
     "Okay," he answered finally, "what's in it for me if I find the 
Mindharp for you?"
     The sorcerer turned slightly in his chair, gave Lando the full 
benefit of his terrifying gaze.  "How about your continued liberty?"
     For the first time since fetching the sorcerer a chair, Duttes Mer 
found the wherewithal to speak for himself.  "There is also your ship 
to consider."
     "And your life!"  Gepta finished in a tone that made Lando's 
tailbone quiver uneasily.
     He ignored it, pretending a nonchalance he didn't feel: "Well," he 
said, "two out of three isn't bad.  I was planning to sell the ship.
     It's of no use t@' "That you shall not do, foolish mortal!"  Gepta 
seemed suddenly to swell in size and power.  "This entire system is 
covered with Sharu ruins.  We have no idea, as yet, in which of them 
the Mindharp lies awaiting us.  You may very well need the vessel t@' 
"Okay, okay.  I get your point."  Stcretly, Lando congratulated himself 
on having been able to interrupt the sorcerer.  He hated being 
intimidated by anyone and made a practice of disintiniidating himself 
as quickly as he could.  "I get a ship I don't want, my life and 
liberty-which I already had before I stumbled into this rustic 
metropolis of yours.  I don't want to appear unappreciative of your 
boundless generosity, my dear fellow-beings, but let's negotiate a 
bonus.  A little something for the overhead?"
     Mer leaned forward over his desk, not a particularly easy feat 
considering his treelike torso and the neck nature had seen fit not to 
endow him with.  A threatening.look darkened his face as he opened his 
mouth to speak, but he was stopped short by a hiss from Gepta.
     "Incentives, my dear governor, incentives.  Do not seal down the 
intakes of the droids who refine the fuel.  We shall indeed offer our 
brave captain a little something as recompense.  Captain Calrissian, 
would a full cargo of life-crystals from the orchards be acceptable?"
     The sorcerer's tone implied it had damn well better be.  Mer 
looked sharply at Gepta.  He might be afraid of the gray-robed figure, 
but it was his bread and butter they were negotiating away.  He opened 
his mouth again, saw that Gepta was serious, and closed it to stifle a 
groan.
     Lando grinned.  "I imagine that it will take rather a deal of 
fancy paperwork to cover up the shortage."
     "Which is precisely, my dear Captain'7-the sorcerer turned 
contemptuously toward Met, and the governor shrank from his gaze-"what 
bureaucrats are for."
     "Okay, Gepta, so far, so good.  But what's to keep you two from 
seizing my ship and returning me to the tender mercies of the 
constabulary once I get the Mindharp for you?  The most extravagant 
offer in the universe is a cheap price to pay if you don't intend-" 
"Peace!"  A long pause for consideration, then: "We shall deliver the 
cargo to your possession before you begin your search for the 
Mindharp-silence, Governor!  However, we shall also have our menials at 
the port of Teguta Lusat render your Millennium Falcon incapable of 
leaving the system-in case you decide to play us falsely yourself-while 
leaving it perfectly suitable for travel from planet to planet within 
the system.  Once you have secured that which we all seek so ardently, 
your vessel will be repaired and you will be free to go.
     Is this agreeable?"
     Lando thought.  It still wasn't much of a guarantee.  In fact, it 
was the same lousy deal as before, with his shi@r at least its 
ultralight capacities-as bait instead of the life-crystals.
     Still, it was all, he was sure, they were going to offer him.
     It was a great deal more than he'd expected after Mer's thugs had 
worked him over.
     "All right," he said through a weary sigh that was at least half 
genuine.  "It beats sitting around in jail."
     Or having one's mind sucked away by the life-orchards, he thought 
grimly to himself.
     "I HAVEN'T THE foggiest notion!  Anyway, what possible business is 
it of yours?"
     Lando stalked moodily along the narrow streetside toward a transit 
stop.  His gaudy shipsuit had at least been restored to him, even his 
din-dnutive stingbeam.  This last decorative touch, he reasoned 
bitterly, was yet another educational message from Rokur Gepta and 
Duttes Met, underlining ironically what they imagined was his utter 
helplessness.  Well, they'd learn better.
     Trouble was, Lando couldn't think of how to accomplish that at the 
moment.
     Vuffi Raa clattered beside him, carrying the rest of his luggage, 
which had been somewhat battered during the assault on the hotel room.
     "But Master, I mean, Captain@' "Call me Lando!"
     "Er, Lando, how am I to help you if you won't tell me what's 
required of us?  I know nothing about what's going on.
     I spent the entire night in the Confiscated Properties Room at 
Constabulary headquarters, sandwiched between bales of illicit smoking 
vegetables and wire baskets overflowing with vibroknives, murder 
hatchets, and the like."
     At the thought, the little droid suffered an involuntary 
mechanical shudder, which originated at its torso seams and rippled 
along all five tentacles to their slim-fingered extremities.
     Lando's bags bobbed up and down until the seizure passed.
     "Did you know," the robot offered in a subdued, conciliatory 
voice, "that most of the spouse killings in this system are 
accomplished with cast-titanium skillets?"
     Lando stopped suddenly, stared back at Vuffi Raa in anger.
     "With a sharp blow to the cranium, or simply bad cooking?
     Look, my mechanical albatross, there's nothing personal in this.
     -It's simply that I haven't the faintest clue where or how to 
begin the idiot quest they've blackmailed me into, and I stand a far 
better chance if I don't have to spend my time stumbling over a 
useless-" "Master, I do not wish to oppose your will in this matter.  
In fact, such would violate my most fundamental programming to the 
point of incapacitating me.  However-2' "I don't give a damn what 
happens to your capacitors!"
     '@however, before you sell me again, I am determined to prove to 
you that I am, indeed, far from useless.  Perhaps even slightly 
indispensable."
     Lando stopped again in the middle of the boardwalk, looking down 
with contempt at the little suitcase-laden automaton.
     He took a deep breath.
     "That, my esteemed collection of clockwork cowardice, would be 
something to see.  What precisely have you in mind?' Vuffi Raa paused.
     A lengthy silence followed, and hovercars and repulsor vehicles 
were suddenly audible swishing by in the narrow, twisted avenue.
     Without warning the droid suddenly spoke once more.
     "So that is the difficulty; I believe I understand at last.  The 
hotel room.  The Constabulary.  Your cries to me for help.  Your 
preference, as I understand it, is that I should have been somewhat 
more, er ... physically demonstrative.  Even, perhaps, at the risk of 
worsening the charges against you?"
     Lando turned on a booted heel, wordlessly resumed his march down 
the street.  A bus went by, bearing half a dozen gawking tourists being 
lectured by the driverdroid on what little was known of the Sharu.
     "Master!"  the droid cried behind him, scurrying to catch UP 
"There was nothing I could do!  I am specifically enjoined by my 
programming never t@' "Stow it!"  Lando snorted, taking some visceral 
satisfaction in the terse, blue-collar monosyllables.  He'd kept his 
back to Vuffi Raa this time, hadn't even slackened his pace.  The 
robot, with a sudden burst of speed made awkward by his master's bags, 
slipped around Lando and stopped, blocking the young gambler's further 
bad-tempered progress.
     "Sir, I am not programmed for violence.  I cannot harm a sentient 
being, organic or mechanical, any more than you could flap your arms 
and fly from this planet."
     "Which only goes to show," Lando asserted, startled at the droid's 
sudden insistent solemnity, "that I was right in the first place."  He 
stepped around the robot and started walking again.
     "You're useless."
     "You are saying, then," the robot's voice inquired, very small, at 
the captain's rapidly receding back, "that violence is the only 
solution to this problem, the only capability that is useful or 
desirable to you in a friend or companion?"
     Lando froze, one foot still in the air, stopped dead by the icy 
disgust he heard in Vuffi Raa's voice.  He set the foot down, turned 
slowly to face the machine.  Not only was he arguing with an 
artifact-he was losing!
     Of course the little droid was right.  Why else did he, Lando 
himself, insist on carrying nothing more than the minimal and miniscule 
weapon tucked away in his sash?  Men of whatever species or 
construction acted with their minds, survived by their wits.  Only a 
stupid brute would automatically limit himself to the resource of his 
fists or those of a friend.
     That stopped Lando a second time: just exactly when had he begun 
to consider Vuffi Raa his friend?
     "Well, Master," Vuffi Raa mused, "as I understand the situation, 
you're to search for whatever lock the Key may fit.  Yet you haven't 
any idea whether the lock-and it may be a more metaphorical than 
material entity-is even on this planet.  Correct?"
     Lando nodded resignedly.  He'd let three regular hoverbuses to the 
spaceport whistle past the stop while he carefully explained things to 
the droid.
     "You've got it, exactly as I just told it to you.  So far, old 
lube-guzzler, you've proved your usefulness as a suitcase caddy and an 
audio recorder.  Any more talents you haven't revealed?"
     He shifted on the transit-stop bench so that his back was to the 
little robot.  He wasn't so much annoyed with Vuffi Raa for being 
useless, as for the fact that the automaton had forced him to confront 
some of his own failings.
     "I beg your pardon, Master, all of my internally lubricated 
subassemblies are permanently sealed and require no fuilher@' Lando 
turned back suddenly.  "All right, cut out that robotic literalness.
     You're a smarter machine than that, and we both know it.  What I 
mean is, do you have any ideas?  I'm fresh out, myself."
     Something resembling a humorous twinkle lived in Vuffi Raa's 
single red optic for a fleeting moment.  "Yes, Master, I have.  if I 
had something ancient and historic, and valuable to look for, I know 
precisely where I'd look for information.
     Lando frowned, brightened, and leaped up off the bench.
     "By the Eternal, of course!  Why didn't you say so before?
     Why didn't I think of it?  It's certainly worth a try!  You may 
have some use, after all."  Lando paced hurriedly down the block just a 
few yards, turned into the nearest bar, then poked a head back out 
through the swinging doors.
     "Wait for me out here!"  he shouted, pointing to a sign in the 
window of the drinking establishment: NO SHOES, NO SHHZT, NO EXTEE 
HELMET FILTERS NO SERVICE NO DROIDS ALLOWED "But Master!"  the little 
robot protested to the empty swinging doors, "I was referring to the 
public library!"
     Having shaken his unwelcomely helpful companion, Lando gratefully 
entered the cool quiet of the Poly Pyramid, one of Teguta Lusat's many 
inebriation emporia.  There was nothing special about the place 
appearancewise or otherwise; he'd merely availed himself of the first, 
nearest ethanol joint on the boardwalk.
     He sat down at a table.
     What he'd really needed all along, he'd known the minute he left 
the governor's office, was some kind of Toka gathering of the clans.
     Unfortunately, life rarely provides what one really needs.  To 
judge from what Gepta had told him, the only people who truly knew 
what,was what where the Sharu were concerned were much too primitive to 
hold conventions-or much of anything else.  They had no villages, no 
tribes, not even any real nuclear families.
     Every now and again, at unpredictable intervals, the Toka simply 
collected in small bunches to bay at the moon like wild canines.  Rafa 
IV didn't have a moon, but, Lando thought, it was the principle that 
counted.
     All right, the young gambler reasoned, one place he'd noticed the 
reliable presence of Toka@yen before he'd known who and what they 
were-was in saloons, usually swamping the floors and polishing 
spitoons, the kind of occupation reserved in other systems for 
lower-classic on c rol .
     the innkeepers could afford to entertain their prejudices and 
those of their clientele against the mechanical minority; Toka 
seniislaves were handier and far cheaper.
     Lando tooked'around.  He'd selected a table in the approximate 
center of the room, halfway toward the back, and halfway between the 
bar that ran down the left side of the place, and the booth-lined wall 
opposite.  Ordinarily, he'd prefer a position where he could see 
everything that went on and not have to turn his back to the door, 
perhaps something toward the rear.
     Now the important thing was to be seen.
     The Poly Pyramid was a working-being's establishment.  On the 
walls, lurid paintings alternated with sporting scenes from a dozen 
systems.  On a less cosmopolitan planet, racy shots of unclad females 
would predominate, but, in places where one being's nude was another's 
nightmare, sensuality had given way before such items as incompetently 
taxidermized galactic fauna, which were nailed to the walls or 
suspended on wires from the ceiling: fur-bearing trout from Paulking 
XIV, for example, and a jackelope from Douglas III.
     As bars go, it was brightly lit and noisy, especially considering 
the small number of patrons so early in the afternoon.  On both sides 
of the traditional louvered doors the inner, fulllength doors were 
propped open with a pair of giant laser drillbits, souvenirs of the 
deep-bore mining of Rafa III, whose vacationing practitioners 
habituated the place.
     In the back, the ubiquitous native was emptying ashtrays over a 
waste can.
     The bartender, a scrawny specimen of indetemiinate middle age, 
approached Lando, wringing his knobbly hands in a dark green apron.
     What little hair he still possessed was restricted to the back and 
sides of his otherwise highly reflective pate, and cut short.  He had a 
nose friends might have called substantial, others spectacular.
     Tattooed permanently beneath it, a mild sneer, punctuated by a 
small mole on his chin.
     "Spacers' bars're all downtown about three blocks, Mac, he said in 
a peculiar drawl.  "This here's a hardrock miners' joint."
     Lando raised an eyebrow.
     "Aint sayin' y'can't drink here.  Just likely y'won't want to-once 
the off-shift R and R crew starts t'fillin' the place up. It seemed a 
long speech for the wiry little man.  He stood there, balanced on the 
balls of his feet, relaxed but ready, looking down at Lando from under 
half-closed eyelids, a foulsmelling cigar butt dangling from his mouth.
     A large, dangerous-looking lumpiness was apparent beneath one side 
of his apron bib.
     Lando nodded slightly.  "Thanks for the advice; I'm meeting 
somebody here.  Have you a pot of coffeine to hand?"  Until he'd sat 
down, he'd almost forgotten the night's sleep he'd lost.  Now it was 
catching up to him.
     "Some of m'best friends drink it," the barkeep replied.  "One mug 
comin' up."
     He began to walk away, then paused and turned back to Lando.
     "Remember what I said, Mac.  Splints an' bandages'll cost ya 
extra."
     Lando nodded again, extracted one of the governor's cigars from a 
breast pocket, and settled back.  Then, casually, he pulled the Key 
from an inside pocket.  An optometrist's nightmare, it wouldn't hold 
still visually, even locked firmly in his hands.  First it seemed to 
have three branches, then two, depending on your viewpoint.  If you 
didn't shift the angle you were watching it from, it would oblige by 
shifting it for you.
     Lando averted his eyes.
     He sat like that for forty-five minutes without any seenung 
reaction from anyone.  Having long since finished his coffeine and 
tired of the cigar, at last he rose, left a small tip on the table, 
nodded amiably at the gnarled little bartender, and stepped outside on 
the boardwalk.
     "Master?"
     "Don't call me Master!  Let's find another bar."

     VI

     THE NEXT PLACE sported a small bronze plaque beside the door that 
stated: "FACILITIES ARE NOT PROVIDED FOR MECHANOSAPIENTS."
     it meant "No droids allowed."
     And it wasn't even true, not in its original rendering.  Vuffi Raa 
had a sort of waiting room to park himself in, nicely furnished, quiet, 
with recharging receptacles, Only bigotry of the very nicest, 
highest-class sort was practiced there.  Lando left the robot with a 
couple others of its kind watching a domestic stereo serial.
     Inside, three Toka swampers were distributing dirty water ly all 
over the floor.  That they and their employers probeven ably thought 
they were washing only demonstrated that pretensions and sanitation 
don't necessarily go together.
     it was not quite dark, so the real drinking crowd hadn't arrived 
there yet, either.  It didn't matter; Lando wasn't interested in them.
     Nearly an hour went by this time, Lando sipping a hot stimulant 
and toying discreetly with the Key.  The thing was as evasive to the 
tactile senses as it was visually, he discovered, closing his eyes and 
examining it by touch.  "Perverse" might be a better word, and even 
more nauseating, somehow.  He opened his eyes with something resembling 
relief.
     On several occasions, he could have sworn that one or anaring at 
him intently when he wasn't other of the natives was st looking in 
their direction.
     Which was also precisely what he'd expected.  He began to allow 
himself a feeble hope.
     Another hour, and two more saloons, brought him back to the 
Spaceman's Rest, the first such establishment he'd visited in Teguta 
Lusat, the day before.  It seemed like a thousand years ago.  The 
double-moustached alien proprietor was nowhere to be seen so early in 
the evening, but the droid behind the bar seemed to have had his memory 
banks attended to.  He recognized Lando with a cordial mechanical nod.
     By then,.  the gambler was thoroughly coffeined out.  He leaned 
against the bar, ordered a real drink, then took it back to a table and 
sat, unobtrusively displaying the weird, eyestraining Key as before, 
for everyone to see.
     One thing was different about the place: its multispecies 
clientele and robot bartender encouraged Lando not to leave Vuffi Raa 
outside in the street.  After all, the little fellow was an item of 
valuable property (to somebody, someday, Lando hoped), and probably 
wouldn't like being stolen, either.
     That small mechanical worthy presently bellied-figuratively 
speaking-up to the bar, cutting up electronic touches while the 'tender 
polished glasses.  Lando had always wondered what robots talked about 
among themselves, but never enough to eavesdrop.
     Despite the tolerant atmosphere of the Spaceman's Rest, the usual 
Toka flunky was there, an elderly wretch distributing synthetic plastic 
sawdust on the floor from a bucket.  Lando grew hopeful as the shavings 
around his table deepened to two or three times the thickness of those 
covering the rest of the barroom floor.
     The Toka kept circling, reluctant yet fascinated, rather like an 
insect around a bright light.  He stared at the Key, tossed a worried 
glance toward the bar, then turned back to the Key again, drawn 
irresistibly.  If he was concerned about the bartender's reaction, he 
needn't have bothered; the droid didn't even seem to notice, wrapped up 
as he was in his work and in conversation with Vuffi Raa.  Maybe native 
productivity wasn't his department.
     On an odd impulse to see what would happen, Lando tucked the K@y 
back into his pocket.
     Abruptly, the Toka dropped his pail with a crash and bolted out 
through the back of the room, leaving a fabric door-drape swinging 
behind him and a few gaping mouths among the sparse scattering of 
customers.  Ordinarily nothing would induce the lethargic and 
prematurely senile natives to do anything in a hurry.
     Lando held his breath: could his lucky break have come so soon?
     He signaled the 'tender for another drink.  Vuffi Raa obliged by 
bringing it over to the gambler.
     "I still think we'd make better progress in the library, Master."
     He set the glass on the dark polished wood of the tabletop.  Lando 
was having a talmog that evening, one part spiced ethanol to one part 
Lyme's rose juice, popular in a unique sunless, centerless system many 
hundreds of light-years away.  It burned.  Lando hated the things, 
which made them another drink he could nurse and re-ice all night if he 
had to.
     "Listen, little friend, let me do the detecting.  For your 
information, I think I've got a bite already."
     "A bite, Master?"  The robot reached a free tentacle to the floor, 
scooped up a pinch of sawdust, and held it closely to his large red 
eye.  "I would have thought the place to be cleaner kept than that.
     Perhaps the Board of Sanitation@' "Vuffi Raa, how would you like 
to be reprocessed into sardine cans?"
     For the second time that afternoon, there was mirth in the robot's 
eye.  "Master-" "Don't call me-" Lando stopped.  The sawdust-spreader 
who had observed the gambler so closely was holding back the hanging 
for a vetitable grandfather-of-grandfathers among the grandfatherly 
natives-a wizened, shriveled super-ancient nearly doubled over with the 
burden of his long life.
     The bartender had stopped his glass cleaning, stood silent as he 
watched the geriatric native hobble toward the gambler.  The old man's 
straight white hair hung in matted tangles to his shoulders.
     "Lord," the ancient Toka wheezed almost inaudibly, bowing until 
his forehead touched the tabletop.  "It is as it was told.
     Thou art the Bearer and the Emissary.  That which thou concealest 
is indeed the Fabled Key lost long ago."
     The other Toka was suddenly nowhere to be seen.  Somehow the spell 
was broken.  The barkeep gave a metal-jointed shrug, resumed his work.
     ,'I, er ... 11
     Now that Lando had made his contact, he realized he didn't quite 
know what to do with it.  The ancient glanced at Vuffi Raa.  Lando gave 
the little droid a scowl, which failed to rid him of the machine at 
what could be a delicate point in the proceedings.  Vuffi Raa remained 
standing by the table, all attention focused on the old Toka.
     "Lord," the worthy repeated.  "I am Mohs, High Singer of the Toka.
     Knowest thou what thou boldest on thy person?"
     elderly character straightened-as much as he was ever going to 
again in this life-and Lando noticed a tattoo on his forehead, a crude 
line drawing of the Key itself.
     "An unaccountably odd artifact," he answered, unconsciously 
patting the irregular lumpiness of it in his inside jacket pocket.
     "Some kind of three-dimensional practical joke.  But, please-sit 
down.
     Would you like something to drink?"
     The ancient glanced around, a furtive expression tucked deeply 
into the wrinkles in his face.  The tattoo puckered on his forehead.
     "Such is not permitted, Lord.  l@' "Master," the droid interrupted 
again.
     "Shut up, Vuffi Raa!  Well, old fellow," he said turning to Mohs, 
"wilt-will you at least tell me something more about the Key?"  He took 
it out, held it in his hand.
     Mohs had to wheeze a little while before he could get the words 
out.  "Thou wishest to test thy servant, then?  So mote it be, Lord.
     Thy wish is my command."
     The Toka launched into a long, whining gargle in a language that 
was vaguely familiar to Lando.  Perhaps it was an obscure dialect from 
some system he'd visited.
     The effect on the dozen or so other patrons wasn't exactly 
salutory: they watched and listened, but Lando couldn't persuade 
himself to believe the expressions on their faces were friendly.  He 
found himself wishing he'd sat a little nearer the door.
     The Toka's monolog went on and on, one of Mohs' bony hands 
indicating the Key occasionally, the rest of the time his weathered 
face turned upward toward the ceiling.  Finally, the chanting ceased.
     "Have I recited rightly, Lord?"
     Lando scratched his smoothly shaven chin.  "Sure.  Perfectly.
     And-just as another test, mind you-let's have an abbreviated 
version in the vernacular."  He indicated the rest of the room.
     "Might win a few converts among the heathen.  Think you're up to 
it?"
     "Lord?"
     The old man reached out shakily toward the Key, apparently thought 
better of it, withdrew the gnarled hand with obvious reluctance, then 
began.  "This is the Key of the Overpeople, Lord Bearer, the Opener of 
Mysteries.  It is the Illuminator of Darkness, the Shower of the Way.
     It is the Means to the End.
     It is-" "Hold it, Mohs, just tell me what it does."
     "Why, Lord, as thou knowest perfectly well Mohs tapered off.  Was 
that a hint of sudden skepticism in the ancient High Singer's eye?  He 
began again, in a very slightly different tone of voice.
     "It releaseth the Mindharp of the Sharu, which in turn-2' "Bull's 
Eye!  Look, Mohs.  As official Bearer of the Key, I have personally 
selected you to lead-in a purely ceremonial sense, of course-to lead a 
pilgrimage.  We're going to use the Key.  What do you think of that?"
     The thought that everything was happening too easily began to seep 
into the back of Lando's mind, but he repressed it savagely.  He was 
stuck with his task and welcomed any lead that would get it over with.
     "Why, whatever else would we do, Lord?  It must be as it has been 
told, else it would not have been told to begin with."
     "I'm sure there's a hole in your logic somewhere, but I'm too 
tired right now to go poking for it.  How soon can you start, then?"
     The old man raised his snowy eyebrows, and the crude 
representation of the Key on his forehead squashed itself from top to 
bottom like an accordion.
     "This very instant, Lord, if that be thy desire.  Nothing 
supercedeth Their holy plan."
     He cast a pious eye toward the ceiling fixtures again.
     "Good," the gambler answered, once the native's gaze returned from 
its rafter rapture, "but I think we'll@' "Master!"  The little droid's 
tone was urgent.
     "What is it, Vuffi Raa?"
     "Master, I hear trouble coming!"
     "Just what we needed."  Lando groaned.
     Suddenly, a man with a gun in his hand burst through the door.
     "All right, spaceboy," he growled, pointing his massive weapon at 
the gambler, "get ready to die!"

      Vii

     "MR.  JANDLER!  THE barkeep shouted, a panicky harmonic apparent 
in its electronic voice, "I'm terribly sorry, sir, but my employer has 
permanently restricted you from entering this@' "Shut up, machine!  Now 
where in blazes was I?  Oh, yeahyou there!  Yeah, I'm talkin' to you!
     It's just like Bernie down to the Pyran-dd told me!  And not only 
with a snivelin', jobstealin' droid at the table, but a dirty Toka, 
too!
     What are you sailor, some kinda pervert?"
     The few patrons in the establishment instantly cleared a broad 
aisle between Lando and the intruder.
     "I don't know," Lando replied evenly.  "It wasn't my turn to 
watch.  Now just who in the galaxy are you?"
     The man was good-sized, maybe eighty-five kilos, perhaps a shade 
under two meters tall.  Over the powder-blue jumpsuit that draped his 
broad frame, he wore a dark blue tunic and neckcloth.  He was neat, 
clean, shaved, and surprisingly sober for a thug, Lando thought.  And 
with surprisingly good taste, as well.
     The man walked closer; the muzzle of his pistol didn't waver.
     The robot bartender hurried to Lando's table, placing himself 
between the two men.  "He's the former owner of the Spaceman's Rest, 
Captain Calrissian, that was before I worked here.  When the place 
changed hands, he tried to get a clause put in the agreement, never to 
allow-" "What do you mean 'tried,' you miserable junk heap?  A contract 
is a contract!  People got a right to make any contract they want!"
     Apparently undecided whether to shoot the young gambler or the 
bartender, Jandler was waving his gun around in a manner that tied 
knots in Lando's stomach.  If it came to a choice, Lando hoped he'd 
choose the bartender as less messy-the bigot did seem to have some 
aesthetic sensitivities.  The robot stood its ground.
     "Not when there's a system-wide ordinance against discrimination, 
sir, and especially not when you lost the place in a table game to a 
being who doesn't believe in discrimination."
     The man swiveled on the machine-Lando thought about jumping him 
just then, but it remained a thought-and brought the weapon down hard 
on its plexisteel dome-top with a sickening crunch!
     "That for your ordinance!"  he hollered, "and thatOWCH!"
     "You should never kick a droid, sir," Vuffi Raa advised 
sympathetically as the man hopped around on one foot, cutsing.  Somehow 
Jandler found the concentration to peer menacingly at the 
starfish-shaped robot.
     "Quite right," Lando offered, diverting Jandler's attention even 
further.  "He might have another droid.  Sic 'im, Vuffi Raa!"
     Jandler whirled on Vuffi Raa again.  The five-tentacled 'hot 
stared at his master in bewilderment, but the distraction worked.  The 
stranger took an ugly step toward Vuffi Raa, on his guard against the 
totally harmless little droid, and the bartender, despite its severely 
dented cranium, walloped the fellow on the back of the neck with a 
chair Lando toed over toward it.
     Jandler went down like a sack of mynock guano.
     A cheer rose from the dozen or so patrons in the room.  They began 
gathering about Lando's table-somewhat unjustly ignoring the injured 
and heroic 'tender-lining up to shake the gambler's hand and pat him on 
the back.
     "I'm gratified," Lando observed with a highly necessary shout-he 
hadn't so much as risen from his chair during the excitement and was 
taking a far worse beating now from his new admirers-"I'm gratified to 
see that not all robots are programmed categorically against violence."
     More specifically to the crowd he said, "Thanks, it was nothing, 
honestly, thank you very much."
     "He's only programmed against starting it, sir," the bartender 
answered.  "I'll just haul this fellow out in the street now, if you 
don't mind.  By way of restitution for the disturbance, will you have a 
drink on the house?"
     "I'd rather have it on the table in front of me.  And bring one 
for my friend, here.  Mohs?"
     Lando .  umped up.  Mohs was gone.
     So was the Key.
     Turning quickly, Lando glimpsed the raveled tail of a grayrag 
garment whisking through the door-drape at the back of the room.  He 
was through the little crowd and across the room with a speed that 
startled even the robots.
     He grabbedAnd received a collection of knobbly knuckles in the 
teeth!
     Spitting blood, Lando seized the wrist attached to the knuckles, 
bit down hard in the meaty edge of the palm.  Mohs let out a yelp and 
brained his erstwhile Lord left-handed with the Key.
     Releasing the old man's arm, a dazed, surprised, and angry Lando 
went for the throat with both hands, catching Mohs' knee, instead, 
right between the legs.
     Lando groaned and sank down to his knees, fighting the urge to 
vomit.
     This, however, put him in a position of advantage.  As the elderly 
native-Lando couldn't make himself stop thinking of the savage in this 
manner-came in for another shot with the Sharu Key, Lando grabbed the 
nearest naked, dirty ankle that came to hand.  Mohs went down on his 
back, with Lando on top, the old man biting and scratching.
     By this time, Vuffi Raa had made it to his master's side, where he 
hopped up and down, shouting advice that Lando couldn't hear and 
probably wouldn't have followed.  It was scarcely a fair fight.  As 
much as he would have liked to, Lando couldn't punch the "helpless" old 
fellow into submission.  He simply attempted to hold on and ride the 
furious storm to its conclusion.
     They rolled across the storeroom, crashing into crates and 
cartons, and at one point fetching up against the lower extremities of 
the bartender, who had joined Vuffi Raa in supervising and kibitzing.
     For a brief crystalline moment, Lando looked up.
     "You're being a lot of help," he said to the bartender.
     The mixerbot remained motionless.  "Beating up old men is a little 
out of my line, Captain.  Besides, you look like you could use the 
practice."
     Abruptly, Lando was sucked back into the fight.  Mohs bashed him 
on the head again, but a bit more weakly.  Lando grabbed the Key, then 
managed to lever himself into a sitting position astride the Toka 
Singer, grab a forelock of shaggy white mane, and bounce the elderly 
head once, gently but fmwy, on the floor.
     Mohs struggled for another moment, sivity.
     "Naughty, naughty, Mohs," Lando said, gasping for breat i as he 
looked down at the ancient.  "No fair doing Holy Things without the 
duly constituted Key Bearer's help."
     Mohs concealed his face in his long, emaciated hands.
     "Thou mayest kill me now, Lord.  I have sinned greatly."
     With considerable effort, Lando cranked himself back into a 
standing position, reached a hand down to the native, and helped him 
up.
     "By the Emptiness, that's the first sign of spirit I've seen from 
any of you people."
     He sat down, panting, on a stack of plastic cartons in the dingy 
rear hall.  "But, from now on, just keep in mind who's the sacred 
emissary here, will you?"  He held up the Key.  "I'm in charge of this 
eyeball-bender for the duration.  Keep that in mind, and we'll get 
along fine.  Vuffi Raa?"
     The robot trundled up beside him, his tentacles a tangle of 
nervous excitement.  "Yes, Master?  Sorry I couldn't help you back 
there, but-2' "I know, I know.  In your estimation, how long will it 
take for Gepta's crew to sabotage the Falcon the way they said they 
were going to?"
     The droid considered: "Not more than an hour, Master.  It's merely 
a matter of unsffipping the toroidal dis@' "Spare me the technical 
details."  Lando turned to the old man, who seemed to be recovering 
more quickly than he was.
     "Mohs, we're headed for the spaceport to begin our little 
excursion.  Are you ready to come along and behave?"
     The old man nodded humbly, bowing.  "Yes, Lord, I am."
     "Then let's get moving-and don't call me Lord."
     Mohs stole a glance at Vuffi Raa, nodded again.  "Yes, Master."
     "Mohs," Lando scrutinized the wrinkled figure carefully, "are you 
trying to be funny?"
     "What is 'funny,' Lord?"
     Lando sighed, beginning to be resigned to permanent exasperation.
     "Something about this whole confounded setup.  Here I neatly avoid 
a messy conflict with that character out in the

     I

     re apse into pasbar, and then you go and try to set yourself up in 
the Key Bearer business.  And I don't see why Gepta and his pocketpiece 
governor need me to do their dirty work in the first place.  They had 
the Key, why not just ... Come on, Vuffi Raa, we're getting out of 
here.  I need a chance to think.  We'll doss down aboard the Falcon 
tonight and get a fresh start in the morning."
     He paused, then added, "And I want you to help me rig up a few 
booby traps in case anybody else wants to try grabbing the Key."
     "Master, I'm not sure my programming will allow that!"
     The bartender stood, impassive, then turned and went back into the 
bar.  "Good luck, sir.  I think you're going to need it."
     Keeping a suspicious eye glued to Mohs, Lando said to Vuffi Raa, 
"Very well, then, whether we can overcome your cybernetic scruples or 
not, we're still spending the night aboard the Falcon.  Get out front 
and find us some transports bus, a vegetable gravlifter, anything."  He 
shrugged uncomfortably, trying to unwind a painfully twisted muscle in 
his shoulder.  "Do you think they might have any taxis on this 
misbegotten mudball?"
     The robot knew a rhetorical question when he heard one.
     Lando watched him o, rubbed at his bruised shoulder,

     stood up and stretched.

     "Stay a moment, Lord."  It was the old Toka.  "It is not meet that 
thy servant mount the same conveyance as thyself."
     Lando snorted.  "What do you propose as an alternative?"
     Mohs shook his snowy head.  "Worry not, Lord, neither trouble 
thyself over the minor travails of thy servant, but go thou, instead, 
thine own way, even as thy servant shall go his."
     "Catchily put.  Does that mean you'll meet us at the spaceport?"
     The old man looked puzzled.  "Is that not what I just said?"
     "Somewhere in there, I suppose; it got lost in the 
transubstantiation.  Very well, old disciple, have it your own way."
     Blast, there was a snag in his tailored uniform trousers.  They 
simply weren't intended for brawling.  "We'll leave a light burning in 
the starboard viewport."
     He left by the front door to join Vuffi Raa.  Mohs presumably 
exited through the back.  A hoverbus swooshed along almost immediately.
     Lando and the robot were whisked the ten kilometers to the landing 
field in as many minutes.
     They were not unanticipated.
     "What in the name of the Core is that?"  Lando asked the equally 
astonished droid.
     Outside the chain-link gate that filled a gap between the 
force-field pole-pieces around the port, a considerable and highly 
unusual crowd had gathered.  Absently, Lando paid the driver droid, 
turned to stare at the hundreds of stooped gray figures standing in 
their loincloths in the moonless dark, chanting to the cold unanswering 
stars.
     As the gambler and his companion approached them, the primitives 
stepped back en masse, forming a broad, open corridor.  To one side, a 
spaceport security officer was visible through the transparency of his 
guard booth, gesticulating at the visicom.
     Lando and Vuffi Raa, the former growing more reluctant by the 
minute to surround himself in an unpredictable mobespecially after his 
recent wrestling match with one of the natives-made slow, involuntarily 
stately progress as the crowd folded itself back before them, the 
rhythmic chanting never missing a beat.
     At the end of the living aisle, they encountered Mohs.

     Vill

     IT HAD BEEN a couple of very long sleepless days.  Lando didn't 
even want to think about how an ancient savage on foot had beaten a 
fusion-powered hovercraft across ten kilometers of twisted, ruin-strewn 
thoroughfare to the spaceport.
     Let the robot figure it out, he told himself groggily, that's what 
Class Two droids are for.
     Mohs, High Singer of the Toka, had, of course, been leading the 
high-pitched, disharmonious chant.  Now the old man signaled the others 
to provide a more subdued background music as he addressed the gambler: 
"Hall, Lord Key-Bearer'@he turned to Vuffi Raa-"and Emissary.  It is, 
indeed, as it has been told.  Long have we awaited thee.  Vouchsafe now 
unto thy servants what it is that shall next come to pass."
     "We shall climb aboard yon Millennium Falcon," Lando pointed to 
the crablike vessel sitting on the asphalt a hundred meters away, and 
yawned.  "Tuck ourselves into our little beddy-byes, and get 
some-yipe!"
     He stopped short.  Across the tarmac, half a dozen 
repulsortrucks, overhead lights blazing like novas, surrounded the 
small starship.  Along with what appeared to be at least two squads of 
heavily armed constabulary.
     "Good grief," the gwnbler said to the robot.  "Your ethical virtue 
will remain unscathed tonight, at least.  Everybody seems to have 
beaten us to the spaceport.  So much for the wonders of public 
transportation.  What do you suppose we've done now?"
     " 'We,' Master?"
     "Very funny, my loyal and trusty droid.  Your support underwhelms 
me."
     Approaching the lowered boarding ramp, Lando, the robot, and the 
TokA Singer-who had detached himself from his departing 
congregation-were met by armored, dark-visored cops, blasters drawn and 
at the ready.
     "Okay, officer, I'll pay the two credits."  Lando was tired and 
angry.  He didn't even want to know how they'd gotten in past the 
locking-up he'd done the previous night.  But he kept his tone 
goodnatured.  With those fellows, it paid to.
     "Good evening, Captain," came an equally good-humored reply from 
beneath a helmet with two decorative bars across its highly reflective 
forehead.  "We're here to guard your cargo while it's being loaded."
     "Really?"  Lando marveled.  He was always suspicious of favors 
from policemen.  The trooper pointed an armored finger toward the 
trucks, from which a steady stream of packages ran up automated 
conveyors into the Falcon's open cargo hatches.
     "That's tight," the guardsman answered, then added in a more 
subdued and, Lando thought, somehow civilian tone, "I sure hope your 
bruises are healing up okay.  We were pretty careful.  Nothing 
personal, you understand, sir.  A guy has orders to follow."
     And plenty of morally evasive cliches to fall back on, Lando 
thought as he peered into the anonymous helmet visor.  He

     LI' @

     gave it up.  "Think nothing of it, my dear fellow, I understand 
completely.  I'll try and do as much for you, someday."
     The cop chuckled, snapped to attention, clicked booted heels, and 
brought his heavy handweapon to port arms.  Lando suppressed an 
unmilitary snigger of his own at the display, and climbed aboard the 
Falcon with Vuffi Raa and Mohs behind him.
     The interior of the Millennium Falcon, Lando thought for e 
hundredth time, was more like the innards of some great th living beast 
than the inanimate human construction that it was.
     Starliners and other vessels he was familiar with were as 
rectilinear and orderly as the hotel where he'd spent an uncomfortable 
night in Teguta Lusat.  But aboard his ship were no separate 
compartmentalized cabins of any sort, nor any clear demarcation between 
cargo and living space, simply lots of unspecialized volume, currently 
being rapidly and compactly filled with cartons and crates of highly 
valuable life-crystals.
     Lando watched the port's longshorebots work.  It appeared Gepta 
was more than keeping his part of the bargain-Lando made a note to have 
the crystals assayed as soon as possible.
     There was nothing about the sorcerer, or his governmental flunky, 
that inspired trust, even had Lando been the trusting type.
     Parking Mohs at a convenient bulkhead frame, Lando and Vuffi Raa 
stopped off beside the ultralightspeed section of the ship's drive 
area.  There had been some changes made.  And not for the better, Lando 
thought.
     "Oh, Master!"  the dismayed Class Two robot wailed.  "Just see 
what they have done to her!"  He rushed to the faster-thanfight drive 
panels and stood, wringing his metallic tentacles and making the kind 
of high-pitched squeal humans call tinnitis and see physicians about.
     All along the wall, access panels had been left rudely hanging 
open.  Frayed wires and broken cables dangled from the overhead.  Small 
bits and pieces of machinery, mechanical detritus such as nuts and 
washers and scraps of insulation littered the decking.  The faint foul 
stench of soldering and scorched plastic defied the ventilating 
system's best efforts.
     "It's quite a mess, aJI right, old home appliance.  But don't 
fret, she's only a machine, after all, and they've promised to make 
full and complete repairs, once we@' "Only a machine?"  The robot's 
voice was disbelieving, scandalized, and almost hysterical.  "Master, 
1, too, am 'only a machine'!  This is horrible, unbearable, cruel, 
evil.  It's-" "Oh, come now, Vuffi Raa, don't exhaust your vocabulary.
     You're a sapient machine.  The Falcon's big and smart, but she's 
way, way beneath you on the scale of things.  Otherwise I shouldn't 
have had to rent that confounded, idiotic-" "Master," the droid 
interrupted, more gently this time, "how does it make you feel to see 
somebody's furry pet run over by the roadside?  Do you dismiss it, say 
it's only an animal, beneath you on the scale of things?  Or do you 
feel like ... well, the way I feel now?"
     Lando shook his head, too tired to argue further.  The point, 
within limits, was certainly well taken.  And he hated to think that 
the little automaton was a more humane being than he himself.
     "I'm going forward," he said abruptly.  "There's no telling what 
trouble somebody like Mohs can find to get into with all those dials 
and pretty buttons going unsupervised."
     "Very well, Master.  With your permission, I'll remain here a 
little while to comfort her as best I can and tidy up this ...
     this butchery."
     "As you will."  Lando paused in the bight of curving comdor, 
turned back to see the droid collecting washers and sheared rivets from 
the decking.  "Er, uh, sorry I didn't understand your feeling at first, 
old cybemet.  It's just that I .  . ."  His voice trickled off.
     There was a long silence between the two, then: "That's all right, 
Lando.  At least you understood after I explained it.
     That's more than most organic beings could do, I think."
     The gambler cleared his throat self-consciously.  "Yes, weller, 
ah ... see you forward in a little while, then-and don't call me 
Lando."
     In the tubular cockpit forward, Lando took an inexpert look at the 
indicator lights on various control boards, then thumbed through the 
Falcon's dog-eared flight manual to see what they meant.
     Mostly, the unfamiliar lights he saw were warnings of open hatch 
covers where the loading was being carried out.  Clunks and thumps and 
groans below confirmed the telltales.  The entire section of 
instrumentation given over to the ultralight drive had only solid reds 
and yellows glaring balefully.
     Behind Lando, in the high-backed jumpseat where the gambier had 
placed him firmly, Mohs seemed to have lapsed back into senile 
passivity.  Lando couldn't blame him: he almost wished he could do the 
same.  It had been a long, hard day for the poor old savage.  The Toka 
sat, eyes wide open, staring down at the decking plates, knobbed hands 
lying palms up in loinclothed lap.
     "Mohs?"  Lando asked gently.
     The old man started, as if he'd been thoroughly asleep despite the 
open eyes and hadn't seen Lando turn around to speak to him.  He 
blinked, rubbed a slow and shaky hand over his stubbly chin.
     "Yes, Lord?"
     "Mohs, what was it that you and your people were chanting out 
there by the fence?"
     The old man breathed dee ply, resettled himself in the heavily 
padded jumpseat.  He'd never placed his scrawny fundament in so 
luxurious a resting place before.  He patted the arms a little, almost 
in disbelief.
     "It was the Song of the Emissary, Lord, in honor of the advent of 
you and@' "I see."
     A long, thoughtful few moments followed.  The old man's breathing 
was almost loud in the control cabin.  Lando hadn't really thought very 
much about this Emissary business.  There hadn't been time.  It was 
beginning to dawn on him that there might be more to all the chanting 
and Key-Bearing stuff than Gepta had seen fit to tell him.
     "Well, old fellow," Lando said, not unkindly, "if you're not too 
played out after all the excitement, why don't you tell me-2' With a 
clank at the doorsill betraying whatever weary clumsiness robots happen 
to experience, Vuffi Raa chose that moment to return from the drive 
area aft, clambered into the right-hand seat, which Lando had replaced 
after sending the pilot droid back to the Oseon.  The little automaton 
was uncharacteristically subdued.
     "Everything shipshape and tidy to your liking, then?"  Lando asked 
conversationally.  "Good.  Did you happen, by the way, to overhear that 
guard captain out there?  He more or less directly identified himself 
as the unreconstituted son-of-a@' "Yes, Master," the robot responded 
somewhat dully.  "I must say, it was something of a surprise."
     Lando mused.  "I don't know about that.  I don't suppose it's all 
that great a coincidence.  In the first place, they can't have an 
endless supply of uniformed thugs to call upon in Teguta Lusat to do 
their dirty work.  And in the second place, assigning that particular 
one to greet us would be Duttes Mer's idea of a joke.  Actually, I 
thought it rather sporting of the fellow to apologize and ask after my 
health and all that sort of thing. Once more imitating human beings, 
Vuffi Raa did a double take, turning to "face" Lando.  "And especially 
considering the effective way in which you got even, afterward, 
Master."
     It was Lando's turn to blink surprise.  "Got even?  What in the 
name of the Galactic Drift do you mean?"
     "Why, Master, I thought we were talking about the same socalled 
coincidence.  Aren't you aware of who that@' "Certainly: the 
paramilitary bully from the hotel, last night. "And more recently, 
Master, a civilian 'Mr.  Jandler' from the Spaceman's Rest.  I thought 
you recognized his voice, as I did-and the painful stiffness with which 
he moved his neck."
     "You don't say!"
     Perhaps there is some justice in the universe, after all, Lando 
thought with satisfaction.  Then he screwed his face up sourly: another 
blasted mystery!  What had that charade in the saloon been all about, 
then?  He'd taken it for a bit of bigoted random stupidity on a highly 
bigoted and randomly stupid planet.  And what did it all imply about 
the robot bartender (or its owner), who seemedA previous idea demanded 
Lando's attention quite suddenly: "Tell us about tire Emissary, Mohs, 
old fellow-no, don't sing it!  Make it short, intelligible, and to the 
point."
     The Toka ancient stirred.  "Le,-end foretelleth of a dark 
adventurer, an intrepid star-saflor with preternatural luck at games of 
chance, who shall come with a weird inhuman companion in silvery armor 
arrayed.  They shall possess the Key with which to liberate the 
NEndhaip, which in turn shall liberate the@' Lando slammed a palm on 
the amirest of his chair.  "Well, I'll be doubled-dyo, homswoggled, and 
trussed up like a holiday fowl!  We were set up, Vuffi Raa!  Gepta must 
have had his convict spies watching the port for months-possibly 
years-to find a sucker with the right qualifications: gambler, 
spaceship-captain, with an unenameled droid and a weak mind.
     That's why neither a creepy old Tund magician nor that ugly 
neckless governor of his could play this hand themselves: they don't 
fit the Toka legend!"
     "And we do, Master?"
     "Ask Mohs, here; he's the local Keeper of the Flame."
     "Master?"
     "Never mind, a figure of speech.  Let's go back aft and get some 
shut-eye.  We've got some heroing to do in the morning-and don't forget 
to polish your armor, old canopener!"
     ix CAME THE DAWN, with a full night's rest under his stylish if 
somewhat wrinkled satyn semiformal cummerbund, Lando was in a worse 
mood than ever.  He loathed the idea that he might have been taken by 
one of the marks, and the nasty suspicion was growing within him that 
he'd only begun to discover the extent to which he'd been outmaneuvered 
by Rokur Gepta.
     The takeoff of the Millennium Falcon shortly after sunrise, had 
proceeded as smoothly as clockwork, as fluidly graceful as a textbook 
exercise.  Even the Teguta Lusat control tower had complimented Lando 
on it.  This failed to cheer him.  He passed the compliments along to 
Vuffi Raa, who had been at the controls.
     The troopers and freight-handlers had departed sometime the 
previous evening under the cover of the moonless sky, sealing the 
Falcon's hatches tightly behind them until the control boards displayed 
a solid, unbroken tapestry of green pilot lamps.  Mohs had curled up on 
a lounger, snoring like some impossible archaic internal combustion 
engine.  Vuffi Raa had tidied up and tinkered through the night.
     Sapient robots do need sleep-the brighter they are the greater the 
need-but Lando never had been able to discern a pattern in their 
nightly habits.  He himself had tossed and turned, sweating into the 
fancy and expensive synsilk bedroll he'd spread under the common-room 
gaming table, and finally achieving an unrestful semiconsciousness from 
which the robot had awakened him, stiff and groggy.  Several large 
containers of hot, black coffeine had only deepened his already 
gruesome mood.
     "All right," he snarled unnecessarily at the old Toka shaman.
     They were forward in the cockpit once again, Mohs perched on the 
jumpseat, Vuffi Raa occupying the right-hand copilot's couch as a token 
concession to the human captain, but very much in control of the ship.
     Someday, thought Lando, when it all was over, he'd sell both 
blasted machines, Vuffl Raa and the Millennium Falcon, to someone fully 
capable of appreciating them.
     "So where do we go from here?"
     They were lying in a close orbit around Rafa IV.  From there they 
could reach any point on the planet's surface within minutes or strike 
out freely across space for any other body in the system.  Mohs closed 
his eyes, mouthed the rote-memorized words of an ancient ritual to 
himself, and finally pointed a dessicated finger out the viewport.
     "Lord, the Mindharp lieth in that direction."
     Perfect, Lando thought sourly to himself, I've got a mechanical 
kid's toy for a pilot, and an elderly witch doctor for a nay@ igator!
     A sadistic little voice inside him insisted on adding that he also 
had a sabacc-playing conman for a captain.  Even all around, then.  He 
gave it up and peered through the faceted transparency.
     How in the devil do you discuss the details of navigational 
astronomy with an utter savage?  "You mean that bright light in the 
heavens, there, Mohs?"
     "Of a certainty, Lord: the fifth planet of the Rafa System; it 
possesseth two natural satellites, a breathable atmosphere, and 
approximately nine-tenths of a standard gravity, not unlike Rafa tV 
beneath us, whence we came-except in the matter Of the moons.  Is it 
not pleasing in thy@' "Forget it!"  The gambler peered suspiciously at 
the old man, "How is it that you know so blasted much about astronomy, 
all of a sudden?"  And who's really the utter savage here, he asked 
himself quietly; he'd never have been able to pick out the next planet 
from the local sun against the starry sky, not without the ship's 
computer as a crutch.
     The ancient Singer shrugged, gave Lando a saggy, toothless grin.
     "it is all there, Lord, in the Song of the Reflective Telescope, 
which detaileth all things in this system.  Should it not be so?"
     There was a long, long silence, during which the only thing 
accomplished was Vuffi Raa's computer-guided confirmation that Lando's 
"bright light in the heavens" was, indeed, Rafa V.
     "How many of these bloody chants do you know, anyway?"
     The savage considered: "Many beyond counting, Lord.
     More than the fingers and toes of all my great-great ancestors and 
children.  I would say approximately seven point six two three times 
ten to the fourth.  Does this please diee, Lord?"
     For a humble worshiper, the old boy was getting pretty sarcastic, 
Lando thought.  "I suppose that last comes from the Song of Scientific 
Notation."  He shook his head- He understood fully now why Gepta and 
Mer hadn't gone on this wild falumba chase themselves.  It had nothing 
to do with conforming to ancient Toka legends.  They simply wanted to 
stay sane.
     The question now was, why did Vuffi Raa and Mohs need him?
     "What now, Master?  Do you want to go to Rafa V?"
     "DON'T CALL ME MASTER!"
     The relatively short jump of a few dozen n-dllion kilometers was 
blessedly uneventful for the captain and "crvw" of the Millennium 
Falcon.
     They hadn't started it at once.  Vdffi Raa and Lando quizzed the 
elderly Mohs, had made him repeat and translate the appropriate stanzas 
of the appropriate Songs until they, too, were as certain as they could 
be, under the circumstances, that Rafa V was the place to find the 
Mindharp.
     That is, if you were willing to place much confidence in an 
intermittently senile shaman mouthing rhymed and metered legends of an 
indeterminate age.
     Lando spent the few hours of transit catching up on his sleep, 
while Mohs and Vuffi Raa carried on whatever passed for conversational 
small talk between them.  The pilot's acceleration couch was infinitely 
more comfortable than the sleeping bag, and by the time Vuffi Raa woke 
him again, he felt halfway human.  Downright cheerful, in fact.  Or at 
least as cheerful as he everSPANG!
     Something struck the roof of the control cabin, hard.
     "What in the eternal blue blazes was that?"  Lando shouted.
     Behind him, the old man cringed, began gibbering to himself in a 
high-pitched, hysterical voice.  Something about the wrath OfSPENG!
     This time, it was somewhere aft, near the engines.  A yellow light 
winked on the control board.  Vuffi Raa stabbed console buttons, his 
tentacles blurring with speed into near invisibility.
     "One moment, Master, while l@' SPING!  SPONG!
     Red lights flickered now.  There was the faint but definite 
whistle indicating loss of atmosphere.  Lando swallowed hard.
     His ears popped as the pressure equalized, although that hadn't 
been his intention.
     Something was striking the Millennium Falcon repeatedly and with 
great force.  For some odd reason, the image of Constable Jandler (if 
that was really his name) flashed through Lando's mind.  They were in 
close orbit over Rafa V, preparing to use the old Toka chants as a 
guide to selecting a landing site.
     Vuffi Raa heeled the Falcon over so she could take whatever was 
hitting her on her better-armored underside, but they had already 
received at least minor damage.
     SPUNG!
     "In the name of the Galactic Center, what's that?"  Lando 
hollered.
     An unlikely object had wedged itself into the space between the 
cockpit transparency and a small communications antenna.
     It resembled nothing more than a fancy cut-glass plumber's helper, 
complete with handle and suction cup, but rendered in some crystalline 
substance reminiscent of Rafa orchard produce.
     "I don , t know, Master!"
     Was that hysteria in the robot's voice?  Wonderful, thought Lando.
     The ship rolled, stabilized, and they were traveling in orbit on 
her side.  The bombardment seemed to slacken off.  The droid turned to 
Lando.
     "It's an artifact of some kind, Master.  Archacoastronomers 
believe that Rafa V was the original home of the Sharu, the planet they 
evolved on.  Mohs' Songs seem to agree with that.
     I suspect, Master, that we're seeing-and suffering-the remnants of 
their first attempts at spaceflight, objects launched by primitive 
rockets, others expelled by small spacecraft as they prepared to 
reenter atmosphere."
     It made sense.  Planetary orbits were always the richest fields in 
which to discover the leavings of primitive technology.
     There were probably cameras out there, used spacesuits, freefall 
table scraps, all of them practically as good as the day they had been 
jettisoned-barring a little micrometeorite and radiation damage.
     A thought came to him.
     "Vuffi Raa, why didn't you just power the Falcon's shields up when 
we started taking hits?  There's nothing out there the deflectors 
couldn't have handled, especially given our relative speeds in orbit."
     Reading through the flight manual over and over again seemed to be 
doing him some good, Lando thought.  Maybe if he watched the robot fly 
this machine long enough, he'd pick up the knack himself.
     On the other hand, right now he could be aboard a luxury passenger 
liner, sipping a tall cool drink and shearing twolegged sheep.
     "Why, I don't know, Master," came the reply.  "I simply acted as 
quickly as I could.  Brace yourself, everybody, we're going in!"  The 
droid began punching console buttons again.
     Rafa V-birthplace of the fabled Sharu or not-was not the favored 
planet for human colonization.  There was atmosphere, the usual thick 
scattering of titanic multicolored buildings, and, most importantly, 
the ubiquitous life-orchards.  But the place was just a trifle too 
cold, a trifle too dry, and Rafa IV, the planet they'd just come from, 
was moist and shirt-sleeve comfortable over a wide range of latitudes.
     Here and there, according to their orbital survey and maps 
programmed into the Falcon at Teguta Lusat, lay small settlements, 
orchard-stations where a combination of Toka (native to the planet, as 
they were to all bodies in the system with sufficient resources), 
convicts, and government horticulturists harvested life-crystals, 
although on nowhere near the scale of Rafa IV.
     No doubt in another hundred years or so, there would be towns, 
eventually cities other than those the Sharu had abandoned.  But for 
now, there were a paltry few hundred individuals sprinkled over an 
entire planetary surface.
     The colossal pyramid Mohs pointed them toward was at least a 
thousand kilometers from any contemporary outpost of civilization.
     Vuffi Raa brought the Falcon to a gentle leaflike landing in a 
space between several ancient constructs at the foot of the pyramid 
that dwarfed even them.  There were no convenient words to describe the 
building that now loomed over them.  At least seven kilometers of it 
protruded above ground level.  The Falcon's various scanners had 
disclosed that it kept on going beneath the surface, but the depths 
exceeded the capabilities of her instruments.  It was a literal 
mountain of smooth impervious plastic that served no discernible 
function.
     The pyramid had five facets (not counting the bottomwherever that 
was), the angles between each of them not particularly uniform, giving 
the gigantic construct an eerie, dangerous, lopsided look.  Each face 
was a different brilliant color: magenta, apricot, mustard, aquamarine, 
turquoise, lavender.
     Execrable taste, Lando thought, well deserving of cultural 
extinction.
     There was no finishing ornament at the top; the sides simply came 
together in a peak sharp enough to give anyone who reached it a nasty 
puncture wound.
     Not for the first time, Lando wondered who or what it was that had 
scared off creatures capable of creating such an edifice.  He rummaged 
through the ship's chests and his own wardrobe looking for suitable 
clothing, settled finally on a light electrically heated parka, heavy 
trousers, micro-insulated gloves, and rugged boots with tough, 
synthetic soles.  It was a measure of his uneasiness about the place 
that he broke long precedent, slinging a short, weighty' , two-handed 
blaster over his shoulder and filling his pockets with extra power 
modules.
     The weapon hung at his waist, muzzle swinging with his body when 
he moved.
     Mohs flatly turned down the offer of additional warm clothing, 
joined the gambler and Vuffi Raa at the boarding ramp.
     Lando wondered if the old fellow wanted to add frostbite to the 
rest of his in@ities.  If nothing else, they already made an impressive 
collection.
     "Now, you're absolutely certain this is the place?"
     Mohs nodded vigorously as the ramp lowered them and itself to 
ground level, unaffected by the cold as the angle beneath their feet 
steepened and a deep chill entered the belly of the ship.  Air puffed 
out in visible vaporous clouds.  They tramped down onto the dry-frozen 
soil.
     "Master," Vuffi Raa admonished, "I trust you're carrying 
sufficient water.  The humidity in this region does not quite reach two 
percent."
     Lando slapped the gurgling plastic flasks tucked into the pockets 
of his parka.  "Yes.  And I brought a deck of card-chips, as well."  He 
looked out over the barren surface of the planet.
     Fine reddish sand lapped like a frozen sea around the bases of the 
abandoned buildings.  "Chances are we'll die of boredom before thirst 
gets to us."
     Mohs turned, an odd look on his face as he watched Lando open a 
small panel at eye-level on one of the Falcon's landing legs.  The 
gambler pushed a sequence of buttons that started the boarding ramp 
groaning upward again into its recess under the ship's belly.
     "Hast thou also the Key, Lord, the Key which@' "What is this?  Are 
you two seeing me off to summer camp or something?"
     He led them out from beneath the ship, took a deep invigorating 
breath-and promptly froze the hairs in his nostrils.
     "Well, I can see why nobody much has staked a claim on this 
forsaken stretch of-" "Master," Vuffi Raa clattered up beside him and 
tugged at the hem of his jacket.  "Master, I don't like this, there's 
somethings' "I know, old junkyard, I can feel it, too."
     The sky, a light greenish color, was cloudless.  Nevertheless, 
somehow it impressed them all as gray, bleak, and overcast.
     And it was cold.  The whine of Vuffi Raa's servos was clearly 
audible, a sign that perhaps his internal lubrication was thickening.
     Lando replaced the glove on the hand he'd used to retract the 
ramp, thrust it deeply into a warm pocket where the blaster swung.
     "Master!  11
     Something went zing!  and a short, stubby, wicked-looking arrow 
suddenly protruded from the seam between the robot's leg and body.  In 
the next instant, a hailstorm of the primitive projectiles whistled 
toward them, bouncing off the Falcon's hull, burying themselves in the 
sand at their feet.  Vuffi Raa went down, looking like a five-legged 
pincushion.  He didn't utter a word.
     Curiously, not a single arrow struck either Lando or Mohs.
     The former swung his weapon up on its strap, panned it along the 
low dunes a few yards away.  He felt a slap!  and turned the blaster, 
staring at the muzzle orifice with disbelief.
     An arrow had found its way straight down the bore, turning the gun 
into a potential bomb, should Lando touch the trigger.
     He tossed the dangerous thing away, began struggling with the 
fastenings of his coat to find the stingbeam.  It wasn't much, but it 
was all"Stand where you are, 'Lord'!"  Mohs exclaimed, "If you resist, 
you will die before you draw another breath!"
     The old man raised a hand.  From behind the sand dunes, half a 
hundred Toka emerged, dressed as he was in nothing more than 
loincloths.
     In his hands, each held a powerful crossbow, pointed directly at 
Lando.
     SO THIS was a genuine life-orchard.
     The trees were a little odd, but nothing spectacular.  In the wild 
grove perhaps five hundred of the things grew, in no particular 
pattern, yet each was of an identical size and spaced several meters 
from its nearest neighbor.  The trunk was relatively ordinary, 
too-until one examined it closely and discovered that what appeared to 
be bark-covered wood was in fact a fibrous glassy pigmented stem 
approximately half a meter through and a couple of meters tall under 
the spreading branches.
     The first oddity one noticed, however, was the root system.
     Each tree seemed to rest on a base, an irregular disk two meters 
across, like a toy tree in a model monorail set.  Composed of the same 
substance as the trunk, the disk spread from the tree, forming a 
platform that curved abruptly downward at the edge and buried itself in 
the ground.  The entire undersurface was covered with hair-fine glassy 
roots reaching downward perhaps a kilometer but spreading laterally 
only as far as the longest of the branches.
     The branches, in some ways, reminded one of a cactus.  At about 
average head height, they began to sprout from the trunk, departing at 
a right angle for a little distance (the lower the branch, the longer 
the distance, none exceeded the span of the root system), then turning 
straight upward.  Outer branches-lower ones-had shorter vertical 
components.  Inner ones had longer, so that the entire tree was 
somewhat conical in shape.
     At the slender, tapering tip of each branch, a single, faceted, 
brilliant crystal grew, varying from fist-sized, on the outer branches, 
to tiny gems no bigger than pinheads.  Each tree bore perhaps a 
thousand crystals.  In the center, along the line of the trunk, one 
very tall, slender branch reached skyward like a communications 
antenna, unadorned by a crystal.
     These trees were a little shorter, a little stockier than Lando 
had been led to believe was normal.  Perhaps the milder climate of Rafa 
fV had something to do with that.  It was hard to understand how 
anything could grow on Rafa V.
     For grow they did, those trees@espite the fact that they were some 
odd cross between organic LIFE and solid-state electronics.  From some 
unknown spread of seeds, each orchard grew, every tree at the same 
rate.  Remove a crystal from its branch tip-something which had to be 
done with a laser-an another would replace it within a year's time.
     Elsewhere in the Rafa System, Lando knew there were groves of 
trees no more than a hand's-width tall, others in which no tree stood 
less than ten or twelve meters.  All bore crystals proportionate to the 
tree size.  Some life-crystals, uselss for commercial purposes, were 
microscopic.  Others were the size of Vuffi Raa's body.
     The thought of Vuffi Raa caused Lando to stop thinking about trees 
and reflect, instead, on how he'd gotten into this predicament.
     Back at the ship, he'd turned in dismay to look at the little 
robot.  Its red-lit eye was out; arrows stuck from nearly every chink 
and crevice of its body.  A light clear fluid ran from many of the 
wounds, darkening the reddish soil around it.
     Mohs strode up to him, no longer bent and stooped.  He thrust out 
a hand, palm up.
     "Give me the Key, imposter!"
     Lando set his jaw.  He didn't have much to lose, and he was 
mad-more at himself than anything else.  He folded his arms across his 
chest, planted his feet in the sand, and grunted.
     "The Key!  It is not yours, it is ours!  Give it to me!"
     "Don't be silly, old fellow!"
     Quite inexplicably, a look of dismay spread over Mohs' face.  He 
dropped his hand to his side, turned to the other natives surrounding 
the pair in a heavily armed and dangerouslooking ring, and shrugged.
     He turned again to Lando.
     "I say once more, you fake, you fraud, you, you .  . ."
     "If you do," said Lando, not understanding what was happening, but 
willing now to hope, "I'll just say something insulting.
     In fact, I think I will, anyway: your mother sang off key."  He 
nodded for emphasis.
     Mohs took a step backward, aghast-whether at the magnitude of the 
insult or in surprise at the general turn of events, Lando couldn't 
tell.
     Mohs turned once again to his people-and there's another problem, 
Lando thought idly: Mohs was from another planet.
     How was it that the locals seemed to know him and acknowledge his 
leadership?
     Come to think of it, how had the ambush been set up in the first 
place?
     The savages conferred for a while in their own language.  A 
decision appeared to have been made.
     "You will come with us, imposter!"  Mohs ordered.  He started to 
walk off on a course paralleling the nearest face of the giant pyramid.
     Lando stood where he was.
     "I will when the Core freezes over!  Owch!"  This last was due 
more to surprise than injury.  A crossbow bolt had whistled past 
Lando's head, skinning an ear already made painful by the cold, s@ng 
the hull of the Falcon, and catching him on the rebound in the seat of 
his insulated pants.  A pattern seemed to be emerging: they didn't want 
to kill Lando; they couldn't take the Key away without his consent 
(although Mohs had tried that back on Four, he reminded himself), but 
they could threaten and coerce him in other ways.
     They seemed to be pretty good at that.
     He reached for his discarded blaster, intending to pull out the 
arrow and create a little mayhem before they shot him down.  He hadn't 
moved a meter when another flight of arrows virtually buried the 
weapon, pinned it to the ground by its sling, trigger guard, and other 
apertures in the stock and foreend.  So much for that idea.
     As one, the fifty or so natives swung their weapons back on Lando.
     "Okay, okay, I'm coming!  Anybody think to call a cab?"
     Two hours later, Lando wished it hadn't been a joke.  They'd 
marched him for mile after endless mile, climbing over random, angular 
ruins, sloshing through deep-drifted sand, scrabbling through scrubby 
brush.  His feet hurt and his legs ached and, no matter how high he 
turned his suit controls, he was still cold.
     At last he stopped.
     "All right, everybody, I've been a nice guy so far, but this is as 
far as I go.  If you want the Key, you'll have to take it off my dead 
body.  I'm not going another meter."
     The silent natives who surrounded him looked to Mohs.  The old man 
nodded.  They loosed a flight of arrows that plucked at his clothing, 
kicked sand up in his face, whistled mere angstrom units over his head.
     These fellows were impressive markspersons, Lando found himself 
thinking; I hope none of them gets the hiccups.  He stood his ground 
again until they started shooting between his legs.
     It wasn't worth the risk.  He waited until they paused to reload, 
then began marching again.
     What he had thought were crossbows had turned out to be something 
entirely different, some kind of spring-loaded contraption with hinged 
arms-which he'd mistaken for the limbs of a bow-that flailed forward, 
hurling the stubby arrows out through the front of the weapon.  They 
didn't seem to need reloading every time they were fired.  He guessed 
there were perhaps half a dozen projectiles stashed in a magazine 
hidden within the mechanism.  The weapons weren't very powerful, as 
projectile throwers went, but the speed and accuracy with which they 
could be used made him realize he could die from a thousand pinpiicks 
as easily as from a single blaster shot.
     And a great deal more painfully.
     They marched.
     Another couple of hours went by.  Lando wasrr't sure exactly-he 
didn't want to took at his watch, because he didn't want to remind the 
natives that he had several items concealed beneath his winter clothes, 
notably his five-shot stingbeam.  It would take a lot of figuring to 
get any good out of it in this situation, but it was something to fall 
back on, and it gave him a bit of hope.
     Step after endless step.  The country didn't vaiy much: something 
between desert and tundra, most of the space taken up with giant Sharu 
buildings.  Sand, sand, and more sand.  Occasional weeds.  The clear, 
yet somehow foreboding sky.  He worried about Vuffi Raa, hoped that 
robots die a swift and merciful death.
     All during the long, pauseless ordeal, the Toka around him 
chanted, sometimes slowly, sometimes more rapidly.  And to his 
continuous annoyance, never in rhythm with the marching.
     This caused him to stumble awkwardly every now and again.
     He didn't know how the Toka mind worked, but he knew he didn't 
like it.  They sang low-pitched Songs, they sang highpitched Songs.
     They sang in harmony, disharmony, and counterpoint.  They would be 
great to record-they had an endless repertoire.
     At long last, the marching ended at a grove of life-crystal trees.
     Mohs approached him.
     "Imposter, hear me: we are forbidden to remove the holy Key from 
the Key bearer, even should the Bearer be a false one.  You have 
somehow guessed this.  Nor may we kill him who bears the Key, although 
we have killed the false Emissary, which makes us glad."
     So that was it!  Somehow Lando had gotten the idea that the Key 
Bearer and the Emissary were the same fellow, namely himself.  Had he 
betrayed that belief to Mohs, setting up the debacle?  He tried to 
recall what he'd said to Mohs on the subject, then realized it didn't 
make a bit of difference anyway-and besides, the old man was still 
talking.
     11 let them do it themselves.  Come with me!"
     Lando followed him to a tree.  Several of the other Toka handed 
their weapons to comrades, joined Mohs and Lando, and, between them, 
produced a loincloth.
     By the time Lando decided to resist, it was too late.  They forced 
him into a sitting position, bound him to the tree trunk by the waist, 
and used the same length of cloth to tie his hands behind him.  They 
pushed back his hood, unfastened his jacket, and tore it rudely from 
him.
     "Hey!  Do you know what my tailor charged me for-now hold on a 
tninute, that's going too far!"
     Mohs had pulled off one of Lando's boots, bent to seize the

     AND THE'MINDHARP OF SHARU 77

     other.  When this was accomplished, the boots tossed aside near 
his discarded parka, they tore his tunic off, and ig s beneath it.
     Then Mohs produced a knife.
     "Now wait a blasted minute, here!  You can't do that!"  He kicked 
at the old man until a pair of natives held his ankles.
     He'd never believed in strong, silent heroes, and since the only 
thing he had left to do was yell, he yelled.
     He yelled the entire time it took Mohs to slit his trouser legs, 
exposing bare skin to the chilling air.
     "Now," said the ancient Singer, when he was satisfied with Lando's 
disheveled condition.  "All will notice that the Key remains with the 
Bearer."
     This was true.  They'd taken it from his tunic and tucked it into 
the dirty gray cloth about his waist.  That had been a scary 
moment-he'd held deathly still so they wouldn't clank it against the 
tiny beamer hidden beneath both loincloth and cummerbund.
     "Now we shall wait.  In Their own time, They will take his life, 
either in the cold or through the tree.  We shall then return and claim 
the Key which is our rightful heritage.  We go."
     They went.
     As the sun sank behind the highly unnatural skyline, shadows crept 
inexorably toward the helpless gambler, and as they did, his heart sank 
at approximately the same rate as the sun.
     He watched as small plants curled themselves into little 
protective balls for the night.  He watched as frost formed on his 
toes.
     He watched as moisture in the ground forced up the top layer of 
the soil on frozen ice columns.
     Mostly, he watched his nice warm parka, tunic, boots an( socks 
gather frost of their own, not three meters beyond his bound and 
helpless reach.
     He began cursing, first through genuine anger at himself and Mohs 
and Gepta and Met, then simply in order to keep warm.
     He cursed in his native tongue and in the dozen and a half others 
he'd learned during a long and checkered career.  He cursed in three 
computer languages and the warbling cheep of a race of musical birds 
he'd once played cards with-until it reminded him of the Toka.
     He cursed the Toka all over again.  And again.  And again.
     He woke up with a start!
     And began cursing for no other reason than to stay awake.
     If he didn't, he would freeze to death.
      xi DEATHLY SILENCE.
     Beneath a looming, monstrous, crustacean form resting on stilted 
legs, the twin pale moons of Rafa V picked out metallic reflections in 
the night-blackened sand.  Shadows overlaid at different angles with 
slightly differing shades: the enormous double shadow of the Millennium 
Falcon, hundreds of tiny double shadows of stubby wooden projectiles 
buried in ile metal carapace and nearby soil.  a frag Deathly silence 
and deadly cold.
     Everywhere within sight of the Falcon, small, groundhugging plants 
had rolled themselves into compact olivecolored balls in order to 
survive the frigid darkness.  The air was dry, even cheer than the 
daytime atmosphere.  The subtlest sparkling of frost showed here and 
there, on half-frozen plantlife, on the crest of miniature dunes, on 
the rims of a thousand footprints that surrounded the ship, even on the 
tortured, tangled mess of chromium cables lying in a heap just outside 
the Falcon's shadow.
     Fluid still stained the sand for a short distance around the 
pitiable heap, slow and thick and gummy now, in the frozen quiet.  Yet, 
a few inches beneath the grainy surface, there was movement.
     Pseudo-organisms, shiny and metallic, motelike, hovering at the 
edge of human visibility, stirred within the thickened fluid, migrated 
a millimeter at a time back toward the larger pseudo-organism they had 
tumbled from before dark.
     Microscopic flagella beat languidly, laboriously.  Yet, centimeter 
by centimeter, millions of the tiny objects swam what was to them 
enormous distances, back to where they belonged.
     In their wake, the fluid became thinner, more liquid, and withdrew 
after them, carrying minerals and trace metals m t soil with it.
     The same two moons cast double shadows several kilometers away.
     Beneath a spread of glassy boughs, a figure huddled, trying to 
stay alive in the cold.  Lando Calrissian was dying.  As Vuffi Raa's 
life had run out into the sand, so he could feel his own life running 
out through his exposed skin into the frigid air, into the hungry 
sinister plant he was bound to.
     Around him, if he'd cared to look, he might have seen the same 
small plants rolled up into the same small, beatconserving spheres.  He 
might have wished that he could do the same.  But he was past all that, 
by now.  From time to time he shivered, convulsions wracking his body, 
seeming to tighten the painful fibers around his waist, around his 
wrists, cutting off the circulation even further.
     It was getting hard to think, and Lando didn't know whether the 
cold was causing that or the tree.  It seemed important to figure it 
out.  What had he heard about trees like this?  That there was nothing 
free in the universe-that what the crystals gave to those who wore 
them, they had first taken from someone else.  Were they taking from 
him now?
     Most of all, it hurt.  His naked feet felt as if they were on 
fire.  Even in the parched air, frost was forming on their tips, on the 
nails.  How cold does tissue have to be before frost will form on it.
     Cold enough for gangrene?
     Well, they weren't going to get him that easily!  He nodded 
confirmation to himself, and only then noticed the tears that had run 
down his cheeks and frozen there.  If he could still feel his feet-he 
wished he couldn't because the agony was as distracting as the cold 
itself-he ought to be able to feel his fingers.  They were cold, too, 
but shielded from the air by his body, the little clothing they'd left 
him, and the tree.
     The tree.
     Its glassy trunk was like a block of ice at his back.  Overhead, 
its strangely precise limbs showed a bit of transparency-or was it 
translucency?-where they crossed the moons.
     He shook his head, and a pattern stopped.  Dully, he tried to 
figure out what was n-tissing.  Had his heart stopped beating?
     He didn't think so.  He was still breathing@nly now that he was 
conscious of it, it became an effort, an added burden to keep on doing 
so.  He wished he could forget about it, begin breathing automatically 
again.
     That was it!  Unconsciously, he'd been doing something with his 
hands, his fingers.  Why did the tips of his fingers hurt?
     Were they frozen, like his toes?  They shouldn't be-but 
"shouldn't' was a funny word: he shouldni be there, trussed up to a 
tree that was eating his mind.  He should be ... should be ... what 
should he be doing?  Something about long corridors and beautiful women 
and ... and ... card-chips!  What would he do with card-chips?
     Trying to figure that one out, he didn't notice that his fingers 
had gone back to picking the fabric at his wrists, stripping the aged 
cloth one shredded fiber at a time.
     Begin with a metal pentagon, approximately thirty centimeters 
across its longest dimension, seven or eight centimeters thick at the 
edges, perhaps twice that in the rounded center.
     In the center, a lens, deep red, the size of a man's palm.  And 
dark.  Dark where it should be glowing softly, warmly.  Dark as death 
itself.
     Back at the edges, seams.  On the other side of each seam, a 
tubular extension, joined every centimeter or so, tapering gracefully, 
each joint a little closer, a little finer than the one that preceded 
it.  Sinuous, serpentine, and very, very highly polished, reflecting a 
curve-distorted picture of the frozen moons and cruel stars.  Tangled 
now, heaped up and disheveled.
     And at nearly every joint, at nearly every seam, a crude stubby 
brown pencil, rough and splintered, hundreds of them, jutting out at 
every conceivable angle.  Where each arrow pierced the thin, fragile 
metal, a tiny pool of thick, transparent fluid welled.  Some of it 
dripped off curved shining surfaces to the sand a few centimeters 
below.
     Travel down the graceful, violated sinuosity, tapering, tapering, 
slimming impossibly.  Approximately a meter from the torso seam, the 
tentacles branch again, into five delicate tapering fingers.  Usually, 
these are held together so the tentacle seems to have a single, 
well-proportioned tip, concealing a tiny red optic in each "palm," 
replicas of the larger eye in the torso.
     Now they are splayed, whether in haphazard array or in the agonies 
of death, only the mechanically sentient can tell, and they are a 
taciturn, unsentimental lot, for the most part, and will not say what 
it feels like for a machine to die.
     Perhaps, exactly like their creators, they don't know, will never 
know until they experience it themselves and can't relay the sensations 
to others.  Perhaps it's just as large a mystery to them as it is to 
everybody else.  Perhaps.
     Each slender, dainty finger is divided into joints, precisely like 
the tentacles-fine, impossibly tiny joints, such as a watchmaker would 
create, looking through his loupe, trying to still the microscopic 
trembling of his hands.  After a few centimeters, the fingers branch 
yet again-something absolutely no one ever notices.  The joints 
continue marching, tapering, growing smaller and finer until they 
vanish from unaided vision-and continue.
     Those subfingers, at their ends, are hair-fine, wire-slender ...
     alloy strong.  Their inner composition is just as sophisticated, 
just as complex as any other portion of the creature they belong to.  
Yet, unlike the pentagonal metal torso, unlike the sinuous jointed 
tentacles, unlike even the slender adroit fingers, they are too small 
to be seen, too fine to be hit with an arrow.
     One of them stirs.  It waves back and forth languidly a moment, 
living a life of its own.  It coils and uncoils, testing itself.
     It stretches minutely, contracts minutely.  It doubles back, wraps 
itself around the base of an intruding wooden object that had pierced 
the body above it.
     It pulls.
     There is a gentle, sucking noise.  Slowly the arrow surrenders, 
sliding out, grating through tortured metal.  The hair-finesubfinger 
plucks it out, casts it away.  Elsewhere, other wirelike extensions 
perform similar tasks.  And on the inside, where torn and dented metal 
protrudes in sharp triangular, ragged, toothlike edges, nearly 
microscopic flagellated motes begin pushing, thrusting, hammering the 
metal skin back into place, almost a molecule at a time.
     "The bantha is a shaggy beast, although it has no hair...
     Its feathers are unique, at least, because they aren't there....
     Hee, bee, bee, bee, bee!"
     Lando began coughing uncontrollably, choking on his genius as a 
poet.  He was disappointed.  No one would ever get to hear his 
cleverness-although he couldn't quite remember why at the moment, 
Whatever it was, it made him sad, and he lapsed directly from laughter 
into sobs.
     His fingers, highly trained and skillful at manipulating 
cardchips, coins, the entrances to other people's pockets, went right 
on thinking for themselves, picking at the rough-woven cloth that bound 
the wrists above them, threatening to cut off their circulation before 
they had quite finished their self-assigned task.
     "Me governor of Rafa Four is fat as he can be... with fuzzy crown 
and stubby limbs, he looks just like a... bee?
     Fee?  Me?  Thee?  77zee!  He looks just Uka diee, old man, he 
looks just lika thee!"
     Behind Lando, between his body and the pseudoplant, a final fiber 
gave way.  With something akin to shock, Lando jolted back to reality, 
momentarily, surprised that he could move his wrist, almost sorry as 
warmth crawled back into his right hand and the pins-and-needles began.
     Vuffi Raa had problems larger than pins-and-needles.  Ms own 
fingers were free, now, where the primitive arrows had pinned them to 
the ground and punctured them.  His joints would be stiff and 
uncooperative for some while to comeshoot a bullet through a hinge 
sometime and learn why-but he was already plucking the projectiles from 
his tentacles.
     The congealed fluid in each wound was hardened, not by cold, this 
time, but deliberately, by design, protecting his incredibly delicate 
inner mechanisms.  He was through reclaiming fluid from the sand.  The 
traces of raw materials he'd picked up that way wouldn't serve him 
long: he'd require refuelling-something he'd only done once before in 
his long, long memory-perhaps even an unprecedented lubrication.
     But he was alive.
     Moreover, he was conscious, having the spare power, at last, to 
divert into consciousness.  He had taken over the programmed 
simple-minded self-repair mechanisms, and the work was going at 
quadruple speed.  He was beginning to feel good again, knowing that 
what he could do for others of his kind he could also do for himself.
     The frozen desert saw the first faint glow of ruddy amber from the 
lens set in his pentagonal torso, a luminescence vastly dimmer and less 
conspicuous than the moons above-another conscious decision.
     His body stirred the sand around it, continued plucking arrows out 
and healing.
     Lando Calrissian pondered one of the deep philosophical problems 
of all time.  His right arm was completely free, but he didn't know why 
that was important.  What had he intended to do with that arm?
     Something about being cold.
     Well, that was silly: he wasn't cold at all.  He was nice and 
warm.  Nice and rosy warm.  The warmth spread from his toasty feet, up 
through his legs, into his body, out through his shoulders.  Ms ears 
were warmest of all.  They were practically on fire.
     Fire!
     He looked around him.  It was smoky enough for a fire.  The grove 
where he sat so warmly comfortable seemed to be full of haze.  Someone 
hadn't opened the damper on the fireplace, evidently.  Well, he'd just 
have to get up in a few minutes and do it himself.  Couldn't trust 
anybody these days, even with so simple a task as tending aFire!
     Something about a gun!  Now what in the blazes would he do with a 
gun if he had one?  There was nothing to shoot here, nothing to fight, 
nothing to eat, even if he'd been the wildgame type, which he wasn't.
     Besides, they'd plugged his gun up with an arrow.  Devilishly good 
shots, those ... those ...
     Now who had been that good a shot, shooting?
     Shooting?
     What did that have to do with anyd-ting?  He'd been going to tend 
the fire, hadn't he?  Well, no time like the-he tried to sit up.  Great 
Galactic Core, he thought, I'm paralyzed from the waist down!  No-I was 
simply careless putting on my pants and looped the belt around this ...
     this ...
     With sudden, momentary clarity, he reached into his cummerbund, 
extracted his five-shot stingbeam pistol, flipped off the thumb-safety, 
and fired.  The rough cloth fell from his waist.  Almost in panic, he 
rolled away from the life-tree, and had to restrain himself from 
wasting his remaining four shots on the thing that had been sucking his 
brains away.
     It cost him.  Every bone, every muscle in his body, every square 
inch of his skin was in agony.  Each movement threatened to shatter him 
or tear him.  All he really wanted to do was go back to sleep.  All he 
really wanted to do was rest.  That was it: he knew he had other things 
to do, but he could rest up, first.  Get warm again-not really sleep, 
just close his eyes andNearly shrieking.  defiance-at what he was never 
afterward able to say-he rolled, crawled, pushed himself along the 
ground, inflicting new pains with every centimeter of progress.
     At least he reached the heap of clothing Mohs and his bravos had 
stripped from him, nearly dived into the parka, and turned the 
thertnoknob to Emergency Full.
     And the agony really began.
     There wasn't much he could do about his pants.  They'd been sliced 
open from cuff to crotch-Lando remembered the knife, seemingly made 
from a life-crystal.  The abandoned loincloth still clung to his waist.
     With stiff fingers, he spread it out, tore it into strips, wrapped 
the strips around his legs, and tied them at strategic points to hold 
his trousers together.
     Bundled up in the parka, he put the gloves on next.  The stingbeam 
was small enough to conceal inside the right glove so that he could 
shoot it in a hurry if he needed to.  The little weapon was blessedly 
warm from the one shot he'd expended.
     Time to think about standing up.  Should he take the parka off, 
replace his undershirt and tunic?  It would be in better taste, but 
somehow that didn't seem to matter right now.  Oh, yes!  He'd almost 
forgotten about his boots and socks.
     When he got around to examining his feet, he almost wished he 
hadn't.  He was going to rfiiss those toes, and regeneration was a 
long, fairly painful process.  Oh, well, to paraphrase an old, old 
saying, it beat the hell out of having to regenerate new feet.  With 
great tenderness, he pulled his socks on-being careful to dump as much 
sand out of them as possible-and, over those, his boots.
     How the dickens was he going to stand up?  He didn't dare approach 
one of the deadly trees close enough to lean against.
     He rolled over on his side, pulled his knees up, rolled up onto 
them.
     It felt as though someone had clamped his feet in a vise and was 
tightening it.  He told himself that at least he was alive enough to 
feel pain.  Somehow that didn't cheer him much.  He told himself that 
at least he had his twnd back, could think, wasn't going to be a 
drooling vegetable.
     He clambered to his feet, forced himself to walk around.
     So this was a genuine life-orchard.  It had bloody well nearly 
been a death orchard, he thought.  Wouldn't Mohs be surprised, come 
morning, to find his victim gone, and along with himThe Key!
     He felt beneath his cummerbund.  Even though both gloves and coat, 
he couldn't mistake the lumpy weirdness of the artifact.  Well, that 
was going to upset the old man.  Lando chuckled to himself.
     The thought came to him that perhaps he was being watched.  Well, 
let them watch!  The stingbeatn didn't have an orifice like a blaster, 
its muzzle was a pole-piece, more like a thick, stubby, rounded antenna 
than anything else.  He was alive, intelligent, on his feet-he was 
going back to the Falcon for a hot cup ofVuffi Raa!
     It had been one monster of a day!  He'd nearly been killed, 
certainly been hijacked, and lost his best friend.  No, he wasn't 
ashamed to say it: the little droid had been a better, more loyal 
friend to him than any he'd ever had before.  He was going to miss the 
little guy.
     Now, which way was the Falcon?  Simple: just follow the tracks, 
which, with the double portion of moonlight and the dry, still 
atmosphere, were still plainly visible in the sand.
     He took a step.
     LANDO CALRISSIAN!
     Before he realized it, the glove was off his right hand, the 
stingbeam pointed aloft.  Overhead, a repulsor-vehicle hovered, bright 
with running lights, a searchbeam shining down on him and illuminating 
the entire grove.
     It settled to the ground.
     "Drop your weapon, " a familiar voice said over the loudhailer, 
"and put your hands over your head!"  Lando didn't move.
     Nor did he move when four constabulary troopers, their armor 
glinting in the moonlight, jogged up beside him, took his gun away, and 
held their own weapons leveled at his chest.
     Captain Jandler-if that was his name-had rendered his own visor 
transparent, this time.  He strutted over from the hovercar.
     "Well, Captain Calrissian, we meet again.  As soon as we've taken 
care of you, we'll recover your vessel and get that cargo back to its 
rightful owners.  If you thought you were in trouble before ... By the 
way, you have something else we want.
     Where is itT' "Where is what?"  said Lando between gritted teeth.
     "The Sharu artifact.  The Key the governor gave you.  Where is 
it?"
     "Come and get it, thug!"
     "All right, men, we're going to do it the hard way.  Search him.
     Strip that clothing off and search him!"
      xii THUNDER BOOMED OVERHEAD!
     Bathed in a glorious dawn that hadn't yet reached the ground 
beneath it, the Millennium Falcon roared down upon a constabulary 
detachment frozen with confusion and surprise, and stood hovering a 
dozen meters over their heads.
     Lando seized Guard-Captain Jandler's weapon muzzle, swung it 
aside, and kicked the hapless policeman.  Jandler sank with a moan to 
his knees, eyes crossed beneath his helmet visor, and, with a 
preoccupied gurgle, collapsed onto his face.
     Lando resisted the urge to kick him again, someplace more 
breakable.
     Two things happened at the same time: one of the other police 
officers leveled his blaster at the gambler, a finger whitening inside 
his gauntlet on the trigger.  Roiled dirt and fire spurted up into a 
wall ahead of him as a turret on the Falcon spat energy down at him.
     He dropped his gun and raised his hands unbidden, as did two of 
his comrades.  They were out of the game.
     The fourth wasn't giving up so easily.  He seized the opportunity 
to dash for the repulsor-cruiser where a heavy beamer was mounted on 
the transom.  Before he'd taken three hurried steps, the starship's 
turret pivoted, a second energy bolt lashed down from above and the 
police cruiser heaved upward from the ground, fell back in flaming 
wreckage.  Smoke poured from the ruined vehicle into the rapidly 
lightening sky.
     Keeping a wary eye on Jandler, Lando sat down heavily himself, 
wondering where all his vim and vigor had come from all of a sudden.
     And where it had gone just as abruptly - The Falcon settled, its 
active turret still aimed at the policemen.  Lando noticed the 
guard-captain's heavy blaster, lying in the sand a few inches from his 
rag-wrapped knee, picked it up and rested it in his lap.
     The Falcon's long, broad boarding ramp creaked down slowly.  After 
a while there was a flash and twinkle at the dark, inner end of the 
passage.  Vuffi Raa came slither-marching down to the ground, his 
posture and movements conveying somehow that he was rather pleased with 
himself-although he looked a bit worse for the previous evening's wear.
     "Master!  I'm gratified to see you're still alive.  I feared I 
wouldn't get here in time, but I see you've taken care of nearly 
everything yourself already."
     The gambler grinned wearily, accepted the proffered tentacle.
     "I'm gratified myself, considering some of the alternatives.
     But you look like you've been out in a meteor shower!  Or is that 
the latest robot fashion you're wearing?"
     From eye tens to manipulator tips, the little droid was covered 
with small, rounded dents.  Where they overlapped his joints-which was 
practically everywhere-his movements were a little stiff and uncertain, 
and he sounded, when he replied, just the slightest bit self-conscious.
     "Yes, well, these arrow wounds are healing, Master.  In not too 
many days I'll be quite myself again.  But you have suffered damage 
which will not be repaired so quickly.  We must get you into the ship, 
where I can administer-2' "Hold it."  Grunting, Lando hauled on Vuffi 
Raa's tentacle, pulled himself onto his knees, and, placing a palm 
firmly in the middle of the little robot's lens, pressed himself 
upward, to his feet.  He swayed a little, but he was vertical-and still 
had the blaster pointed straight at the constabulary contingent.
     Meanwhile, Captain Jandler was beginning to do some grunting of 
his own.  He rolled over, tears welling from his eyes and dripping on 
the inside of his visor, shook his head from side to side, and lay 
there, still doubled up.
     "We'll administer to me later, old pencil-sharpener.  First we're 
going to 'administer' to our military friend, here.  He seems to be 
among the living, again, although how long .  . ."
     Lando offered the blaster to the droid, glancing significantly at 
the four undamaged troopers.  "While I'm attending to "Hold them at 
bay?  I'm afraid not, Master.  I cannot threaten Jandler, I don't 
suppose you could .  . ."
     a living being with bodily harm.  Sorry."
     "Well, I'm not complaining, not anymore.  I'll just have to keep 
an eye on them myself.  But I am curious: how was it that, ten minutes 
ago, you could@' "Use the Millennium Falcon's armament to keep them 
from attacking you?"
     "And to do that demolition job on the police cruiser.  Neat, but a 
little outside your specialties, wouldn't you say?"
     Lando approached the semiconscious guard-captain, toed him not too 
roughly in the armored ribs.  "All right, time to rise and shine!
     We've got a little talking to do!"
     Vuffi Raa shambled up beside the gambler.  "Master, I can watch 
the troopers for you, and they needn't know I can't initiate force 
against them."  The little robot continued in a louder voice, intended 
for a broader audience, "If one of them so much as twitches an earlobe, 
we'll burn him off at the kneecaps!"
     Lando chuckled, "Yeah, right up to the armpits!  Just be sure'@he 
whispered to Vuffi Raa-"that you don't compromise yourself into a 
nervous breakdown."  Then he added, more loudly, "I said get up, you!"
     Jandler stirred, did some more groaning, rolled over, and sat up 
painfully.  Wincing, he took off his helmet and wiped sweat from his 
face.
     "Cain'ssian, you just plain don't fight fair, do you?
     Lando aimed the confiscated blaster at its former owner's nose.
     "I don't like to fight at all.  When I have to, I try to get it 
over with as quickly and neatly as possible.  Now, WHAT IN THE BLAZES 
IS THIS ALL ABOUP" Jandier, his troopers, even Vuffi Raa jumped a 
little at this outburst.  The police leader blinked, considered, then 
shook his head and sighed.
     "Oka Calrissian-I wish to perdition I knew!  I've been Y, sent on 
more crazy errands in the last couple of days than in my whole career, 
up until now: your hotel room, the Spaceman's Rest, the spaceport, and 
now this.  It puts a man in mind of retiring early, pension or not.
     What do you know about it?"
     Lando squatted down on his haunches, keeping the blaster r 
centered on Jandler.  "I hate the devil to steal your line, Captain, 
but I'm asking the questions, here.  Tell me, exactly where-rather, 
from whom-Aid you receive your orders, if one may ask?"
     Jandler glanced quickly at his men, then back to Lando, and licked 
his lips.  "Where do you think?  From that fat son-of-a-" "Captain!"
     shouted one of the cops, "you can't@' "The Entropy I can't!  Do 
you think that overstuffed chairwarmer gives a nit in a nova what 
happens to any of us?  All he cares about is that Sharu doohicky, and 
if we come back without it, we might as well not come back!  Well, I-" 
"You mean this?"  Lando drew the Key from his waistband.
     it gleamed in the early morning sunlight and, if anything, seemed 
more disorienting than before.
     Lando could see the guard-captain calculating whether it was worth 
the risk jumping for it.  He looked from the Key to his former blaster 
muzzle, across to Lando, up at Vuffi Raa, then back to the Key again.
     Finally, he shrugged.  "Is "Let him get it for himself!"  Jandler 
decided out loud.
     there any way my men and I can get out of this alive, Captain 
Calrissian?  I won't give you those hull-scrapings about , just 
following orders again'@nly, well, I'm not too fond of the w.
     Especially since I seem destined to

     idea of dying, just no for a while."

     taste the fruits of civilian life med, winked at vuffi Raa, and 
looked back at Lando tu Jandler.
     "Well, old Constable, you people do seem to present us with la 
problem.  I'm impressed with your change of heart, but insu ficiently 
so to be too happy about your breathing down my neck while I'm on this 
planet.  Giving you all the Big Push would seem to be the answer-2' He 
held up a hand.
     -But I am highly disinclined in that direction, believe me.
     As you know, I am a gambler by profession, certainly no killer.
     1 live by my wits, not by the gun, however useful the things may 
prove to be at times.  If we can think of a way to let things work out 
for everybody, I'll certainly cooperate."
     Jandier grinned, scratched his head.  His men, a few yards away, 
seemed to relax a few notches as well.
     "Now, Captain Jandier," said Lando, "this is what I think we'll do 
The idea worked out better than Lando had expected.
     Aboard the Millennium Falcon, there were several tough, inflatable 
life-bubbles that could be jettisoned, with air and other short-term 
supplies.  A man could live inside one for several days in moderate 
discomfort.  They weren't much use if something went wrong in 
interstellar space, but, in the neighborhood of a solar system-where 
most accidents happen anyway-they could keep one alive until 
assistance, summoned by an automatic radio beacon, arrived.
     Lando's original plan was to haul the constabulary contingent out 
a few astronomical units and abandon them in space.
     They'd be out of his and Vuffi Raa's figurative hair for a few 
days, and yet live to tell their grandchildren about the experience.
     Happy ending all around.
     The little droid made it happier.
     "Well, Master, that takes care of that.  I believe the gentlemen 
can go aboard now."  He was exiting a hatch in the side of a powered 
interplanetary cargo barge, large, dark, and rusty, in which the police 
team had originally traveled to Rafa V. The humble vessel's presence 
had helped Vuffi Raa to locate Lando in the nick of time.
     Lando transferred the blaster to his left hand, extended his right 
to the constabulary boss.  "I suppose this is farewell, then, old 
bluecoat.  I trust you and your comrades will enjoy the trip. Jandler 
grinned.  "It beats a beam in the eye from a hot laser, Captain 
Calrissian@' "Call me Lando, nobody else seems to be able to do it."
     "Lando, then.  And when we get there, none of us will be in any 
particular hurry to report, will we, guyst' This last had a bit of an 
edge to it.  The other four policemen quickly assumed a what?  who, me?
     expression, and Lando trusted Jandler to keep them all in line.  
Not that it mattered.  The plan was perfect.
     The officers trooped aboard.  Lando waved, then watched Vuffi Raa 
weld the hatch shut behind them.
     "Thirty seconds, Master."
     "Very well, let's get back out of the way."
     Slowly, gently, with impossible grace, the ungainly tub of a 
spaceship lifted from the sand, guided by a program Vuffi Raa had 
punched into its miniscule electronic mind.  Lando glimpsed the fused 
and blackened end of a communications antenna, one of three the little 
droid had ruined.  For the duration of its trip, the barge would be out 
of contact with the rest of the Rafa System.  It would take the vessel 
a week to reach Rafa XI, last and least planet of the colony, a bleak 
ball of slush circling in the dark.
     A considerable research installation had been built there, and a 
fairly impressive helium refinery.
     "You didn't forget the torches, did yout' "Please, Master, it was 
difficult making myself do it, don't rub it in."  controls was your 
"Oh, very well.  But sabotaging the ship's idea, I'll remind you.  The 
cops can't alter the taped course, and they can't communicate with 
anyone until they're close enough to do it with flashlights out the 
viewports.  You did send along that Oseon brandy, I trust" ,Yes, 
Master, and those ... those .  .
     "Holocassettes?  Absolutely imperative, old gumball machine.  The 
scenery where they're going is remarkably boring."
     He gave a final salute as the barge lifted through a rack of rare, 
high cirrus clouds and disappeared.
     Vuffi Raa said nothing.  In truth, he was rather proud of his 
master for sparing the men's lives, and especially for parting with 
them under somewhat cordial circumstances.  Perhaps humans-this one in 
particular, at least-weren't such a bad lot, after all.
     "All right," Lando said, breaking into the robot's reverie, "let's 
get moving ourselves.  We've got to find the Toka.  I'm going to kill 
that buzzard-necked Mohs if it's the last thing I ever do!"
     The first thing they had done, after sending off the constabulary 
contingent, was to attend to Lando's wounds.  Frostbite-of which he had 
been plentifully supplied by the matter, can be as previous evening's 
adventure-is no minor serious as a blastershot under some 
circumstances, and, even with all the facilities of modern medicine, can 
lead to gangrene in a matter of hours.
     The Millennium Falcon did not provide all the facilities of modern 
medicine.  In a locker, Vuffi Raa discovered a portable gel-bath, 
miniature version of the large, full-body devices used to heal serious 
wounds.  It would fit Lando's feet nicely.  He unfolded it in the 
common room and slid it under the gametable where Lando was considering 
a problem in Moebius chess.
     or appeared to be.
     "Dash it all, Vuffi Raa, where would you be, on this planet, if 
you were an ancient savage, with an angry outworider after yout' "I 
couldn't say, Master, the inscrutabilities of the organic mind@' 
"Nonsense, old android.  Your mind is every bit as organic as@' 
"Please, Master, I have done nothing to deserve insult.  If you truly 
wish, I will consider the problem you have just posed."  Silence, then: 
"Why do you suppose he had us land the Falcon near that giant pyramid, 
Master?"
     Lando gave up on the game, slapped the oFF switch, and watched the 
weird serpentine playing board fade and vanish from the tabletop.
     "I've been wondering about that, myself.  It's much the largest 
building on the planet-perhaps, in the system, which would make it the 
largest in the entire galaxy, I'm sure.  On the other hand, the 
Sharu-now there are some inscrutable minds for you-the Sharu may have 
used it to store potatoes."
     "Or the Mindbarp."
     "Yes, although I'd venture that if the Mindharp were simply a 
device to tell the Toka to run and fetch their masters' pipe and 
slippers, it wouldn't deserve quite so august a resting place.
     However, one thing is certain: it is where that scoundrel Mohs met 
up with his savage cohorts.  As such@' "As such," Vuffi Raa ventured, 
"it may be a wonderful place to get ambushed-again.  Hold still, 
please, Master, while I tape your ears."
     "Leave my ears out of this, you mechanical menace, they were fine 
before."
     "Master, please!  I am programmed t@' "All right, all right!  Then 
limber up your piloting appendages.  We're headed for that pyramid 
again.  Only this time, I'm carrying two heavy blasters-and an umbrella 
to keep arrows out of the muzzles."
     Mohs wasn't hard to find.  When the Millennium Falcon arrived, he 
was sitting on a sand dune in the shadow of the pyramid, smoking a 
lizard.

     XHI

     "TWICE HAVE I doubted thee, 0 Lord; yea, even as twice hast thou 
proved me in erior!  Kill now thy miserable excuse for a servant, that 
he may disgrace thee no further!"
     The fire, built of twigs and leaves in a scooped-out hollow in the 
ubiquitous reddish sand of Rafa V, was no larger than a teacup.  It 
failed to warm Lando although he sat cross-legged not more than two 
feet away, trying to avoid noxious fumes rising from a branch that 
sported a small, disgusting reptile skewered neatly from end to end.
     An ugly way to die, the gambler thought, even for a lizard.
     And it made an even uglier lunch.
     "Look, Mohs, see me about that sometime when I'm not so tired.  I 
may surprise you and take you u p on the offer.  In the meantime, are 
you still interested in trying to use the Key?"
     "Of a certainty, Lord!  Too long have my people, the wretched 
Toka, suffered under the tyrannical thumb of the@' "Save it for the 
union meeting, Singer.  All I want to know is where to put this thingIf 
somebody-your people, for instance-benefits, and somebody else loses as 
a result, well, that's no paint off my hull, I can assure You."
     Secretly, the amateur star-captain was thoroughly enjoying the 
chance to use what he imagined was tough-sounding spacefaring jargon.
     Now that he'd had a hot meal, plenty of coffeine, and was wearing 
a fresh change of clean, undamaged clothes, he felt downright jaunty, 
even considering the miserable night he'd spent in the life-orchard.
     "I don't give a hiccup out the airlock, even if Gepta benefits, as 
long as I get out of this confounded system with a full cargo and a 
whole skin-not necessarily in that order, mind YOU."
     Mohs had started a little at the mention of the sorcerer's name.
     Now he positively reeled, managing to wring his bony hands at the 
same time.  "O Lord, they servant knoweth full well that thou sayest 
these cynical things only as a test of my faith, fortitude, and other 
virtues@' "Which are too microscopic to mention."
     '@which are too riiicroscopic to mention, as thou sayest, Lord.
     Yet, wouldst thou mind very much not making such vile, 
blasphemous, and mercenary utterances in the mortal presence of thy 
humble servant?  It causeth unease."
     "Oh it doth, doth it?"
     Lando glanced back over his shoulder.  He was pretty sure that at 
least half of the old man's "unease" derived from the imposing presence 
of the Millennium Falcon about fifty meters away across a clear expanse 
of sand, her full batteries trained in a protective circle to prevent a 
reenactment of the earlier ambush.  In an inner pocket of his parka, 
her captain carried a transponder that kept the Falcon's guns from 
sweeping within a couple of degrees of whoever wore it.  This was a 
necessary precaution because Vuffi Raa was not at Battle Stations, 
inside.
     He was programmed against it.
     Somewhere back along the line, Lando had ceased resenting the 
little robot's programmed pacifism, and simply begun planning around 
it.  In the righthand outside slash pocket of his parka, he carried a 
second device with which he could trigger every weapon aboard his ship.
     Vuffi Raa could handle opening the boarding ratnp as Lando ran for 
it, if anything went wrong.
     It wasn't against his built-in ethics to save a life.  In fact, 
the i; droid had proved himself quite useful in that department 
already.
     But to the problem at hand.
     "Okay, old theologue, we'll change the subject: How did you know 
we had survived this morning, and why did you wait for us here, when 
you knew how sore I'd be about last nightt' Lando wanted to move back 
from the fire.  About a thousand meters would do nicely.  The cooking 
reptile, presently hovering somewhere between second-degree blistering 
and thirddegree chaning, smelled exactly like ... like ... well, he'd 
smelled more appetizing things attached to starship hulls while he was 
melting them off with live steam.  Nonetheless, even the idea of the 
fire was warming; he hadn't felt really comfortable since he'd landed 
on that stupid clot of sand, not even aboard ship.
     The elderly Singer opened his mouth.  "Lord@' "MASTER, HUMAN FORMS 
ARE MOVING BEHIND THOSE DUNES OVER THERE."
     Mohs jumped at least a meter.  The little droid's voice had lified 
through the ship's external loudhailers.
     come amp red in a normal tone.
     "Thanks, old cogwheel."  Lando answer cellent hearing, and so did 
Vuffi Millennium Falcon had ex Raa.  He chuckled as the antique shaman 
regained his dignity.
     THOSE CROSS"THEY APPEAR TO BE CARRYING BOW THINGS, MASTER."
     "Mohs," the gambler said evenly, "I'm going to give you and if 
they're not just thirty seconds to.  send your people away, gone by 
then, you're going to swap places with that poor une creature you're 
cooking.  I ought to turn you in to comfortable the ISPCA@R at least the 
Epicures Club."
     The Singer slowly cranked himself into a standing position, 
rattled off a few discordant stanzas-probably the Song of Strategic 
Withdrawal, Lando thought-then he sat again, turned the lizard on its 
stick, and addressed Lando.
     "I have told them to depart, Lord.  They came only for your 
protection.  Now, if thy servant may have a few moments in which to 
fortify himself and attend to bodily needs, then we shall go to a place 
I know ... where the Key may be used."
     He seized the lizard by its head, pulled backward in a peeling 
motion, and tore it off the stick.
     "Good heavens," Lando cried, gulping to control his upper 
gastrointestinal tract, "are you going to eat that thing?"
     Fifteen minutes later, they were standing at the base of the 
pyramid.  Even tilted backward as the wall before them was, it seemed 
to loom over them like some fantastic, infinitely high cliff, 
threatening to topple and bury them at any instant.
     Vuffi Raa, having locked the spaceship up securely, joined them.
     The Toka Singer cast around, seeming to look for something 
recognizable on what appeared to be a featureless magenta wall.  
Finally, he stopped and pointed.
     "There, " he said with finality, "about a meter downward, Lord."
     He folded his arms.
     Lando rolled his eyes in exasperation.  "Well, don't look at me.
     I'm the Key Bearer.  You're the peon.  You want a shovel, or will 
you perform this ceremony by hand?"
     The old Toka was aghast.  "Me, Lord?  I am Singer of the"One 
moment, gentlebeings," the robot said.  "I can have it done before the 
two of you are finished arguing about it."
     With that, his tentacles became a blur of motion.  He resembled a 
shiny circular saw blade with a glowing red center.  Sand poured upward 
in a wake behind him like an absurd dry fountain, and he was, as he had 
promised, soon finished.
     "Escargot and Entropy!"  Lando swore, struck by what he saw where 
Vuffi Raa had dug.  Mohs was startled into silence, fell to his knees 
and began chanting in a low, whimpery tone.
     It shouldn't have been possible.  Draw a line around your hand and 
rout out the material within the outline to a depth of approximately a 
centimeter.  It can be done, and easily.
     Now try it with the blade of an eggbeater.  The human hand is, in 
its simplest representation, a two-dimensional form.
     Something requiring three dimensions can't be represented in the 
same way, not including its essential element-its threedimensionality.
     Not unless that object is a Sharu artifact, and the people doing 
the has relief are the Sharu themselves.
     In some ways, it was rather as if the wall were transparentwhich 
it was not-,and the molded impression of the Key were buried yet 
visible inside it.  But that wasn't truly the case.  In another way, it 
was like seeing the Key itself, inside out, glued to the side of the 
pyramid@xcept that the "image" (or whatever it was) neither protruded 
from the surface nor was inset into it.  The whole thing looked just as 
preposterous, just as impossible, as the Key itself, only more so.
     And it hurt the eyes in just the same way.
     Lando stepped back, blinked, and shook his head to uncross his 
eyes.
     "All right, Mohs, suppose you tell us exactly what you know-what 
your Songs have to say, if anything-about what we're seeing and what 
happens if we use the Key in it."
     The old man hummed a little to himself, at first as if to get the 
right pitch, then as if he knew the data only by rote and had to find 
the right place before he could start properly.
     "This is the Great Lock, Lord.  For generations uncounted, no 
Toka-no, nor any interloping stranger from the stars-has entered into 
the least of the many sacred shrines They left behind."
     "Marvelous.  We already knew that."
     "Ah, yes, Lord, but now it is as it has been told: we shall enter, 
without entering.  We shall walk the hallowed halls and yet they shall 
not echo to our feet.  We shall travel to their farthest corners without 
going anywhere.  We shall dream, therein, without sleeping, and know 
without learning.  And, in due course and in Their time, we shall 
discover the Harp of the Mind; setting free the Harp, we shall set free 
the@' "All right, all right.  Politics again.  Let me think this over a 
minute."  He kicked experimentally against the bottom edge of the 
pyramid where it showed above the ground.  There was no sound, no 
sensation of impact.  It was like kicking at water or fine dust.
     "Vuffl Rai?"
     "Yes, MasterT' "Don't call me master.  )"at do you think about all 
this interloping businesst' He took the Key from his pocket, turned it 
over in his hand, and thrust it back in his pocket.
     "I think I'm long overdue for a lube job, Master, and would just 
as soon go home and@' "I thought your lubricated areas were permanently 
sealed."
     Was that a sheepish look in the droid's single eye?  "Yes, Master, 
although I did get rather badly punctured and lost a good deal of ...
     oh, I can't see any alternative to using the Key as Mohs suggests, 
Master.  Much as I would like to."
     -withoutLando laughed.  "I don't much like this enter entering, 
sleep-without-dreaming stuff myself, truth to tell.
     Look here, Mohs, what else have you got for us-in plain language."
     For the first time, the old man appeared to be uncomfortable on 
Rafa V. He had goosebumps all over him, and was shivering with the 
cold@r something else.
     "That is all that is known to the Toka, 0 Lord.  It is all that 
the Song hath to tell.  Thy humble and obedient servant confesseth, in 
his unworthy manner, that, were I thee, I would consider departing this 
place without using the Key.  All those numberless generations, 
waiting, waiting ... Why me, Lord?
     Why in my time?"
     "Congratulations, Mohs, you've just joined the ranks of some great 
historical figures.  That's what they wanted to know, and usually in 
about the same miserable, desperate tone of voice."
     Again, Lando extracted the Key, looked it over grimly.
     "Well, there's no time like the present.  Keep your eye open, 
Vuffi Raa.  Mohs, what do your Songs say about using this thing?"  He 
suppressed a shudder.
     The old man gave a highly articulate shrug.
     "That's what I like," Lando said, "help when I really need it.
     Here goes nothing!"
     Which is precisely what happened.  Lando pressed the Key against 
the lock in a position and at an angle that seemed most likely.  It was 
a little like putting a ship in a bottle-at least it seemed that way at 
first.  Then, in a manner that defied the eye and turned the stomach, 
the Key was in the Lock.
     The sun shone.  The wind blew.  The sand lay on the ground.
     Lando looked at Mohs, who still had some of his shrug left.
     He used it.  The gambler looked at Vuffi Raa.  Vuffi Raa looked 
back at him.  The robot and the elderly shaman exchanged glances.  They 
both looked at Lando.
     "Well, Mohs, I realize you've had breakfast, or whatever You call 
it, but I could use another bite.  This seems to be a bust.  What say 
we repair to the ship and-Vuffi Raa?"
     As he had spoken to the old man, he'd turned to look at the robot.
     Vuffi Raa had vanished.
     "Mohs, did you see that-Mohs?"
     The instant Mohs was out of Lando's field of view, he had 
disappeared, exactly like the droid, without a sound, without a 
movement.
     The sun shone.  The wind blew.  The sand lay on the ground.
     xiv LANDO CALRISSIAN was not, ordinarily, a physically 
demonstrative young man.  His livelihood and well-being depended on 
dexterity and control, the subtle, quick manipulation of delicate 
objects, the employment of fine and shaded judgment.
     He smashed a fist into the pyramid wall.
     And reeled with surprise.  Where, before, contact with the 
building had been much like ducking one's head into a stiff win"lusive 
but unquestionably real-now the experience had taken on the aspect of 
fantasy.
     His hand passed into the wall and disappeared as if the structure 
were a hologram.  He withdrew the hand, looked it over, flexed it.  He 
inspected the wall without touching it: terial itself was featureless, 
seemingly impervious to the ma time, weather, the puny scratching and 
chipping of man.  Yet there was a fine patina of dust, a film of oil or 
grease that seemed to coat everything within the planet's atmosphere.
     Lando could plainly see a single fine hair, neither his own nor 
one of Mohs'-perhaps that of some animal that had wandered by or which 
had been home on the wind until it stuck here.
     - He thrust his hand into the solid-looking wall again.  Again it 
disappeared up to the wrist.  He stepped forward until he lost sight of 
his elbow, shuddered, backed away.  And, again, his hand, his arm, were 
intact, unharmed.
     Lando Calrissian was nothing if not a cautious individual.
     Someone else might have plunged through the wall in pursuit of 
Vuffi Raa and Mohs, for it was clearly where they'd gone.
     But to what fate?  If your best friend zipped from sight into a 
trapdoor in the floor, would you follow him onto the steel spikes 
below?
     Lando pushed his hand into the wall again, meeting no more 
resistance than before.  It was as if the wall weren't thereexcept as 
far as the eyes were concerned.  He closed his own, and felt around.
     There wasn't enough breeze outside that he could tell about the 
wall's effect on air currents.  The temperature felt the same.  He was 
free to wiggle his fingers, clench and unclench his fist.  He snapped 
his fingers, felt the snapbut couldn't hear it outside the wall.
     Thrusting in a second hand, he felt the first.  Both felt quite 
normal.  He clapped them, feeling the sensation, missing the usually 
resultant noise.  Odd.  He placed his right hand around his left wrist, 
slid the hand slowly up the arm until it reappeared, much like a hand 
and arm emerging from waterexcept that this surface was vertical.  He 
stooped, picked up a handful of sand, reinserted his arms, poured sand 
from one hand to the other.
     He pulled his arms out, threw the sand away ...
     ... and stepped through the wall.
     Sometimes you have to take a gamble.
     He hadn't thought of that before.
     Old man Mohs, ancient and revered High Singer of the Rafa Toka, 
had been leaning against the pyramid wall when the Key-Bearer inserted 
the Key.  Suddenly, it had been as if the wall weren't there, and, in 
the short fall into darkness that resulted, his garment had nearly been 
lost.
     All his long, long life, Mohs had put up with the chilly draft 
that found its way beneath the simple wraparound.  Now, even in the 
darkness, even in this terrifying, holy place, it had occurred to him 
that he could take a long free end of the cloth, tuck it up between his 
legs, and eliminate the draft.
     Why hadn't he thought of that before?  Why hadn't anybody else 
among his people?  He found himself thinking cynically that this little 
piece of information alone was worth a hundred silly Songs about-no!
     That's blasphemy!  He cringed, trying to peer into the utter 
darkness around @ fearful of ... of ... what?
     He thought about that.
     He seemed to be doing a lot of thinking in the past few minutes.
     Finally, he decided-in what may have been the first real decision 
he'd ever made for himself-to wait until his eyes adjusted.  He sat-on 
some firm, resilient surface-enjoying his new-found warmth.
     And the new-found working of his mind.
     It had been hours!
     Four hours, twenty-three minutes, fifty-five seconds, to be 
precise, by Vuffi Raa's built-in chronometer.  He never had to see the 
time, he simply knew.  The trouble with built-in faculties, he 
reflected, such as being able to pilot a starship, for example, is that 
they denied or dulled the urge to acquire new ones for oneself.  Better 
to be like a human being, he thought, without innate programn-ling, 
with the ability and necessityA human being?  What was he thinking?
     He'd been approximately-no, exactly-seventeen centimeters from 
touching it with his nearest tentacle, and yet, when Lando had 
activated the Key, suddenly, he, Vuffi Raa, was here (wherever here 
was) on the other side of the wall.
     Five hours, twenty-nine minutes, thirty-one seconds.
     Exactly what here was, Vuffi Raa thought rather ungrammatically, 
was a good question in itself.  He'd felt strangely isolated, lonely 
for quite a while, and, oddly, that feeling had preoccupied him so 
thoroughly that he'd failed to examine his surroundings with much 
enthusiasm.  The feeling hadn't gone away, it had gotten worse, much 
worse.  Now, it was necessary to investigate, if only to take his badly 
shaken mind off his emotions.
     Of the presumed-to-exist inside wall of the pyramid, he could see 
no evidence.  He stood in a brightly lit corridor, seemingly kilometers 
between him and the ceiling.  His doppler radar, not his strongest 
sense, couldn't reach quite as far as the roof, although he got some 
tantalizing echoes from it.
     The area he occupied was a longish rectangle, five meters by 
perhaps fifty.  Behind him was a serditransparent wall through which he 
could see what appeared to be a vast circular drum, several stories 
high, much like a ftiel storage tank, yet made of the same 
plasnc-appean.ng material as everything else here.  In front of him, a 
smaller circular subchamber filled the corridor from wall to wall, yet 
he could see beyond it with several of his senses, knew it divided lais 
chamber precisely in half.
     To the right and left were similar, exactly parallel corridors, 
"visible" through walls much as the one behind him, and identical to 
the corridor he occupied except that they lacked the smaller circular 
"storage tank."
     He turned left.
     As far as he went along the wall, there was no exit.  The 
available space grew smaller and narrower as he approached the 
circularity.  Finally, he stopped, retraced his steps, and took the 
right-hand direction.  This time, near the angle of the wall and the 
tank, he found a permeable area.  He stepped through into the next 
corridor.  The predominating light was blue, as it had been in the 
chamber he had left, but here it was slightly brighter.  He crossed the 
corridor, found another "soff' spot in the wall, went through into a 
third chamber, identical to the second.
     The fourth chamber was shaped differently-five-sided, but not 
regularly so.  The only permeability was in the far righthand wall, a 
very short one, forcing him to take a right turn.
     The next chamber was the mirror image of the last, then a series 
of rectangular chambers began again.
     He kept walking, lonely, and, for the first time in his life, 
really afraid.
     Seven hours, sixteen minutes, forty-four seconds.
     From the inside, the pyramid was transparent.
     That was the first thing Lando noticed.  Outside, he could see the 
sun shining, the reddish color of the sand, a few scrappy shrubs, and, 
comfortingly close (although farther away than he would have liked) the 
Millennium Falcon sat patiently awaiting his return.
     He hoped she wouldn't have to wait very long.
     It was difficult to judge the thickness of the wall.  It was not 
quite perfectly transparent, but shaded a very pale bluish tint.
     Behind him was an empty chamber-and he realized that there was a 
good chance his eyes were being tricked somehow.  Not a hundred meters 
away, he could see one of the farther walls of the five-sided building, 
more sandy desert beyond.  The walls came to a point perhaps two 
hundred meters overhead.
     The trouble with all that was that the building was several 
kilometers in any dimension you chose to measure.
     The walls, then, were sophisticated viewing devices, conveying the 
illusion that the building was much smallerhuman-scaled, in fact-than 
it really was.
     He called out: "Vuffi Raa!  Where are you?  Mohs?  Answer me!
     There wasn't even a decent echo.  HeWhat was that?  Embedded in 
the wall he'd come through, stuck like a fly in amber, was the Key.  He 
reached for it-and barked his fingers badly.  The wall could have been 
made of solid glass, and the Key was at least a meter beyond his reach.
     It had been his way-and Vuffi Raa's, apparently, and Mohs'-inside 
the pyramid.
     He looked around the featureless chamber he occupied.
     From wall to wall, a smooth reflective floor stretched, devoid of 
furniture or fixtures.  It was rather like being in a large, deserted 
warehouse.  Through the walls, the sky was a slightly more brilliant 
blue than it had really been.
     The desert was a trifle darker: red and blue make purple.
     The transparency had another odd effect, it made everything 
outside seem very far away, subtly shrunken by perspective and 
refraction.  Perhaps the walls were curved minutely.  The Falcon almost 
looked like a model, a child's toy.
     Perhaps he'd better find another way out.
     There had better be another way out.
     Grown considerably more desperate, Vuffi Raa stopped to rest.
     He was internally powered; a microfusion pile that was practically 
inexhaustible burned within him at all times, requiring only a minimal 
amount of mass to keep itself (and Vuffi Raa) going.
     But,the little droid was tired.
     In a lifetime vastly longer than his current master would 
comfortable to contemplate, the robot could not rehave found call ever 
feeling lonelier or more isolated.  There, in that endless series of 
empty chambers, it was like being a piece in a huge meaningless game, 
shuffled from one spot to the next by vast, uncaring, uncommunicative 
fingers.
     The little droid was afraid.
     He'd come a considerable distance.  Six featureless rectilinafter 
the one he'd first appeared in, with its almost ear rooms, transparent 
circular tank in the middle.  Then another tankroom.
     The four empties, the last of which had forced him into a sharp 
left-hand turn, The next room had had a circularity, although there had 
been a narrow space to get by it.  Then another empty room, another 
left-hand turn, three more flat blue chambers and another tank.
     The pattern had repeated itself, again and again, the robot 
growing more disconsolate with every fruitless turn and passage.  This 
didn't even seem like the same planet-the same reality-let alone the 
same building he'd somehow accidentally entered.
     He wandered onward.
     Thirteen hours, forty-five minutes, twenty-eight seconds had 
passed.
     Another right-hand turn (the first since the initial one), two 
more lefts, and another right.  Two more lefts.  And always the same 
stark, empty, blue-tinted rooms, the occasional empty circular columns 
in their centers, more left turns, fewer ng How long could this go on?
     Nineteen hours, eleven minutes, four seconds.
     Lost in thought, Mohs didn't notice that he couldn't see.  It 
didn't matter much to him, he didn't have anyplace to go at the moment.
     There wasn't any hurry.  He'd only been here for a minute or two, 
and before another minute or two went by, the Bearer and the Emissary 
would come and get him.
     Or not.
     it wasn't very important, really.  He'd just realized, thinking 
about his loincloth once again, that if he took the long, rectangular 
strip of cloth, pulled it around end to end, but twisted it a half turn 
before joining the ends together, he'd get a very odd result: an object 
with only one side and one edge.  How that could be, when everything 
had at least two sides, had to have, he wasn't sure.  There must be 
some important secret to this cloth shape, he reasoned, some hint at 
the fundamental nature of the universe.  But the secret kept eluding 
him, there in the dark, seemed just barely out of reach.  It was 
annoying.
     He pondered the question, picked at it, unraveled it like the 
homespun fabric his single garment had been made from.  It wasn't easy 
going, but the more he thought, the simpler things seemed to become.
     Presently, they became very simple, indeed.
     Mohs laughed.
     Lando heard somebody laugh.
     He turned, and there was Mohs-where he had not been a moment 
before-squatting on his heels, one arm across his naked lap, the other 
braced between chin and knee.  Forgotten on the floor before him lay 
three or so meters of gray, aged loincloth, laid out in a circle, and 
twisted into a giant, floppy M6bius cylinder.  The old man's back was 
toward Lando.
     "Mohs!"  Lando cried.  "Where did you disappear to?"
     The old man chuckled without turning.  "Apparently the same place 
that you did, Captain.  What time is it?"
     And odd question from a naked savage, thought Lando.  He glanced 
at his watch.  "I'd say it's been perhaps twenty minutes since you 
vanished through the wall.  What have you been doing all this time, 
just sitting?"
     "What would you suggest I do, Captain?"  The old man rose, pivoted 
on a heel to face Lando.  "I thought it better than getting lost.  You 
can't see your hand in front of your face in here."
     "Good heavens, man!  What's happened to your eyes!"
     The old man blinked, lids wiped down over eyeballs that might as 
well have been opaque white glass.
     "My eyes?  There's nothing wrong with my eyes, Captain."
     The ancient Singer smiled.  "What's wrong with yours, can't you 
see the darkness?"
     Vuffi Raa wasn't lost, he simply didn't know where he was.
     Since he'd first popped through the pyramid wall, he'd wandered 
through this strange, blue-lit maze for what seemed like days, taking 
pathways that offered no alternative.  The only choice he'd had -was to 
stay where he was or go where he could, and he'd always preferred 
action to inaction.
     He'd taken four right turns (each carrying him through two of the 
oddly shaped rooms), and six left turns, not necessarily in that order.
     Before very long, he'd wind up exactly where he'd begun, no closer 
to any meaningful destination, no wiser concerning what this rat-run 
was intended and constructed for, and no likelier to find his friends.
     Just a machine, Lando had said once.  Vuffi Raa wondered if his 
master knew how lonely a machine could get.  Vuffi Raa hadn't known, 
not until the last few hours.  Twenty-seven of them, to be precise, 
plus thirty-six minutes, eleven seconds.  He was three rooms past one 
of those with the small circular subchambers.  That meant he ought to 
be entering a fourth, which would force him to take a left turn.  After 
that, one more left, four more rooms, and he'd be back to where he'd 
started from.
     And a lot more discouraged, in the bargain.
     He found the soft spot in the wall, slithered through.  Sure 
enough, none of the walls within this place-including the one he'd just 
passed through-would let him pass except the lefthand one.  He took it, 
the light dimmed a little as it always did in rooms with circular 
tanks, and he walked automatically the length of the room, past the 
tank, and to the end wall.
     And banged right into it.  it wouldn't let him pass.
     Well, here was something new.  Oddly enough, it failed to hearten 
him, or even relieve the tedium that had become his only companion.
     Had he been a mammal, he'd have stood there, scratched his head, 
folded his arms in exasperation, and SWOM.
     He stood there, raised a tentacle to his chromium carapace, 
scratched at it absently while folding two more tentacles in disgust.
     "Glitch!"  he said, and meant it.
     Exploring the unprecedented chamber, he traveled along the left 
wall, squeezed back through the narrow opening past the circular tank.
     The short wall through which he'd come was totally impermeable.  
He began feeling his way along the half of the other long wall he could 
reach before he had to make a cir cult of the tank again-and made 
another discovery.
     Up until now, the rounded sides of the features he chose to call 
tanks were just as solid and impassable as any of the other walls, This 
one was different.  He could stick a tentacle through it.  For lack of 
any better course, he followed the tentacle into the circular area, 
where, on one spot along the curved inner side, there was a deep 
purplish glow.  As he expected, the "tank" wouldn't let him back out, 
so he felt the glowing section carefully.  Yes, it, too was permeable.
     He stepped through into a rectilinear room, exactly like the 
tankless blue ones he'd spent the last day wandering through.
     Only these were a brilliant scarlet color.
     One, two, three, four.  He should be between two of the blue 
tankrooms, now, but there wasn't any tank in here.  Five, six, 
seven-something odd.  The far wall seemed to tug at him, and the red 
glow was a little fainter here.  He backed up and thought.
     Thirty-two hours, fifteen minutes, forty-two seconds had passed 
since he'd gotten into this mess.  He didn't much care, now, how he got 
out of it.
     He let the wall pull him toward itself and stepped through ...
     Lando sat by the transparent pyramid wall, his head in his hands.
     The last half hour had had its shocks, but this was the worst of 
all.
     Where the old Singer's eyes had been, there were now a pair of 
deep ugly wounds-healin rapidly, it was true, and showing no signs of 
infection, just as the old man showed no signs of pain.  But he was 
blind, horribly, hideously blind.
     And happy about it.
     "Captain," said Mohs, "please do not be distressed.  There is 
nothing free in this life.  I seem to have exchanged my eyes for a 
certain understanding.  I now know what I was: a retarded savage who 
could see, but did not know what it was he saw.
     Now I am an intelligent, civilized man, who happens to be blind.
     Do you not think it a fair trade?"
     Lando grunted, poked a finger idly at a tiny line of dust gathered 
in the corner between wall and floor.  Something tiny sparkled there, 
like a speck of metal, a fleck of niirtor silvering.  Curious, Lando 
brushed the dust away from it.  It was better than answering Mohs, 
either truthfully or insincerely.
     Nothing could make up for blindness.
     "Further, Captain.  My new-found reasoning capacities seem to 
serve me in the stead of eyes to some extent.  I can tell that you are 
sitting to my left, turned mostly to the wall, poking with a finger in 
the corner.  I believe I know this by deducing from the sounds you make, 
what I know of your personality and habits-it's quite as if I could see 
you."
     "I'm happy for you, Mohs," Lando mumbled irritably.  Suddenly, the 
minute sparkly bit grew larger, and Lando drew his hand back abruptly.
     "Son of a-look at this!"
     Not noticing what he'd said to a blind man, Lando watched the 
corner.  There was a spider there, a tiny one, very shiny, very fast.
     It skittered about frantically, trying to escape Lando.
     It couldn't have been much more than three millimeters in 
diameter.
     Lando reached down, unafraid, let the spider race up his thumb, 
turned the thumb down into the palm of his other hand ...
     And watched a nearly rwcroscopic Vuffi Raa, accelerated to sixty 
times normal speed, trip over his lifeline and go sprawling.

     -X-V

     No ONE HAD ever accused Vuffi Raa of being stupid.
     Of course he'd recognized the hundred-meter giant looming over 
him, the instant he'd popped out of the final red-lit chamber and 
through the inside wall of the pyramid.  It was his master, and what 
surprised him was the feeling that, whatever their current predicament, 
he was home.
     Apparently, Lando grasped the weird situation, too.  He'd held his 
thumb down on the floor in front of Vuffi Raa, keeping it amazingly 
still for the full minute the little-very littledroid required to climb 
its length.
     For his part, Vuffi Raa was very careful: the thumbnail at this 
scale was rough and full of convenient handholds, but the flesh seemed 
soft and spongy.  He went gently, using all five tentacles and 
spreading them, outward and flat, to disuibute his mass.  One misstep 
would cruelly pierce his master's fie sh like a needle and, perhaps, 
precipitate the robot into disaster.
     Not that that wasn't the situation now.
     With incredible slow steadiness, Lando had raised the robot up to 
his eye level, then across his mountainous chest, over to the other 
hand.  Vuffi Raa tumbled down into the waiting palm, righted himself, 
and looked up into the giant eye that peered down at him.
     "Master!  What a mess!  What are we going to do?"
     "EEEwVUUUFFFEEE EEEUUURRRAAAHHH," responded Lando, taking at 
least twenty seconds to do it, his voice low and thunderous.  A human 
being in Vuffi Raals Position might not have been able to hear what 
Lando said-the little droid's range of hearing was impressive-but he'd 
certainly have felt it.
     Now the robot understood his master's unnatural rocksteadiness.
     There seemed to be some difference in their perception of time, 
correlative to the difference in their sizes.
     Lando was living at a vastly slower rate than Vuffi Raa.  He 
considered the problem for what would have seemed a millisecond to his 
master, then gave forth a series of loud chirps, spaced evenly over 
about a minute's time, each burst carefully shaped and calculated to 
blur with the ones before and after into something the giant could 
follow: "Can't understand you, Mtister " Lando heard a tiny voice say, 
"Can you hear me?"
     Lando wasn't stupid, either.  He could see how quickly, jerkily, 
Vuffi Raa was moving about in his hand, and figured out that time@r at 
least metabolism-was flowing differently for each of them.  He even had 
a good idea how Vuffi Raa was managing to communicate with him, 
although none whatsoever as to how he could communicate back.
     He decided on short words: "Yes."Vuffi Raa received this as 
"EEEYYYEEEAAASSSSS," but the part of him that was a high-powered 
computer quickly squashed it all together (as it had eventually learned 
to do when Lando called him by name) and formulated a brief 
reply-although it would take a much longer time to transmit: "Ask Mohs 
about this.  " "OOOGGGAAAIIIEEE!"
     Giant-to-giant: "I say, Mohs old fellow, what does your new-found 
cogitational capacity tell you about this distressing turn of events?
     I believe I've got the galaxy's smallest droid here, but I don't 
think he's appreciating the distinction very much."
     Wrapping the loincloth back around his middle by feel, the old 
shaman shuffled up beside the gambler, cocked an ear over the tiny 
robot in lieu of peering down at him with ruined eyes, and thought his 
answer over for a moment.
     "I do not know of any Song which speaks of such a thing as this.
     He can hear us, can he not?"
     "Yes, " came the small, clear reply, almost as quickly as Mohs has 
asked the question, and long before Lando could respond.  This method 
of communication seemed to work satisfactorily for the organic giants, 
Lando realized, but it must be agonizing unto tears for the tiny 
speeded-up droid, each word requiring many seconds to assemble, then 
the even more annoying molasses-like wait for the humans, with their 
slower reaction time, to answer.
     "Captain," the old man said, seemingly unwilling to address a 
spider-sized machine directly, "I can see-in a manner of speaking-no 
intelligent alternative but to go on with our search for the Harp.  We 
can do nothing for your friend here.
     Perhaps some solution lies ahead of us."
     "Agreed," Vuffi Raa said before Lando had a chance to think about 
it.  Meanwhile, the miniature automaton had also had time to think to 
become thoroughly fascinated with the examination of his giant master's 
hand.  The epidennis was shingled like a shale field, and the fine 
ridges were like furrows made by a plow.  Lando's pulse was a quiet, 
steady earthquake every few minutes.  Open pores lay scattered abut 
like gopher holes.
     Finally, long after Vuffi Raa had tired of his explorations: 
"AAAIII EEEGGGIIIEEESSS EEEIIIYYYOOOLYUURRR EEERRRAAAIIIT7T."
     Eventuall , Vuffi Raa managed to convey a question about travel 
arrangements.  He was willing to make his exploration of the building 
on foot, as the humans intended to do, but his own far greater rate of 
operation would be more than offset by his size and the (to him) 
roughness of .  the terrain.  Accordingly, he suggested that he ride, 
somehow, and asked diffidently how and where.
     "I've always rather fancied an earring," Lando told the surprised 
robot.  "D'you think you could manage it without tearing off my 
earlobet' That would make communications a bit easier, and there would 
be little chance of Vuffi Raa's getting injured or dropped, since Lando 
would be inclined to be careful about injuring his own head.
     "Captain," Mohs asked, once that had been settled, "there is 
supposed to be a way out of this chamber, somewhere near the center.
     Can you see it?"
     For the relatively short time they'd been there, Lando's attention 
had been directed outward, through the transparent walls.  Then it had 
all gone to Mohs and the pitiable condition of his eyes, and finally to 
Vuffi Raa.  Now he took a good hard look around.  It wasn't easy: the 
floor was glossy, as if it were transparent glass over some darker 
base.  He guided the old Singer toward the center of the room, 
approximately fifty meters away, the little droid clinging with all 
five tentacles to his ear.
     Before them lay a downward-slanting ramp set neatly into the 
floor, flush, without guardrails or other embellishment.
     Lando thought they hadn't noticed it before because of this, and 
the fact they'd been looking straight across its foreshortened length 
to the reflective surface on the other side.
     It was strangely dim in the middle of the room, beneath the 
pyramid's peak.  The brightly shining sun outside lent an eerie 
contrast, which got on Lando's nerves.
     "Well, friends, shall we?"  Lando asked no one in particular.
     No one replied.
     He shrugged, took a step-remembering, once it was too late, that 
this sort of thing was what had gotten him into ...
     well, this sort of thing in the first place.  As soon as it rested 
on the gently downward-slanting surface, his foot began to slide 
forward of its own accord.  He gave a hop, his other foot joined the 
first, and he found himself moving without walking-just as Mohs' 
prophetic Song had had it-on a sort of glassy, featureless elevator.
     He looked behind him.  Mohs was in the rear, expression a bit 
unsettled-apparently not very happy to realize his Songs had come true.
     Well, Lando thought, are any of us ever, really?
     The place that they had entered was broad, perhaps ten meters 
wide, and as they settled down through the floor and the tunnel seemed 
to level off, they saw that the roof overhead was about the same 
distance-ten meters-from the moving floor.
     The walls went straight up, tipped over into an arch overhead.
     At first the walls were featureless, the same impression as above 
of transparency over darkness.  The floor showed no

     AL

     AND THE MINDHARP OF SHARU III signs of mechanical moving parts; an 
object placed upon it simply flowed along at the same rate Lando, Mohs, 
and Vuffi Raa were traveling.  Whether the floor itself traveled with 
them, they were unable to determine.
     "EEEIIIUUU OOOGGGAAAIII, EEEwVUUUHHHwVIII EEERRRAAAHHH?"
     Vuffi Raa clung to Lando's ear, watching, measuring, trying to do 
his part-since someone else was carrying his miniscule weight.  Yet 
most of his mind was on the matter of his size.  Assuming it was he 
who had diminished-never mind how or that the disparity was supposed to 
violate several laws of physics-h e certainly didn't want to spend the 
rest of his life that way.  Droids live a long, long time.
     On the other tentacle, suppose Lando and their native companion 
had somehow grown, violating different laws.  Vuffi Raa didn't think 
he'd have to ask them how they'd feel about that, His contemplations 
were interrupted by the part of him that was watching.  He gave an 
internal, mechanical sigh as he prepared himself for another of the 
tedious attempts at communication: "Master the corridor's beginning to 
curve.
     "Not so loud, Vuffi Raa!  Curve?"  Lando glanced around.
     He couldn't see it; it must be very gradual.  A thought occurred 
to him: "What's the rate?  At some point, it's got to bend back on 
itself, and we should see the junction-for whatever good that does us."
     "I don't think so.... It, never fidly leveled out... Starting a 
gradual downward spiral " "So?  At what rate?"  Lando repeated.  The 
old Toka Singer listened to this exchange as it went on, a strange look 
on his blinded face.  "What's the apparent diameter of the spiral?"
     "Whose scale?"
     Lando chuckled.  "A good question.  Make it mine, if you don't 
mind.  I've got to figure it out, haven't I?"
     Vuffi Raa refrained from saying that Lando hadn't been much good 
so far at figuring out anything-and only partly because communications 
were such a chore.  Instead, he simply divided everything his sensors 
told him by approximately sixty.
     "Ten klicks at current rate.  Drops a hundred meters every thirty 
kilometers.
     "Can you tell how fast this thing is carrying us?"
     "About twenty kph.  One full spiral every one-twenty-third of a 
planetary revolution.
     The journey went on and on.  Hours passed.
     It was Vuffi Raa who first noticed the changes in the walls.
     "Master Please observe that something is visible.  " "I see it."
     Lando peered through the transparency.  Where before there had 
been inky blackness, now some form and structure could be seen, like a 
highway cut through a mountain pass.  "We're out of the pyramid!  Below 
it!"
     xvi THEY TRAVELED THROUGH the heart of the planet.
     This was not precisely true, as Vuffi Raa was already pointing 
out, but it was a metaphor that suited Lando.
     The geological strata they were seeing dated, according to the 
little droid, from the beginnings of life on Rafa V. Beds of stone 
formed by tiny microscopic creatures living in seas that no longer 
existed on the ancient, dried-up sphere alternated with slabs of 
solidified lava from volcanic eruptions.  Vuffi Raa's fine vision-and 
perhaps the fact that he was so smallenabled him to see and describe 
the smallest details through the transparent glass.
     "And here we see ... Master ... the evidence of the first cellular 
colonies ... the precursors of multicelled animals."
     "Don't call me Master, especially when you're lecturing me.
     Do you want a bite of this, Mohs?"
     Lando had delved into the pockets of his survival parka for water 
and condensed rations.  Vuffi Raa hadn't any need of them, but the old 
man surprised Lando by accepting only a small portion from the plastic 
canteen.
     Otherwise, the ancient High Singer had been strangely quiet for 
hours, watching the walls, peering ahead into a gloom that was 
something other than darkness, listening to Vuffi Raa.
     How much the old man understood of the droid's paleontological 
dissertations, he had no way of guessing.
     "But if we're seeing the slow, steady progress of microscopic 
life," Lando asked Vuffi Raa, "doesn't that mean we must be gaining 
altitude again?"
     "On the contrary ... Master ... the corridor leveled out some time 
ago ... and straightened.... We're traveling in a diagonal upthrust 
formation."
     For some reason, this bothered Lando.  He wished the robot had 
kept him informed on the shape and direction of their travel.  More, 
this was almost as if ... as if ...
     "They chose this route deliberately, didn't they?  So we'd see 
what we're seeing!"
     "fhey, Captain?"  Mohs spoke up, surprising Lando.  The old man 
had long since discovered that he could travel on a moving sidewalk 
just as easily by sitting down as standing.  Lando had joined him, and 
they were sitting a few feet apart now.
     Lando had been thinking about taking a nap before the walls grew 
transparent and the geology lectures began.  He was still thinking 
about it.
     "You know perfectly well who I mean.  There's some purpose to all 
this, isn't there?"
     "If so, Captain, the Songs do not@' "I'll bet they don't!  Mohs, 
the primary purpose of those Songs of yours was to make sure somebody, 
someday, wound up sitting precisely where you are."
     "So 1, too, had sum-dsed."
     Lando searched through his pockets, found a cigarette.  He didn't 
smoke much at all, and when he did, he preferred cigars.
     Whoever had packed this parka-an Imperial surplus modelhad left 
very little missing.  Lando lit a dried-up cigarette with a tiny 
electric coil built into one sleeve of the jacket.
     "The question, then, is why.  What's so flaming important about 
your seeing all these rocks and suchlike?"
     The old man lifted his sightless head.  "There must be a better 
word than 'seeing,' Captain."
     "Great Heavens, man, I'd almost-," He had almost forgotten about 
Mohs' eyes.  At least the hideous wounds were healing.
     Yet Mohs had not been moving like a newly blinded man, had not 
been stumbling and groping.  He had peered at the walls, down the 
tunnel, listened to Vuffi Raa as if he could"What do you mean, 'a beuer 
word,' Mohs?  Is there some sense better than seeing?"
     The Toka Singer swiveled himself where he sat on the floor and 
faced Lando.  He drew in a deep breath, then let it out.
     "It would appear so, Captain.  You are carrying the Emissary on 
your right ear.  You have a container of water in your left hand, the 
remains of a food-stick in your right.  Your coat is unfastened; the 
shirt beneath has a missing fastener, second from the top.  You hold a 
burning weed-stick in the same hand which holds the canteen.  It is 
approximately one-third consumed."
     Lando was as impressed as he ever was by anything.  "What color 
are my eyes?"
     "They are the color of deceit, the color of avarice, the color

     Of@,

     "Enough, enough!  Don't go getting poetic on us.  Somehow you are 
'seeing' all these things.  Any idea how: clairvoyance, telepathy, 
psychometry .  . ."
     "I do not know the meaning of these words, Captain.  I can hear 
the water gurgling, the weed-stick crackling, the tones within your 
voice and that of the Emissary.  I smell things and feel vibrations in 
the floor.  Here it is warm, there it is cold.
     Pictures form themselves in my mind.  My remaining senses assemble 
information which tells me everything my eyes once did."
     "Pretty good trick.  How many fingers am I-ow!  Take it easy, 
Vuffi Raa, that's my earlobe you're destroying!"
     "Apologies ... Master... Observe the walls.... There are the first 
large creatures to appear on this world."
     VufFi Raa's method of communication was far from perfect, but it 
didn't fail to convey his excitement.  Lando wondered what was so 
terrific about the fossils of old marine animals.
     Why, they looked like ordinary urchins, starfish, and the like.
     Perhaps that was what had moved the little robot.  These things 
weren't unlike him in their rough anatomy: five-sided, fivelimbed.
     That didn't account for Mohs' excitement: "Behold!  Look upon the 
very ancestors of Those whose name it is not wise to speak in this 
place!"
     "You mean the Sharu?"  Lando said defiantly.  He hated mumbo 
jumbo, even in a good cause, and this wasn't.
     "Yes, Captain," the old man sighed resignedly, "I mean the Sharu."
     They were nothing more than a bunch of formerly slimy starfish, no 
matter whose ancestors they were.
     The hours wore on, Vuffi Raa and Mohs alternating in rapture over 
what they observed embedded in the walls.  Lando yawned, slid over onto 
the moving floor surface, arranged the hood of his parka comfortably, 
and did a little sliding of his own, in the direction of sleep.
     The floor was solid, but resilient, and it was warm.
     Even in his sleep, the science lectures wouldn't leave him alone.
     He recapitulated the slow, steady progress-boring every step of 
the way-from the tiny, disgusting single-celled inhabitants of the 
planet's soupy primeval waters, through the first colony organisms, up 
into multicelled animals, and from there to things with backbones and 
legs which eventually crawled out on the land.
     Oddly, the further these imaginary entities got, climbing the tree 
of evolution, the vaguer and more nebulous they grew in Lando's mind.
     Queer, shadowy shapes beat at one another with broken tree limbs.  
Even more intangible figures took those tree limbs, scratched the dirt 
with them, and planted the first seeds.
     By the time the ancestors of the Sharu were building tiny, crude 
cities, it was almost as if the cities built themselves and were 
inhabited by invisible citizens.
     Continents were explored, migrations carried out.  Wars were won 
and lost, with rapidly increasing technology.  Discoveries were made, 
more wars fought.  The pre-Sharu touched the boundaries of space in 
primitive explosive-powered machines, depositing the first installment 
of the junk the Millennium Falcon had had to fly through, getting to 
Rafa V All the while, Lando experienced a growing sense of unease, some 
vague pain or nagging that made his sleep less restful than it might 
have been.  He'd had no idea, all day, where they were going.  There 
wasn't any choice in the matter for him: he had to find the Mindharp, 
and then figure out how to get out of the tunnel, away from the ruins, 
off the stinking planet, and, ultimately, clear of the Rafa once and 
for all.
     They'd never catch him bringing mynocks into the Rafa System 
again!
     Or anything else.
     The sense of unease grew, gradually metamorphosing into something 
resembling real pain.  Lando tossed and turned in his sleep, but kept 
on dreaming.
     The ancestors of the Sharu had built roads and buildings that 
wouldn't be unfamiliar to any civilized inhabitant of the galaxy.  They 
had traveled in powered vehicles, eventually spread themselves to.
     other planets of the system.  At first they endured the harsh 
conditions on some of these globes, living in domes or underground.
     Finally, they had begun transforming them into replicas of their 
own home planet.
     It hadn't always been a desert.  There had been oceans and trees 
and lakes and snow-covered mountains.  There had been moisture in the 
air, and weather.  How long ago all that had been, the part of Lando 
that did the dreaming wasn't prepared to guess.  How long does it take 
for the seas to go away?
     Gradually, however, as their technology surpassed that which was 
currently available in Lando's civilization, the shapes of buildings 
changed, the roads disappeared.  The unseen entities who wer6 becoming 
the Sharu fought no more wars, but struggled, instead, with the 
environment.  No rock, whirling in its independent orbit around the 
Rafa sun, was too insignificant to be altered into a garden.  To what 
precise purpose became increasingly unclear.  Cities ceased to resemble 
anything that made sense.  The first of the gigantic plastic structures 
appeared@n Rafa V. Then they appeared on the other planets, as well.
     Taken altogether, they were nightmarish things.  Lando squirmed in 
his sleep, flailed his arms and sweated.  Every surface and angle was 
somehow wrong, things were added that seemed without function, 
passageways tapered out into tiny pipelines, hair-fine fractures became 
vast thoroughfares, in no logical order.  The seas began to vanish, red 
sand replacing landscape everywhere.  Had something gone wrong with the 
Sharu environment, or did they like it better the new way, plan it?
     Lando sank deeper into a dreamless, pain-filled sleep.  His last 
thought was a question: would this passage funnel down until the 
inexorably moving floor ground them into tiny pieces?
     Lando woke up.
     Somewhere, for a fraction of a second, he had the feeling that 
everything made sense after all.  Then the feeling went away and left 
him with a terrible lingering headache.
     "Vuffi Raa, are you awake?  You're going to have to find another 
perch for a while, my whole head hurts!"  He rolled over on his back 
from the curled-up position he'd taken in the night.
     "Masteryou'reawakeatlasthowdoyoufeel?"
     He sat up-a sudden blast of pain hit him and he settled back again 
for a moment.  "Take it a little slower, will you?"
     He lifted a hand to his ear.  "Hop down a minute while I get rid 
of this headache."
     He felt a fe rathe touch his palm.  The pain subsided.  Bringing 
his hand down, he looked at Vuffi Raa.  Something was funny, but he 
couldn't place it in his present groggy state.
     The walls rolled by, this time showing discarded metal and plastic 
containers, parts of machinery and electronics frozen into the 
geological matrix.  How long does a civilization have to last before 
its radios and televisions become fossils?
     "Now, what was it you were saying, little fellow?"
     "Merely ... greeted ... you ... Asked... how ... you ...
     feel."
     "Lousy, but thanks for asking.  Anything interesting happen in the 
night?"  He scrounged around for a cigarette, started thinking about 
which of the ration bars to eat for breakfast.
     "It... is... nighttime... now... outside.... Master ...
     You... slept... through... the... day."
     "I don't see that it makes all that much difference, down here.
     Where's Mohs?"  Lando had glanced around, up and down the tunnel, 
and hadn't seen the old man.  Perhaps he'd"What ... Master?"
     "We seem to be having some difficulty understanding one another 
this-er, afternoon.  I said, where's Mohs, did he wander off 
somewhere?"
     "Master ... there is something I must tell you."
     Lando felt a vague alarm.  "What's that, old watchmovement?"
     "I believe... from measurements that you're shrinking."
     "What?"
     "Everything is shrinking.... The tunnel grows narrower by the 
kilometer... You have shrunk just enough that my weight upon you causes 
pain.  . . . The previous rate at which I communicated is too fast....
     We are nearing each other's size and time-passage."
     "Which could mean just as well that you're growing, did you ever 
thing of that?"  Lando examined the tiny robot in his hand.  Let's see, 
he'd estimated Vuffi Raa's previous size at perhaps three millimeters.
     Yes, no question of it, he was very nearly twice that size now and 
his miniscule weight was actually perceptible in Lando's hand.
     "Yes.... I considered it.... I think you are shrinking."
     "Well, I think you're growing.  What about Mohs?"
     "Who ... Master... Who is Mohs?"
     "Vuffi Raa, don't do this to me!  Mohs-the High Singer of the 
Toka-the old guy who led us here!  Mohs!"
     There was a long, long pause.  It must have been vastly longer to 
the speeded-up droid.  Finally: "Master ... I recall no Mohs.... Are 
you certain you feel all right?"
     xvii AS TtiE TUNNEL carried them along, they argued.
     "Who was it that we met in the bar, who sang the Songs that 
pointed the way to Rafa V?"
     "Why, Master, something that Rokur Gepta said must have given you 
the clue, and you guessed.  Very good guessing, Master, highly 
commendable."
     "Well, then, damnit, what about that crowd at the port.  Who had 
been leading the singing?"
     "Why, no one, Master, it was simply community chanting, 
spontaneous on the part of the natives."
     "Arghhh!  Okay, why did we land at the pyramid-never mind, I know: 
it was the biggest building on the planet.  Tell me this: if there 
wasn't any Mohs, who ambushed us, shot you full of holes, and carried 
me off to the life-orchard to die?"
     "The natives, of course, Master.  But there wasn't any chief or 
head witch doctor or whatever.  The Toka don't have enough social 
structure for that."
     "Or to build crossbows?  Look, Vuffi Raa, I couldn't have made up 
that part about eating a lizard, I just couldn't."
     "What do you expect me to say, Master?"
     "I expect you to say that this is all an elaborate practical joke, 
and that you're sorry and will be a good little droid from now on."
     Lando shook the plastic package.  There weren't any cigarettes 
left.
     "Life is just full of annoyances these days."
     Vuffi Raa stood on the floor by Lando's knee.  He was five or six 
centimeters tall, by then, looking very much like one of those tropical 
spiders that eat birds.
     "I wish I could do that," he squeaked, no longer coding his 
messages in pulses.  He had to make a conscious effort to slow them 
down for his still-gigantic master.  "What reason would I have to lie, 
Master?"
     Lando crushed the pack, started to throw it away, then, looking 
around him at the clean, uncluttered tunnel, thought better of it and 
put it in his pocket.  "I'm not saying you're lying, Vuffi Raa.  One of 
us is wrong, that's all.  By the Eternal Core, I can describe the old 
man to you in the finest detail, from the tattoo on his wrinkled 
forehead to the dirt on his wrinkled feet!"
     Vuffi Raa said nothing to that.  He simply sat there growing@r 
watching his master shrink.  That was something else they hadn't been 
able to agree about, but they'd tired of arguing about it.
     They were also tired of asking one another when the journey would 
be over.  Lando extracted the deck of sabacc cards he carried with him, 
began to shuffle them.  Vuffi Raa looked on with interest.
     "Did you know, old pentapod, that these things were once used for 
telling fortunes?"  He shuffled the deck again, cut it, and began 
laying the cards out on the floor.
     "Highly irrational and unscientific, Master."
     "Don't call me Master.  I know what you mean, thoughexcept that 
sometimes they can help you solve a problem, simply by getting you to 
look at it in a way you hadn't thought to before."
     "I've heard that said, Master, but so can a sudden blow to the 
head, if you're looking for random stimuli."
     That's right, Lando thought, what I really need now is a fresh 
machine to banter with.  The first card to fall was the Commander of 
Staves, one which Lando had often associated with himself.  It was the 
apparently chance appearance of the right card-as happened so 
often--4hat made him wonder if his "scientific" analysis was all there 
was to the things' "That's me," he explained to the robot, "a messenger 
on a fool's errand.  Let's see what stands in the way."  He dealt a 
second card, laid it across the first.  "Great Gadfry!"  he exclaimed.
     "What is it, Master?"
     "Not what, who.  It's Himself-the Evil One.  I'd guess that to be 
Rokur Gepta.  Hold on, now, it's changing."
     As sabacc card-chips are prone to do now and again, the second 
card transformed itself into the Legate of Coins-but the image was 
upside-down.
     "Duttes Mer!"  laughed Lando.  "A being corrupt and evil if ever 
there was one!  Well, that makes sense, even though it tells us nothing 
new.  Let's see what else."
     The third card he placed above the others.  The Five of Sabres, 
Lando explained, represented his own conscious motivations, in this 
case, the desire to relieve the weak and unwary of the burden of their 
excess cash.  He chuckled, dealt a card below the others, indicating 
his deeper, possibly subconscious motives.  He groaned.
     "The Legate of Staves.  Don't tell me I'm a do-gooder at heart!"
     "Master, this is simply a random distribution of images, don't 
take it seriously."
     Lando looked at the little robot cautiously.  "I think I've just 
been insulted.  Well, the next card should tell us something.  It 
represents the past, things coming to an end."
     It was the Six of Sabres.  Lando placed it to the left.
     "Oh-ho!  This usually denotes a journey, but its position 
indicates the journey is nearly at an end.  What do you think of that?"
     "I think, Master, that journeys can end in many ways, not all of 
them pleasant or productive."
     "That's what I keep you around for, to bring me down whenever I 
feel too good, to remind me that every silver lining has a cloud.
     Say, you know, you're getting bigger@ight, maybe nine centimeters. 
 And your voice is changing, too."
     The little robot didn't reply, but simply watched Lando lay the 
next card down to the.right of the center pair.
     "Flame and famine!  You spoiled the run, Vuffi Raa-it's the 
Destroyed Starship!"
     "Does that mean harm will come to the Falcon, Master?"
     "Don't call me Master.  I thought you didn't believe in any of 
this."
     "I don't.  But what does it mean?"
     "Cataclysmic changes in the near future, death and destruction.
     It may be the worst card in the whole deck.  Maybe.  One thing 
I've learned TOM all t us: t There s ways a worse car(.
     This next will tell us what will happen to us and how we'll react 
to it."
     " We, Master?"
     "There you go again-great: the Satellite.  It means a lot of 
fairly nasty things, things that you find under rocks.  Mostly it means 
deception, deceit, betrayal."  He looked closely at the robot again.
     "Are you getting ready to double-cross me, my mechanical minion?"
     "There, Master, is the greatest danger in such mystical pursuits.
     You trusted me before you started playing with those card-chips, 
didn't you?"
     "I still do, Vuffi Raa.  The next card, up above the Satellite, 
here, is supposed to tell us where we'll find ourselves next.
     Hmmm.  I wonder what that means?"
     The Wheel sat shimmering on the card-chip, an image denoting luck, 
both good and bad, the beginning and the ending of things, random 
chance, final outcome-it gave Lando no information whatsoever.
     The third card in that part of the array, placed in line above the 
Satellite and the Wheel, represented future obstacles.
     Lando cringed when he saw what had appeared.
     "Gepta again!  Well, I suppose that's only logical.  Want to see 
the final outcome, old clockwork?  Well, you're going to, anyway.  Here 
we go.  Well, that's not too bad, after all.  It's the Universe.  It 
means we'll have a shot at everything we want to do.  Join the human 
race and see the world.  Something like that."
     "Master."
     "Yes, Vuffi Raa, what is it?"
     "Master, that Six of Sabres: that's a journey over with?"
     "That's what I said although it can mean other things, in other@' 
"Master, our journey's over with."
     And, indeed, so it appeared to be.  The floor slowed as they came 
upon the towering doorway of a chamber large enough to park a fleet of 
spaceships in.  A long, long distance away, something resembling a 
giant altar was raised, all the lights in the cavernous room focused 
upon it.
     Even from several hundred meters off, Lando could tell it was the 
Mindharp of Sharu.  It hurt his eyes to look at it.

     xv

     IT WASN'T As easy as all that.
     There were other things inside the hall besides the podium or 
altar where the Mndharp stood, and a giant replica of the Key Lando had 
carried until the wall of the pyramid had taken it.
     "What do you make of that, Vuffi Raa?"
     The robot, standing now as high as Lando's knee, peered into the 
same odd well-lighted gloom that had filled the tunnel behind them.
     The light was a brownish amber and seemed to emanate from the 
floor.
     The room, a vast auditorium of a place, was lined with something 
between sculpture and paintings pageant that seemed, to the gambler, to 
recapitulate his dreams of the night before.
     Here, at the entrance, shaggy forms, barely erect, shambled along 
the walls in a frozen march, growing straighter, taller, beginning to 
carry things in their hands, to lose their furry coverings, to wear 
clothing.
     Lando and Vuffi Raa followed the right wall, which curved gently 
into the vast circularity that was the chamber of the Mindharp.  By the 
time the figures on the wall were playing with internal combustion 
engines and rocketry, the pair had only walked a few dozen meters.
     Uncounted thousands of centuries of history lay ahead of them.
     The robot hadn't spoken.  Lando looked down at him.  His eye was 
glowing peculiarly-or perhaps the peculiarity was in the lighting of 
the chamber.
     "Vuffi Raa, did you hear meT' "Why yes, Lando," the droid said, 
seeming to be waking from a sort of walking dream.  "What do I make of 
this?  The same that you do-that this is somehow the center of Sharu 
culture.  What they left behind of it, anyway.  That the Harp is 
somehow even more important than we thought it was."
     Lando hadn't been thinking that at all.  He'd been thinking that 
the chamber was a place of worship, that the, figures on the wall were 
human-Toka-that the has-relief murals would convey to them the story of 
how they arose on some far-off planet and came to the Rafa System.
     That somewhere along the wall the story would be told of how they 
met the Sharu and discovered their masters.
     He didn't want to wait.  "I'm going on across the roomenough of 
this historical nonsense.  Con-ting with me?"
     Vuffi Raa turned, followed Lando without a word.
     It was a long, long trip.  The Sharu had discovered the same 
secret that many human cultures had: that if you make the floors of a 
public building slick enough, keep them polished and slippery, they'll 
force the people who have to walk there into little mincing steps that 
magnify the distances and humble the spirit-just as high ceilings tend 
to do.
     Lando wasn't having any.  He took a few running steps and slid 
along the floor.
     "Wheee!  This is fun!  Come on, old tinhorn, try it!"
     "Master!"  said the robot in a scandalized voice.  "Have you no 
respect?"
     Lando stopped, gave the robot a sober look.  "Not a grain of 
it-not when it's being imposed on me by the architecture."
     He took another running start, slid several meters this time.
     The robot had to hurry to catch up.  By the time he had, he was 
very nearly his original height.
     "Lando," he said, "speaking of architecture, there's something 
very odd about this place."
     Lando had to stop to catch his breath.  He sat down on the floor.
     "That would be consistent with everything else around here.
     What is it this time?"
     "Well, from the entrance, the room looked circular, with a high 
domed ceiling, and perhaps a thousand meters across the floor to the 
altar."
     Lando looked around.  "Still seems that way to me."
     "And to my vision, too.  But, checking with radar and a number of 
extra senses, the room is ovoid-shaped like an egg with a big end and a 
small end.  The big end was the entrance.
     The roof keeps getting closer to the floor."
     Lando had another flash of his dreams.  Something Vuffi Raa said 
earlier had triggered the first, something about the idea that it 
wasn't he, the robot who was growing, but Lando who was shrinking.  Yet 
if that were true-the tunnel had seemed to stay the same size the 
duration of the two-day tri@then the moving passageway had to have been 
shrinking.  Lando had appeared to Vuffi Raa to be a hundred and ten or 
twenty meters tall in the beginning.  Now he was back to being a little 
shy of two.  The corridors had to have been shrinking accordingly.
     At that rate, when they reached the Mindharp, Vuffi Raa would 
tower over Lando, and they'd both have to travel on hands and knees to 
reach the artifact.
     11 HALT!"  said a voice.
     "What?"  Vuffi Raa and Lando cried simultaneously.
     11 IT IS NOT PERMITTED TO CROSS THE HALL."
     "What happens if we do?"  inquired Lando.
     The voice paused, seemed confused.  "WELL, I'M NOT SURE I KNOW.
     NO ONE EVER ASKED ME.  BUT IT IS NOT PERMI=D."
     Lando opened his mouth"Just who in the Hall are you, anyway?"
     Vuffi Raa said.
     Lando looked at the robot sharply.  He hated having his good lines 
stolen.  It was exactly what he'd been planning to say, himself 11 WHY, 
I AM THE HALL, OF COURSE.  YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO LOOK AT THE EXHIBIT AS 
YOU APPROACH THE SACRED OBJECT."
     "And it's your job," Lando suggested, "to make sure we do?
     Well, let's get a few things straight here, Hall: I've been tugged 
along by everything that's happened so far.  I'm not going to let an 
empty room tell me what to do.  Now answer me truthfully: does anything 
bad or dangerous happen to someone if they don't skulk along the wall 
like vermin?"
     NO, I DON T SUPPOSE IT DOES."
     "Then I guess we'll go on.  You don't happen to have a cigarette, 
do you?"
     I'M AFRAID I DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU MEAN."
     "I thought you were going to say that.  Come on, Vuffi Raa."
     They continued across the broad expanse of the Hall, Lando sliding 
occasionally just to demonstrate his spirit.  Vuffi Raa's legs twinkled 
in the weird lighting.  Lando had a thought: "Hey, Hall?"

     AND THE MINDHARP OF @HARU 125

     YES, HAVE YOU DECIDED TO GO BACK TO THE WALL?"
     "No.  I was just wondering: how much do you know about this 
place?"
     11 ABOUT MYSELF?"
     "No, about the pyramid and the moving tunnel we were in before we 
got here."
     The Hall considered.  "A GREAT DEAL.  WHAT, SPECIFICALLY WOULD YOU 
LIKE TO KNOW?"
     "Well, just to begin, what size am I?"
     A very long pause this time.  "IN WHAT UNITS OF MEASURE MENT?"
     "Skip it, then.  What I really want to know is: was I gigantic a 
few kilometers back, or was my friend, here, very tiny?"

     DOES IT MATTER?"

     "Of course it matters.  Would I ask, otherwise?"
     "Organic entities seem to take considerable delight in doing 
things to no good purpose," Vuffi Raa offered.  "But in this case, 
Hall, I'd be interested in knowing, too."
     "Right," Lando said under his breath, "so the two of us can 
compare notes on the frailties of humankind.  Play your cards right, 
Vuffi Raal- cozy up to this Hall and they may make you a telephone 
booth or something."
     11 VERY WELL.  THE CHANGES IN THE DIMENSION WERE WROUGHT

     ON THE ORGANIC LIFE-FORMS HERE.  IT IS A NECESSARY PART OF THE

     PROCESS WHICH CULMINATES, PROPERLY, IN TRAVELING AROUND THE 
CIRCUMFERENCE OF THE HALL AS YOU ARE INTEN@' "Skip the commercial, 
Hall," said Lando, "and get on with the explanation."
     11 VERY WELL.  THIS INSTRUMENTALITY IS CAPABLE OF ALTERING

     THE PROPORTIONS OF INANIMATE MATTER AS WELL, BUT IT MUST BE

     IN THE PROXIMITY OF ORGANIC LIFE.  OTHERWISE, IT IS ABSORBED BY 
THE MAINTENANCE SYSTEMS .
     Vuffi Raa described his journey through the blue and red maze.
     "Can you tell me what all that was about?"

     11 CERTAINLY.  YOU WERE MISTAKEN BY THE WALL FOR A SMALL

     HOUSEKEEPING DEVICE AND ROUTED THERE FOR REPROGRAMMING AND REPAIR. 
 HAVE YO BEEN REPAIREDT' u "Not that I know of."
     Lando laughed.  "Any secret urges to sweep up or take out the 
garbage?"
     "Lando, this is serious.  I want to know what happened!"
     "Touchy!  Okay, I concede, I grew, I shrank-but I've got

     Mkl

     you on another one: Mohs.  The Hall said organic lifeforms, 
plural."
     11 QUITE CORRECT, SIR, YOUR INTESTINAL FLORA, OTHER SYMBIOTIC 
ORGANISMS, ALL WERE GREATLY ALTERED IN SIZE, THEN BROUGHT BACK TO 
NORMAL MAGNirUDE AS PART OF@' "What about Mohs.  Was there another 
human being with us when we entered, and what happened to him?"
     The hall was silent-a guilty silence if ever there was one.
     Lando realized suddenly that relations between mechanical 
intelligences weren't all that different from those between organic 
ones.
     'Well?"
     More silence.
     Lando looked at Vuffi Raa.  'That thing mistook you for a 
maintenance bug, and hummed up your memory trying to 'repair' you.
     That's why you don't remember Mohs.  Now it feels ashamed."
     Vuffi Raa looked at Lando.  "I certainly hope so, Master, I 
certainly hope so.  What are we going to do, once we reach the Harp?"
     "Shhhh!  The walls have ears.  We're going to use it in whatever 
manner was intended-rather, take it to somebody who knows how to and 
let him do it."
     "You mean the govemort' "That fat ape?  No, I mean Gepta.  He's 
the one who really I I says when we get to leave this lousy system."
     They shuffled onward, trying, occasionally, to get the hall's 
attention again.  Since it obviously hadn't gone away, it must have 
been ignoring them.  Finally they reached the base of the raised 
platform on which the Mindharp stood.  It wasn't as bad as Lando had 
predicted: the ceiling was much lower-Vuffi Raa was now his old 
familiar size again-and the room felt smaller, but it was still huge 
and awe-imposing.  As was the altar.
     A dozen meters high, it was cut from a single perfectly 
transparent slab of what appeared to be life-crystal.  It was hexagonal 
in cross section, with corners one could practically cut himself on.
     Otherwise, it was smooth and featureless.
     It would be a long, difficult climb.
     Lando sat down to consider the problem.  Ms survival kit included 
no rope, suction cups, antigravs.  Its designers had anticipated he 
would be among others-fellow soldiers-and had shared out supplies in a 
package that was sold originally to an entire squad.  They had not 
anticipated that survival would necessitate committing a burglary.
     "Any ideas, Vuffi Raa?"
     "No, Master.  If I were small again "You never were small, 
remember?  We argued about that and you won."
     "oh, that's right.  You argued so persuasively that I forgot for a 
moment."
     ",Vuffi Raa, I think that's the first nice thing you've ever said 
to me."
     "You're welcome, Master."
     "Don't call me Master."  He thought some more, then: "Hey, Hall?"
     11 MAY I BE OF ASSISTANCE?"
     "I hope so.  How come you didn't answer us back theret' I'M SORRY, 
I WAS THINKING ABOUT SOMETHING.  MAY I HELP YOU NOW?"
     "Sure.  Does this pylon sink into the floor or anything?"
     11 NO, I'M AFRAID THAT IT DOES Ncyr."
     "You don't happen to have a ladder handy, do you?"
     11 NO, SIR, I AM NOT SO EQUIPPED."
     Lando mused for a long time.  Despite his long sleep, he was tired 
and hungry-jacket rations aren't everything their manufacturers claim 
for them.  In fact, they aren't anything their manufacturers claim, 
except that they'll keep you alive.
     "Say!  Can you make me big again?"
     CONGRATULATIONS, SIR, YOU H"E PASSED THE TEST.  YES, I CAN ENLARGE 
YOUR SIZE.  DO YOU WISH ME TO BEGIN NOW?"
     "Can you make me normal again, afterward?  The size I am 
now-provided that's the size I started out before we entered the 
pyramid?"

     11 IMMEDIATELY UPON YOUR REQUEST, SIR."

     He looked at Vuffi Raa.  "Well, here we go again."
     " 'We,' Master?"
     "Now don't start that!  Okay, Hall, let's do it!"
     This time it was perceptible.  Lando watched the room and 
everything in it shrink around him, Vuffi Raa grew smaller, the altar 
shorter.  It only took a few moments.  "How the devil does this work, 
anyway, Hall?  I thought it was supposed to be impossible-cube-square 
relationships and my bones not supporting my weight above a certain 
size and everything.  That's why I figured Vuffi Raa had shrunk-plenty 
of problems there, but fewer, I think."
     OH, NO PROBLEMS AT, ALL, sfR," the Hall began.  Lando noticed that 
its voice wasn't disturbed at all by the change in scales.  Good 
engineers, those Sharu.  "WHAT ARE YOU, NO OFFENSE, SIR, BUT ORGANIZED 
@ORMATION?  WHAT DOES IT MATTER HOW DENSELY THAT INFORMATION IS 
COMPRESSED?  AN OLDFASHIONED BOOK MAY BE PRINTED UPON THICK PAPER, WITH 
THE LINES DOUBLE-SPACED.  STILL, Yr IS THE SAME INFORMATION, IS IT 
NOT?"
     "You trying to tell me I've been sort of spread-out, like?  I'm 
not sure I like that thought.  Well, here we are.  Vuffi Raa?
     That's all right, you don't have to talk back.  Just help me with 
this thing once I get it down-it's going to be big."
     At present, the Mindharp rested on the flat upper surface of the 
pylon.  It was a precise replica of the Key, except for size, and, in 
his present condition, it felt the same to Lando as the Key had.  He 
reached down to take it, it came away without resistance.  He started 
to put it in his pocket"Master ... don't ... do ... that."
     "Right!  It'd mess up my jacket a bit when I shrank back down, 
wouldn't it?  Okay, Hall, let's lower me back where I belong."
     Silence.
     "Hall?  Hey, you're supposed to shrink me again!  Get with it!"
     There was no reply.
     "Look, Hall, if you don't listen, I'm going to take this obscene 
artifact and-2' OH, I'M VERY SORRY, SIR.  WOOL-GATHERING AGAIN.  I HAVE 
AN INCREASING TENDENCY TO THAT, AS THE MILLENNIA ROLL ON.  I TAKE IT 
YOU WISH TO BE REDUCED AGAIN."
     "You take it right."
     With that, Lando began to shrink once more, the Nfindharp growing 
perceptibly in his hands as he did so.  He stooped gently, set it on 
the floor beside Vuffi Raa, straightened, and folded his arms over his 
chest.
     The Mindharp was an armful when Lando had been restored to his 
natural size.  Perhaps a meter in its greatest extent, it was even more 
visually distressing than the tiny model he had played with in the 
beginning.
     "Vuffi Raa, take one end of this.  Hall, how do we get out of 
here?"
     BEHIND THE PILLAR, SIR, AND GOOD LUCK."
     "Well, good luck to you, too.  Maybe someday they'll hold concerts 
here."

     I CERTAINLY HOPE NOT, SIR.  I RATHER LIKE THE PEACE AND

     QUIET."
     Behind the pylon was a wall.
     Embedded in the wall was a Key Perhaps it was the same Key, Lando 
thought-this building seemed to like little jokes like that.  The 
question was, how did you use it?  It protruded somehow from the wall.
     He let one hand go from the Mindharp, reached out to touch its 
smaller counterpart.
     There was a flash!  and a hole began opening in the wall, like the 
iris of an ancient camera.  Lando and Vuffi Raa stepped through.
     Into the busy daytime streets of Teguta Lusat.
     "OFMCER," Vum RAA demanded, summoning the first constabulary cop 
he saw on the street.  The robot pointed a tentacle at Lando.  "Arrest 
this man immediately.  Orders of the governor."
     Lando stopped, stunned.  They hadn't taken three steps away from 
the side of the Sharu ruin they'd emerged from.  He looked back-the 
aperture they'd walked through was gone.
     He held the Mindharp to his chest, walked back a step, another, 
until his back was against the wall.
     "Why, you little@' "That'll be enough of that," the cop ordered.
     "I can't arrest a man on the word of a machine.  I'll have to 
check it out with H.Q."  He touched the side of his helmet, communed 
momentarily with the radio inside it, then waved off with one hand the 
small crowd that was beginning to gather.
     Lando took a small, quiet step sideways.  No one seemed to notice.
     He took another, and another.  Only a few more steps to a corner 
where he just might be able to"Officer!"  Vuffi Raa shouted.  "He's 
trying to get away!"
     "Manks a lot, you atom-powered fink!"
     The policeman drew his blaster, held it steady on Lando's chest.
     "Well-first time I've ever heard of a droid with a security 
clearance like that, but-hold still, you!  We'll have some 
transportation in a minute, then we'll all take a nice little ride."
     The governor's office looked much the same as it had before, even 
to the absence of Rokur Gepta the Sorcerer of 'Nnd.
     With the Mindharp lying across the crystalline desk, Lando 
wondered why the wizard wasn't present to claim the prize he'd sought 
so avidly.
     He didn't wonder very long.
     "Good afternoon," Duttes Mer said, entering from the right and 
easing himself into his chair.  "I see you have the object.
     Very good.  You could tell me one little thing, though, if you 
would be so kind."
     Lando was standing between two of Teguta Lusat's finest once 
again.  This time Vuffi Raa was present, standing beside the governor's 
desk.
     "Anything you want to know," Lando said, trying hard for 
cheerfulness and not quite making it.
     "EXACTLY WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN THESE LANl' FOUR MONTHS?"  The 
governor calmed himself down, straightened his neckcloth, blinked.
     "Four months?"  Lando asked, reeling from one astonishing 
development after-so that was it!  The time differential.  What had 
seemed like a couple of days to him had actually been sixty times that 
long.  "Governor, you wouldn't believe me if I told you.  Ask your 
treacherous friend, here.  He'll tell youunless he's a congenital 
liar."
     "Don't be too hard on the droid, Captain.  He did what he was 
programmed to do: play the Emissary's part so that the natives would 
help you find the Harp.  Also, to report to me the instant the Harp was 
in your possession.  It would seem I've had a stroke of luck in that 
respect, however.  How is it that you flew to Rafa V and returned here 
without being picked up on planetary defense sensors?  We really have a 
nice, modern system, you know."
     "You tell him, Vuffi Raa, since you're such a blabbermouth 
anyway. "Sir," the robot said, "the Sharu appear to have some method 
of matter transport.  I'm not certain when the transition occurred, and 
I am told that you lost track of my telemetry the instant we entered the 
pyramid on Rafa V. The shift could have been oy time afterward, from 
the inside wall of the pyramid to the aperture through which we stepped 
into the street here in Teguta Lusat."
     The governor patted his stumpy fingers together.  "Well, well.  A 
technological bonus, if we can unravel its secret.  In the meantime, as 
I said, a stroke of unexpected luck.  You see, Captain, my, er, 
colleague is orbiting Rafa V this very minute, waiting for your 
emergence there."
     "Haw, haw.  I am here.  And I have the Mindharp.  It would appear 
that I am something of a lucky gambler, too, wouldn't you say?"
     Lando shrugged indifferently.  This wasn't going to turn out good, 
no matter what he did, and there wasn't any point in giving the fat 
-slob any satisfaction.
     "Come now, Captain, consider: Rokur Gepta hired an anthropologists 
real one, mind you, with genuine credentials-to investigate the system.
     The poor fellow thought he was working for me, which gave us the 
opportunity to appropriate his paycheck from Imperial funds, and 
yielded Gepta the enjoyment of n-dsdirection he seems to treasure so 
much for its own sake.
     "Meanwhile, we set a little trap.  In return for the offer of a 
new job, once his investigations here were finished, the anthropologist 
went to Oseon 2795 in search of, well, shall we say a suitably gullible 
individual to do our work for us."
     Interested despite himself, and aware that Mer's desire for, what, 
approval?  might show him a way out of the mess, Lando asked, "@y 
didn't you just hire yourself another sucker-or let your tame scientist 
get the Mindharp for you?  Why me, and why maneuver me into it, rather 
than simply coming out and@' The governor laughed.  "You know the 
legends.  It had to be a wandering adventurer from the stars, a 
stranger to the Toka, someone they hadn't seen snooping around, 
recording their chants and so forth.  And the truth.  Why, Captain, if 
you known the truth about the Mindharp, you would be about to assume 
absolute power over the minds of everyone in the system, rather than 
myself That is another mistake my esteemed colleague made.  Thus we 
looked for a freighter captain down on his luck-and on Oseon 2795
     everybody's down on his luck-in a place where we had the, er, 
cooperation of local law-enforcement personnel.  We let you think you'd 
won the robot, and put you in a position where you had to flee@' "Oh?"
     the gambler asked beneath raised eyebrows.  "Well, suppose I'd 
fled to the Dela System, as I'd intended, or simply@' "There was the 
'treasure' as an inducement, plus the fact that you had a valuable 
asset to claim in the droid, here.  And, of course, if you hadn't come, 
our Ottdefa Osuno Whett would simply have found a new prospect.  You 
were our first-I'm rather proud of the Ottdefa."
     Lando shook his head resignedly.  "I get it.  That's why Vuffi Raa 
was left here: if you'd missed your chance with me, and I'd had him in 
my possession in the Oseon, you would have lost a valuable 'hot, 
whereas any poor jerk who took your bait@' "Precisely.  I'm gratified 
that you appreciate the subtlety of the scheme.  That will be all.
     Officers, take him away."
     Lando didn't even have time to protest.  The police hauled him 
from the office, along the corridor, and down a flight of stairs to a 
waiting hovercruiser.  They whisked through the streets to the edge of 
town, where they entered a force-fence around a series of 
corrugated-plastic buildings.
     "Give him the usual processing," one of the anonymous visored 
officers told a fat man in a dirty tunic.  "You'll have the paperwork 
in the morning."
     "Very well," the fat man beamed.  He was short and greasy looking, 
but the neuro@c whip in one hand and the military blaster in the other 
added something to his personality.  The cruiser roared away.
     "Welcome to the penal colony of Rafa IV."  The fat man grinned.
     Midnight.
     Listening to the chanting of the Toka, Lando lay on a steelslatted 
cot in a barred cell.  Offworld prisoners occupied cells on one side of 
the corridor; the Toka shared an unlocked kennel-like affair on the 
other side.  Lando was unusual in that the other three bunks in his own 
cell were unoccupied.

     iL

     He figured that the governor didn't want him talking to anyone 
until he was "processed'!-whatever that meant.
     To say he found the native chanting annoying would have been a 
calamitous understatement.  It was unpleasant enough in itself, but it 
further served to ren-iind him of Mohs-the little man who wasn't there.
     If he had been.  The question bothered the gambler almost as much 
as his present predicament did.
     More, perhaps, because he'd been in jail before.
     Less, perhaps, because he'd never faced a sentence in the 
life-orchards.
     And, unlike the other freshly arrived convicts in the cells around 
him, he knew what that meant, had had a taste o s mind's being sucked 
away by the trees from which the crystals were @ested.
     And his memories of Mohs were clear; the chanting across the 
hallway was in no way inconsistent with them.  The language was 
distressingly familiar.  He could almost imagine- he understood it.
     Not for the first time, he reasoned that it was a corrupted 
version of some tongue spoken in a place he'd been once.  If only he 
could remember ...
     "ALL RIGHT RISE AND SHINE!"
     The fat man had friends, at least five of them, also armed with 
blasters.and whips.  They paced up and down in front of the barred 
cells, shouting to wake up the offworld prisoners.
     The Toka were already gone, sometime in the night.
     Lando groaned, turned over.  Before they'd placed him in the cell, 
they'd taken his clothes, replacing them with roughwoven pajamas of 
unbleached cloth.  Now he was being ordered to remove even that minimal 
dress.
     He quickly found out why.  Two of the guards placed their weapons 
to one side, manhandled a huge fire hose into place before the cells, 
and turned it on.  Lando was dashed to the back of the cell, where he 
fetched up against the rough plaster wall and slid to the floor, 
shielding his eyes against the blast of water.
     The stream passed on to the next cell.  He rose stiffly, put his 
shirt back on-he hadn't time to undress all the way before the water 
hit him-and wondered what came next.
     He didn't have to wait long.
     "All right, prisoners," the fat man shouted, "we will open the 
cells in a moment, and you will step outside, stand at attention, until 
told otherwise.  Then you will turn left-face and march, single file 
and silently, into the waiting bus.  Step out of line, utter so much as 
a single word, and you are dead where you stand."
     Luckily, Lando didn't have a snappy come-back ready anyway.
     The door slid open with a clank.  He stepped out and stood 
stiffly, shivering in the early morning breeze.  He had his first look 
at the compound, and, having looked around, decided he didn't want to 
make a habit of it.  Boxed into the corner between two plastic Sharu 
building ' s hundreds of meters tall and unscalable, the yard was 
fenced on the other two sides.  Bare earth, a handful of small 
one-story cell blocks, and an administration building.  Home sweet 
home for the rest of his life.
     Like hell, Lando swore to himself.  He would be free.  He had 
debts to settle.
     The command was given.  He turned left smartly, walked behind half 
a dozen other prisoners to the bus, an old one, driven by another 
convict.  Its skirts were stained and tattered.  It would be a rough 
ride this morning.  ItThe ground began to shake.
     Across the compound, the earth billowed up like waves on the 
ocean, heaved at the cellblocks, smashing them to bits, ripped the 
administration building apart, toppled the hoverbus.
     The man inside it screamed.
     Several convicts ran to help the trapped driver.  They were 
shouted at by the guards.  One of the uniformed men opened fire, 
sending a prisoner up in flames that were mirrored by those which 
suddenly burst from a leaking fuel line in a building on the far side 
of the yard.
     Lando stood where he was, then decided to fall down, since the 
quake threatened to do it to him anyway, and there was less chance of 
getting shot.  Suddenly, a figure in the town-cop uniform, mirrored 
helmet visor and all, staggered up to the warden or whatever he was.
     Lando could hear him over the rumble, roar, and screaming.
     "That man is to be turned over for further interrogation!"
     The armored finger pointed at Lando.  The warden and the cop 
leaned on each other to stay erect.
     "I have no authorization!  He's mine!  Can't this wait?"
     "The governor wants him immediately!"  There was sudden menace in 
the big policeman's voice.  "Something about a load of cops he tried to 
maroon on Rafa XI four months ago."
     "Then by all means take him.  l@' That was all the fat man had to 
say.  He swayed and fell.  The cop ducked back, came for Lando.
     "Let's go!"
     Grabbing Lando by the pajamaed scruff, the cop bore him along 
toward a waiting cruiser that had been left aground beside the cell 
block.  "Get in!"
     They roared away through the gate, which hung open on one hinge.
     It wotvldn't have mattered: the force-fence was down, even its 
auxiliary power system apparently destroyed in the quake.  The car 
rocked and swayed, turned right, and sped down the road.
     "Say, old flatfoot, this isn't the way to Teguta Lusat!"  Lando 
shouted.  He cringed as they rounded a corner and dashed toward the 
country.
     "What's it to you?  Shut up and mind your own business!"
     "Would this make it my business?"
     The cop looked down to see what was pressing at his side.
     It was his own blaster.  He raised a visored head to the young 
gambler.
     "Very good.  I guess you didn't need rescuing that badly, after 
all.  Want to go back and have all the glory to yourself.9" "What are 
you talking about?"  Lando demanded.  "Stop this car and take that 
helmet off.  I want to see who I'm talking to!"
     The cruiser slowed as per specification.  They halted in the 
middle of the road and waited out an aftershock.  Lando leveled the 
blaster at the policeman's face.  "Okay, take it off."
     The gloved hands rose, took the helmet and lifted.  In place of a 
head sticking up through the collar, there was-a snake!
     A chron-tium-plated snake.
     "Can I get out of this uniform, Master?  It's very uncomfortable."
     "Vuffi Raa!  You little-but what's going on here?  Why are you 
rescuing me?' Shucking the rest of the guardsman's uniform-he'd been 
walking on two tentacles, using two for arms, and the fifth as an 
ersatz head-Vuffi Raa assumed a more normal position behind the driver 
tiller.
     "Master, I was programmed to betray you from the beginning, and 
not to tell you about it.  But you're my Master, Lando, and, as soon as 
that program had run out, so did 1. And here I am.  We've got to get 
off this planet, out of the system, and fast."
     "I know."
     "You know?  How?"
     "The dreams, the chanting I heard last night.  It's Old High 
Trammic-the language of the Toka.  I was on Tramffiis III a couple of 
years ago.  I still can't understand the language very well, but my 
subconscious apparently made something of it.  I woke up this morning 
knowing the truth about the Mindharp, and I know we've got to get out 
of this place now."
     "N"y is that, Master?"
     "Don't call me Master.  Because, once somebody starts the music 
up, this system's never going to be the same again."
     "Then we must go now, Master.  Duttes Mer is using the Harp.
     That's what the earthquake's all about."
     xx UNLIKE A Flc-riONAL villain, Duttes Mer hadn't gloated or 
divulged his plans to the beaten Lando Cahissian.  He'd simply had him 
disposed of, as quickly and neatly as possible.
     Where he'd made his mistake-his first one, anyway-was in his 
attitude toward menials.  Toka servants were virtually invisible to 
him@nks and cigars simply appeared near his elbow, and that, he 
thought, was as it should be.  He was the governor, after all.  Droids 
were even more invisible.
     So Vuffi Raa had stood in plain sight in the governor's Office as 
he made a transspace call to Rokur Gepta.
     "Ahhh, it is you, my esteemed sorcerer.  I have some news."
     "What is it, Met?  It had better be good!"
     "Are you enjoying your stay in orbit around a dried-up desert 
planet?"
     "My ship is far more comfortable than that heap of bricks you call 
a city.  Get on with it, Governor, you're beginning to anger me!"
     The governor reached for the pickup on his communicator,

     AND I THE MINDHARP OF SHARU 137

     pulled it out on a retracting cable, and pointed it at the top of 
his desk.  "See anything you recognize, Gepta?"
     In the screen, the sorcerer's eyes were filled, by turn, with 
wonder, greed, and rage.  "The Mindharp!  How did you@' The governor 
chuckled.  "It only matters that I did, Gepta, and that you're millions 
of kilometers from here.  You see, that story you told Calri I 
ssian-that the Harp is the 'Ultimate Instrument of Music'-may have been 
good enough for him, but the story you told me about its being a master 
control over all the Toka never washed.  Such a thing would be 
commercially useful, but this," he indicated the Harp, "is much, much 
more than that."
     "What do you mean, Met?"
     "I am capable of hiring investigators, too, my dear former 
partner, and I took the wisest course: hiring yours.  Recall that I 
have the power to commute sentences, order pardons.  I know the truth: 
that the Mindharp of Sharu is an instrument capable of controlling 
every mind within the system-possibly beyond it.  And the instrument is 
mine!"
     "Don't try it, Met, you don't know what you're doing!"
     Panic was evident in the sorcerer's voice.
     "On the contrary, my dear@' "NO!  You don't understand!  The 
Mindharp will-" The governor smiled benignly.  "It will give me 
absolute power, even over you.  I suggest that, if you don't want to 
feel that power, you turn your ship out of orbit and leave my system.
     That may buy you a few years, at least."
     "MerI'll warn you once more: you don't have the knowledge to 
safely@' Click.
     When the opportunity arose-which wasn't until the middle of the 
night-Vuffi Raa crept from the governor's offices, stole a uniform from 
the guard laundries, jump-wired a police cruiser in the maintenance 
yard, and went off to rescue Lando.
     "Well, I appreciate it, Vuffi Raa, old criminal, but I trust 
you'll understand the residue of skepticism that remains within me.
     They were whisking back into town at a moderate, legal, and 
inconspicuous velocity.  They had felt several more tremors, but 
nothing like that first quake.
     "I understand," Vuffi Raa acknowledged, "and I suppose telling you 
I was programmed to betray you is much the same as a human being's 
saying he couldn't help himself Well, I came to rescue you by way of 
restitution."
     Lando thought about that.  "Very well, and just to show you my 
good faidi, you might as well know that Rokur Gepta and Duttes Mer are 
both wrong about the Mindharp."
     Vuffi Raa brought the car to a screeching halt as they neared the 
outskirts of Teguta Lusat.  "What?"
     "That's correct.  And we've got to get out to the port, steal 
something that will get us out of the system, but fast."
     "Master, I agree about getting out.  You don't want your mind 
controlled, especially by a being like the governor- i@' believe me, I 
know.  But if they're wrong .
     "It will be worse, Vuffi Raa.  My only regret is leaving the 
Falcon on Rafa V" "Master, four months have passed.  Mer had the Falcon 
brought back.  It's cargo of life-crystals hasn't even been unloaded, 
because until we reappeared in Teguta Lusat, Gupta and Mer didn't know 
if they might have to bargain more with you.
     "What?  Why didn't you tell me?  He didn't think to have her 
drives repaired, did beT' After a long pause, the droid replied, "No, 
Master, I did that, the first thing on the way to Rafa V."
     Lando didn't say anything.  If he'd realized the extent of the 
droid's housekeeping back then, they might have taken off and skipped 
the last four months inside the Sharu ruins.  "Well," he said 
irritably, "let's get out to the port!"
     "Yes, Master."
     Aboard the decommissioned cniiser Wennis, leaving orbit from Rafa 
V, a decision had been made.  Rokur Gepta lay ' in a special 
acceleration couch, being strapped up for the voyage ahead of him.  The 
vessel in the lifeboat bay was not a lifeboat, but an elderly Imperial 
fighter, refitted as a scout.  It could make the trip to Rafa IV in a 
third the time of its parent vessel.
     If the occupant could stand the G-forces involved.
     The safety precautions were primarily for the benefit of the crew, 
Gepta reflected.  He didn't need them, but it was dangerous for them to 
know that.  As the last strap and bit of tape was m place and the port 
clamped down, he relaxed, waited for the tick, and didn't stir a hair 
when @st that might have seriously injured a mere human being passed 
harmlessly through his body.
     He'd be in Teguta Lusat within an hour.
     Duttes Mer looked down at the Mindharp on his desk, afraid to try 
again, but desperate to master the weird thing be ore Gepta could return 
and take it from him.  He had no Ilusions.
     If he couldn't control that mind, along with millions of others, 
he was doomed.  He placed his short, square hand on the central shaft 
of the Harp again, suppressed a wave of fear, and tried to concentrate.
     "Master!
     Vuffi Raa clung to the steering tiller as the road tried to shake 
them off its back like a wet dog.  Lando grabbed the ends of a seat 
belt, tried to fasten them together as the police car pitched and 
swayed.
     "This is no good!"  he shouted, finally giving up the effort.
     "Look, let's make a run for it!"
     The spaceport gates were only a few hundred meters away, and they 
were traveling twice that distance weaving back and forth across the 
road.  Lando slammed the door open, rolled out, got to his feet, and 
ran toward the gate.  Vuffi Raa, right behind him, took no time at all 
to catch up.
     A guard, well away from his swaying guardpos@ was standing in the 
gateway.  He aimed a blaster at Lando.
     "Halt!  Looters will be shot!"
     "I'm not a looter," Lando hollered as he approached the guard.
     Both were pretty busily occupied just staying on their feet.  "I'm 
the captain of that ship over there, the Millennium Falcon, and I've 
got to get her off before she breaks up with everything else on this 
planet!"
     The blaster came up to Lando's eye level.  "That ship's under the 
governor's seal.  You can't@' Lando stepped closer.  The guard fired, 
but, swaying as he was, succeeded only in burning a shnib across the 
road.  By that time, Lando was close enough to seize the weapon, push 
it upward, punch the other man in the solar plexus with his fist.
     Flexible armor is for bullets and energy beams.  It's no 
protection at all against an unarmed man.  The guard folded.
     Lando took his gun away, added it to the weapon he'd taken at the 
labor camp.
     "Let's go!"
     They ran toward the Falcon, and, as they approached it, the 
boarding ramp swung downward slowly, as if in welcome.
     Cautiously, Lando and Vuffi Raa walked up the inclined plane.
     At the top, still aged and wrinkled, but sporting a stylish 
haircut and expensive business suit, stood Mohs, High Singer of the 
Toka.  Where his ruined eyes had been now glittered a pair of faceted 
multicolored optics like those of a giant psychedelic spider.
     Duttes Mer glared resentfully at the alien object on his desk.
     Twice, now, following the mental procedure conveyed to him by 
Gepta's captive sociologists, he had tried to gain control of the 
Mindharp, and thusHe slammed his hand down on the desk, making the 
object jump.  He didn't want to try again; all it seemed to do was 
cause quakes that threatened to tear his administration building apart.
     Why that should be, he didn't know, but he knew one thing: Rokur 
Gepta was coming.
     The spaceport radar people had confirmed it, just before the 
communications lines had gone dead.  A small, extremely fast craft was 
no more than twenty minutes from landfall.  Mer suspected that Gepta 
didn't need the port facilities; there was a wide flat space atop the 
adn-finistration building.  It would do nicely forHe hit the 
annunciator button.  "Give me the Captain of the Guard!"
     At first there was no answer.  Then a terrified secretary told 
him, "Sir, the guard contingent has left the building because of the 
tremors.  I was about to go, myself.  I-" "If you leave, I'll have you 
shot.  Summon those four men who went to Rafa XI.  They're under house 
arrest here in the building.  Tell them to get up on the roof and-never 
mind, I'll tell them myself!"
     Once more, he looked upon the Mindharp.  It had better work this 
time.
     Rokur Gepta was'coming.
     "You will pardon my dramatic appearance, Captain Calrissian," Mohs 
said as he ushered them around the curving corridor toward the Falcon's 
cockpit, "but things are beginning to happen, and I am too busy to be 
anything but dramatic."
     "I know," Lando said, throwing himself into the left-hand seat.
     He flipped a couple of switches and helped Vuffi ' Raa through the 
preflight checklist.  It was a long list, much too long for comfort.
     "I know everything-but I'm in something of a hurry myself right 
now."
     Mohs looked puzzled, then relaxed and grinned.  "Ah, yes.
     You put the pieces together.  All my life I was the instrument of 
my ancestors, given orders-the Voices of the Godswhisked thither and 
yon at Their bidding.  It was terrifying to the savage that I was, for 
example, to brush near an ancient wall, as I did that night in Teguta 
Lusat, and appear an instant later, leagues away, amidst a gathering of 
my people.  I apologize also for vanishing from the tunnel; its purpose 
was elementary education, you see, and I matriculated and went on to 
higher things."  He absently ran a fingertip over his bizarre eyes.
     "The decision was made for me, and l@' "Had no choice about it?"  
Lando asked.  He looked at Vuffi Raa.  "There's a lot of that going 
around.
     What in heaven's name is that red light on the life-support panel!
     Here, let's override@' "You are in no danger," Mohs smiled.  "The 
two of you helped me, and now I shall help you.  We mean you no harm."
     "Swell.  Can you fend off the governor and his friend the 
sorcerer?"
     "I can tell you that the governor is alone, trying to use the 
Mindharp, while Gepta is on his way from Rafa V. He ought to be down 
any minutes but he won't be coming to the spaceport. Lando turned to 
look at the old man, no longer bent and wizened.  He was still old, but 
it lent him dignity and authority now.
     The tattoo of the Key-the Mindharp, Lando realized-was darker now, 
stood out more sharply on the old man's forehead.
     It practically glowed.
     "Are there any more like you?"  Lando asked.
     "No, Captain, I am the only one.  I am all there ever was, of my 
generation.  The burden was to be passed on next year, but here I am."
     "Master, what are you talking aboutt' "Quiet, Vuffi Raa.  Watch 
the temperature in that reactor!"
     "I assure you, Captain, everything is under control.  You'd 
realize that, if you truly know our secrets."
     "I know your secrets, Mohs, believe me.  There never were any 
pre-Republican colonists here, right?"
     "That is correct, Captain."
     "But what are you saying, Master?  If@' "Nor were there really any 
Toka.  Or would that be tellingt' "Minter-" "Quiet!  You people are the 
Sharu.  It's written all over your walls inside the pyramid.  You're 
humanoid and very, very advanced.  I don't know what scared you into 
this masqueradeand I'm willing to bet you don't either!"
     "Master, will you please exp@n@' "All right, all right.  Mohs will 
correct me over the rough spots.  I hardly understand contemporary 
Tramniic, let alone an ancient-and thoroughly synthetic-version.  But 
this is the gist: something pretty scary threatened the Sharu.
     Something that liked to eat hyperadvanced cultures but that 
wouldn't bother with savages.
     "So, a vast computer system was created.  that's all the socalled 
ruins in the system.  The Sharu, before the threat, lived in cities not 
terribly different from our own, and they're probably concealed beneath 
the monumental architecture tooalong with the intelligence of the 
Sharu.  Hand me that checklist a moment."
     "Very good, Captain, very good."
     "You bet it's good.  The life-orchards weren't created to increase 
intelligence or longevity.  They were created to suck it away from the 
population.  I'll bet three-quarters of everybody's mind on the planet 
is stored inside that pyramid and other buildings like it.  That's so 
succeeding generations would be disguised as savages, too.  But, when 
the crystals were separated from the trees by the colonists, the things 
absorbed small amounts of intelligence and life-force from the ambient 
environment, then fed them back to whoever wore the crystal-an 
accidental and unlooked-for effect."
     The old man nodded.  "The colonists' harvesting did no harm.
     What was of real value was stored in the buildings."
     "The buildings," Lando continued, "may be the biggest computer 
system ever created.  When this colony was founded, the computer 
searched our records, came up with a missing pre-Republican colony 
ship, and decided to use that as a cover story.  The Sharu-reduced to 
mere Tokahood-were poor savage brutes, 'broken' by their experience 
with the n-dghty Sharu.
     "I just couldn't swallow it.  What were the Sharu afraid olp.
     How could they be so mighty, and yet-" "I still don't know the 
answer to that, Captain.  it was expunged from the records, out of 
sheer terror, I think.  It womes me. "It ought to.  Ready, Vuffi 
Raa?"
     "I think so, Master.  Yes, we're ready."
     Another tremor rocked the ship.
     "Mer's trying to use the Harp again.  Boy, will he be 
disappointed.  It's a trap, isn't it, Mohs?"
     "I'm afraid so," the old man admitted gravely.  'The legends were 
spread among my people in order to entice members of another 
intelligence species into finding and using the Harp.
     That way, we'd know that it was safe to come out of hiding."
     "Your giant computer system will regurgitate all those smarts it's 
been storing for thousands of years, the covers will be stripped off 
your cities-there's going to be a good deal of earth-moving around 
here, isn't there?"
     "All over the system."
     "And when the dust clears, the Sharu will be back in control.
     Well, considering the governor and the nature of the colony here, 
it can't happen too soon for me.  We're leaving.
     Better jump off, Mohs.  I'd say it's been nice to know you, but I 
hate being used, by governors, sorcerers, or representatives of 
sen-filost civilizations."
     Rokur Gepta swept down upon the governor's office building.  As 
he'd expected, guards were posted all over the miniature landing field.
     He cleared them away with a burst of the craft's blasters and set 
down lightly amid the smoking remains.  The ground trembled again, and 
this time it didn't stop.  Gepta hurried down to the penthouse office.
     He thrust the doors aside and walked into a burst of radiance.
     Gepta was thrown against the corridor wall as energy streamed out 
all around him.  He squinted his eyes, employed certain other 
protections, and gazed briefly at the governor's desk.
     The Mindharp of Sharu shone far too brightly to be looked upon, 
even by the sorcerer.  Behind it, his fat hands wrapped around the 
base, stood the governor, his mouth and eyes opened wide, frozen, 
paralyzed.
     And doomed.
     Even as Gepta watched, both governor and Harp began to melt, to 
fuse, showering the room and hall with deadly radiation.  He regained 
his feet and ran back up as the earth tremors redoubled.
     It was a scene from hell.  All around, as far as the horizon, the 
giant forms left by the Sharu were shifting, fusing, melting like the 
Harp or, occasionally, detonating rather spectacularly.
     Something else was rising from the rubble, something Gepta didn't 
want to see.
     He leaped into his scoutship but neatly tumbled it off the roof 
before he got it properly airborne.  Ahead, toward the spaceport, an 
ungainly crustacean-shaped object lifted from the runway.
     Gepta cursed.
     He heeled the fighter around, then aimed it straight for the 
Millennium Falcon.  Closing, closing, he laid a thumb on the firing 
stud, his crosshairs on the unsuspecting freighter.
     Two things happened.
     Aboard the Falcon, another thumb rode another stud.  Energy 
streaked toward the fighter Vuffi Raa had noticed landing on the roof.
     The Falcon's radar was good, and they'd both been alert against 
flying debris.
     I may not be much of a pilot yet, but I can shoot, Lando thought.
     Almost simultaneously, a small obelisk of Sharu manufacture 
exploded beneath Gepta's fighter, driving fragments into the small 
craft.  The explosion staggered the scout, disabling it but throwing it 
from the path of Lando's beam.
     Seconds later, Rokur Gepta clambered from the wreckage as the 
Millennium Falcon soared away, safe, and with a precious load: the last 
life-crystals ever to be harvested in the Rafa System.  Lando would be 
very, very rich.
     Gepta shook a fist at the departing ship.
     Someday ...
     LANDO CALRISSIAN AND THE FLAmEwIND OF OSEON  And this book is 
dedicated to J. Neil Schulman and Victor Koman, a pair of cards if 
there ever was one.
     HE WAS SLIGHTLY over a meter tall, from the faceted wide-angle 
lens glowing redly atop his highly polished pentagonal body to the fine 
feathery tips of his chromium-plated tentacles.
     Of these, there were five, which he felt was as it should be.
     After all, hadn't he been created in the image of his 
manufacturers?
     He thought of himself as Vuffi Raa, an unsentimental designation 
from a different numbering system and a different language, half a 
galaxy ago.  It served well enough as a name.
     At the moment, he was in a hurry.
     The tree-lined Esplanade of Oseon 6845 was a broad, jungly, 
cobblestoned thoroughfare built exclusively for pedestrian traffic, no 
matter what the individual sentient's personal means of locomotion.  It 
was equipped with an artificial gravity field three meters deep to 
accommodate the most attenuated of species.  It was lined on both sides 
with elegantly restrained shops to accommodate the very richest.
     It has been said that the commercial footage along the domed 
Esplanade of Oseon 6845 is the most expensive in the known universe.
     And that the patrons strolling its landscaped and sculptured 
kilometers are the wealthiest.  Vuffi Raa didn't know about that@ rare 
failing of information on his part.  In the first place, he hadn't the 
appropriate statistics ready to hand (in a manner of speaking).  And if 
compelled to base his.  opinion on an n of one-the single case with 
which he was intimately familiar-he'd have had to hold the opposite was 
true.
     Not everybody there was rich.  Not everybody there had come to buy 
and sell.
     Which conclusion neatly brought his musings back around to the 
reason for his present urgency: his current master, latest of what had 
been, until recently, an embarrassingly lengthy list of thoroughly 
dissatisfied customers.
     Freebie-reeep!
     From the heavily planted median on the Esplanade, an entity that 
might have been a songbird warbled noisily in what may have been a 
bush, momentarily distracting the little robot.  You could never tell.
     In the plush, cosmopolitan resort, the creature doing the singing 
might well be a photosynthetic vegetable attempting to attract pollen 
carriers, and the foliage it perched in, a soil-rooted animal.  The 
entire Oseon System was like that, a rich-man's playground, cleverly 
intended by those who had ordained its construction to be full of 
surprises.
     But then, so was life itself Their very presence in this 
overstuffed watering hole, his and his master's, was ample testimony to 
that.
     Vuffi Raa forced his jumbled thoughts back into relevant channels.
     He was a Class Two droid, with intellectual and emotional 
capacities roughly equaling those of organic sapients.  And an 
uncorrected tendency in his programming to let his mind wander and to 
mix his metaphors on occasion.  It was a price he paid for being one 
of the rare machines abroad with an imagination.
     At the moment, it was a luxury he couldn't afford.  He held the, 
blackened evidence before his eye again as a renlinder.  It was a 
fist-sized chunk of scorched metal and fused silicon.  A few hours ago, 
it had been a neutrino hybridizer, a delicate and critical component in 
the sub-lightspeed drive of a certain class and vintage of starship.
     Now it looked like a niicrocredit's worth of asteroid 
rm'netailings.
     Unconscious of a gesture he had acquired from long association 
with human beings, Vuffi Raa raised his free tentacle to scratch at the 
upper portion of his five-sided torso-the closest thing he had to a 
head.  The little droid was pentadextrous, having no preference as to 
which of his five sinuous limbs he used for getting around on, which he 
used for holding, carrying, or manipulating objects.  Such as 
treacherous lumps of recently molten quartz and platinum.
     A well-rounded, versatile, and radially symmetrical fellow was 
Vuffi Raa.
     And a very worried one.
     lEs brisk but absentminded pace carried him past a leafshaded 
decorative pond where something between a green mammal and a small 
many-joinied insect dabbled a lineactually an extension of its right 
front leg-into half a meter of water.  There was a modest ripple, a 
splash, then a snap!  The creature reeled in a tiny, colorful fish, 
devouring it on the spot and spitting the bones back into the water.
     Vuffi Raa never even noticed.
     At long last he reached the expensively decorated surface of the 
exclusive Hotel Drofo.  With a brotherly salute, entrance Vuffi Raa 
strode past the door-being, a robot painted in the garish gold and 
purple livery of the establishment, and went directly to one of the 
eight down-shafts leading into the hotel proper.
     On an asteroid, even one like Oseon 6845, and even where a 
first-rate hotel is concerned, surface area comes dear.  Volume is 
cheap.
     Selecting LOBBY on the miniature display beside the entrance to 
the down-shaft, he waited for the elevator to take his measure, then 
fell-"drifted" might be a better word-at a fraction of the augmented 
surface acceleration of the asteroid gently downward several dozen 
meters, coming at last to a cushioned rest at the bottom of the shaft.
     He stepped out into the whispery bustle of the underground hotel.
     Plenty of other droids were in evidence, mingling freely with the 
humans, humanoids, and nonhumans present.  Most of the automata here 
were in service of one sort or another; they were unusually conspicuous 
in their number and visibility.
     The galaxy over, robots were the object of harsh and persistent 
prejudice.  The Oseon was different, however.  Cynics pointed out that 
neither its current inhabitants nor their ancestors were ever Rely to 
have worried much about losing a job.
     The place was filled with exiled and vacationing nobility.
     Captains of industry, active and retired, gravitated here, along 
with majors, colonels, and generals.  Mercantile-and literalpirates who 
had purchased themselves a little class, sometimes from that selfsame 
deposed aristocracy, rubbed shoulders and less human body parts with 
media stars from a million different systems.
     The little droid knew the man he was seeking would be in one of 
the small, comfortably furnished gan-dng salons just off the Grand 
Lobby, here on the first, or bottom, floor.  Finding the room wouldn't 
be any problem, but getting in might be.
     Gamblers tended to be jealous of their priv I acy.  He 
"shouldered" his way through the richly dressed crowd, thinking about 
the news he had for his master-and how very reluctant he was to deliver 
it.
     A human being can only stand so much bad news.
     It had begun with an adventure.  His master had won a starship-a 
small converted freighter, actually, called the Millennium Falcon-in 
yet another card game, and had whimsically decided to add "captain" to 
his other professional titles: gwnbler, rogue, and scoundrel.  He was 
proud of every one of them, though he preferred "con artiste" to what 
the authorities usually had upon the tips of their sharp and 
unforgiving tongues.
     He'd been a perfectly terrible pilot in the beginning.  Vuffi Raa, 
an accomplished ship-handler by virtue of inbuilt programming, was 
gradually taking care of that in two ways: piloting the Falcon when the 
need arose; teaching his master to do it for himself whenever they had 
time.
     He'd won Vuffi Raa in a card game, as well.  That had triggered a 
series of events that culminated with their leaving the Rafa System 
with the very last full cargo of the fabulous lifecrystals ever 
harvested there.  The only load ever removed from the system legally by 
a private cargo vessel.
     And they were rich.
     Temporarily.
     Yet his master hadn't seemed very happy, filling out 
landing-pennit forms, going over bills of lading, figuring overhead and 
profit margin.  Even with Vuffi Raa along to make the workload lighter 
... It was too much like going straight.  The gambler yearned to 
practice his original profession once again.
     Thus, when the invitation had suddenly arrived out of nowhere to 
come and play sabacc in the Oseon, where the pickings were the richest 
in the galaxy, the pair's free-lance cargo days had come to an abrupt 
and highly welcome end.  They'd blazed across a hundred parsecs to be 
here on time.  The Falcon's speed, in competent tentacles, was 
legendary.  And here they were.
     Trouble was, someone had attempted to assure that they be not only 
here, but also back in the Rafa, out on the Edge, down at the Core, and 
everyplace else tiny little pieces of their respectively organic and 
mechanical existences could be scattered.
     That someone, it would appear, didn't like them very much.
     Vuffi Raa approached the heavy antiqued wooden double doors.
     Standing before these was an enormous humanoid in an

     JIL

     elegantly tailored groundsuit at least four sizes too large for 
any other two men in the hotel.  Beneath the hulking fellow's stylish 
armpits the robot could make out the twin bulges of a pair of 
Imperial-issue blasters.
     "Excuse me, gentlebeing," offered the little droid, "I have a 
message for one of the players inside."  He produced a card his master 
had given him for use in just such a circumstances To Vuffi Raa's 
overwhelming relief, the bouncer/bodyguard looked at the holocard as 
the letters of instruction danced across its surface, nodded politely, 
and stepped aside.  The doors parted slightly; Vuffi Raa squeezed past 
them.
     The air inside the small, luxurious chamber was full of smoke, at 
least a dozen different, mingling odors, despite the best efforts of 
its starship-class life-support systems.  In the center, seated at a 
table ringed with players and kibitzers, lounged his master, 
resplendent in tasteful and expensive velvoid sen-dformal shipclothes.
     The robot approached, waiting until the hand was finishedhis 
master raked in a substantial pile of credit tokens-then tugged gently 
at the hem of his short cloak.
     "Master?"
     The figure turned, looked down.  White teeth in a dark face, 
irresistible smile, intelligent and mischievous eyes.
     "What is it, Vuffi Raa-and how many times have I asked you not to 
call me master?"
     They were both whispering against a noisy background.
     The droid held up the oddly shaped clump of debris for his 
master's inspection.  "There wasn't any spontaneous breakdown in the 
phase-shift controls aboard the Falcon, Master.
     I'm afraid you were right, that this makes two such incidents."
     His master nodded grimly.  "So it was a bomb."
     "Yes, Master, someone is trying to murder you."
     LANDO CALRISSIAN SHOOK his head ironically and grinned.
     He had good reason.  His first evening in the Oseon, his first 
sabacc game, and already he was ahead some twenty-three thousand 
credits.
     The dashing young gambler stood, dressed impeccably at an hour 
when most people were rumpled and tired, before a fulllength mirror, 
stroking the brand-new mustache he'd begun only a few weeks ago, when 
things looked so much bleaker.
     Yes, by the Core, it did give him a certain panache, a certain 
elan, a certain ...
     And without filling out so much as a single form in triplicate (if 
that was logically possible)-his mind was drifting back again to the 
money tucked into the pockets of his velvoid sen-iiforinals-without 
acquiring a permit, easement, license, variance, or Certificate of 
Mother-May-1.
     Here was one fat bankroll that wasn't going to evaporate when he 
wasn't watching it!
     What added amusement to triumph was that sabacc was a game 
considerably more complex and infinitely riskier than the 
entrepreneurship he'd been attempting since he'd acquired the 
Millennium Falcon.  It called for quicker judgment, greater courage, 
and a more sophisticated understanding of human (in a broadly tolerant 
manner of speaking) nature.
     So why was he so casually accomplished at the former and so 
miserably rotten at the latter?
     He shrugged to himself, crossed the hotel room from the door he'd 
closed and locked securely not very many moments before.
     Let's see-just the most recent example.  He'd won the Falcon and 
Vuffi Raa, then proceeded to cam a handsome fee (work he'd been coerced 
into doing) that, by all rights, ought to have set him up for life.
     Orchard crystals from the Rafa System had never been cheap to 
begin with.  Humanoids who wore them found their life spans extended, 
their intelligence somewhat enhanced.  They were both valuable and 
rare.
     They grew in only one place in the universe.
     Lando had known, when he and the hot had quit the Rafa, that there 
would be no more life-crystals, at least for a while.
     The colonial government there had been overthrown by insurgent 
natives.  Thus, he'd held out for the highest possible prices.  Yet, 
somehow, the money-several millions-had seemed to disappear before his 
very eyes, eaten up in spacecraft maintenance, docking charges, taxes, 
surtaxes, sursurtaxes, and bribes.  Every time he closed a deal, no 
matter what margin he'd built in at the beginning, he wound up losing.
     It didn't seem sensible: the more money he earned, the poorer he 
became.
     If he got any richer, he'd be broke.
     Perhaps he simply hadn't been playing in the right league.
     One of the rules of this new game (new to Lando, anyway) was that 
they didn't tell you the rules until it was too late.  His figurative 
hat was off to anyone who could survive in the world of business, let 
alone prosper.
     A small noise in the next room alerted him.  He peeked in: Vuffi 
Raa was laying out tomorrow's wardrobe for him.  He'd told the little 
fellow a hundred times that it wasn't necessary.
     He needed no valet, and long ago had begun thinking robot as a 
friend more than anything else.  But exactly like a good friend (or 
consummate servant), the droid understood the gambler's need for some 
time alone without conversation, while he unwound from the evening's 
tense preoccupations.
     Lando suspected that Vuffi Raa actually wanted to discuss the bomb 
he'd discovered-the second since their last planetfall.
     Well, morning was time enough for that.  He closed the connecting 
door softly and returned to his private thoughts.
     A second irony struck him as he watched the bed turn itself down.
     He shucked out of his dressy bantha-hide knee boots and reclined, 
one foot dangling over the edge of the bed to the floor.
     The very individuals who had prospered most, either at legitimate 
businesses like freight hauling, or shadier ones such as smuggling (the 
avocation, in fact, for which the Falcon had originally been 
constructed), those who had made their way to the top, lived here in 
the Oseon, where one Lando Cahissian, a dismal failure by their 
standards, experienced little difficulty at all separating them from 
their hard-won money.
     It was their own fault.  They'd invited him ...
     Fire streaked from the starboard weapons turret of the Millennium 
Falcon.
     In desperate haste, Lando swung the quad-guns down and to the left 
as the drone squadron whooshed by, their own energyguns coloring the 
misted space around the freighter.
     "Missed!  Vuffi Raa, hold her a little steadier!"
     The ship ducked and swooped, narrowly avoiding being skewered in a 
cross fire as the drone fighters split up, attacking from both sides.
     "Master there are too many of-good shooting, sir!"
     The little droid's voice issued from an intercom beside Lando's 
ear.  The gambler made an imaginary chalk mark on a purely mental 
scoreboard, manhandling the guns around for another shot.  The drone 
he'd splattered was an incandescent and expanding ball of dust and gas, 
augmenting an already dirty region of space.
     Anyone else might have whooped!  victoriously.
     Lando ftimed in the transparent gun-bubble.
     All right, so it had been his idea to shortcut through this small 
nebulosity on the way to the next port.  Blast it all, he was carrying 
valuable, somewhat perishable cargo.  Crates of wintenberry jelly.
     Stacks of mountain bollem hides.  Expensive tinklewood fishing 
rods.
     In short, the produce of a frontier planet.  His corner-cutting 
could save them precious days, compared to routes preferred by 
scheduled cargo haulers.
     The shields pulsed with coruscating brilliance.  They were taking 
hits again!
     He slewed the quad-guns hard, pressed the double triggers.
     Bolts of ravening energy rammed directly into a pair of tiny 
unmanned fighters screan-dng toward the ship.  One exploded, the other, 
severely damaged, cork-screwed crazily out of Lando's line of vision.
     Vuffi Raa rolled the ship, skated into a wild, stomachwrenching 
yaw, adroitly avoiding a direct hit.  They were a good team together, 
Lando thought.
     Besides, it wasn't much as nebulosities go.  Even deep inside the 
scruffy patch of gas, a few molecules every cubic meter produced very 
little visible clouding.  They did slow a ship down, however, making it 
dangerous to use the faster-thanlight drive.  That's probably why the 
regular lines avoided the place.  But Lando, calculating distance over 
time, had figured that, even at a substantial reduction from 
lightspeed, they'd still gain time and profit thereby.
     He'd been wrong.
     Six more meter-diameter drones bore directly for his turret.
     The enemy seemed to have an endless supply.  Lando caught a glance 
of their mother vessel, a pirate lying off and directing the attack in 
relative safety.  She was approximately four times the displacement of 
the Falcon, clumsily built, a large sphere attached to a slightly 
smaller cylinder, the whole awkward assembly patched and mottled by 
hard use and long neglect.
     He could imagine half a hundred crew-beings, hunched over their 
drone panels in a dimly lit control center.  They were probably as 
broke and desperate as he was.
     Waiting until the last possible moment, he let loose all four 
barrels on maxium power and dispersal.  Lights dimmed aboard the 
Falcon.  Two saucer-shaped drones blossomed into fireballs, the third 
was holed severely.  The fourth, fifth, and sixth zoomed over his head 
in ragged formation, past the gun-blister, and out of his visual range 
before he could tell what he'd done to them.  He released the triggers.
     Full illumination sprang forth again.
     Nebulosities were good for hiding spaceships.  The gas, dust, and 
ions, the magnetic and static fields made a hash of longrange sensor 
instrumentation.  That's they'd woun up in this confounded"Vuffi Raa!"
     Lando shouted suddenly.  "Close on the pirate herself!  I've had 
enough of this.  Give me a pass at her reaction-drive system!"
     "Very well, Master" There was doubt in the robot's doubly 
electronic voice-not concenung Lando's combat abilities.  Quite the 
contrary.  It was simply that the droid's most ftindeanental 
programming forbade him to take the life of a mechanical or organic 
sapient being.
     He was straining his cybernetic ethics severely even now, conning 
a fighting ship.  Yet strain them he did.
     In a long, graceful arc with a little flip on the end, the Falcon 
soared toward the pirate, taking her by surprise.  A few guns warmed 
up feebly-too late@ their startled operators switched attention from 
remote-control panels to fire-control systems.  The tiny flying weapons 
might be adequate against an unarmed freighter or a pleasure yacht 
that stumbled into the cloud, but they hadn't been conceived or built 
for mortal engagement with a vessel like the Falcon, half pirate ship 
herself and bristling with more guns than her crew could handle all at 
once.
     Trusting his ship's shields, Lando bore down upon the quadgun, 
drilling its quadniple high-power bemns at the reactiondrive outlet at 
the far end of the pirate's spherical section.
     Once again the Falcon's interior lights dimmed, and for the first 
time, it occurred to Lando that his heavy trigger finger was costing 
something..However, the enemy's thrust tubes were beginning to glow.
     First red, they quickly became orangeyellow.  They'd been molded 
to withstand heat and pressure right enough, but not from the outside 
in.
     Suddenly, a starburst appeared in space between him and the 
pirate.
     "Good shooting, Master You got another one!"
     "Nonsense, I didn't even-Great Merciful Heavens!"
     All around them, balls of fiery gas stood out against the starry 
background.  The drone fleet was destroying itself!  The pirate 
swiveled on her center of gravity, glowed savagely from her own 
internal fires, and streaked away.
     At the extreme end of her flight line, toward the edge of the 
nebulosity, Lando could make out the flash as she shifted into 
faster-than-light.  It was a deadly risk even so; they must be 
frightened badly.
     "Well, well!  Stand down from Battle Stations," he informed his 
mechanical partner, 111,11 be up to the cockpit in a n-dnute.  Put some 
coffeine on, will you?  And by the way, Vuffi Raa .  .
     He unstrapped himself from the gun-chair webbing, turning his 
captain's hat-the one with all the golden braid-around the right way, 
and zipped his shipsuit up a couple of inches.
     "Yes, Master?"
     "Don't call me Master!"
     Stepping into the broadly curving main corridor, Lando passed the 
sublight-drive area of the Millennium Falcon.  As if sprouting from the 
floor, there stood a tapered chromium snakelike entity, about a meter 
long, tending the control panel.
     At its slenderest end, it branched into five slim, delicate 
"fingers" that twisted knobs and adjusted slide-switches.  In the 
center of the "Palm," Lando knew, was a small glassy red eyespot.
     Farther along, where a cluster of instruments comprised the radar 
and other detection devices, another metallic serpent stood watch.
     There were three more like it elsewhere in the ship, giving 
attention to sensitive areas that could not be handled from the cockpit 
monitors.
     Up front, Lando flopped into the left-hand seat, a pridepreserving 
. concession tacitly made between himself and the real pilot of the 
vessel.  It lay in the other seat, a pentagonshaped slab of bright 
silvery-colored metal and electronics.  A large lens pulsed redly at 
the top.  The object was strapped down firmly to the seat.  One of the 
"snakes" hovered over an instrument panel, half a meter away.
     "Vuffi Raa, you've got to pull yourself together," Lando chuckled, 
fumbling under the panel.  He brought out a slim cigar and lit it, 
eyeing the armless, legless contraption next to him and waiting for a 
reaction.  Outside, the fog began to disperse as their own reaction 
drives brought them to the margin of the nebulosity.  Was he imagining 
things, or was the plastic window transparency slightly pitted?  More 
dust in the region than he'd calculated-and another expensive repair.
     The snake floated downward, attached itself to one flat side of 
the pentagon, and waggled at the gambler.  "Master, that wasn't funny 
thefirst hundred times you said it."  Vuffi Raa began unstrapping his 
torso from the copilot's seat, one-tentacled.
     From the passageway outside, another snake drifted in, settled in 
the chair, and linked itself, becoming the second of Vuffi Raa's limbs 
to rejoin his body.  Lando looked over the ship's instrumentation, and 
his glow of combative satisfaction evaporated completely.
     "By the Edge!  Look at those power-consumption gauges' Those 
quad-guns are expensive to shoot!  We would have used less power going 
the long way around!"
     It was a hell of a note, Lando thought, when even defeating a band 
of pirates had to be calculated on the balance sheet.
     And at a loss.
     "We'll be lucky to break even on this load, do you realize that?"
     Regaining yet a third tentacle, the robot refrained diplomatically 
from pointing out that he'd opposed the shortcut in the first place.
     He hadn't known exactly why.  The big, regularly scheduled 
companies avoided the route although it took parsees and whole days off 
the run, exactly as Lando had insisted.
     On the other hand, big, regularly scheduled companies seldom 
attempted anything new or daring-which was what always made the future 
so bright for newer, smaller companies.
     Now, between the star-fog and the pirates it concealed, both of 
the partners knew what was wrong with the nebulosity.
     Fourth and fifth manipulators in place, Vuffi Raa cautiously 
punched up the interstellar drive.  The stars stretched into attenuated 
blurs and vanished.
     Yet, none of that explained what was wrong with Dilonexa X-Xlll.

     "FISHING POLES?"

     The customs agent was a small man with wiry arms and legs, knobbly 
knuckles.  He was dressed, like everybody else on that self-consciously 
agrarian planet, in bib overalls.  in his case, they were made of a 
deep green satyn, heavily creased.
     His shiny pink scalp shone through a field of close-cropped gray 
stubble.
     "You gotta be kidding, Mac!  In the first place, there ain't a 
body of water on the planet bigger'n a bathtub; we don't like to spare 
the land.  In the second place, nobody here has any time for fishing.
     An' in the third place, the native fish taste terrible-lacka trace 
metals or something."
     The sun of the Dilonexa System (a catalog number Lando didn't 
remember and hadn't bothered asking Vuffi Raa about as they'd made 
their approach) was a gigantic blue-white furnace.  The twenty-two 
planets nearest it were great places to get a suntan.  In a couple of 
microseconds.
     The outer seventeen were iceboxes.
     But the planet in the middle, at least in the view of its early 
col I onists, made it all worthwhile.  It was large, nearly twenty-five 
thousand kilometers in diameter, composed mostly of the lighter 
elements, which gave it a surface gravity not too unreasonable.  Nearly 
everything of metal had to be shipped in.
     But Dilonexa XXIII was rich, an agricultural world whose fields 
stretched unimaginable distances around its surface, providing 
foodstuffs, plastics, combustible fuel@verything with an organic base.
     Its inhabitants, fat farmers and their fatter families, had 
acquired a taste for some of the finer things in life.
     "ch was why Lando had brought his valuable, somewhat perishable 
cargo there.
     He shook his head ruefully as he watched the Dilonexan ground crew 
put fuel elements into the Falcon where it rested on the feffocrete 
apron-and gaping wounds in his credit account.
     "Well, then, how about the jelly and the hides?  Surely@' "Had a 
second cousin once named Shirley," the little man explained, scratching 
a mole under his chin and squinting up at the cloudless sky as if in 
aid to memory.  "Tried that wintenberry stuff you're haulm'.  Broke 
down with the gallopin' gosharooties.  Too many trace minerals for a 
fourth-generation colonist.  We gotta watch what we eat, us 
Dilonexicans, that's a fact."
     Lando shook his head again; it was getting to be a habit.
     "But look here, Inspector, l@' "Call me Bernie.  You wouldn't 
happen t'have a cigar on you?"
     The gambler visualized the big chest of cigars in his safe aboard 
the Falcon.  "Even if I did, they'd be from Rafa IV, a place just lousy 
with heavy metals.  Probably kill you.  What about the leather, then?
     I have a hold full of beautifully furtanned hides, and@' The 
wizened customs officer interrupted Lando again, this time with an 
upraised hand.  He pointed toward the prairie that surrounded them.  
Lando knew that virtually the entire globe was plains just like the 
scenery he saw now.  He also knew that city-sized tornados swept, 
unimpeded, around the planet's circumference-that is, they had until 
gigantic weather-control satellites had been installed.  Their potent, 
tornado-destroying energy-weaponry also made it impossible to smuggle on 
or off the planet-or to get away with unpaid bills.
     "%Vhaddya see out there, Mac?  A zillion acres of grain crop, 
that's what.  We can't eat it, but the native bovines can, an, we can 
eat them.  Lookie here!  when's the last time you saw a genuine leather 
awning?  You got it@ver on that building right there.  We got leather 
comin' out our cars.  There's a sixty-five percent import duty on 
hides, seventy-five percent on fishin' poles an' other recreational 
goodies, a hundred an' five on poisonous substances like that jelly 
you're pushin'."
     Lando groaned.  First the expensive battle with the pirates, now 
this-plus he was out his landing fees, permits, and refueling costs.
     "But say, you're Cap'n Cahissian, ain'tya, from the Millennium 
Falcon?  Gotta message for you somewhere here."  He fumbled in his 
overall pockets until he pulled out a chip with a keyboard displayed on 
its face, punched numbers and letters into it.
     "Right!  From the Oseon, it says.  That's quite a ways away, ain't 
it?  You want it now?"
     "Oh, very well," Lando answered despondently.  He didn't really 
care.  All he really wanted was a nice quiet place to he down for a 
century or two.
     "Okay, that'll be thirteen-fifty, Mac."
     Lando blinked.  So it wasn't a paid message.  Odd, and thirteen 
and a half credits seemed a little cheap for interstellar 
communication, but ... He pulled a few bills out of his pocket.
     "You don't unnerstand, Mac.  There's an import fee on interstellar 
messages here.  We figure a fella oughta be content with what's on just 
one planet, an' not go sashayin' off ... Anyway, that'll be thirteen 
hundred an' fifty credits."
     "Forget it, then," said Lando in disgust.  "It's probably just The 
little man grinned up at him.  "There's a two-thousandcredit penalty 
for not pickin' up interstellar messages.  Ain't neat t'leave 'em lyin' 
around."
     In the comparative quiet and sanity of what passed for a lounge 
aboard the Millennium Falcon, Lando inserted the coded chip into a 
playback machine.  An overstuffed, cheerful face materialized above the 
instrument.
     "To Captain Lando Calrissian of the Millennium Falcon: greetings 
and salutations!  I am Lob Doluff, Administrator Senior of the Oseon 
SystenL You haven't heard of me, I'll wager, but, my dear boy, I have 
heard of you!"
     The recording continued: "Your reputation as a player of sabacc is 
perhaps wider spread and mom salubrious than you know.  My associates 
and 1, a small group of fanciers of the game, would like to invite you 
here at your convenience, to play with us.  If you are interested, 
please name the time and stakes.  Every courtesy will be extended to 
you during your stay with us.  My very warmest and anticipatory regards 
to you Lob Doluff, signing off.  " A grin began to spread itself 
across Lando's face.  In that context, he could cut his losses.  All he 
needed was a small stake when he got to the Oseon.  He thumbed a 
communicator switch.
     "Vuffi Raa?"
     The robot was below, out on the concrete, supervising the last of 
the fueling operation.  "Yes, Master?"  came his voice.
     "Don't call me Master."' He'd sell the fishing rods to 
somebody-diere wouldn't be a scheduled import duty if there wasn't some 
market, no matter how small.  Too bad no one needed tinklewood radio 
antennas.  Not surprisingly, he'd learned the agricultural planet would 
pay top credit for the contents of his ship's waste-cycling system.
     "Get up here and give me a hand, will you?  We've got a thousand 
hides to chop up and several hundred crates of jelly to put down the 
disposal."
     He'd used his own communications equipment, once they were out of 
the atmosphere of Dilonexa XXIII, saving several hundred credits in the 
process.  Doluff was delighted that Lando was on the way, and promised 
a high-stakes game in the most luxurious of surroundings.  Lando shaved 
and showered, dressed himself in civilian clothing, though they were 
still several days' transit from the Oseon.  He simply wanted to get 
the feeling back of doing what he was properly cut out to do.  As Vuffi 
Raa droided the controls, Lando sat in the lounge practicing with the 
cards.
     There were seventy-eight of these, in five suits: Sabres, Staves, 
Flasks, and Coins, plus the special suit of face cards with negative 
values.  The object was to build a two- or threecard hand adding up to 
twenty-three, no more.  What made it especially difficult was that the 
cards were "smart"-each was, in fact, a sophisticated electronic chip 
capable of changing randomly to another value, while the card it 
replaced changed to something else.  This made for a fast-paced, 
nerve-wracking game combining elements of skill and fortune.
     Lando thought of it as relaxing.
     He held up a card, watched it blur and shift and refocus, from 
Commander of Staves to Three of Coins.  In the surface field of a 
gaming table, the cards would retain their identities.
     This was necessary for scoring: imagine tossing down a perfect 
twenty-three, only to have it transmute itself into a losing hand.
     Another card, the Seven of Sabres.  It stayed its old familiar 
self for rather a longish time, finally changed into Endurance, one of 
the negative cards.  Lando shuffled it back into the deck.
     The Oseon, he thought: I should know a great deal more about it 
and its people.  Principally, what the mffic will bear.
     He turned from the cards to a datalink, punched a few buttons.
     There it was: oh, yes!  While it might be remarkable for its rich 
inhabitants, it was downright famous for its seasonally spectacular 
scenery.
     Oseon was the home of the Flainewind.
     Many stellar systems have asteroid belts, where whole planets have 
come unglued or never quite managed to coalesce.
     Circular zones occupied by rocks rather than worlds, their 
constituents could range in size from sand grains to objects 
hundreds@yen thousands-of kilometers in extent.  Some few systems had 
morr than one such belt.
     The Oseon had nothing else.
     In the Oseon there were no planets at all in the proper sense of 
the word.  Not even the Core knew what disaster had taken place there, 
perhaps billions of years before the advent of humankind.  Maybe a 
rogue star had passed too close, its gravity well disrupting the 
planet-forming process.  Maybe some unique element in the makeup of the 
system had caused the planets to blow themselves up.
     Perhaps there had been an ancient, alien war.
     Whatever the cause, the Oseon sun was now surrounded by seven 
broad bands of floating debris, billions upon billions of subplanetary 
bodies.  The largest of these worldlets, Oseon 6845, was an 
artificially honeycombed mountain seven hundred kilometers in diameter, 
filled with luxury hotels, nightspots, and palatial residences.  Other 
rocks in other belts had been converted into estates for the rich and 
supenich.  There was plenty of room.
     All of this, while quite extraordinary, was not in itself 
sufficient to turn the place into a five-star tourist attraction.
     But once a year (by what reckoning Lando forgot even as he read 
it), the Oseon System's sun flared in a peculiar manner (giving rise to 
the theory about a unique element blowing up the planets).  As the 
flares tore streamers of excited vapor from the nearest of the 
asteroids, the entire system fluoresced, pulsed, resonated, generating 
enormous bands of shifting color, fairy brilliance, millions of 
kilometers long and wide, like the spokes of an enormous wheel.  Colors 
ranged across the humanly visible spectrum, exceeding it broadly at 
both ends.
     There was, very possibly, nothing else quite so impressively 
beautiful in the known universe as the Flamewind of Oseon.
     Lando did a rapid calculation: yes, if his luck ran well for long 
enough, he and Vuffi Raa would be there at the right time.  Perhaps 
that had been intended by Lob Doluff as an incentive of sorts.  How 
nice: a kind of bonus they could bothK,4BLOMMMMM!
     The Millennium Falcon pitched end over end with sudden violence.
     Through the ports, stars whirled crazily about them in a 
meaningless pattern.  Alarms went off, filling the cabin with an 
ear-splitting wail.  Smoke began seeping into the room as random bits 
and pieces-Lando's cards, his cigars, an old pair of socks@lung in odd, 
unpredictable places, responding to the prin-fitive artificial gravity 
imposed on the ship by its wild head-over-heels spin.
     "Vuffi Raa!"
     Grasping the nearest bolted-down furniture, Lando shouted at the 
intercom.  "What in the name of the Eternal was that?"
     There was no response.
     Pulling himself hand over hand against the nonsensically vectored 
drag, Lando made slow, unsteady progress to the bridge.  Klaxons beat 
upon his head, their noise a tangible thing.  The final turn of 
corridor was like crawling up a vertical sewer pipe, each rung of the 
emergency ladder coming with greater difficulty as he climbed above the 
ship's new center of gravity.
     Once in the cockpit, he climbed exhaustedly into his seat and 
strapped himself in, trying without much success to catch his breath.
     Rendered virtually invisible by their speed, Vuffi Raa's tentacles 
were flying over the controls.  It must be some emergency, thought 
Lando, if even the multitalented robot was too busy now to talk.  To 
the continued tune of shrilling alarms, Lando began assisting him, 
newly acquired knowledge coming sure and true to his fingertips.
     First, they stabilized the ship's insane changes of attitude.  Up 
became up once again, down, down.
     Next, they located the source of the explosion.  It was in the 
bottommost level of the Falcon, seemingly just under the belly skin.
     They triggered cannisters of firefoam, then jettisoned the 
resultant mess into open space.  Temperature indicators relaxed, a few 
red lights winked to green.  The alarms shut off-, a deafening silence 
reigned.
     Finally, Vuffi Raa laid the proper course back in, and they were 
on their way to the Oseon once again, although at something less than 
normal interstellar cruising speed.
     "How bad is the damage?"  Lando was already unstrapping himself He 
wiped a shaking hand over his dampened forehead.
     Vuffi Raa looked over the control panel, several sections of which 
were still ablaze.  with red and yellow lights.  "It would appear, 
Master, to be superficial.  The difficulty began when I shifted into 
faster-than-light drive.  We shall have to inspect it close up, 
however.  I don't trust the remote sensors."
     "Very well," the gambler answered, "let's get below.  I'll put on 
a pressure suit and@' "Master, it is standard procedure in such 
instances for one crew member to remain at the controls, while the 
other@' "All right, then," Lando said, a trifle irritated, "you stay 
here.  I'll suit up and@' "Master, I can operate perfectly well in a 
hard vacuum without a suit.  Explosive decompression doesn't bother me.
     And I know how to weld.  Do you?"
     The little droid, of course, showed no expression, but Lando felt 
as if there were a pair of human arms somewhere inside its shiny 
chassis, folded across an imaginary chest, beneath an unbearably smug 
grimace.
     "Have it your own way, then!  I'll still suit up.  It seems a 
sensible safety precaution, just in case you open the wrong door 
somewhere.  Keep me informed, will you-and don't call me Master!  " 
Vuffi Raa unstrapped himself from the copilot's seat, rose, and strode 
to the back of the control area.  "I'll do better than keep you 
informed, Master.  Observe that monitor nearest your left elbow."
     Swiveling his neck, Lando was suddenly seeing himself, quite 
plainly if somewhat distortedly, as if by a wide-angle lens held too 
close to its subject.  The colors seemed a bit off, and the gambler 
realized he was seeing a translation of infrared and ultraviolet 
information in addition to the usual spectrum.
     "I get it: I see what you see.  You know, this could come in very 
handy: like, say, the next time I'm in a game, and@' "But Master, that 
would be unethical!"
     "Wouldn't it just?  All right, we'll talk about it later.
     Meanwhile, let's get to work on the damage."
     They both shuffled out of the cockpit, headed toward separate 
destinations.
     Ten minutes later, Lando was again seated in his pilot's recliner, 
watching the monitor through the transparent faceplate of a spacesuit 
helmet.  He thought about opening the visor to smoke a cigar, 
remembered the magic words "explosive decompression," and desisted.
     After all, they didn't know yet how badly hurt the Falcon was.  A 
footfall, no matter how light, in the wrong place might blow a hull 
panel, whichOn the screen, Vuffi Raa had made it to the site of the 
explosion.  His viewpoint approached a heavily damaged piece of 
machinery.
     "Why, that's just one of the hydraulic jacks for the boarding 
ramp," Lando exclaimed, almost indignantly.  "There's nothing flammable 
or explosive in that section-and what does it have to do at all with 
the ultra-lightspeed drive?"
     The camera angle tilted downward.  A tentacle reached for 
something wedged between two heavy springs.  The object had to be sawed 
and twisted out of its place, then the tentacle lifted it nearer the 
robot's eye.
     "What the devil is that?"  Lando asked the intercom.
     The thing' looked like a spring itself, a section of thickgauge 
wire coiled and then twisted around into an evasively fanfiliar shape, 
rather like a doughnut, but with an extra turn, pretzel-wise.
     "It's a M6bius coil of some kind, Master," Vuffi Raa answered at 
last.  "They're used as tuners and-my word, it's an antennh.  Master, 
someone placed a device here to detect the shift into ultralightspeed.
     You see, there's a hyperware generated by the-" "Yes, yes," Lando 
interrupted impatiently.  "But what's the point of all that?"
     "There would be a considerable point, Master, if the antenna was 
connected to a controller that, in turn, was connected to a bomb."
     The gambler pondered that.  "You mean, someone just walked up and 
attached it back on Dilonexa, while we were refueling, and when we 
buttoned up for takeoff, we effectively brought it inside the ship 
ourselves?"
     "Something like that, Master."
     "A bomb.  Do you suppose they found out about the wintenberry 
jelly?"

     IV

     DEEP SPACE.
     The officially decommissioned Imperial Cruiser Wennis bored 
through the blackness like a thing alive, a hungry thing, a thing with 
the need to kill.  It had been built for that, nearly three-quarters of 
a century ago.  Now it was an obsolete machine, displaced by more 
efficient killers.
     Still, it served its purpose.
     On the bridge, a uniformed crew quietly attended to their duties.
     They were a mixed lot, officially-again, officiallycivilians.  
Many were the worst of the worst, the scum and misfits of a 
million-system civilization.  Others were the best that could be had, 
the cream of the elite.
     Like the Wennis, this, too, served a purpose.
     All were military personnel, now indefinitely detached to serve 
aboard the decommissioned cruiser.  In this, they served their 
Emperor.(although not without an occasional-extremely discreet-grumble) 
and hoped for early promotion and other rewards.
     In practicality, all served an entity who, although somewhat less 
elevated than His Imperial Majesty, was nevertheless quite as 
frighteningly impressive.  This figure stalked the bridge as well, 
draped from crown to heel in the heavy dark swathings people had come 
to associate with the mysterious and sinister Sorcerers of Tund.
     Rokur Gepta, all features save his burning eyes concealed behind 
the final windings of his turbanlike headgear, barely suppressed a 
scream.
     "Do you have the temerity to tell me you have failed again?"
     The officer he addressed was not happy with his present 
assignment.  In the first place, his uniform had been stripped of all 
rank and unit markings.  It made him feel naked.  In the second place, 
he could not understand why a battle-ready cruiser and its full crew 
were pursuing a single tiny tramp freighter.
     The officer gulped.  "I only mean to say, Sir, that the device our 
agent planted seems to have gone off prematurely.  It was supposed to 
explode, on your orders, just before atmospheric entry at their next 
port of call."
     "So you have failed twice!  You idiot, they're en route to the 
Oseon-there will be no atmospheric entry!  I have had enough of this!"
     The sorcerer made a gesture with his gloved fist.  The officer 
groaned, sweat sprang out on his forehead, and he sank to his knees.
     "You see how much more effective it is than mere pain, don't you?
     Everyone has memories, little items from their past best left 
buried: humiliations, embarrassments, mistakes ...
     sometimes fatal ones.  All the ways we have failed those we have 
loved, the ways they have failed us!"
     Gepta made another gesture.
     "No, you can think of nothing else!  The ignobility races round 
and round your mind, amplified, feeding on itself!"
     The officer's face went gray, he swayed on his knees, his back 
bowed, his clenched fists began dripping blood where the fingernails 
cut into the palms.  A little froth appeared at one corner of his mouth, 
followed by more blood as he gnashed at his lips and tongue.  Finally, 
he lost all control, collapsed in a heap and lay there, twitching, 
moaning.
     Gepta released him.
     A pair of orderlies appeared, dragged the broken man from the 
bridge.  Oddly enough, he was far from destroyed.  Gepta had noticed, 
in the past, a certain increase in efficiency, perhaps even slightly 
enhanced intelligence after one of these crises.  So why not make a 
good tool better?  The tool was not in any position to complain of the 
stresses involved.  Did it hurt a knife to grind it to razor sharpness?
     Who cared?
     Slightly invigorated himself, the sorcerer turned, strode back to 
the control chair he usually occupied on the bridge.  He was not 
captain on the Wennis, but he liked to stay on top of things.
     He sat.  Beside the chair was a pair of cages, each perhaps half a 
meter cubed.  In the first, he kept his pet.
     It was scarcely visible in its bed of gray-green muck, simply 
three stalky black legs @sting upward crookedly, curving inward with a 
certain hungry, greedy energy perhaps only Gepta could see and 
sympathize with.  The legs were sparsely hairy.
     In the second cage, Gepta kept another type of creature.
     There were half a dozen of the things; soon he'd need a new 
supply.  They were about the size of mice, very like mice, in fact, but 
with curly golden pelts and impossibly large blue eyes.  Each creature 
was sleek and clean, seemed to radiate warmth.  Each had a bushy tail, 
rather like that of a miniature squirrel.
     Suppressing a shudder, Gepta reached into the cage of the furry 
creatures.  Using a large pair of plastic tongs, he seized one-it 
squeaked with surprise and pain-and transferred it from its cage.  He 
opened the top of the other cage, dropped it into the center of the 
upraised hairy legs.
     There was a squelch!, another terrified squeak, which was cut off 
sharply, then a crunch!  Gepta let the lid drop, a warm glow inside him 
as his pet preened itself, one dark, manyjointed leg grooming another 
until all three were clean of the blood and fur of its meal.
     It did him good to imagine that the small, furry, helpless 
creature he had just destroyed was Lando Calrissian.  It did him a 
great deal of good.  Others had attempted to interfere with Gepta's 
plans before.  Only one had managed to survive.  Why, of all people, 
this insignificant vagabond, this itinerant gambler and charlatan 
should so frequently come between the sorcerer and his plans was a 
mystery.  Yet it had happened.
     Very few individuals understood how much-and how little-the 
Sorcerers of Tund believed in magic.  Even fewer were those who lived 
to pass the knowledge on to others.  Calling up the Wennis's captain's 
ugly memories, for example, amplifying them, driving out everything 
else-there was nothing to it, nothing that couldn't be done by anyone, 
given the proper electronics.
     Yet those of Tund had their own beliefs about things that 
transcended science, and Rokur Gepta was a superstitious soul.
     He believed that some perverse kind of luck, some fate, karma, 
kismet, or destiny kept throwing Cahissian in his face.  Sometimes it 
appeared the young gambler wasn't even aware that it was happening.
     Now the sorcerer would have an end to it.
     He pressed a button set in the arm of his chair.  An officer 
materialized, one a little younger than the captain.
     "You are the second in command?"  Gepta hissed.
     The officer saluted uncertainly.  He'd seen his superior dragged 
from the bridge.  "Y-Yes ... yes, sir, I amer ...
     shall we maintain our course for the Oseon, sir?"
     Rokur Gepta waited a while to reply, knowing that the prolonged 
silence would further ravel the young officer's nerves.
     In a military hierarchy there was alwa something to feel YS guilty 
about.  It was designed that way, so that an individual couldn't go 
through a single day without having to stretch, bend, or break a rule.
     This, of course, worked to the advantage of those at the top of 
the pyramid.
     Just as it was working now.
     When a fine sweat sprinkled the officer's brow, Gepta finally 
spoke.
     "No, no.  We shall digress for a short time.  I'll give you the 
heading.  Your captain will be indisposed for several hours, and I want 
to be well on my way by the time of his ... recovery."
     Many parsecs away, in space equally as deep as that which 
enveloped the cruiser Wennis, a strange apparition manifested itself.
     At its center lay the naked core of a dreadnaught-class 
ultralightspeed drive engine, pulsing, glowing, seeming to writhe with 
unholy energies as it twisted space around itself to deny the basic 
laws of reality.  A closer examination would have disclosed that it was 
old, very old, patched and welded together out of many such drive 
engines, long past obsolescence, verging on dangerous fatigue.
     Surrounding it were at least two dozen equally weary and obsolete 
fighters of nearly as many separate pedigrees, some constructed by 
inhuman races and sloppily converted.  They were connected to the drive 
core with gleaming cables that glowed and sparked and writhed in time 
to its fundamental frequency.  The fighters appeared to be towing the 
engine.  In fact, the reverse was true.  These small craft were 
incapable of making the translation to faster-than-light velocities 
themselves.
     They let the core field do it for them.
     Nfititia Leader FJyn Shanga sat before the controls of his aged 
spacecraft, his eyes unseeing, his mind turned inward.  It had been 
thus for over eleven days-Us was the most excruciatingly dull voyage he 
had ever endured.  Yet it was necessary: honor demanded it.
     Though alive with lights, his controls were, for practical 
purposes, inert, locked into the controls of all the other fighters, 
each of them in turn slaved to a cobbled-together navigational computer 
on the chive engine.
     There was nothing to do, and all the time in the universe to do 
it.
     He had long since stopped thinking of his home, a littleknown 
backwater planet, settled long generations before the present wave of 
Imperial colonization-settled even before the Old Republic had sent its 
own explorers outward.  He had long since eeased thinking about his 
fancily.  There was little point: it was highly unlikely he would ever 
see them again.
     He had devoted even less time to thinking about his present task, 
the mission of this motley group of militiamen, retired policemen, 
adventurers, and professional soldiers as ancient and obsolete as the 
craft they flew.  They were their culture's expendables.  The task was 
simple and straightforward: find someone and kill him.  It didn't 
matter that their target, their enemy, had damaged their civilization 
severely, exposed it to a galaxy-wide culture more potent and wealthy, 
stripping away its hidden safety.  It mattered less that the life they 
sought to take was the very embodiment of evil.  Evil or not, it would 
pass out of existence if they did their work right.
     If they didn't, their fates were academic.  Evil abounded in the 
universe, and one life more or less wouldn't make much difference.  The 
damage was done; this was for revenge, pure and simple-and perhaps to 
protect other helpless, defenseless worlds.
     Klyn Shanga glanced through the canopy of his fighter at the rest 
of the group clustered around the battleship engine.
     All together, they looked laughable-the same way, no doubt, their 
world had looked to the intruder.  They resembled nothing more than a 
grotesque, desiccated plant, an interstellar tumbleweed being blown 
wherever the faites would have it.  Shanga tried to take comfort in the 
notion that nothing could be further from the truth, that they were a 
spare and deadly force who would take their adversary completely by 
surprise.
     At that moment, his communications console sprang into life.
     There were no greetings, no salutations.  The beam was tight, 
intended only for the cluster of fighters.  It boomed and faded with 
the galactic drift.
     On the screen, a young military figure was visible, his gray 
uniform unadorned by rank or unit markings.  Shanga knew him to be the 
second officer of the decommissioned Imperial Cruiser Wennis.
     The figure did not speak, but only nodded.
     Keying his transmitter, Shanga asked, "He is on his way, then?"
     The figure nodded again, but hatred and fear burned in his eyes, 
just as it burned in the heart of Klyn Shanga and all his men.
     "He will be there when we arrivet' asked Shanga.
     For the first time, the officer spoke.  "There is the possibility 
of some delay@f a detour, apparently-but I believe the original course 
will be resumed in a short time."
     Klyn Shanga rubbed his calloused hands together.  In the many 
decades since his world's last war, he had been a farmer, living 
peaceably and contentedly among animals and plants and children.  Now 
that could be no more, because of the person they were discussing.  He 
knew his men were listening to the confirmation that the prey was at 
last near to hand.  They had come a long, long way to hear that news.
     "You take considerable risk," Shanga said, some sympathy seeping 
into his weathered expression.
     "It is unnecessary to discuss that.  It is well worth it.  I must 
signal off, the chance of detection grows by the second."
     Shanga nodded.  "Be well, then, and good luck."
     "The same to you."
     Many parsecs away, an impatient Rokur Gepta closed a switch and 
sat back, to ponder.  His first, most immediate inclination was to 
choke the life-better yet, the sanity-from the young pup who was 
betraying him.  Not for the first time was he grateful to himself for 
having installed the secondary system of surveillance devices in the 
personal quarters of his underlings.  The second officer had easily 
fooled the official bugs.
     Well, Gepta would have his revenge at the appropriate time.
     Now it was important to let this complication resolve itself.  He 
did not recognize the individual with whom the off icer had spoken, but 
then Gepta was very old, so old that the truth would have frightened 
most ordinary beings.  He had seen and done a lot in the many centuries 
he had lived.  He had made many enen-des, most of them now long dead.
     So should it always be.
     One thing he could do: hasten the process.  He shelved his earlier 
plans; they had had a certain hesitancy to them anyway.
     He keyed a switch on the table beside the bed in his living 
quarters.
     "Bridge?  Gepta.  Cancel previous orders.  Reinstate the course I 
previously gave you.  We will proceed directly to the Oseon."
     LoB DOLUFF was a pear-shaped man who looked larger on the 
televisor than he was in fact.  He had what Lando found him l@ self 
thinking of as a skin-tight dark beard and a naked scalp that looked as 
though it had been waxed and polished.
     His manner was ingratiating, he was an enthusiastic sabacc player, 
and a good loser.  This was something of a necessity, it appeared, 
since enthusiasm and skill do not always go together.
     Sitting across the table from Lando, Doluff managed to hold his 
cards up while resting his elbows on his protuberant stomach.  Fate had 
presented him with a Six of Flasks and a Mistress of Staves on the 
initial deal, yielding a value of nineteen.
     Courage and enthusiasm do not always go together, either.  He 
stood pat, somehow failing to take into account the fact that the 
longer he held the cards, the likelier it was they would alter 
themselves before his very eyes.
     Lando, with a Seven of Coins and the negative card, Demise, the 
eded something better than minus six to win this hand.  He dealt 
himself an Ace of Sabres, bringing the score to nine-still 
insufficient.  The next player also took a card; the Administrator 
Senior had already decided to refuse; the player to his left took a 
card; the one to Lando's right stood pat.
     Lando dealt himself another card, the betting proceeding with'each 
turn around the table.  They had anted at a thousand credits that 
night, Lando's fourth in the Oseon, and after three rounds of betting, 
an impressive amount of money lay on the table.
     Mistress of Coins.  Lando was one point short of a pure sabacc.
     He held his peace.  The cards seemed slow, tonight, reluctant to 
perform their transmutations.  He could feel his luck glowing warm 
within him.  He was relaxed.
     The player to his left took a card.  The Administrator Senior 
still stood pat.  The next player took a card-and immediately slammed 
her hand down on the table.
     "Zero!"  she grumbled in disgust.  There were three ways of going 
out in the game: exceeding twenty-three, falling below minus 
twenty-three, or hitting zero.  The player to Lando's right stood pat.
     A flicker of movement in his hand caught Lando's eye.  One of the 
cards was changing.
     "Sabacc!"  he said with satisfaction.  Demise had made itself into 
Moderation.  The odds against such consecutivity were high, and so was 
the value of the pot the young gambler raked in.
     The others tossed their cards on the table.  The deal would stay 
with Lando for another hand.
     Shuffling the cards, he considered those playing with him.
     There was, of course, Lob Doluff, too conservative a player to 
make any real gains-no threat, but a reliable source of income.  He 
should stick with managing a bureaucracy.  He wasn't cut out to be a 
gambler.
     That night they were at Doluff's estate.  The game shifted to a 
new place each night it was played.  A few kilometers outside what 
passed for a city, it was a rather large dome on the surface, filled 
with moist air and tropical plants.  The cold stars rose clearer and 
sharper than they had any natural right to do above the thick jungle 
that surrounded the players.
     The table had been placed on a broad, tiled walkway in the very 
center of the giant decorative greenhouse.  A fountain burbled 
agreeably nearby.  It was practically the only noise: the Administrator 
Senior had not seen fit to populate his garden with animals.  From time 
to time, a mechanical servant would emerge from between the heavy 
plantings to offer the players a drink.  Lando stuck with snillik, a 
thick liqueur from somewhere near the galactic Center, one he actively 
detested and therefore drank slowly and judiciously.
     Having shuffled the deck a fifth and final time, he offered it to 
the player on his right for a cut.  That worthy accepted, divided the 
deck into three stacks, and reassembled it in a different order.  Lando 
kept an eye on him; he had the look of yet another professional, 
although he'd claimed to be a retired businessman.  Perhaps he was 
both.
     Approximately of middle age, Del Cycer was extraordinarily tall 
for a human being, well over two meters.  He was also extraordinarily 
thin.  He was dressed in a bright green caftan and wore a great many 
rings on his fingers.
     "You have been recently to the Rafa, I heard it said, Captain 
Calrissian.  Is it true they've found the legendary lost civilization 
that was supposed to be there?"  Cycer's tone was conversational, 
friendly, interested.
     Lando reclaimed the cards, dealt them around the table in a 
practiced, leisurely manner.
     "It might be more accurate to say the lost civilization found us.
     I was there when it happened.  The ancient Sharu are back and 
setting up in business."
     "How dweadfuw!"  the creature to Lando's left responded.  It was 
something nasty looking, with a small trunk dangling beneath its 
bloodshot eyes.  Even more unfortunate, its blood was green.  The veins 
clashed with the deep blue of the irises.  "Does that mean theah won't 
be any mowe wife-cwystals?"
     The creature had a large Rafa orchard-crystal pendant from a chain 
around its thick, wrinkled neck.  It wasn't the only one here to sport 
the expensive gems.  Lando had learned that they collected a sort of 
ambient life force given off by all living things, collected and 
refocused it on the wearer.  He shunned them himself-, they made him 
feel like a vampire.
     "No," he answered, handing the creature its second card.  "I think 
the new management will eventually start shipping them again.  Probably 
at substantially higher prices."
     Lob Doluff took his second card without comment.  It was obvious 
to Lando that he had a winning hand-and that he'd managed to lose the 
advantage somehow before the play was over with.
     The player to the Administrator Senior's left was a female human 
being, younger than Lando, blond and not unattractive.
     She had been introduced to him as Bassi Vobah, and some vague 
reference made to her being an administrative officer.
     The young gambler wondered where she got her money.  He was 
unimpressed with her playing so far, and more than a little bothered by 
the fact that she seemed to be watching him closely.
     And not in a friendly way.
     He handed her a card, dealt to De] Cycer and himself, then, 
without looking at his cards, took a tiny sip of snillik.  "Cards?"
     he inquired.
     The trunk-being nodded, its proboscis flopping obscenely, then 
threw all three down in disgust.  "Fhirty-seven!"  it exclaimed.
     "Amazing!"
     Lob Doluff stood pat.
     Bassi Vobah took another card, said nothing.
     De Cycer accepted a card, laid his hand down gently.  "Out, 
confound it."
     "Anybody again?"  Lando asked.  Bassi Vobah responded, took the 
card, stared grimly at her hand.  This time the centerpiece was not as 
rich.  Lando finally looked at his cards: Nines, of Flasks and Staves.
     "Dealer takes one."
     Sweat began forming on Lob Doluff's shiny pate, his fingers seemed 
to tremble a little.  Finally, in an explosive gesture, he threw his 
cards on the table, face up.  'lWenty-two!  Can YOU beat that?"
     Lando glanced at Bassi Vobah.
     "Fourteen," she said.  "Forget it."
     With the Four of Sabres Lando had drawn, he, too, had twenty-two.
     He displayed the hand, picked up the deck to deal again.  "Sudden 
Den-tise."
     Doluff received the Three of Staves, breaking his hand.
     Lando could have stopped there, but flipped the next card over.
     The Idiot, worth exactly zero.  The pot was his again.
     "Let's take a break."
     Since it was his winning streak, he could recommend a rest without 
engendering resentment.  That was easy: he didn't believe in winning 
streaks, and wasn't afraid of interrupting them.  He did need to 
consider, though, whether to begin losing a few hands deliberately.
     His livelihood, well-being, ultimately his survival depended on 
maintaining goodwill-which meant losing on the small bets and winning 
quietly on the big ones.
     He'd believed such a ploy to be unnecessary in a rich-man's 
playground, but was discovering that it wasn't any different from 
playing in a hard-rock @her's bar.  Psychology, human and otherwise, 
remained the same.
     "Five minutes to breakout, Master" Once again, Lando sat in the 
lounge of the Millennium Falcon, riffling through the cards and 
thinking odd-shaped thoughts to himself.  He and Vuffi Raa had repaired 
the damage to the ship as best they could.  Luckily they carried a good 
many replacement parts in stores, and the boarding ramp seemed to be 
something that needed fairly constant upkeep in any event.  Moving 
parts.
     Then, they'd gone over the interior of the Falcon centimeter by 
centimeter, being the untrusting types that they were, looking for 
additional sabotage.  They had found nothing.  Vuffi Raa had wanted to 
climb outside and check the hull, but had been severely vetoed: the 
fields around a ship in ultralightspeed drive were not only physically 
dangerous, but the distortions of reality they created could drive even 
a droid insane.  Besides, he'd studied the manuals enough to know that 
the defense shields flowed along the surface of the ship, in the first 
few molecules of her skin.  A bomb attached outside could only do less 
than minimal damage.
     They'd take their chances.  He wasn't a gambler for nothing, and 
he had a friend's concern for the continued health of his mechanical 
sidekick.
     He realized suddenly that he hadn't replied to the intercom.
     "All right, old can-opener, I'll be up in a moment."
     This was to be Lando's first planetary landing under the tutelage 
of the talented robot.  His previous attempts, before he'd acquired 
Vuffi Raa, had been fiascoes.  Perhaps setting down on the surface 
("next to the surface" might be a more accurate description) of an 
asteroid wasn't a very spectacular exercise, but he needed the 
practice.
     This time he'd made it to the cockpit before the explosion 
occurred.
     Afterward, they spent some time untangling arms and legs from 
tentacles.  Lando hadn't had the time to strap in, and Vuffi Raa had 
momentarily unstrapped himself to check a gauge at the rear of the 
control deck.  They both wound up between the pilot's seats, stuffed 
under the control panels.
     The Millennium Falcon turned lazily, end over end.
     "Master, I hate to point this out, but that explosion was on the 
outside of the ship, in the outboard phaseshift adaptor."
     Lando studied the boards, while rubbing severaj bruises.
     "Yes, bui I think it may have been spontaneous.  Look at the 
readings on the phase-shift controls-they aren't very far away from 
where that bomb went off the other day, are they?"
     It was the droid's turn to ponder.  "I believe you are right.
     Nonetheless, had we been making a genuine planetary reentry, into 
a full atmosphere and full gravity, this accident would have destroyed 
us, Master.  Observe the remote cameras; the cowling's been torn and 
lifted.  It would have ablated away, leaving us with-2' "Uh, I think 
that will do, my friend.  I can well imagine us tumbling and burning 
out of control.  How long to fix it?"
     "Not more than a few hours, nor will it interfere with our landing 
now."
     Lando dealt the cards again, not quite as honestly as before.
     Of course it had turned out to be a second bomb.  Whoever had 
planted it apparently hadn't known their ultimate destination was to be 
an airless worldlet too small to suck them in and burn them up.  Vuffi 
Raa had found part of the control module, like that in the first bomb, 
a device built to detect a change in their velocity relative to the 
speed of light.  This one had been set to go off when they dropped 
below lightspeed.
     Somebody really meant to kill him.
     He @ to remember all the really big coups he had made at the 
gaming table.  Had he unknowingly pushed someone with enough resources 
and anger to carry out a vendetta?  Well, it appeared that caution 
might be in order, now.  And a little sleight of hand.
     He dealt the trunk-creature a Two of Staves, Lob Doluff a Ten of 
Staves, Bassi Vobah the Queen of Air and Darkness, valued at a minus 
two.  Cycer got a Master of Coins; the young gambler dealt himself a 
Commander of Coins.
     Going around a second time, he handed the alien the Star, a 
negative card worth seventeen; Doluff took a Nine of Sabres; Bassi 
Vobah got a second negative, the Evil One, which brought her count to 
n-tinus-seventeen.  He dealt to Cycer and had scarcely given himself 
the Nine of Coins for a respectable but unspectacular twenty-one, when 
the tall, thin retiree shouted "Sabacc!"  excitedly and slapped his 
original Master on the table, along with the Nine of Staves.
     Lando breathed a secret sigh of relief and passed the deck over to 
Cycer for the deal.  Sometimes winning included knowing when to lose.' 
Cycer had the deal for exactly one hand, which Doluff, barely able to 
contain himself, won.  Then the deal passed to the trunk-thing (Lando 
was beginning to feel a little guilty about not remembering the 
creature's name-which was humanly unpronounceable in any case), where 
it stayed for two hands, then back to Del Cycer.
     Bassi Vobah didn't seem to be having much luck.
     Cycer was dealing the cards when a small spherical droid rolled up 
beside Lob Doluff and whistled imperatively, then split into a pair of 
hemispheres.
     Doluff looked up from the screen and keyboard thus revealed, all 
colored drained from his face.
     "Captain Calrissian, I believe you'd better hurry to the 
spaceport.  I have a message here that your ship, the Millennium 
Falcon, is on fire."

     VI

     THE ASTEROID OSEON 6845 had been artificially accelerated to 
complete a rotation every twenty-five hours, giving its inhabitants a 
comforting sense of day and night-and those whose task it was to land 
spaceships there a severe headache.  Touching down upon a surface 
moving at eighty-eight kilometers an hour in the tight and tiny circle 
that was the planetoid's circumference doesn't seem a difficult job 
until one tries it.
     Consequently, from the Administrator Senior's equatorial garden 
home, Lando took a pneumatic tubeway to the north pole of 6seon 6845.
     There a small and relatively stationary spaceport had been leveled 
out of the barren rock.
     Unfortunately, the tube car had no communicator of its own, nor 
did Lando make a habit of carrying one.  Momentarily, he regretted it: 
he could learn no more in transit about the fate of the Millennium 
Falcon.  All he had with him was the fortyseven-odd thousand credits 
he'd acquired that evening, and a tiny, unobtrusive five-shot sfingbeam 
pistol tucked into his velvoid cummerbund.
     It was all the personal weapon he allowed himself in a dark and 
perilous universe; he preferred to rely on his brains for the heavy 
firepower.
     The tubeway shot him northward through a chord beneath the 
curvature of the asteroid's surface at several thousand kilometers an 
hour.  Lando fidgeted every second, every centimeter.
     He'd sent Vuffi Raa to the space terminal to continue repairs on 
the Falcon.  And to keep a big red glassy eye on her.
     What had gone wrong?
     The little robot was a pacifist by nature, it was ineradicably 
programmed into him.  Could some saboteur have taken advantage of this 
handicap, overpowered him, and set fire to the ship?
     With a plastic-gasketed wheeze, the tubeway lurched to a halt.
     Its transparent doors opened to let Lando-out into a maze of 
service corridors underneath the landing field.  He ran down seemingly 
endless crossing and countercrossing passageways until he reached one 
numbered 17-W.  A temporary holosign in a bracket on the wall displayed 
in six languages the legend: MILLENNIUM FALCON LANDO CALRISSIAN, CAPT.  
& PROP.
     Overhead, a large circular pressure door hung open, connected by a 
short, accordion-pleated tube to the underside of the Falcon.  A metal 
ladder led upward through it.  Oddly, there was no one else about in 
the harshly lit cylinder of the service corridor.  The only sounds 
Lando could hear were those of small mechanical things going about 
their business.
     Shaking his head, Lando climbed the ladder.
     He emerged in the curving companionway of the Falcon, the somewhat 
dimmer light and familiar clutter something of a comfort after the 
stark, brightly lit port corridor.  Everything was perfectly quiet.  He 
stalked along the passage until he came to the first intertame panel he 
found set in a bulkhead.
     Nervously, he pressed a button.  "Vuffi Raa?"
     "Yes, Master?"  a cheerful voice replied.  "I'm out on the hull, 
finishing up with the phase-shift adaptor."
     "Oh.  Well, I'm aboard, very confused.  You didn't happen to have 
a fire here tonight, did you?"
     "Master?  Why, no, aside from some welding-and that was 
vacuum-synergetic, no open flame of any kind Why do you ask ?  " 
Suspicions of several and various distinct flavors began to fill 
Lando's mindEr, this may sound silly, but how do I know it's really 
you I'm talking to?"
     "Master, what's wrong?  Of course it is really L Please come to 
the starboard gun-blister and I'll show yol4" That could be an 
altogether different kind of invitation than it sounded.  Lando drew 
his stingbeam, every nerve on edge.
     He crept into the short tunnel leading to the gun-blister, his 
back tight against the low, curving wall, and slid sideways until he 
could see out past the quadguns through the hemispheric plastic.
     Outside, the Oseon sun shone garishly on a stark and rocky scene.
     'De spaceport had begun as a huge natural crater many kilometers 
in diameter.  The Falcon sat in its approximate center.
     Here and there a ship lay, positioned over its own assigned 
service hatchway.  Pleasure yachts, company vessels, those of traders, 
distributors, and caterers.  Halfway across the crater to the rim, 
Lando could make out the impressive bulk of an elderly but 
well-maintained battle cruiser.  Well, everyone to his own taste.
     Stars beat feebly downward, making a miniscule contribution to the 
solar brilliance.
     A flicker of movement at the corner of his eye sent Lando into a 
tense crouch, both hands wrapped professionally around the small grip 
of his pocketgun, its muzzle seeking, sniffing after something to bite.
     A chromium tentacle rasped across the plastic before him.
     Lando found himself staring into Vuffi Raa's eye as the robot 
swung down in front of the blister and hung on one manipulator.
     The gambler punched the intercom button beside the gun chair.
     "Sorry, old boltcutter, I'm a touch paranoid tonight.  Some 
thoughtful individual interrupted my game-and quite a profitable one, I 
might add-with a fire alarm.  Anything at all exciting happening at 
your end of the planet?"
     Through the plastic, the droid gave as much shrug as it was 
capable of.  "I've simply been tidying up here, Master There have been 
no communications, visitors, nor have I so much as seen anybody within 
a hundred meters of the ship except a few of the spaceport automata.
     Shall I come in and-" "Don't trouble yoursell Perhaps I still have 
time to return to my game."
     The robot waggled a free tentacle in farewell.  "Very good, Master 
I'll see you at the hotel."
     "Good night, Vuffi Raa."
     The light flickered momentarily, as if a ship had flown between 
the Falcon and the sun.
     Out of the blister and around the passageway, Lando went directly 
to the hatch he'd entered through.  He clambered down the ladder, more 
careful this time not to get his seniiforinals greasy.  On the 
next-to-last rung, he heard the sharp grit of a footstep behind him, 
twisted to see who itCRUMMMP!
     Something hard and traveling fast smashed savagely across his 
lower back.  Grunting with shock and pain, he released his hold on the 
ladder, fell rapidly in the artificial gradient, scraping his face on 
the ladder.
     A second swipe missed him, zipping over his head to clang noisily 
on the metal rungs.
     Hitting the floor with a gasp, Lando rolled over in desperate 
haste, clawing at his middle.  A pair of dirty boots tromped toward 
him.  They were all he had time to see before something came swooshing 
downward toward his head.
     He fired the stingbeam upward.
     There was a high-pitched piercing whistle from the weapon, a 
high-pitched scream of agony from the tar-get.  The clubwhatever it 
was-clattered noisily to the surface.  Lando's adversary fell backward, 
the chest area of his jacket bursting into flame.  Smoke and the 
nauseating stench of flaming synthetic fabric began to fill the 
corridor.
     Lando rose stiffly, millimeter by tortured millimeter, pulling on 
the rungs of the ladder.  There were tears in his eyes from smoke and 
pain.  Leaning hard against the ladder, he reached around behind 
himself, felt his back where he'd been struck.
     His life had probably been saved by the forty-seven thousand 
credits distributed in his compartmented cummerbund.
     Stingbeam hanging limply along his thigh, he staggered over to see 
who had attacked him.  The figure lay still, the brieflived 
flames-accidental byproduct of a close-range discharge-had died.
     So had the-assailant.
     A soldier of some kind.  That's how he appeared to Lando.
     The gambler tugged a soft leather helmet off the fellow's 
unresisting head, the kind of headgear customarily worn under the larger 
bubble of a spacesuit during extended periods in hard vacuum.  The 
club, a two-meter section of titanium pipe, was the only weapon 
visible, although Lando detected wear across the dead man's trousers 
where a gunbelt had abraded the fabric.
     The uniform, if that's what it was (hard to tell with only one of 
the things around) was patched and faded, many times mended.  It seemed 
to match the wearer's condition.  He was a large man, gray and 
weathered, his face deeply furrowed with age.  Lando didn't recognize 
the insignia.  In a million-system civilization, chances- were he 
wouldn't.
     What to do now?
     In the big cities of many a civilized planet, one was far wiser, 
having disposed of a mugger or burglar, simply to pass on, leaving a 
small mystery behind for the authorities.  Such was Lando's 
inclination.  They were accustomed to it, as they had every right to 
be.  They were the ones who had made the act of self-defense a worse 
offense than the crime that had provoked it.
     In the Oseon, would that be the case?  Lando didn't know.
     He couldn't very well afford simply to walk away.  A dead body, at 
the docking entrance of his ship, plenty of other physical evidence 
scattered around, and a partially discharged energy-weapon in his hand.
     Embarrassing, to say the least.
     Well, down the corridor there was a public communicator.
     He climbed back up the ladder.
     Vuffi Raa, back now from the hull, met him at the top of the 
ladder.  In the dimly lit corridor, his eye glowed like the coal of a 
cigar.
     "Master, what is going on?  I heard shouting, and-" ve just killed 
a man, old thing.  Be a good sort and corn Lob Doluff.  We may have a 
bit of pull in this system; I suspect we're going to need it."  He sat 
down suddenly on the decking, leaned against the wall, and collapsed, 
sliding over sideways.
     It wasn't bad, as jails go.
     The life of a gambler was somewhat checkered.  Often people took 
offense when they lost money.  Sometimes they were in a position to do 
something about it outside the rules of whatever game they'd lost money 
at.
     The suite was seniitastefully decorated in cheery plastic colors 
that did not quite make up for the colorless music drifting blandly 
from a speaker in the ceiling.  A separate bathroom offered modest 
privacy-as long as one overlooked the large rmrror over the sink that 
was undoubtedly a window from another point of view.  There was a 
genuine skylight, heavily barred and shielded, that served to reduce 
claustrophobia and gave a fine, undistorted picture of the stars 
overhead.  There had even been a band of plastic around one of the 
ceramic facilities stating that it had been sanitized for Lando's 
protection.
     Somehow, he couldn't quite summon up the appropriate gratitude.
     His injuries had been properly attended to.  They weren't many: a 
couple of cracked (or at least severely bent) ribs, some abrasions.
     The tape was supposed to fall off of its own accord sometime in 
the next fifty hours.
     They'd confiscated his clothing and personal papers, his 
cununerbund with the forty-seven thousand credits, and, of course, his 
stingbeam, leaving him a set of shapeless drab pajamas with a number 
on the back and front in six languages and a pair of step-in slippers 
that threatened to deposit him on his head every time he took more than 
three paces.
     There was only the one bed, and it wouldn't turn itself down when 
Lando told it to.  Technically, he was in solitary confinement.  That 
was all right with him, the acquaintances one makes in jail arc seldom 
broadening, nor was he enamored of any sort of company at the moment.
     There was nothing to read, nothing to watch, nothing to do-but 
think.
     Lando was.
     good at that.
     Lob Doluff had answered the call himself.
     The Administrator Senior expressed gratification that Lando's ship 
hadn't actually been on fire.  He couldn't understand the false alarm, 
however.  Such criminal offenses were prosecuted harshly in the Oseon.
     "There is one small complication," Lando added, "however."
     "However?  And what is it, Captain?"
     In the background, Lando could make out the figure Of Bassi Vobah, 
drink in hand.  They were still in the starlit garden dome.  He 
wondered whether the other players were still there as well, and if 
not, what else might be going on in the upper echelons of Oseon 
Administration.
     "Well, sir, the false alarm seems to have been intended as a trap.
     Someone ambushed me as I was preparing to return to the sabacc 
game-a stranger.
     "I'm rather afraid I've killed him, Administrator Senior."
     The older man's eyebrows danced up a fraction of an inch and he 
leaned into the video pickup.  "You aren't joking, are you, Captain 
Cahissian?"
     Lando sighed.  "I don't believe I'd joke about something like 
this.  He surprised me, attacked me with a piece of pipe, and I was 
forced to shoot him."
     The Administrator Senior's eyes widened and his eyebrows soared 
impossibly close to the crown of his naked scalp.
     "Shoot him?  Did you say@' "Hold on a moment, Captain Bassi Vobah 
leaned over and whispered something.  Doluff looked puzzled a moment, 
then nodded.
     "Captain Calrissian-Lando, my boy, stay right where you are.  I'm 
going to send Miss Vobah directly over to you.  I believe she can be of 
help to both of us in this affair.  In the meantime, leave everything 
exactly as it is; I'll order access to your service corridor closed 
off.  We'll get this over with a quickly and discreetly as possible."
     Another whispered conference.
     "Yes, and by the, way, it is perhaps better that you tell Miss 
Vobah and myself nothing @er about what happened.  We are duty-bound to 
testify in court about it, being administrative personnel, the both of 
us.  You understand."
     Lando understood.  He nodded, signaled off, slouched back in his 
pilot's chair disconsolately.  Outside, the light seemed unnaturally 
harsh, even for an airless asteroid, and flickered now and again as if 
a fleet of ships were passing overhead.  The colors all seemed a bit 
off, as well, but that may have been explainable by the mood of the 
observer.  Finally he turned to Vuffi Raa.
     "Well, old vegetable-slicer, it looks as though we're in for it 
again.  I must be losing my touch."
     "Now, Master," the robot replied, patting the gambler on the 
shoulder with a gentle tentacle, "I'm sure everything will work out.
     You would not have done what you did, had you not been forced to."
     He extracted a cigar from beneath the control panel, trimmed it, 
handed it to Lando, and lit it with a glowing tentacle tip.
     "I didn't know you could do that.  Do you suppose he was the party 
behind the bombings, the fellow I shot?"
     "The idea had crossed my nidnd, Master.  I do not know."
     A glum silence settled over the pair.
     The control panel beeped.  Lando flipped a switch.  "Yes?"
     "It's Bassi Vobah here, Lando.  I'm in the service accessway 
beneath you.  Come down and meet me, will you?"
     "Very well.  Shall I bring a toothbrush?"
     Her voice was apologetic.  "It might be a good idea."
     Lando gave the robot a few instructions, then turned and retraced 
his steps to the bottom of the ladder.  When he turned around, she was 
bending down, dispassionately examining the body.
     She was wearing the uniform of the Oseon police.
     In his cell a few hours later, Lando once again resisted the urge 
to get up and pace.  He'd never taken very well to confinement.  It was 
well past local midnight, there on a different spot on the equator, 
closer to the small city of which the Esplanade formed the core.  Yet 
the lights had been left on-more or less standard practice in jails 
everywhere.  Worse yet, the syrupy music still dribbled from the 
overhead.  Resentfully, he looked up-and was nearly blinded by a flash 
of overwhelming brilliance in the sky.  As his eyes began to readjust, 
he saw that long streamers of color had begun to creep across the 
zenith, deepening every second in hue, like mutant fingers closing over 
the transparent bowl of the heavens.
     Crimson flared.  Yellow seethed.  Blue and green pulsed steadily 
against a syncopated counterpoint of violet.
     The Flamewind had begun.

     VII

     A POLICEPERSON'S LOT is not a happy one.
     Sometimes, it was downright discouraging, thought Peacekeeper 
Bassi Vobah as she wrote up her report on the Millennium Falcon 
killing.  What a time for something like this to happen!
     Flamewind had begun, and she was going to miss it.
     Born in the oseon System, she was one of the many who served the 
few, her function-not terribly different from that of the countless 
robots that populated the asteroids-spare her masters all possible 
inconvenience.  That this has been the essential task of police 
officers everywhere in time and space, she was unaware.  Her education 
had been specific and to a point.  It had not been noticeably 
cosmopolitan or analytical.
     Her parents, even less well off than she was, had originally 
immigrated as merchants after passing batteries of examinations, 
probes into their backgrounds and intentions, studies of their 
attitudes and goals.  Nevertheless, they had not been tenibly 
successful.  In the end, she had worked to support them, and by the 
time it was no longer necessary, what she did for a living had become a 
habit with her, although not a particularly comfortable one.
     Her one relief, her one vacation every year, was Flamewind.
     it was a deadly and spectacular time.  Brightly colored streamers 
of gaseous ionization filled the open spaces-a thousand kilometers on 
average-between floating mountains.  Fantastic lightnings blasted from 
rock to rock.  The seven belts of the Oseon fluoresced madly.
     Radiation, static discharges, and swirling, colored fogs distotted 
navigational references, drove instruments and men alike insane.  All 
interasteroidal commerce was grounded by law for the duration, 
averaging three weeks, to protect would-be sojourners from their own 
folly.  The sleet of particles that lashed the system was only one 
opportunity for misadventure and destruction.  Communications of any 
sort between the asteroids or with the'rest of the galaxy were 
physically impossible, blotted out by wailing electrons.
     No one went anywhere.  Or wanted to.
     And there were spooky stories of a less scientifically verifiable 
nature that circulated every year during Flamewind.  Legendary 
disappearances, ominous apparitions, phenomena of the oddest, 
ghastliest, most relishably gossipable sort.
     Yet-or consequently-tourists flocked to the Oseon just before the 
cataclysn-dc display.  It had become a caniival of confinuous parties, 
public and private, unceasing gaiety.  Hundreds of different 
intelligent species intermingled from a million systems, giving some 
meaning and adventure to the otherwise humdrum life of a small-town 
girl.
     Like Bassi Vobah.
     And now this.  Aside from the arrest itself and the keyboardwork 
it engendered, there were the impoundment documents, to be completed in 
nanolicate, it seemed.  This Lando Calrissian, a wandering tramp who 
hadn't filled out so much as a single visa form, had so far collected 
one hundred seventy-three thousand credits from his betters (and hers) 
without lifting a finger to do any honest work.  That had been 
confiscated, of course, and, whether he was ultimately found innocent 
or guilty, would go to pay the expenses he'd imposed on the 
administrative services of the Oseon.
     That much money would have supported half a hundred families like 
Bassi Vobah's for a year.  It was simply indecent for an individual to 
gain so much so easily.  At least justice reached a long arm out to 
punish evil-doers sometimes.  This was one occasion when her job 
generated a great deal of satisfaction.
     And then there was the broken-down smuggling vessel he claimed was 
a freighter.  That was worth fifteen or twenty thousand.  If she could 
think of additional appropriate charges, the ship would go on auction 
to pay for them.  Also that pilot/ repair droid.  It was worth 
considerably more than the ship and would have a much more enthusiastic 
market in the Oseon.
     Mark it down at fifty thousand credits.
     Incidental personal items of property, worthless-and, of course, 
the murder weapon.  No, she wasn't legally justified calling it that.
     Yet.  The confiscated stingbeam, then.  It would make a nice 
addition to her tiny department's "museum."  Such killings didn't 
happen often in the fat, complacent community she served.  It would 
make an interesting story to tell.
     But that scarcely made up for the trouble Calrissian was causing, 
and if possible, she'd see him fried for that.  The other complication 
was his fault, indirectly, as well.  She'd argued with her superior, 
Lob Doluff, about it, but pressure was being put on him, and the 
pressure worked its way down onto her shoulders.  Calrissian would pay 
for that, as well.
     Flamewind had begun, and she was going to miss it.
     Vuffi Raa paced the curved companionways of the Millennium Falcon.
     He was a most unhappy machine.  Below, the hatchway to service 
corridor 17-W was closed, clamped with an impound seal, and it had been 
all he could do to persuade the authorities not to stencil a seizure 
notice on his body@r take him away and lock him up in some warehouse.
     Maintaining a modest silence about his manifold additional 
capabilities, he'd convinced them that, as a pilot, navigator, and 
repairbot, he was essentially part of the ship.  As a consequence, they 
had affixed to his torso a restraining bolt-a bit of electronic 
mischief that was supposed to inflict enormous pain on his nervous 
system should he attempt to leave the Falcon.
     It had taken Win all of thirty seconds to disable it, once the 
police had departed.  Nonetheless, prudence dictated that he stay there 
unless he could think of something useful to do for himself and his 
master.
     Outside, huge sheets of polychrome gas filled the sky, punctuated 
every few minutes by terrifying displays of lightning.
     Flamewind was barely underway and yet, for most observers, the 
phenomenon was overwhelming.
     Vuffi Raa didn't even notice it.
     He supposed that Lando had offered at least a hundred times to set 
him legally free.  For some reason it bothered the gambier deeply to 
own another sapient being, even a mechanical one.  Vuffi Raa had always 
turned him down, preferring to stay with his adventurous master.  Now 
he wondered-very briefly-whether it mightn't have been a better idea to 
accept.
     As a manumitted droid, he would have been at liberty to deal with 
the situation.
     Although what, specifically, he would have done remained a 
mystery.
     As an article of property, he was told nothing by the authorities 
about Lando's fate or that of himself and the Falcon.
     However from long, long experience with human culture, the robot 
could make a fairly accurate guess.  Somehow all of that must be 
prevented, some bargain struck that would at least leave them even, 
leave them in the condition in which they'd arrived.
     Vuffi Raa had very little experience making deals.
     Outside, the sky writhed with the seven colors of the spectrum-and 
with every possible mixture in between.  For Vuffi Raa, there were more 
than a hundred basic colors, from lowest infrared to highest 
ultraviolet, and the pen-nutations an combinations possible had to be 
expressed in exponentials.
     Yet the spectacle was lost on him, and not from any lack of 
aesthetic sensitivity.
     He liked Lando Cahissian.  The little droid had a deceptive 
appearance; he always looked brand-new, and his mere meter of height 
made people think diminutive thoughts about him.  In reality, he had a 
powerful mind and a lifetime that stretched back centuries, even 
further than he could remember.
     Apparently, that was the result of a pirate attack on a freighter 
in whose hold he'd occupied a commercial shipping crate.  It was his 
first clear memory, the jarring, shouting, scre@ng.  The groaning of 
the fabric of the victimized ship.
     He hadn't been supposed to awaken until arrival at his 
destinafion.  The premature activation was a survival mechanism, but it 
had cost him something.  He could remember nothing of his origins; had 
only the vaguest impression that the race who had created him looked 
something like him.
     In all the time since, through hundreds of owners, hundreds of 
systems, planets, cultures, he'd never grown so fond of a human being.
     He couldn't exactly say why Lando Calrissian affected him so, but 
affection was the truth.  They laughed together; Vuffi Raa's separating 
tentacles (once the robot had disclosed this capability) had become the 
basis for a number of Lando's rare but elaborate practical jokes.  They 
prospered together, and in financial extremes, Lando had divided his 
small fortunes between buying food for himself and whatever small 
electronic items the robot's maintenance required.
     They were friends.
     And now, Vuffi Raa was helpless to aid his master.
     Outside, a braid of raspberry red, lemon yellow, and orange orange 
twisted through the heavens, across a constellation locals called the 
Silly Rabbit.
     No sentient sighted being could have cared less than Vuffi Raa.
     Rokur Gepta floated in an utter blackness not half so dark as the 
secret -contemplations of his soul.
     Deep underground, where the final traces of the minuscule natural 
gravity of the asteroid were canceled, he hung suspended in the center?
     of an artificial cavern, momentarily free of all sensation, free of 
the annoyances attendant upon suffering the incompetence of his 
underlings, free of the steady, grinding presence of the warmth and 
bustle of life.
     His plans were well in motion.  The Wennis was some distance away, 
its crew performing drill after endless drill, not so much to sharpen 
their abilities-they were, after all, only the best of a hopeless 
lot-as to keep them out of the kind of trouble that uncontrolled 
individuality never fails to generate.
     Gepta smugly affirmed to himself that chance favors the prepared 
mind: a happy turn of fate had placed his enemy, Lando Caltissian, in 
the custody of Oseon officialdom.  Since that officialdom was a 
government, and he was who he was, Cahissian was already three-quarters 
of the way into his hands.
     They would be cruel hands, once they received their prey.
     And deservedly so.  Who had kept the sorcerer from obtaining and 
using the Mindharp of Sharu, an instrument of total

     AL

     mental control over others?  Lando Cahissian.  Who now owned the 
ancient enigmatic robot that seemed the key to yet another sheaf of 
tantalizing unanswered questions-and limitless power?  Lando 
Calrissian.  Who had evaded trap after trap, ineluding that prepared 
for him on Dilonexa XXIII and the device planted aboard that cursed 
wreck, the Millennium Falcon?
     Lando Cahissian.
     How he hated that name!  How he would make its owner squirm and 
writhe until he learned the secret of his weird luck, or the other, 
hidden powers for which he was a front!  How he would crush the 
life-slowly, very slowly-out of Lando Calrissian's frail body, after 
first destroying most of the mind (but not enough so that its owner 
couldn't appreciate the final moments).
     Gepta thought back to an earlier, a happier time, to his first the 
ancient Sorcerers of Tund.  How years as an adept among he had deceived 
the doddering fools, even while stealing their esoteric and sequestered 
leamings.  As intended, they had n-iistaken him for a young apprentice 
and had been unable to penetrate his disguise.  Already, he had been, 
even those thousands of years ago, far older than the most ancient of 
the sorcerers, and they knew how to stretch a life span!
     Ah, yes.  The galaxy still believed that somewhere the hidden 
planet Tund was home to the mysterious Order.  Only Gepta knew it was a 
sterile ball.  Not so much as a tiny fingerbone was left.  The 
thought-the memory of what he had done on that final day-filled him 
with delight and satisfaction.
     Someday he'd do it to the entire universe!
     Meanwhile, that universe wasn't big enough for Rokur Gepta and 
Lando Calrissian.  As Lando Cahissian was going to discover very soon.
     Slowly, with elaborate precision, the sorcerer everted his 
body-turned inside-out on the axis of his digestive system as a form of 
meditative relaxation-and' resumed a true appearance only slightly less 
disgusting than the one he had given a few seconds before.  No human 
being had ever seen him thus, none ever would-and live to relate the 
horror of it.  He relaxed his numberless alien appendages, stretched 
them, and relaxed, then spun about himself the appearance of the 
gray-swathed presumably humanoid sorcerer the'world knew.
     Summoning a power of which the universe was equally ignorant, he 
drifted slowly, deliberately, toward the floor of the cavern.  There was 
work to do, and he must be about it.
     And yes ... he must feed his pet.
     Klyn Shanga concealed his grief.  Year after year, it never got 
any easier to bear.  Now, Colonel Kenow, his old and valued companion, 
was dead.  Dead and gone.  Forevermore.
     They had fought in the battle of the Rood together as boys.
     It had been an insignificant sideshow in a vastly greater war, but 
to them, it had been a lifepath-altering cusp.  They had survived, 
toughened by the ghastly experience, transformed from callow fannboys 
into soldiers.
     And friends.
     And now, Colonel Kenow was dead.
     The worst of it was that it had been a senseless, purposeless 
death spurred by an impetuosity Shanga wouldn't have believed possible 
in a man of Kenow's age and battle experience.  The stringent 
rich-man's laws of the Oseon had forced the veteran to abandon the 
weapon he was used to in favor of a crude length of pipe..  Then he had 
been shot down by a stranger only tangentially involved with the enemy 
they sought, an accidental, not altogether innocent bystander.  If only 
Kenow had listened ...
     Lightning flared, shaking the entire fabric of the odd assembly of 
fighters.  Keeping station off the asteroid was growing more difficult 
by the minute.  He could scarcely see across the few hundred meters 
that separated him from the farthest ship in his tiny fleet, thanks to 
the colored vapor that smoked and roiled around them.  The 
radiation-counter needles climbed inexorably, despite the fact that 
they were in the shadow of a billion tons of iron-based rock.  How much 
longer they could keep it up ...
     Well, in the end, it wouldn't matter.  The giant engine still 
pulsed reliably, the cables connecting it to the fighters were sound.
     They'd had to rebalance to make up for Kenow's missing ship, but 
that had been simple, really.  If they could just hold on long enough 
to do their work, it wouldn't make a bit of difference whether they 
survived the fury of the Flamewind, whether their skin flaked off and 
they lost their hair and vomited up the last drop of their lives.  
Those lives would have been well accounted for, the loss well worth it.
     Shanga, like the rest of his companions, bided his time, hid his 
grief The sleet of energy around them was making even

     AL@

     line-bound communication impossible.  The cables acted like a huge 
antenna, gathering up a howling cacophony that ground on the nerves, 
eroded morale and resolve.  It was as if all the dead the universe had 
ever seen gathered in an unholy chorus once a year in the Oseon.
     And now there was a new voice, that of Colonel Kenow, Klyn 
Shanga's old friend.
     Well, soon there would be other voices, Shanga thou s among them.
     Lob Doluff wasn't any happier than anyone else that carnival 
season.  He regarded the whole Flamewind fooforaw as an enormous, 
unnecessary pain in the neck.  He had never liked it, never understood 
why anybody else did.
     Lob Doluff was color-blind.
     He was also worried-half to death.  Dressed as he was in 
lightweight indoor clothing, his head uncovered, his plump arms bare to 
the chill of the special section of his garden, standing in the middle 
of half a hectare of snow, his hands were sweating.
     The Administrator Senior's visual disability did not affect his 
appreciation for flowering plants althou h his reasons for collecting 
them may have been a bit different from those odiers might have.  He 
loved their perfume and their persistence.
     To him a weed that cracked a ferroconcrete walkway was something 
of a miracle, and here, where tiny, almost microscopic flowers poked 
their small, courageous heads up through snow and ice, there was 
something especially miraculous.
     It did little to cheer him now, however.  He was in a bind.
     Unlike his subordinate, Bassi Vobah, he was one of there who 
served the few, while making an unusually honest effort to serve the 
many.  He was quite as wealthy as anyone in the Oseon, and yet a sense 
of civic duty, personal pride, drove him to sit in the Administrator 
Senior's office and attempt to govern the essentially ungovernable 
millions upon millions of falling worldlets that comprised the system.
     He kept the peace.  He maintained minimal social services.  He 
acted as a buffer between the Oseon's inhabitants and a galaxy that 
often clamored for their attention, either in response to their great 
wealth, their enormous fame-or their crin-dnal reputation.
     At all of this he was very good, and his independent wealth 
allowed him a certain latitude denied the average civil servant.
     He might not quite be able to tell his superiors to take a flaming 
jump into the Core, but he had thought about it more than once and made 
the recommendation to many of their representatives.
     Unfortunately, he was unable to indulge himself on this occasion.
     Pressure-greater pressure than he had known existed-was being 
placed on him to betray many of the things he stood for.  If he 
complied, it was distinctly possible that no one would ever learn of 
it.  But he, Lob Doluff, would know, and it would remove a great deal 
of the satisfaction from his life.
     At the other end of the proposition, he stood to lose his 
position, his wealth, his reputation, even his life if he insisted on 
pushing things to their extreme.  In addition, many, many others would 
suffer.  It was ugly, and he hadn't thought such things could happen in 
a civilized universe.
     Now he knew different.
     He turned from his absent contemplation of the snowflowers of a 
hundred systems, walked through an invisible air curtain into a 
semitropical wedge of the dome, strode to a tree stump, and flipped the 
top upward.  Reaching in, he seized a communicator and brought it to 
his lips.
     "This is the Administrator Senior," he said after asking for the 
correct extension number.  "Have Captain Calrissian brought to my 
office in an hour."
     His hands were sweating again.  He'd never sent a man to certain 
death before.
     Vill IT was Two and a half meters tall, had an orange beak and 
scaly three-toed feet, was covered with bright yellow feathers, spoke 
in an annoying high-pitched effeminate voice despite its repulsively 
obvious masculinity, and answered to the name Waywa Fybot.
     It was also an undercover narcotics agent.
     Lando hadn't learned any of this yet as a pair of robots, 
spray-painted the same color as Bassi Vobah's uniform, dragged him from 
his comfortable cell to confront the Administrator Senior.
     "The charge is carrying a deadly weapon, Captain Cahissian, and 
the customary sentence, upon conviction, is death by exposure."
     Lob Doluff paced back and forth before the floor-to-ceiling window 
in his office.  Outside, the Flarnewind filled the sky with racing 
garishness, but most of it was obscured by the dozens of hanging plants 
that turned the window into a vertical carpet of shaggy greenery.
     Other plants were scattered about in pots, in long narrow 
planters, in aquaria, even drifted in the air on lacy pale wings.  A 
gentle frond brushed Lando's cheek as a flying plant passed over his 
head.
     Lob Doluff didn't have a desk.  He didn't need one.  Tucked away 
in an alcove was a datalink with its screen and keyboard; a pair of 
secretaries awaited hi$'sunnnons in an anteroom.
     What he had were several comfortable chairs, none of which had 
been offered to Lando, and the enormous bird-thing that none of the 
mobile plant life would even approach.
     And Bassi Vobah herself, looking prim and starched and heavily 
armed.
     Lando reached downward to thrust his hands in his pants pockets, 
discovered once again he hadn't any, and folded his arms across his 
chest.  He looked from Bassi to the Administrator Senior, spent a 
moment on the weird creature in the corner, then back to the humans.
     "I take it, then, that you're not charging me with murder."
     Bassi Vobah nodded.  "That would be irrelevant.  In the first 
place, there's ample evidence that you killed him in selfdefense.  In 
the second place, we have no record of him having entered the Oseon by 
legal channels and therefore, at least in legal terms, he doesn't-never 
did-exist."
     Lando shook his head.  "Nice government you have here.
     Why is carrying a weapon a capital offense, and what have I got t6
     do to get out of it?  I take it that I wouldn't be here if you 
weren't going to offer me some nasty alternative to being shoved out an 
airlock."
     The gambler had been in, this position before, on more than one 
occasion.  Odd, how government people needed extragovernmental people to 
manage their dirty work on occasion.  The things that he'd been asked 
to do, however, could scarcely be classified under civil service job 
descriptions.
     Bassi Vobah had stiffened at Lando's reply, and only steely nerves 
and training had kept her hand away from the gigantic military blaster 
hanging at her hip.
     Lob Doluff, however, seemed relieved.  He nodded toward the 
nonhuman observer, introduced the creature to Lando.
     Waywa Fybot flapped his short arms as if in greeting, ruffled his 
feathers, and settled back into silence.
     "In one sense, Captain, you are mistaken.  You have been arrested 
and are soon to be tried and duly convicted of the offense."  The 
Administrator Senior made a gesture.  The robotson each side of Lando 
stepped back, Lando was signaled to a chair facing those in which Lob 
Doluff was seated and Bassi Vobah stood behind at a sort of parade 
rest.
     "As I said, the punishment as prescribed by law is exposure to the 
heat, cold, and vacuum of interplanetary space.  There is, however, no 
provision for the precise method to be employed, and I am moved, my 
boy, to suggest a means by which the law may be obeyed and yet spare 
you from the unpleasantness such an experience ordinarily brings."
     "I get it.  You're going to shoot me before you stuff me out the 
airlock.  By the way, Administrator Senior, have you ever seen somebody 
after they were spaced?"  (Lando hadn't either, but he had a good 
imagination and hoped that Doluff did as well.) "Pretty messy."
     He made a face, eyes bulging out, tongue lolling at the corner of 
his mouth.
     Lob Doluff grimaced painfully, gulped, and placed a protective 
hand on his large stomach.  "That's exactly what we're trying to 
prevent, my boy.  To my knowledge, there has never been a ron-nal 
execution in the Oseon, and I have no desire to be the first@' "Nor I," 
Lando agreed, "I suppose this is where our avian f7lend comes in, isn't 
it?"  He indicated Waywa Fybot, taking up a great deal of room in the 
corner.
     Fybot stepped forward.  "Tell me, Captain,"-the creature squeaked 
ridiculously, especially considering its size@'have you ever heard the 
name Bohhuah Mutdah?"
     "Sounds like somebody bawling for his mommy."  Lando was sick of 
being the eternal patsy.  He knew by then that they needed him, and had 
become determined to make things as difficult as he could for them.
     The humor of the response-what little there was of it-was lost on 
everybody present.  Lando even detected a little shudder from Lob 
Doluff.  The Administrator Senior shut his eyes, wiped sweaty palms on 
the creases of his trousers.
     The big bird took another step forward, towering over Lando.
     "Bohhuah Mutdah is a retired industrialist, a trillionaire.  His 
holdings in the Oseon are the largest in the system by a single 
individual, and it is possible that he is the wealthiest person in the 
civilized galaxy.
     "He is also thoroughly addicted to lesai."
     Lesai.  Lando shut the bird-being out of his mind for a moment, 
summoning up what he knew of the rare and extremely illegal drug.
     The product of a mold that grew only on the backs of a single 
species of lizard in the Zebitrope System, lesai had many desirable 
qualities.  In the first place, it eliminated the necessity for sleep, 
thus effectively lengthening the human life span by a third.  Unlike 
other stimulants which consumed something vital in the human brain, 
lesai provided that something vital itself, meaning it could be taken 
indefinitely.
     Yet, it was not without its cost.  It turned the user into an 
emotionless, amoral calculating machine.  In the end, family and 
friends, the lives of thousands or millions of other individuals-at 
least so the authorities claimed@ounted as nothing, compared to 
whatever goals the addicted mind had set itself.  One had to be 
careful; those in power often lied about things like the effect of 
drugs, and even Lando, who was strongly predisposed against any 
mind-altering substances, took what the government said with a very 
large grain of salt.
     Nonetheless, some of this made sense.  He could understand how 
lesai and the richest individual in the known universe might be 
associated.  There wasn't any particular trick to becoming rich-as long 
as one devoted his whole life to it to the exclusion of everything 
else.  Lando wasn't capable of it; to him, money was a means to an end.
     It became meaningless when it was an end in itself.
     But not everybody felt that way.  Perhaps Bohhuah Mutdah was a 
person like that.
     "Okay," he interrupted the avian creature, "so we have a 
fabulously wealthy lesai addict, and you're a drug cop.  What's the 
matter, didn't he pay his protection money on time?"
     Waywa Fybot stood up even straighter than before' his feathers 
fluffed straight outward as if in shock.  "Captain Cahissian, you 
forget yourself!  1, after all, am a-" '@An agent of a government fully 
as corrupt as any government that ever existed.  Don't kid me, 
won-n-breath.  Vice laws are always written to be selectively enforced, 
to serve other purposes.  What have you people got against this Mutdah 
character@r is it simply that you don't like the size of his bank 
account?"
     The bird-creature blinked, began to tremble with rage.  It opened 
its beak to reply, shut it again, opened it again, and subsided into 
the corner, speechless.  Lando grinned at the Administrator Senior and 
his Peacekeeper, spread a hand that was half a shrug.
     Bassi Vobah was nearly as scandalized as her professional 
colleague.
     Lob Doluff, however, chuckled and appeared to relax for the first 
time since the interview had started.  His smile became a grin to match 
the gambler's, then became outright laughter.  He glanced, guiltily at 
first, at the feathered VIP, then shook his head and laughed again, 
this time without qualms.
     "By the Core, Captain Caltissian-Lando, if I may-I do admire you!
     You're a gambler through and through, not just at the table.  
Please allow me to make this unpleasantness more comfortable.  Have you 
had anything to eat?"
     Lando nodded.  "Best food I've ever had in jail.  I could use some 
coffeine, though, and maybe a cigar."
     "And by Core, Edge, and Disc, so shall you have them!
     Bassi, see to it immediately!"
     The police officer stared at her boss indignantly, decided he was 
serious, and stalked out of the room to attend to the chore.
     Doluff snapped a finger at one of the guard-robots who had retired 
to the corners of the room behind Lando.
     "Bring this gentleman his clothing, this very minute!  By the 
Eternal, if I have to go through with this charade, I'll bloody well go 
through with it in my own way!"
     Lando had sat quietly through it all.  Now he sat up a little 
straighter as the Administrator Senior settled back, fully relaxed.
     Coffeine and tobacco arrived in due course, delivered by a 
seething Bassi Vobah.  A police-robot brought Lando's personal 
property, which the gambler ignored for the time being as more 
interesting matters occupied his attention.
     "Now," Lob Doluff said, when everyone was settled in again.  At 
his insistence, a strange-looking rack the size and shape of a pair of 
sawhorses had been brought in by a robot, and Waywa Fybot encouraged-at 
the Administrator Senior's insistence-to perch on it.  The bird got a 
dreamy look on its face, its feathers smoothed once again, and it was 
quiet.
     "Now, sir, I will tell you the plain truth-as much as I have been 
told, in any case-and we will all understand.  You're quite right, of 
course.  Bohhuah Mutdah's corporate enemies and business rivals are 
preparing to overthrow his commercial empire.  But they fear him 
greatly, sir, as I would in their place, and, accordingly, are seeking 
to put him personally and physically out of the way.
     "I rather guess they hope he will resist arrest, providing them 
with an excuse to make things permanent.  But that is only a sun-nise.
     The point is, Lando, I must ask you to help make all of this 
possible, and there is no way I can refuse to do so.  I have what 
amounts to'direct orders-by Gadfrey, it feels good to tell the truth!
     "Were it simply my position, I would tell them-well, I hold this 
office quite voluntarily@uite unnecessarily if the truth were told.  I 
like it, but not so much that I'd betray a fellow sabacc enthusiast and 
gentleman adventurer I ad@re."
     Bassi Vobah squirmed uncomfortably in the chair she'd been ordered 
to take.
     "Why do I have the feeling you're going to find another reason to 
betray me, then, old bureaucrat?"  Lando asked.  "That's what you're 
leading up to, isn't it?"
     The Administrator Senior sighed.  "I'm afraid so, my dear fellow.
     I offer no excuse.  Means have been found to exert leverage upon 
me which my scruples cannot withstand.  I do not ask you even to 
understand my position.  I am attempting to arrange things so as to 
minimize the damage the situation inflicts on us both.  I'll thank you 
to believe that much, at least."
     Lando shrugged again, noncommittally.  "How much does a hangman's 
apology count for, Administrator Senior?"
     Doluff grimaced uncomfortably, then nodded.  "You're quite right, 
sir.  But took here, this is how I am prepared to hold up my end of a 
bad bargain."  He turned to Waywa Fybot.
     "Listen to me, you ridiculous creature, and listen well-" 
"Adminis-" interrupted a shocked and outraged Bassi Vobah.
     "Hush, child, I'll get to you in a moment.  Are you listening to 
me, you absurd collection of flightless feathers?"
     The Imperial narcotics agent blinked stupidly.  Apparently the 
position it had been forced to assume triggered some reflexive sleep 
reaction.  It shook its head, peered at the Adn-iinistrator Senior, but 
said nothing.
     "Very well, then, and you can inform your mercantile-class 
sponsors that I gave you this direct order: you may arrest Bohhuah 
Mutdah, I haven't the power to stop you.  But you will return him to 
me, alive and in condition to stand trial in the Oseon, or I'll have 
you plucked, dressed, and roasted for Founder's Day.  Am I making 
myself clear?"
     The bird-creature nodded, a look of hatred latent in its large 
blue eyes.
     Doluff turned to Bassi Vobah.  "And as for you, my dear, remember 
who it is you work for.  Your orders are to see that my orders are 
carried out.  And you are to use that oversized chicken-roaster of 
yours"-he indicated her energy pistol-"if the occasion calls for it, on 
whomsoever merits it."
     He nodded significantly toward Waywa Fybot.
     "Now, Captain Cahissian-Lando-this is what you are to do.  As you 
probably are aware, it is perilous in the extreme, and also illegal, 
for ships to travel from asteroid to asteroid in the Oseon during 
Flamewind."
     As if to underline the Administrator Senior's words, lightning 
flared briefly outside the window, washing the colors from every object 
in the room.  The flash subsided.
     "Nonetheless, I am required to instruct you to take this pair of 
law-enforcement officers to Oseon 5792, the home and estate of Bohhuab 
Mutdah, so that they may make their arrest."
     Lando shook his head.  "I don't get it.  Why not just-2' "Because, 
my dear Captain, it seems he must be caught in the act.  His enemies 
lack sufficient evidence at the moment, and even they dare not move 
without it.  You are the goat because of your avocation as captain of a 
tramp freighter.  It must appear that you are taking him his regular 
shipment of the drug; apparently he supplies himself every year under 
the cover of the Flamewind, and-2' Lando stood up suddenly.  "Now wait 
just a minute, Admin@' The bureaucrat slammed his large hands down on 
the arms of his chair.  "You wait a minute, Captain!  I have no 
latitude in this; my instructions are clear, detailed, and unavoidable.
     We will provide you with a large amount of lesai, which has been 
seized from Mutdah's regular connection.  You will make transit to the 
next Belt inward, to the particular rock owned by Bohbuah Mutdah, and 
sell him the drug.  You will be observed doing so by Officer Waywa 
Fybot and Oseon Peacekeeper Bassi Vobah, who will then seize both drug 
shipment and payment and take Mutdah into custody.  That is how it has 
been ordained; that is how it shall be done."  Doluff subsided once 
again and took two or three deep breaths.
     Lando sat quietly for a moment, thinking, then asked a question.
     "All right, so we're boxed in, if I'm to believe your word.
     But-well, I've won rather a deal of money here in the Oseon in the 
last few days, nearly two hundred thousand creds.  I can anticipate 
that it would suit certain interests if I'm arrested in the same 
illegal exchange, wouldn't it?"
     A predatory gleam became visible in Bassi Vobah's eyes.
     Lob Doluff, on the other hand, simply sn-died sadly.  "Lando, we 
already have you on the weapons charge; I repeat, a capital offense.
     Those whose interests I serve desire that no one besides 
themselves possess the means of deadly self-defense, and they enforce 
the rule@r expect me to, which amounts to the same thing-quite 
severely.
     "Besides, although you have been quite fortunate-no, let us 
acknowledge your skill-at the gaming table, I assure you that no one 
you played with, excepting Miss Vobah here, who was appropriately 
subsidized, will miss so much as a micro of your winnings.  We are a 
wealthy people.
     "However, if it will make you feel more comfortable, you'll recall 
I offered you an additional assurance of my goodwill in this awkward 
matter.  This is what I had in mind: transport these two individuals 
and help them make the arrest.  In return, I shall see that you take 
your winnings with you, along with every other item of your property, 
and you may depart the system directly from Bohhuah Mutdah's estate.
     He owns a large number of small interasteroidal craft, and I 
believe that the Hamewind may have quieted enough that Bassi, here, and 
Officer Fybot can make their way with evidence and prisoner back to 
this place unassisted.  Is that fair enough?"
     Lando thought it over, nodded reluctantly.
     "And you, my dear, have I made myself sufficiently clear to you?
     Should you oppose my will in this, inconvenience Captain Cahissian 
in any way, I shall expect you to leave the system directly from 
Mutdah's asteroid, in his place."
     The policewoman gulped visibly and nodded fully as reluctantly as 
Lando.
     Once more Lob Doluff frowned at Waywa Fybot.  "And as for you, you 
hyperthyroid whooping crane, should you interfere in my wishes 
concerning the good captain here, after you have been plucked and 
roasted, I shall stuff a cushion with your feathers and rest my 
fundament upon it for the remainder of my life.  Do you understand?"
     The bird nodded, adding a third portion to the general grudging 
atmosphere in the room.
     Doluff folded his hands across his paunch, a satisfied expression 
on his face.  "Very well, then, we are agreed, and everything is 
settled.  By the Center, it is good doing business with a group as 
straightforward and understanding as you all are.  I am feeling 
extremely fond of the three of you.  Shall we see about having lunch, 
then?"
     ix IN THE OSEON System during Hamewind, the inhabitants and their 
guests have little to do but party and watch the fireworks.
     But even the most spectacular display in the known universe begins 
to pall after sufficient time, and attending parties has its 
limits-and its consequences.
     Thus it is an interesting fact of demographics that, although the 
majority of Oseoni, owing to what is required of them to achieve their 
high place in the general scale of galactic society, are long beyond 
childbearing age, yet the human birthrate in the system inevitably 
jumps every year nine months after Flamewind.
     One reason for the increase is the peril of traveling during

     205 -AND THE FLAMEWIND OF OSEON

     Flamewind.  The deadly rain of radiation accompanying the display 
vastly accelerates the decay of electronics that control navigation and 
life-support equipment.
     Even travel on the surface of an asteroid is dangerous.
     And yet, Lando Calfissian, once resigned to the journey, was 
anxious to be underway.  Freedom in the Oseon, he was discovering 
rapidly, had its severe drawbacks.  There would be no more sabacc games 
for a variety of reasons: he had effectively cleaned out the available 
talent, not, so much depriving them of their discretionary funds as 
convincing them that it was pointless to oppose him at the gaming 
table.  In this he had been, if not directly careless, then overly 
enthusiastic.  It was not a mistake he would have made in less opulent 
surroundings; he had yet fully to appreciate how much more tenaciously 
the rich hold on to what they have.
     Had he been a waitress or a bell-hot, no one would have needed to 
tell him.  The wealthy are notoriously lousy tippers.
     What was worse, given the local standard of living, the fact that 
there were so many wealthy inhabitants and that the commercial overhead 
was so high, he was once again watching his money-his winnings-being 
eaten up.  Everything was expensive, from a simple meal in the humblest 
eatery to the equipment and supplies his ship required for the journey 
ahead.
     As usual, Lando's luck, both good and bad, was operating at full 
blast.
     The day after his revealing conference in the Administrator 
Senior's office, he and Vuffi Raa were bolting down the weirdly shaped 
seating rack that had been sent over for Waywa Fybot.
     "One more turn ought to do it!"  Lando grunted.  "I wish there was 
room for an autowrench in this corner-unh!"
     The head of the bolt had twisted and torn off.  This meant they had 
to undo all the other bolts and move the rack while Vuffi Raa drilled 
out the broken hardware and removed it for a second try.
     "Master, why is the installation necessary?  We could override the 
gravfield in this part of the ship and let Officer Fybot spend the trip 
in free-fall.  It would be much more comfortable."  Having drilled a 
hole through the soft metal of the bolt, he inserted a broken-screw 
remover, the twist of its threads being opposite those of the bolt, and 
tightened it, turning the offending artifact neatly out of the deck.
     "What, and have his birdseed floating everywhere?  Not a chance.
     Besides, his physiology is supposed to be delicate or something, 
like a canary's.  Don't ask me why they made somebody like that a 
cop-that would require an assumption that logic functions at some level 
of government."
     Together, they moved the distorted chair back into place over the 
boltholes drilled for it in the decking.  Somehow, thought Lando, the 
parties responsible for this-the final straw of messing up his nice, 
neat spaceship-would be brought to a reckoning.
     The first three bolts went in perfectly.  Again.  Lando and Vuffi 
Raa looked at each other with resigned expressions (Lando reading the 
little droid's body posture since it had no face), placed the fourth 
bolt in its hole, and locked the wrench around its hexagonal head.
     "If it doesn't work this time, old power-tool, we're going to send 
for a big wire cage!"
     Deep within the honeycombed recesses of Oseon 6845, down where 
enormous pipes the diameter of a man's height conveyed air and water 
and other vital substances from fissionpowered machinery to hotels and 
offices and stores and other places habituated by human beings, down 
where no one but an occasional robot made its perfunctory rounds, a 
meeting was being held.
     "So you came," a gray-clad figure whispered.  The clothing had the 
look of a uniform, although it was barren of the insignia of rank or 
unit markings.  The face above the stiff collar, below the cap, was 
young.  It was the first officer of the Wennis, lurking in the shadows 
of a ship-sized power transformer, his voice drowned within a meter or 
two by its titanic humming.
     The other figure was even less conspicuous, hidden more deeply in 
shadows, cloaked for anonymity in many yards of billowy fabric.  It was 
taller than the Wennis second-incommand, and stood there silently, 
acknowledging the greeting with a nod.
     "Good," the officer hissed.  "And do you understand what you are 
supposed to do when you get to 5792?  There must be no mistake, no 
hesitation.  The Administrator Senior has found a legal means of 
circumventing our intentions in this matter, and it must not work!  The 
orders come from very nearly as high as they can."
     Once again, the tall disguised figure nodded.
     "All right, then.  In return, you will be richly rewarded.  Our, 
er ... principal understands the pragmatic value of gratitude.
     Be sure you understand the consequences of failure."
     The cloaked form shuddered slightly, but that may have been the 
cold.  Even with the machinery in full operation, there was a chill in 
the air that converted both their breaths into clouds of barely visible 
vapor.
     It shuddered again.  And it may not have been the cold.
     The gray-uniformed officer departed without further conversation.
     He was in a hurry.  Before he returned to the Wennis, he had 
another meeting, even deeper in the planetoid's core, and it was not 
one he was looking forward to particularly.
     Behind him the tall, cloaked figure departed as well, leaving a 
single, downy yellow feather that trembled in the cold draft along the 
floor, then was still.
     With understandably mixed feelings, Lando tucked his freshly 
recharged stingbeam into the waistband of his shipsuit.
     Mere possession of the thing inside the Oseon System was a capital 
offense, and the manner of execution made hanging, gassing, perhaps 
even the nerve rack seem desirable ways to end it all.
     On the other hand, he was operating under the direct verbal orders 
of Administrator Senior Lob Doluff, whose concern for Lando's continued 
existence, it appeared, was sincere and rivaled only by his desire that 
Bassi Vobah and Waywa Fybot carry out the mission precisely as the 
administrator had instructed.  Lando's pistol was a small but 
additional guarantee he had insisted upon.
     On the third hand (Lando looked at Vuffi Raa, whose capable 
tentacles were flicking switches, turning knobs, and doing other things 
mandated by the preflight checklist), the Administrator Senior had 
adamantly refused to issue the young gambler a written permit to carry 
the weapon, fearing, perhaps, that his original leverage on Landowould 
be weakened thereby.
     Ah, well, Lando thought, if things went according to plan (he had 
no great confidence that they would, being a cynic by inclination and 
having lived long enough to see his natural suspicions confirmed more 
often than not), he and Vuffi Raa would be out of the confounded system 
in a few days, and the whole issue would be irrelevant.
     He had taken some pains of his own to assure this.
     He intended to take even more.
     As Lando and his mechanical partner warmed things up in the 
cockpit of the Millennium Falcon-illuminated through the forward canopy 
by the multicolored glare and flash of the Flamewind-their passengers 
were in the lounge area, each keeping his or her trepidations about the 
coming voyage to him- or herself.  Bassi Vobah, having reluctantly 
abandoned the psychological protection of her police uniform, sat in a 
sort of semicircular booth with an electronic table in its center, 
glumly watching an entertainment tape from the Falcon's meager library.
     It was the saga of some early star travelers, marooned on a harsh 
and barren world through the failure of their spacecraft during a 
magnetic storm.  At present, the characters were casting lots to 
determine which of them would eat the others.
     Somehow it failed to elevate her mood.
     Waywa Fybot was essentially a bird in his anatomy and physiology, 
although no more bound by the characteristics of such creatures than 
are men by their fundamental origins.
     While he was nervous, he could remind himself that what he was 
about to endure was in the line of duty, what Emperor and Empire 
expected of him, and consistent with future promotion and increases in 
salary.  While he felt murderously angry at the local administrator who 
had verbally savaged him (Fybot's own people had plenty of snappy 
remarks applicable to mammalian species in general and simian ones in 
particular, but Doluff's office hadn't seemed the place to trot them 
out), the prospect of bigger game and future rewards helped him smooth 
his ruffled feathers.
     Damn!  He'd done it to himself that time.
     Beneath the long thick plumage of his stubby left ann-a vestigial 
wing useless for flight long ages before his people had chipped their 
first crude stone tools-Fybot wore a small energy-projector that was 
something of an advance on Bassi Vobah's openly sported blaster.  Half 
the military weapon's size, it had six times the power, coming close, 
in theory, to one of the modules of Lando's four-barreled quad-gun.
     The projector was a Service Special and a closely guarded secret, 
even from the regular military.
     It didn't need to be drawn to be used, which was a blessing, as 
nature had not provided Fybot's people with the quickest or most adroit 
of manipulators.
     He looked over at Bassi Vobah as she tried hard to keep her 
attention on the entertainment tape.  It wasn't easy.  Calrissian and 
his robot were running the Falcon's engines through a series of tests 
that shook the vessel like a leaf at irregular intervals and left 
stunning silences between.  Their caution in assuring themselves of the 
ship's operating condition only served as a grim render of what risks 
they were all about to take.
     Which brought Waywa Fybot around again to his nervousness.  He 
settled deeper into his resting rack, enjoying the reflexive drowsiness 
that came with the action, and wished his species still had sufficient 
flexibility to tuck their heads under their wings.
     Come to think of it, he'd only bruise himself on the weapon he 
carried.
     A gentle snoring sound began to issue from the small round 
nostrils pierced through the narcotics officer's beak.
     "Item one ninety-six," Lando quoted from the manual, "navigational 
receivers on standby.  Well, old can-opener, we can skip that one.
     How'd that dead-reckoning program of yours turn out, or do you 
want to say?"
     Vuffi Raa paused, a tentacle tip over a switch on the panel before 
them.  "I wish, Master, that there was another name for it.  It sounds 
awfully final, doesn't it?"  He flipped the switch, watched the panel 
indicators go crazy as the Flamewind's ionization attacked the 
navigation beam receivers.
     He flipped the switch to off again.  Both partners felt relieved.
     "Item one ninety-seven," Lando said, ignoring Vuffi Raa's 
rhetorical sque@shness.  "This begins a subseries of thirteen 
intermediate items before we get to one ninety-eight.  First item: 
check main reactor core-temperature, which should be up to optimum by 
now.  Check.  Second item: make sure that moderator fluid is 
circulating freely in the heat exchangers.
     Check-at least according to the instruments.  Third item .  . ."
     Administrator Senior Lob Doluff had stoically suffered the 
indignity of ordering the datalink, normally tucked inoffensively away 
in an alcove and concealed by a hanging fern, rolled out into the center 
of what was supposed to be his office and what was, in reality, a 
miniature of his greenhouse home.
     By landline he was having a view transmitted to him of the north 
polar spaceport, specifically, the central area where the Millennium 
Falcon vibrated in readiness.
     Maybe, he thought to himself, he hadn't the intestinal fortitude 
to be a first-rank administrator.  He found it difficult in the extreme 
to order those beings, Lando Calrissian and his doughty little Class 
Two droid, into the fury of the Flamewind at its most colorful and 
dangerous moment.  His heart would be traveling with them, he knew, and 
might never return to its proper location.
     He wished them well.
     However, he sighed, he did know a cure for the anxiety and guilt 
he was experiencing.  In another alcove, across the room from that in 
which the dat@ normally was exiled, he kept a terrarium filled with odd 
spongy growths from a planet a quarter of a galaxy away., Even to him, 
the great lover of green, growing things, they were utterly repulsive.
     But they were necessary to nurture and conceal an even more 
repulsive specimen of lizard that lived in symbiosis with them and 
shared the planet Zebitrope IV.
     On the back of the lizard, another symbiont, there grew a rather 
disgusting purple mold.
     Lob Doluff locked his office doors, extracted a small plastic 
spatula from beneath the datalink, trod over to the terrarium, seized 
the lizard, and scraped a bit of mold from its back.  This he rubbed 
with thumb and forefinger into the hollow at the base of his throat, 
covering the resulting stain, which looked rather like a bruise, with 
some flesh-colored powder he kept for just that purpose.
     He settled back in his chair.
     They were wrong, thought the governor, those "experts."  He 
watched the Falcon detach itself from the accordion tube beneath it and 
seal up its belly hatch.  Lesai didn't stop you from caring.
     Lob Doluff wished it did.
     Several thousand kilometers away, a n-dssile streaked past an odd 
conglomeration of battered and obsolete fighting craft attached with 
long and brightly pulsing cables to the core of a starship engine.
     It was a signal, the only means of conveying information across 
space during the Flamewind of Oseon.  Klyn Shanga watched it sizzle 
past his canopy, began punching buttons to place himself in 
wire-communications with his companions.
     "That's it, men," he said in a grim, determined voice.  "Now it 
begins, and it will not end until we have ended it.  Call off your 
status when I say your name.  We have to get this damned mess 
synchronized just right or we'll wind up slamming into a rock somewhere 
between here and there.
     "Den Salt Glass!"
     "On the tick, " came the reply.
     "Glee Jun!"
     "Hot and ready!"
     "Stec Eddis!"
     "On the mark!"
     "Mors Eth!"
     "Item two twenty-three," Lando read.  "At long last.  Landing 
tractors out, prepare to lift."
     "Landing tractors offline," Vuffi Raa answered.  "Zero weight on 
the landingjacks, negative weight, we're clear!  Ease forward on the 
throttle, sublight drives engaged at three percent power.  Altitude-if 
that's the word for it-twelve thousand meters and rising."
     "Good!"  the gambler/spaceship captain replied.  He hit a button, 
spoke toward a small grill in the arm of his acceleration chair.
     "This is Captain Calrissian speaking.  Hope you two are thoroughly 
uncomfortable over there.  We're off the ground and headed toward the 
Fifth Belt.  If we arrive in one piece, it won't be any fault of 
yours!"
     VIOLET FRINRES LASHED at the Millennium Falcon, purple flames 
licked at her hull as lavender-colored lightning flashed in a sky that 
was infinitely mauve.
     "Vuffi Raa, according to these instruments, we're spinning like a 
top and following a course that's essentially a giant figure eight!"
     Lando shook his head.  The plum-colored glare through the 
cockpit's canopy was souring his stomach, and the hard vacuum of space, 
which supposedly was incapable of conveying sound waves, rocked as if 
with the laughter of malicious giants.
     He could scarcely hear the droid's reply.
     "I'm sorry, Master, there isn't any help for it.  We must trust 
the program I fed into the engines and attitude controls.  I can't see 
a single instrument on the panel that's reliable."  Even the robot's 
voice had the faintest hint of an hysterical edge.  Or perhaps it was 
Lando's ears, battered by the screaming of a universe tearing itself 
into bits.
     in the passenger lounge, Waywa Fybot was aroused from a sleep 
unusually deep even for his deep-dreaming species.  He stirred, felt 
the feathers on his long neck ruffling themselves, and tried to close 
his eyes again.  A glimpse through a small round port across the room 
caught his attention.  His gaze became involuntarily fixed upon it, as, 
one by one, his feathers lifted, stood perpendicular to his body.
     Bassi Vobah's hands covered her eyes.
     Had she been capable of a single linear thought, she would have 
wished for a second pair to cover up her ears.  It seemed to her that 
the very Core of the galaxy was shrieking at her for some terrible 
thing she'd done and somehow forgotten.  With a sob, she collapsed 
sideways on the curving couch, sqt eezed herself into a huddled ball, 
knees up to her chin, eyes s iut tightly that they were slowly 
blackening under the self-in licted pressure.
     Her hands were on her ears, now, so that the titanic bellowing of 
a sun gone mad and its resonating orbital companions transmitted itself 
through her very bones.
     Beneath her face, the cushion of the couch was soaked with tears.
     What end was there to madness?
     Starboard, in the cockpit, Vuffi Raa switched off another bank of 
useless instruments.  They were distracting and therefore worse than 
useless.  In a similar disgruntled humor and for identical reasons, he 
had shut off his hearing, but it hadn't done quite as much good.  Where 
humans had a small cluster of senses, seven or eight at most, he had 
nearly a hundred, and at the moment, every one of them seemed to be his 
enemy.
     Unlike Lando, who could suffer the effects but never feel the 
machine-gun sputter of ionizing particles through his body, part of 
Vuffi Raa's sensorium was a sophisticated scintillation counter.  He 
could experience the density and frequency with which a dozen distinct 
kinds of particle drilled through him.
     For the first time in his long existence, he wished sincerely that 
he had the same limits to his awareness as his master.  For the first 
time in a very long existence indeed, he entertained the notion that 
what he didn't know mightn't hurt him.
     Lando had finished being sick-or at least with having something to 
be sick with.  Fortunately the cockpit sanitation unit was still 
functioning.  Of course it wasn't electronic and had almost no moving 
parts.  Lando, wishing for the impossible like everybody else, was 
wishing he didn't have any moving parts, because, every time he moved 
something, it sent waves of nausea up whatever limb it happened to be, 
waves that zeroed in on his solar plexus and waggled it back and forth 
until he had to inspect the sanitation unit again.
     Closely.
     He didn't think he ever wanted to see anything purple again as 
long as he lived.  If he lived.  Or wanted to.
     A blueness that was more than blue seeped in through every port, 
window, blister, bubble, and televisor on the ship.  With the same 
delightful irony that determines every other day-today event in a 
malicious universe, the only electronic devices on the ship that worked 
perfectly were the outside visual pickups and their repeaters inside 
the hull.
     Navy blue, robin's-egg blue, sky blue (the sky of a million 
different planets, all mixed together indiscriminately in agate 
whirls), powder blue, denym blue, velvet blue, true blue.
     Lando blew his nose.
     His stomach seemed to have subsided a little.  He glanced at Vuffi 
Raa, who bristled with alertness, tentacles on the controls and his big 
red eye fastened on the cockpit transparency.
     "How are you feeling, Master?  Better?"
     "Don't call me master.  Yes, I'm feeling better.  How are you 
feeling, old trash-compacter?"  Lando thought about lighting a 
cigar-and immediately had to lean over to the sanitation unit again.
     False alarm, but it very nearly made him stop smoking for the 
rest of his life.
     "I don't know, Master.  I'm afraid I had to shut my feelings off 
in order to function.  Please forgive me if I don't seem quite myself 
for the duration of this journey."
     Lando laughed.  "I'm never going to be myself again!  What can I 
do to help?  You look like you have your tentacles pretty full. 
"There is really nothing either of us can do, Master.  The course is 
logged in and-one trusts-being followed.  I am merely monitoring 
life-support and other housekeeping functions.  And wondering how 
reliable even those indicators are."
     "We could always go back and look-you or 1, I mean, whichever you 
think best."  He tightened his chair harness a little, straightened up.
     He'd always wondered why sadness was described as being "blue."  
Now he knew: much more of this, and he'd be looking around for 
something sharp to cut his wrists with.
     He'd never known there were so many shades of blue, all of them 
ugly.
     "I think not, Master.  If something goes wrong up here, I t)elieve 
it will require the attention of both of us to correct it.  You might 
try asking one of our passengers how things are elsewhere in the ship, 
though."
     "Good idea."  He pushed an intertalkie button.  "Hello, over 
there!  Anybody listening?  We just want to know if the air and 
lighting and heat are all working.  Hello?  Can you hear me?
     Bassi?  Fybot?"
     Nothing could be heard over the roar of static in the system.
     Lando looked at Vuffi Raa and shrugged.  The instruments said 
everything was all right in the lounge and elsewhere in the ship.
     Other instruments, however, said that they were traveling in a 
spiral now, looping the loop as if riding down the coils of a cosmic 
corkscrew.
     Everything was blue outside.  Lando felt a tear creep down his 
cheek and, for the first time, in a long, long time, thought about a 
dog he'd had once.  It had been run over by a hovercraft.
     Bassi Vobah felt green inside.
     As a matter of fact, she felt green outside, as well.  The 
leafcolored radiation then battering at the Falcon's viewports seemed 
to penetrate to her very marrow, turning it and the blood it produced 
green, too.
     It didn't make sense.  Nothing made sense, and that alarmed her 
far worse than the light or radiation.  She was a person of certain 
bounds, of linearity, of rationality, of rules.  She was a person-an 
upholder, a maintainer@f law and order.
     Now see what had become of her.  The penetrating green light let 
her do exactly that.  She could see her own heart beating, deep green 
muscle fibers pumping bright green blood to medium green tissues and 
organs-all of which she could watch functioning-and returning, 
gray-green, to be reoxygenated in her spongy green lungs.
     With transparent green oxygen.
     Vuffi Raa examined his tentacles one by one.  Reflecting bright 
yellow light from the cockpit canopy, they gleamed back at him as if 
made of gold.  He had been silver-colored all his LIFE.  Now he was a 
golden droid, glittering at every joint.  He rather liked it.
     A beeping on the control panel indicated another set of 
instruments gone mad.  Irritably, he shut them off, then returned to a 
pleased and fascinated contemplation of his highly polished self.
     Perhaps when it was over, he'd have himself gold plated.  
Tastefully, mind you, nothing ostentatious.  How would gold and the red 
of his eye look together?  Rather nice, he thought.
     A yellow light began blinking on the console.  It clashed with the 
yellow streaming in the windows, so he flicked a tentacle down and 
squashed it.  There was a pop!, a fizzle, andblast it all, he had soot 
on his tentacle tip!  He searched around for something to clean it 
with, found a tissue beneath the panel, and began tidying up.  Must be 
perfectly clean, unless I want the plating to peel on me, and that 
would be atrocious Absently, he reached down to turn off another 
half-dozen switches, and suddenly became aware of a sallow pinkish 
starfish of a being sitting right on the dash in front of him.  Ver@n!
     How in the name of"Vuffi Raa!  What are you doing, old cybemaut?"
     "What did you call me, you@' "Vuffi Raa, listen t(y me!  You've 
busted up the intercom, and you were starting to turn off the 
life-support monitors.  Get hold of yourself, droid!  What's the 
matter?"
     With considerable effort, Vuffi Raa forced himself back into 
something resembling a normal frame of reference.  "My word, I'm 
sorry, Master, I must be taking radiation damage!  I don't know what to 
do about it, though; it's so hard to think.  Would you like me better 
if I had myself gold plated, or would it'be too garish?"
     Lando stared in blank amazement at his friend.  "Can you turn 
yourself off temporarily?  If you removed your tentacles, I could put 
you in the safe-the one under the panel where I keep my cigars.  Would 
that workEr
, what?  You want me to what, you organic slug, you 
blind, groping grub, you sniveling, hydrocarbonated-yawp!"
     Lando snatched the robot from the pilot's chair and, tentacles 
trailing, crammed his pentagonal body into the safe.
     "I hope youappreciate what I'm doing, old geiger counter.
     I've ruined my entire supply of cigars-crushed them to a ...
     Vuffi Raa, are you all tight?"
     The robot responded groggily.  "I think so, Master.  Did I really 
call you all those things?"  The heavy genuine steel antique safe-left 
by a previous owner of the Falcon-surrounded him on all sides but one 
and seemed fairly effective at shielding him from the radiation.  Lando 
swung the door as far shut as the robot's tentacles would allow, and 
chuckled.
     "I believe that's the most gumption you've shown since I met you.
     I rather liked it-but don't make a habit of it.  And don't call me 
master!"
     "Master, I'm still feeling the effects of the radiation.  Can you 
get by without me for a while?  I'm going to disconnect my 
manipulators, and ask you to close the door.  I'm terribly sorry, 
but-2' "Don't have another thought about it.  That's right, I'll take 
care of your legs.  I'm closing the door now.  Have a nice nap.
     I'll wake you when it's over."
     He shut the door, suddenly feeling very lonely, and carefully 
placed the little robot's tentacles on the pilot's seat, strapping them 
down.  He took a look at the instruments, decided there wasn't very 
much he could do about them, and sat for a while, wishing he had a 
cigar.
     Waywa Fybot awoke suddenly with the oddest feeling that he was 
home.
     Familiar orange light poured in from somewhere, and suddenly the 
world felt better, looked better than it had since he'd left his native 
planet decades ago to join the police.
     Why, yes!  There was his hometown, a lovely place, not too large 
yet not so small it didn't have all the conveniences a being could 
want.  He could see it now, wavering a little on the horizon as the sun 
beat down upon it.  He kept walking ...
     Egad, it had been a long, lonely time out among all those weird 
alien races.  Everywhere he went, they made bird jokes.
     Could he help it if his people were evolved-and proudly sofrom 
avians?
     He only wished that somewhere along the track of time they hadn't 
lost the knack of-but what was this?  He wasflying!  A glance to either 
side assured him that his arms had somehow lengthened, broadened, 
strengthened.  Well, it was all in the genes somewhere, he supposed.
     Recapitulation, he recalled, recapitulation.  He banked steeply, 
enjoying the sensation, banked the other way to get himself headed 
right, and passed over the rooftops of the town to the house that he'd 
been hatched in, a large place of cement and steel beams with a 
thatched roof.  He saw now that the place had been reroofed with 
genuine straw.  His folks were nothing if not stylish.  Those checks he 
was sending home were going to a good cause, then!
     He hopped over the fence, stirring the lawn lice with the power of 
his wings and making them complain in their mewling tones.  There were 
thousands of them, of course.  It was a well-kept lawn of a lovely 
shade of magenta, alive with crawling, rustling legs.
     He went inside the house.
     The Falcon seemed to be flying in right triangles as the Flamewind 
shifted from orange to red.  Lando caught it in the act that time, 
blinked as many-branched lightning bolts blasted all around the ship.
     He fought the urge to seize the controls as the apparent geometry 
of the Falcon's flight path shifted with the colors from triangles to 
something indescribable that would nauseate a pretzel-bender.  Well, 
I'll be dan-med, he thought, we're traveling on the inside surface of a 
Klein bottle.
     Or so it felt.
     Satisfied that the ship was flying true to course (or at least 
resigned to trusting its computer), he bent down and put his head next 
to the safe.
     "Vuffi Raa?"
     "Yes, Master?"  the robot answered meekly, its voice severely 
muffled by the metal door and barely audible over the Flamewind's 
titanic howling.
     "Are you all right?"
     "I'm all right," the box said.  "How are things with you?"
     "I'm having a wonderful time, wish you were here.  1-by the Galaxy 
Itse4p Hold on, I'll get back to you if we live!"
     Directly ahead of the Millennium Falcon was a vision out of a 
nightmare.  But it was no illusion.  Half a kilometer wide, the thing 
loomed up out of the glowing star-fog and ominous red glow like an 
impossible spider with too many legs.
     It seemed to be a starship engine attached to a great number of 
obsolete one-man fighters.  Eve n as he watched, the smaller craft 
detached themselves, leaped toward the freighter, their energy-guns 
spewing destruction.
     These were no remote-control pirate drones.  These were the real 
thing.
     And they were ready and eager to kill.
     xi STEADILY THE MOTLEY fighter squadron bore down on the 
Millennium Falcon.  Its instruments unreliable, bound to a 
predeternidned course, the converted freighter was a helpless target.
     Lando reached to the panel without hesitation, flipped a bank of 
switches, cutting off the artificial gravity and inertial buffers.
     Loose items in the cockpit swirled and floated as he punched the 
override and took control of the ship from the computer.
     He couldn't see-not with the dials and gauges acting the way they 
were-but he could feel.  He could con her by the seat of his pants.
     Whether or not they reached their destination was of secondary 
importance; survival came first.
     A pair of fighters streaked by, spitting fire.  The Falcon's 
shields glowed and pulsed, absorbing the energy, feeding it into the 
reactors.  There were limits to the amount that could be absorbed that 
way-in which case the reactor would come apart, taking the ship and 
everything within a thousand kilometers with it-but for now, each 
unsuccessful pass fed the Millennium Falcon's engines.
     And her guns.
     Rolling to defeat another run by the fighters, he slapped the 
intercom switch.  "Bassi Vobah, try and reach the starboard 
gun-blister!  I need some help with the shooting!"
     Silence.
     Diving steeply,finishing up with a flip that left four fighters 
soaring helplessly past the freighter, Lando realized that Vuffi Raa, 
in a moment of demented frustration, had wrecked the intemme.  He was 
on his own, for the first time since acquiring the little robot.
     He wasn't thing it much.
     A pair of smaller weapons on the upper hull was controllable from 
the cockpit.  Lando started keyboarding until he had established fire 
control through a pair of auxiliary pedals beneath the console.  Then, 
turning sharply-and feeling for the first time the stresses of 
acceleration as it piled his blood up in odd parts of his body-he trod 
on the pedals, blasting away at three of the enemy as they passed.
     They kept on passing.  Either Lando had missed, distracted by 
maneuvering the ship, or he didn't have the firepower to do the job.
     It was like a nightmare where you shoot the bad guy and he doesn't 
fall down.
     Half a dozen fighters overtook the Falcon from behind, their 
energy-caimon r@ng her.  She shuddered, staggered.  Lando brought her 
back under control, rode the shock waves out, and continued to pour 
fire at an enemy he saw-to no effect at all.
     He slewed the ship around, getting angry, and found he faced at 
least a dozen of the fast, vicious little craft, coming head on.
     He picked out the leader, got it in the canopy cross-hairs, and 
stamped on both pedals.  Every move the fellow made, he matched, 
keeping the fighter centered, keeping the guns going.
     The enemy's nose cowling suddenly disintegrated, the small craft 
burst into flames, showering debris over the Falcon and his 
squadronmates.  One of the companion vessels staggered suddenly and 
veered off, trailing sparks and rapidly dispersing smoke.  Two with 
one-rather prolonged, Lando admitted to himself@hot.
     The Falcon lurched, as if lifted suddenly from behind, then 
stabilized as Lando applied counterthrust.  Something solid had smacked 
her in the underside vicinity of the boarding ramp, always a weak 
point.  He skated her in a broad horizontal loop, gave her half a roll 
as she came around, and there it was: another fighter, its fuselage 
accordioned, its engines spouting flames.
     Ramming?  In this century?  They must be pretty desperate.
     And certainly not pirates, Lando thought as he fought the ship 
into a better attitude to fire from.  No profit in ramming.
     The bombers, then?  The man he'd killed on 6845 could have been a 
fighter pilot.  What had he done to get an entire squadron of fighter 
pilots angry with him?
     The Falcon jumped again.  This time the irtstruments-if they could 
be relied upon-showed heavy fire being poured into the hull about where 
the fighter had mmmed her.  Sure enough, the shields, never at their 
strongest there, were steadily deteriorating.  He rolled the ship, only 
to be attacked in the same place by another group of fighters.  The 
battle was getting serious.
     All right, then: he hadn't anyone to help him, and a battle by 
attrition was a losing proposition.  He only had one ship to lose.
     He'd taken the measure of the fighters.  They were maneuverable 
and fast-more maneuverable than the freighter, that was only natural.
     But not as fast, either, not on a straight course.
     Trusting his feel for direction, he ironed out the circle he'd 
been making, rolled through three-quarters of a turn to bring him 
parallel to the Oseon ecliptic, and shoved all throttles to the ends of 
their tracks.
     Behind him, the sublight dimsters outshone the Flamewind for a 
moment.  Then, from the viewpoint of the fighters, they were gone, lost 
in the multicolored mist.
     Lando knew his enemies-whoever they were, confound it!-would not 
be long in following.  They'd had that gigantic antique battleship 
engine they were using as a collective booster.  He had to think of 
something clever, and he had to do it fast.
     Momentarily, the Flamewind paled.  They were out of the Sixth Belt 
where they'd begun, and crossing the narrow space between it and the 
Fifth Belt, their destination.
     Either that or they were headed from Six to Seven-Lando didn't 
trust his navigational capacities at the best of times, let alone now.
     No, they were headed toward the Oseon's fractious primary.
     His hand swept instrument switches.  The screens still showed an 
indecipherable hash, but coming up a little to the starboard was a 
small cluster of asteroids, irregulars, following their own course 
through the belt.  He modified his course to meet them.
     As he switched the instruments back off, he could see the tiny 
fleet of fighter craft behind him.
     The screen had shown him half a hundred asteroids.  His naked eyes 
showed him half a hundred more, all small-none greater than a few 
kilometers-all very tightly bunched together.  Taking a great chance, 
Lando cut straight through them until he saw a sort of miracle ahead.
     Whether it had been a single rock, struck and not quite split in 
half, or a pair of floating worldlets that upon colliding had not quite 
wholly fused, there was a cldep crack around its circumference, seventy 
or eighty kilometers long, no more than twenty meters wide.
     Using everything he had to stand her on her nose-without smearing 
everybody aboard into roseberry jam in the absence of inertial 
buffering-he steered for the crack, orienting himself correctly and 
establishing a tangent course to the double asteroid.  At the last 
moment he killed everything but the attitude controls and the docking 
jets, brought her to a gentle stop deep within the crevasse.
     The portside windows showed a half a dozen fighters streaking past 
without noticing where he'd hidden.  Puffing little bursts of attitude 
reactant, he ground the Falcon gently into place.  The guns he could 
control he aimed at open sky.  The Flamewind pulsed-luridly, looking 
like a far-off fireworks display.
     Which is when he noticed the instruments.
     One by one, as he checked them, most of his instrumentation seemed 
to turn reliable again.  He guessed his hidey-hole was an iron-nickel 
asteroid that acted as a shield against the storm of radiation.  The 
protection wasn't perfect, but it was within the abilities of the 
ship's electronics to correct.
     He ducked his head beneath the panel, spoke loudly and distinctly.
     "Vuffi Raa, come out of there!  Coffeine break's over!"
     Reconnecting the little robot's tentacles was not as easy as it 
was under ordinary circumstances.  They themselves were sophisticated 
mechanisms, the equal of the fully equipped droids that drove buses and 
typed stories in newsrooms everywhere in the galaxy.  Even deactivated, 
they had taken a lot of radiation, and their self-repair circuits, set 
in motion once they were attached to their owner, would require some 
hours to bring them to full efficiency.
     Lando left Vuffi Raa in the cockpit to watch for enemy strays, and 
wended his way around the corridor to the passenger lounge.
     Where he was greeted by utter chaos.
     It looked as though a herd of house-sized animals had stomped 
through.  Freed of the restraint of artificial gravity, impelled by 
sudden changes of direction without inertial damping, everything loose 
in the room had collided with everything stationary at least once.
     Perhaps more than once.
     And that included Waywa Fybot and Bassi Vobah.
     Wires hung loose from ceiling and walls.  Small articles of 
ftimiture had ended up in extremely strange places.  The female police 
officer was beginning to stir.  She moaned heartily, lifted herself up 
on an elbow, and shook her head.
     "What happened?  Where are we?"
     "Two very good questions," the captain responded.  "We were 
attacked-I don't know by whom-and we escaped.  But I don't know to 
where.  Are you all right?"  He stopped beside her, assisted her in 
righting herself.  She breathed deeply, made a sketchy 
self-examination.
     "I don't think anything is broken-although to look at this room, 
that would require a small miracle.  Ohhh, my head!"
     "Take it easy, you're not expected anywhere very soon.
     That's me: Lando Cahissian, miracles made to order.  You stay 
there, I'm going to look at our fine feathered fuzz."
     He rose and stepped over the debris toward Waywa Fybot's sleeping 
rack.  In the bird-being's case, there had been something less than a 
miracle.  Both the creature's legs were broken, in exactly the same 
place, apparently where a bar of the rack crossed them.  The 
arrangement had never been intended for free-fall and high 
acceleration.
     Nonetheless, the avian officer seemed to have a blissful 
expression on his face, if Lando could rely on his interpretation of 
it.  The gambler felt a presence at his elbow.  Bassi Vobah had made it 
to her feet and across the room.  She stood a bit unsteadily, but she 
wasn't leaning on anything or anybody.
     Lando liked her a little bit more for that, but not much.
     "What's wrong with Officer Fybot, and why in the name of the 
Eternal is he smiling in that idiotic way?"
     "Shock, perhaps," Lando answered her.  "He's broken both his 
legs-rather, I've broken both his legs.  I'm having a bit of trouble 
regretting it very much, considering the circumstances.
     Although I wish I knew how to examine him for further damage.  I 
don't know where he's supposed to bend, let alone where he isn't."
     Bassi seemed a bit hysterical all of a sudden, and Lando 
subtracted a few of the points he'd given her.  "Well, can't you do 
something?  We can't just leave him lying there!"
     He shook his head.  "That's exactly what we're going to do, after 
I splint those'legs.  I don't think we'd better move him."
     The birdlike creature sat up suddenly, opened his great blue eyes, 
and said delightedly, "Yes, I'll have another centipede, Mother, if you 
don't mind!"
     xii AND THis ONE is worth a negative eighteen-am I clear, so far?"
     the robot asked.  The gigantic yellow avian towering over him at 
the lounge table nodded, trying to shift to a more comfortable 
position.
     Lando looked up from the covered free-fall dish that contained his 
long-overdue meal and chuckled, wondering who was going to take whom to 
the laundry when the bird and the droid had the rules of sabacc 
straight between them.  Vuffi Raa's literal-mindedness could be a 
handicap; on the other hand, Waywa Fybot was a bit preoccupied at 
present, between his injuries and whatever it was he'd seen during the 
onslaught of the Flamewind.
     They'd gotten the narcotics officer sprinted up all right: 
tinklewood fishing rods had turned out to be good for something, after 
all.  Lando had never been able to sell the blasted things back in the 
Dilonexa.  He still had a bundle of them stacked in one of the 
auxiliary holds.
     Ah, well.  Things could be worse.
     They could all be dead.
     Looking up again, he winked and smiled at Bassi Vobah, likewise 
feeding herself from a covered tray.  It had taken them the better part 
of an hour to manhandle the bird into a position where his broken legs 
could be treated, even in free-fall.  Then, all at once, it seemed they 
had a million things to attend to, and it hadn't been until later that 
they could think of food.
     The first order of business had been the Falcon herself.
     She'd been pretty badly battered by the desperate flight through 
the Flamewind and the battle with those tramp fighters-Lando still 
didn't know who the Core they were or why they had attacked him.  She'd 
never been constructed for astrobatics with her inertial dampers shut 
down.  The stresses to her hull and frame must have been titanic.
     In addition, she'd been shot at and even rammed, albeit by a tiny, 
lightweight single-seater with insufficient mass to do very much except 
momentarily overload her dynamic shielding.  That was the key, of 
course: her force fields had held her together through everything; she 
was basically a loose pile of nuts and bolts kept in one place by 
electromagnetogravitic gimcrackery.
     But-like his girlfriend the bootlegger's daughter-he loved her 
still.
     "Master, that should be another centimeter to starboard, I 
believe.  " Vuffi Raa had been on the other side of the hull-the 
inside-measuring the effects of Lando's exhausting labor on the 
outside.  There was a huge ugly dent-but no more than that-in the 
underside of the boarding ramp where the fighter had smacked it.  Lando 
laughed to himself.  You shoulda seen the other guy!
     There was nothing he could do right now about the purely 
mechanical battering.  Her seals were intact, the ramp would work 
perfectly (although there'd be a slight bulge to stumble over, exiting 
the ship), and what really counted was the shielding.
     He moved the n-ticropole another centimeter to the right, waited 
for the robot's confirmation, and riveted it in place.  He didn't 
understand why the Falcon's previous operators hadn't done this long 
ago.  They had the parts in stores.  Just lazy, perhaps.  When he was 
done, the effective density of her defenses would be doubled@f course 
with a correlative increase in what the shields pulled out of the power 
plant.  Maybe that explained things.
     It was hot and sweaty in the vacuum suit, and he was hungry again.
     Worse, it was extremely claustrophobic working in the skinny wedge 
of space between the Falcon's belly and the face of the asteroidal 
crevasse.  Well, he had no one but him@ to blame for that: he'd sheared 
half a dozen communicate and sensory antennae wiggling her in there, 
items that by very nature had to protrude through the defenses in order 
to operate.
     The fact that they hadn't been operating at all, on account of the 
Flamewind, had helped to guide his instantaneous decision.
     That and the twenty-odd hostile spacecraft determined to blow the 
Falcon to smithereens.
     He began to back from the cramped enclosure.  "Let's see about 
those soft spots on the upper hull, now.  Then I'm going to have to 
quit for a while.  This is rather tiring, I'm afraid."
     The little droid's response was laden with apologetic overtones.
     "Master, if it were possible, I would be doing that for you right 
now.
     I-" "Vuffi Raa, for once shut up and let somebody else do the 
donkeywork.  You come out here and the blasted sun will start frying 
your brains again.  It's like that safe in the cockpit: we're shielded 
by the asteroid, but not perfectly.  You need the extra protection of 
the hull."
     "Yes, Master How lucky it was that this crevice runs perpendicular 
to the direction of the Flamewind.  Were it a few degrees the other 
way, it wouldfunction as a funnel or a wave guide and concentrate the-" 
"Yes," said Lando with a shudder, "how well I know!"  He hadn't been 
thinking about all that when he'd ducked the Falcon in there.  He'd 
simply been trying to get away from the fighters.  He'd been flying and 
fighting by the seat of his pants.
     Even now it gave him a chill to contemplate.
     "All right, I'm out from under.  Start the lock cycling.  I'll 
rest for five minutes and then get out on the upper hull."  This may be 
hard work, Lando thought, but when I'm finished, my ship and 
passengers-and I!-will be as well protected from the Flarnewind as we 
are now.  Without having to hide inside an asteroid and go wherever it 
feels like taking us.
     "Sabacc!"  Vuffi Raa cried, displaying his cards to the bewildered 
bird.  "You see, this comes under a special rule: whenever you have the 
Idiot-that's worth zero, you know-then a Two of anything and a Three of 
anything are considered an automatic twenty-three."
     Dejectedly, Waywa Fybot handed over a few credits.  "But that's 
ridiculous," he said in his ridiculous voice.  "It doesn't make sense.
     Two and three are five, not twenty-three, and besides, the 
addition of a zer@' "That's why it's called the Idiot's Array, old 
passenger Pigeon," Lando supplied.  If things kept going that way, he 
was going to fly the ship and let Vuffi Raa do the gambling.  Lando 
opened a flap in his tray, took a final bite of whatever it was, and 
slid the container into the mass recycler.  "Why don't you play with 
them, Bassi?  A three-handed game's more interesting."
     "Not on your life!"  She shook her head ruefully.  "I've played 
enough sabacc to last me a lifetime, thank you."
     "Master would it be presumptuous of me to say that your piloting 
of the ship earlier today was highly proficient?"
     "Only if you don't call me master when you're doing it."
     Lando could not have been more pleased by this modest praise.  He 
had been a perfectly terrible flyer when Vuffi Raa had taken him in 
hand-rather, in tentacle.  Now, at least sometimes, it was as if he 
were wearing the Millennium Falcon instead of riding in her.  The 
little droid had been mortified about his own failure to stand up to 
the sleet of radiation, at his momentary irrational irresponsibility.
     But Lando had pointed out that even a diamond, subjected to the 
proper stress at the proper angle, would shatter.
     He tightened down another @cropole, this time on the upper surface 
of the Falcon, and went on to the next designated location.  No bloody 
wonder the vessel was so vulnerable; there were a dozen spots where the 
fields failed to overlap properly.
     Carefully he pulled his arm out of the suit sleeve, pulling at the 
glove with his other hand, snaked his fingers up through the collar 
into the helmet, and wiped perspiration off his nose.
     You'd think that after all the centuries people had been wearing 
pressure suits that someone would have inventedA red light lit up on 
the surface just below his chin.  Now what the devil did that mean?
     Great Edge!  It meant a heat-sink overload!  He was cooking 
himself to death!  He examined the readouts on his left arm; everything 
looked nominal there.
     What was the matter, then?  He keyed the suit's transmitter.
     "Vuffi Raa, you'd better start the lock going.  I've got to get 
out of this suit.  There's somethings' No response.
     "Vuffi Raa, do you copyt' Still no response.
     Again he checked the indicators on the panel inset in his sleeve.
     The communicator pilot was burning steadily.  He hoped that his 
little friend was all right.  The difficulty there lay in the fact that 
the high point of the Falcon's hull was precisely at the upper airlock.
     He'd had to crawl out from below, climb around the edge of the 
ship, to get to where he was.
     Now, with an apparently malfunctioning suit, he was going to have 
to repeat the procedure in reverse, with no guarantee he could do it in 
time to keep from being poached in the shell.
     Vuffi Raa could save him a critical few minutes-if only he'd 
answer!
     "Captain to Millennium Falcon, do you read?"
     Nothing.
     He sat as still as possible, thinking as hard as he could.  It 
seemed to be getting hotter inside the suit by the second.
     Suddenly, he glanced at the riveting gun in his hand and at the 
airlock wheel wedged against the rock that formed a roof over his head.
     Crawling slowly forward a meter, he rapped against the shank of 
the wheel.  The clank!, transmitted by the hull, reverberated in his 
suit.
     He tried it again.  And again.
     A few moments later, there was another kind of reverberation in 
his suit.
     "Master is that you making that noise?  I can't raise you on the 
comlink.  " Uncertain whether Vuffi Raa could hear him, he bashed the 
riveter against the wheel again, once.
     "Are you in some kind of trouble other than communication's being 
down?"
     Good guess, Vuffi Raa.  Clank!
     "I'll come and get you, right-" Clank!  Clank!
     "But, Master ...
     Clank!  Clank!
     A few sweaty minutes later, another suited figure clambered toward 
Lando over the edge of the ship.  Bassi Vobah-her pistol strapped to 
the outside of her borrowed vacuum-wearcrawled beside him, placed her 
helmet in contact with his.
     "Once a cop, always a cop," Lando said before she got a chance to 
open her mouth.
     "Don't be an idiot.  What's wrong with your suitt' He shook the 
sweat out of his eyes.  It floated in tiny droplets inside the helmet, 
distracting him.  "Coolant failure of some kind.  I was worried about 
getting dinner; now it looks like I'm going to be din@' "Oh, shut up!
     You relax and lie still.  I'll pull you out of here.  Your little 
five-armed friend and Officer Fybot are at the downside lock right now, 
waiting for us."
     "Not the bird, he's accident prone!"
     "You should talk!"
     Lando was approaching unconsciousness when they cycled through the 
lock.  Vuffi Raa practically tore the helmet off his master-and his 
ears with it.  The resultant blast of fresh air in Lando's face was 
like an arctic gale.
     "Well, another small adventure," the gambler observed as the three 
of them stripped him down to his underwear and handed him a plastic bag 
of water, "when what I really needed was a few days in a 
sensory-deprivation tank.  That's the universe for you.  Anybody think 
of slapping something in the food-fixer?"
     Bassi Vobah huffed and stomped her way out of the lock area, not 
an easy thing to do in the absence of gravity.  "You're welcome!"  she 
said over her shoulder.
     The alien officer followed her, limping awkwardly on his sprinted 
and bandaged legs.
     Vuffi Raa looked up at Lando from where he was minutely examining 
the vacuum suit.  "Master," he said cautiously, and in a very quiet 
voice, "did you remove this suit between the time you were working down 
below and when you went topside?"
     Lando floated on his back beside the airlock hatch, @ng-but only 
thinking-about getting up and going forward.  The cold metal felt 
extremely good to him at the moment.
     "Had to," he replied, hoping the robot wasn't headed where he 
thought he was headed.  "Call of nature."
     "So that's when it was done.  Master, somebody@' "Sabotaged the 
suit when I wasn't looking, is that it?"
     "I'm afraid so.  They crossprogrammed the communicator with the 
cooling system.  Oddly enough, if you'd continued trying to call me on 
the radio, it would have saved you from being roasted."
     Lando shook his head, grabbed a stanchion, and sat up stiffly.
     "That's a little obscure, even as practical jokes go.
     Which one of them do you suppose it is?"
     "Bassi Vobah helped to save your life."
     "When she couldn't avoid it.  Come on, I want a smoke.  Do you 
suppose I could roll a cigarette out of one of those crushed cigars in 
the safe?"
     "Why would you want to, Master?"
     "Because it's there."
     The next order of business-after getting something to eatwas 
figuring out where they were.  Lando's running battle with the fighter 
squadron had taken him through many turns and twists, and across what 
distances he couldn't guess.  He and Vuffi Raa spent a good deal of 
time pondering all that over the navigational computer.
     "The device is useless, Master.  The radiation's finished it 
off.-That gives me an eerie feeling, I must confess.  However, the 
catalog has some information: this asteroid is uninhabited, but it 
isn't uncharted."
     In the seat beside the robot in the cockpit, Lando's shoulders 
jerked in surprise.  "What?  You mean you know where we are?"
     "I know the catalog number and some other characteristics of the 
asteroid we're on@r in, if you prefer.  Its configuration is unique, 
and has been noticed in the past.  On the other hand, I can't say 
precisely where the asteroid is at the moment.  I have its orbital 
elements, but everything in this system is subject to everything else, 
gravitywise@' " 'Gravitywise?' " "Yes, Master, and predicting where 
anything will be at any given moment amounts to a billion-body geometry 
problem.  At any other time than Flamewind, there are continuous 
longrange sensor inventories, and the system's databanks are updated 
hourly, but you see@' "I see."  Lando turned a knob, activating the 
deck plates at their lowest intensity so he'd have just enough gravity 
to roll a cigarette.  He lit it, kicked them off again, and reclined in 
his chair, mind working furiously.
     "Once we get out in that mess again, we won't be able to 
navigate," he said, more to himself than to the robot.
     Vuffi Raa agreed, adding, "However, I shall be of more assistance, 
now that you have increased the shielding, Master.
     The trouble is that we don't know where to go."
     "We still have that dead-reckoning program of yours?"
     Reflexively, he flicked ash off his cigarette.  It drifted in the 
cabin, finally settling on Vuffi Raa's carapace.  The droid, equally 
absently, flicked it off.  It broke up and they both lost sight of it.
     "Yes, Master-with what amounts to a big ball of unknown squiggles 
at the end of it where you evaded those fighters."
     "Can you estimate how big a ball?"
     "Yes, certainly.  From the.  power consumption, if nothing else."
     "Then that's our margin for error.  We simply follow the course as 
if we'd never deviated and hunt through a sphere of space the same size 
for Bohhuah Mutdah's estate."
     "I'm afraid not, Master, if for no other reason than that the 
sphere doesn't stay the same size.  It increases as a function of 
probable error as we travel sunward.  During Flamewind, there's no way 
of accurately estimating drift, and@' "Does that catalog of yours give 
details on Mutdah's asteroid?"
     "Fifty-seven ninety-two?  Yes, Master, l@' "Then it should give us 
some hints about the other asteroids around there; it's interested in 
the weird shape of this one.
     Let's get as close as we can, then pick our way, rock by rock, 
until we find the right one."
     "Very well, Master, I see no other alternative."
     "Neither do I. Now, while we're still up here and have some 
privacy, we're going to talk about who it is this time that's trying to 
kill me."
     "We're nearly a day behind schedule!"  Bassi Vobah protested.
     They were sitting in the lounge again.  Lando had powered up the 
gravity, assuring himself beforehand that his passenger with the broken 
legs was settled comfortably, and asked Vuffi Raa to prepare another 
meal before they started.
     "Do you realize," the female officer continued to an 
unappreciative audience in general and an increasingly irritated Lando 
in particular, "that, under ordinary conditions, this trip would have 
required a little over two hours?"
     "As an inhabitant of the Oseon System, my dear hired gun, you 
should appreciate better than anyone else the inapplicability of the 
expression 'ordinary conditions.' There's a storm going on out there, 
and although I'm not altogether unwilling to venture out in it again, 
some preparation is essential."
     "Captain, may I remind you that the discretion in this matter 
isn't wholly yours t@' "Officer, may I remind you that I am the 
captain, and that, if you continue nagging, me, I'm going to take that 
bl@ away from you and stuff it up your nose?"
     The policewoman blinked, sat back in stunned outrage.
     her superiors had never spoken to her like that!  Lando 
grinned-not altogether unironically, and laid down the law: "Now see 
here: one of you attempted to murder me when I was outside the ship.
     I'm going to be rather busy when we quit this refuge, both Vuffi 
Raa and I are, and I don't want to have to watch my back.  Therefore, 
until we can arrive at an agreement concerning arrangements, we will 
sit right here.  My inclination-and if you think I'm joking, you're 
woefully deceived-is to handcuff the pair of you together until we get 
to 5792.  Unless you can think of an alternative that suits you 
better-and will satisfy me-that is what we'll do.
     "Or we'll park here until the Core freezes over."
     Bassi Vobah sat in angry silence, her arms folded across her 
chest, a sour expression on her face.  Waywa Fybot blinked his huge 
blue eyes, looked thoughtful, but in the end said no more than did his 
colleague.
     Finally: "Now look, you two, I'm not kidding!  I haven't figured 
out who's doing what to whom and why, yet, but there's 
something-possibly several somethings-going on.  I make it a practice 
to avoid getting killed.  'One of you get out your handcuffs and lock 
yourself to the other immediately, or@' "Master!"  came a shout over 
the intercom.  "We've got trouble-big trouble!  I need you on the 
flight deck!"
     Rising quickly, Lando glanced from one cop to the other, smashed a 
frustrated fist into the palm of his other hand, turned, and hurried to 
the cockpit.
     "What is it, Vuffi Raa?  Just now I've got@' "Look forward, 
Master, to the edge of the crevasse."
     Lando settled in his chair, strapped himself in, and, as a happy 
afterthought, turned the local gravity in the lounge up to 
approximately three times the normal pull.  "That ought to keep them in 
one place!  I-oh, no!"
     "Oh, yes, Master.  You can make out the reflections from their 
bulls.  The fighter squadron has found us.  They'll be firing into this 
canyon-without any chance of missing-in a very few seconds!"
      xiii "MASTER, I HAVE failed you again!  We cannot escape, my 
pilot skills are therefore useless.  Nor can I man the guns-my 
programming forbids it!"
     Lando waggled back and forth at the controls, loosening the Falcon 
in its rocky nest.  He was wishing he could bring the starboard 
quad-guns to bear, but that was asking too much.
     Aside: "We all have our limits, Vuffi Raa, remember what I told 
you about diamonds.  Just@' Diamonds?  That gave the gambler an idea-a 
gambler's idea, to be sure, but it was all he had at the moment.
     "Get out of there, old automaton, strap yourself in the jumpseat 
behind us, and warn me if anybody comes up the tunnel to the cockpit.  I 
may be able to get us out of this mess, but I want my back safe and my 
elbows unjogged."
     As soon as the droid had restationed himself, Lando began hitting 
switches.  He had some time: the crevasse was deep, composed mostly of 
metal-bearing rock.  It would take the enemy a while to find the 
Falcon, especially since they were out in that impossible .  - - in the 
lounge.  A neeTaking his first risk, he cut the gravity die on a 
power-consumption gauge dropped slightly to the left.
     Next, he began robbing power from every other system.  Out went 
every light in the ship.  Off went the life-support-they'd all be fine 
for a few minutes without it, and, if his plan didn't work, they 
wouldn't need it.  He'd never reactivated the inertial damping; he 
placed it on standby, contingent on what happened next.  When he was 
finished, only the panel lights were glowing, that and Vuffi Raa's 
great eye behind him.  The ship was deadly silent.
     With enormous reluctance, he cut the standby power to every gun on 
the ship.  It made him feel naked, but they were useless for what he 
had in mind.
     "All right, Vuffi Raa, everything quiet back there?"
     "I can hear the pair of them wondering what's going on, Master."
     "Let them wonder."
     He reached across the instrument array and flipped the shields on.
     Lights sprang into bright existence, making him feel better.  Then 
he unlatched a metal cover over a graduated knob.  Normally it was set 
at a tiny minus value, placing the main strength of the shields just 
under the first few molecules of the ship's skin.  There were sound 
reasons for this, but Lando didn't care about them now.
     He turned the knob, slowly, very carefully.
     The ship's structure groaned as the shields expanded, first a 
millimeter, then a centimeter away from the surface of the hull.
     Stresses were transmitted through the hull members to the heavily 
buttressed casing of the field generator.  Lando turned the knob a 
little more.
     The Falcon had been tightly wedged within the rock, the wheel of 
her upper airlock hatch scraping one side of the crevice, the bottom of 
her hull abraded by the other.  There hadn't been a millimeter to 
spare.
     Now Lando was demanding more room, expanding the shields against 
the asteroid's substance.  He turned the knob again; something groaned 
like a living@ying-thing aft of the cockpit, but the panel lights still 
showed everything intact.
     Half a dozen fighters shot by the lip of the crevasse, seeking, 
searching, probing.  One of them fired an experimental shot.  It 
penetrated and rebounded half a dozen times within the walls before it 
faded.
     Another group of fighters swooped past.
     And another.
     They were circling the asteroid, searching the long canyon, 
hundreds of kilometers in extent, for the hidden freighter that had 
burned at least two of their number out of the polychrome skies of the 
Oseon.
     Their flybys were becoming more frequent as they narrowed the 
search.
     Lando turned the knob a little more, a little more.
     A brilliant beam of energy cascaded across the forward shields.
     By accident or design, the enemy had found its prey.
     The power needle jumped.  Lando slammed the knob to the right as 
far as it would go.
     There was a deafening exploding sound.  Multicolored light 
showered in on Lando and the robot as the asteroid burst under the 
stresses of the shields and the Flarnewind swept around them again.
     Secondary explosions punctuated the space around them: one, three, 
five-Lando lost count as the hurtling rock fragments smashed and 
scattered the fighter squadron-seven, eight.  Perhaps more, he wasn't 
sure.  No one turned to fight.  He diverted a little power to the 
inertial dampers, cut the shields back to normal, fired up the drives 
and kicked in the deadreckoner.
     They were on their way again.
     He turned up the gravity in the lounge.  Even he could hear the 
thump and a curse from Bassi Vobah.  He grinned and shook his head.
     The improved shields seemed to help considerably.  Vuffi Raa 
retained his reason, Bassi Vobah was as mtional as she ever was.  Waywa 
Fyb6t dozed in his rack, recovering from his injuries with the aid of 
an electronic bone-knitter from the Falcon's medical bag of tricks.  He 
ought to be completely well in a few more hours, just in time to arrest 
the triltionaire addict.
     SweH.
     Lando, for the most part, stayed up in the cockpit.  He was tired 
of having police for company, preferred the company of Vuffi Raa.  The 
little robot scurried around, tidying up and doing minor repairs.  He 
reported that the hull was perfectly sound, despite the torture 
inflicted on it, and, in a spare hour, checked the mountings of the 
shield generator for stress crystallization.
     There wasn't any.
     Now that he had time to think about it again, Lando realized that 
his life had become very complicated.
     He'd had many of the same thoughts in jail back on Oseon 6845, but 
things had been simpler, even as recently as then.
     He was a simple man, he told himself, a relatively honest gambler 
who usually only cheated to avoid winning too conspicuously.  Yet 
someone-several someones, it would appear- kept trying pretty hard to 
kill him.  First with a bomb.
     Then with another bomb.  Then, just to show a little versatility, 
with a big piece of titanium pipe.  Finally, most recently, with a 
cleverly jimn-lied spacesuit.  He didn't even count the pirate attack 
or the two encounters with the fighter squadron, although the latter 
seemed at least tangentially connected.  He simply didn't know where it 
all fit in.
     Everybody has enemies, especially a gambler who makes a habit of 
winning.  But the vendetta was ridiculous.  For the hundredth time, he 
reviewed his life over the past few years, trying to discover some 
person he'd known and hurt badly enough to merit such attention.
     He was a skillful and fortunate man with the cards, and, despite 
his failings as a merchant captain, he was becon-ting a pretty good 
ship-handler, as well.  If he did say so himself.
     Vuffi Raa said so, himself.
     Unfortunately, when closely examined, his proficiency was a talent 
of no practical value.  All it seemed to do was get him into trouble.
     He belonged on a luxury interstellar liner as a passenger, 
educating other passengers about the follies of trying to fill an 
inside straight.  The soldier-of-fortune routine was beginning to pall.
     Well, if by some slim chance he got out of this mess, he'd see 
about rearranging his LIFE.  He had come to love the Falcon, but it was 
a dangerous affair, one that threatened to get him killed at just about 
any moment.  Vuffi Raa was quite another matter, a good friend and 
partner, an astute adviser.  But this captain business ...
     Vtrith a sinking heart, Klyn Shanga inspected the remnants of his 
command.  One lost at Oseon 6845.  Two lost in the first engagement 
with that tramp freighter.  And now, between the Flatnewind and that 
exploding asteroid, a mere five fighters left.  It was possible that 
more had survived, were even now trying to find their way back to the 
squadron through storm and radiation.  Some of them might even live 
past the @sadventure because they'd lost touch with their comrades.
     Five tiny fighting craft, no two alike, except in general size, 
range, and firepower.  They drew on the battle-cruiser engine, 
restoring their own power even as it pulled them through the 
nightmarish void.
     Well, each of the men had known from the beginning what he faced: 
a cruel and cunning enemy; a being that took delight in human misery; a 
creature willing to sacrifice whole cultures, entire planets to satisfy 
whatever unknowably evil objectives it set for itself.
     And each had understood, when he had assembled them in his home 
system from the ragtags of a dozen armies, how little chance there was 
of surviving the quest.  To them, it had been worth it.
     Five out of twenty-four.
     It still was.
     Bohhuah Mutdah lounged in a gel-filled recliner, watching a 
performance of surpassing obscenity.  On the lawn before him, all 
manner of sentient beings mingled, progressing through every 
permutation of activity possible to them.  He had hired them-over three 
hundred of them-for that express purpose.
     They were following his detailed instructions.
     He found it boring.
     Bohhuah Mutdah found very nearly everything boring.
     There was little he cared to participate in directly, owing either 
to security considerations@yen now he was surrounded by an unobtrusive 
force field to protect him from potential assassins among his 
employee@r to his physical condition.  He had seen too much of life, 
had too much of life.  Still he clung to it, although he didn't know 
why.
     To say that Bohhuah Mutdah was obese would be to engage in 
understatement.  He had begun, a hundred years ago, with a large frame, 
a little over two meters tall, broad-shouldered, long-legged.  That had 
been only the beginning, an armature on which he molded a grotesque 
parody of heroic sculpture.  He was heroically obese, monumentally 
obese, cosmically ...
     On a genuine planet, with a real gravitic pull, he would have 
weighed three hundred kilos, perhaps three-fifty.  He hadn't entered 
such a field for a quarter of a century.  He was bigger around the 
waist than two large men could reach and working on three.  His own 
arms looked stubby, his legs like cones turned over on the ends into 
absurdly tiny baby feet.  His face was a bushel basket full of suet, 
dotted with impossibly tiny features: a pair of map-pin eyes, a pair of 
pinprick nostrils, a miniature blossom of a mouth.
     He hadn't used his own hands for any purpose for five years.
     He could afford to use the hands of others.  He had no real notion 
of what he was worth.  No truly rich man does.  He'd heard it said he 
was the wealthiest human in the known galaxy.
     He wasn't sure about that, either, and didn't care.
     He didn't care about anything at all-except, perhaps, lesai.
     Maybe it was I the drug that kept him going, maintained the mild 
interest he experienced in remaining alive.  Everything else, the 
world, the entire universe, resembled a bleak gray plain to him.  The 
Flamewind, lashing and snarling above his heavily shielded dome, seemed 
colorless to him, although the hirelings on the lawn paused long 
enough, now and again, to look up in awe at the display.
     It wasn't being rich that had done this to him.  As long as he 
could remember, since he was a child in rather ordinary circumstances, 
he'd puzzled over the phrase "will to live" and wondered what drove 
others to the bizarre extremes they sometimes reached while struggling 
merely to remain in existence.  Mutdah's wealth had been the casual 
result of a decade's desultory application of his incredible 
intelligence, directing his modest substance toward a path of 
inevitable, automatic growth.
     Nor did that intelligence provide him with an answer to his real 
problem.  He knew submorons, many of them working for him, whose 
capacity to enjoy life was infinite compared to his.
     He simply lived on, whether he cared to or not, like a machine-no, 
even the machines who worked for him appeared to relish the mockery of 
life they possessed with greater fervor and satisfaction than their 
master.
     It was a puzzle.  Luckily, he didn't care enough about solving it 
to let it worry him unduly.  He watched the sky, he watched his 
performers.  He watched reflections of it all in the fist-sized Rafa 
life-crystal he wore upon a yard of silken cord about his neck, 
wondering why he'd bothered to obtain the thing in the first place.
     That philosopher, whoever he had been, had been right: the 
greatest mystery of life was life itself.  And the question that best 
stated it was: why bother?
     A tear rolled down Bohhuah Mutdah's pillow of cheek, but he was 
far too numb to notice it.
     In a hidden place, Rokur Gepta thought upon the art of deception.
     How ironic it was, and yet how fitting, that the surest way to lie 
to others is to lie to oneself first.  If you can convince the single 
soul who knows the falsehood for what it is, then everyone else is an 
easy mark.
     Salesmen had known this simple wisdom for ten thousand years, but 
Rokur Gepta had never known a salesman.  Politicians knew it, too, but 
politicians were Gepta's natural prey, and while the spider knows the 
ways of the fly in many respects, she never asks him what he thinks of 
the weather.
     Gepta, isolated by necessity now, from his cruiser, from his 
underlings, even from his beloved pet-they'd better be taking proper 
care of it, or they themselves would face a greater appetite!-Aid not 
regret the rigors which fulfillment of his plans required.  Long 
centuries before an infant Bohhuah Mutdah moaned that life meant 
nothing, Gepta was consumed by an overwhelming lust for all the things 
life meant to him: power; hunger filled;, power; humiliation of 
enemies; power.
     He let himself be warmed, in his stifling concealment, by memories 
of triumphs past, by extrapolation to future victories.
     He saw himself astride the universe, whipping it on to exhaustion 
in his service.  In a linear progression, he would make vassals of 
emperors, servants of gods.  Nothing was beyond the scope of his 
ambition, nothing.
     And his certain destruction of Lando Catrissian would be but a 
microscopic footnote, a token of good luck, a single fourleaf clover in 
an infinite field.  It was an exercise in determination to-Rokur Gepta, 
an example of taking minute pains to assure that everything, absolutely 
everything, was right.
     The subject of a microscopic footnote to the future history of 
intergalactic space was pleased.
     He rolled another cigarette and lit it while Vuffi Raa checked 
references against the Oseon ephemeris.  Exactly as the gambler had 
anticipated, they'd wound up, at the end of the program, in a flock of 
asteroids which were well cataloged and identifiable.
     And not too very far away from Oseon 5792.
     A gambler's life had taught him to take satisfaction from success 
without being cocky or becoming careless.  Well outside the range of 
the best-known ship-detection systems, and despite the fact that the 
Flamewind howling outside had blinded any such devices, he ordered 
Bassi Vobah and her feathered colleague into hiding.  Examining the 
blueprints of the Falcon, it had occurred to him that there was space 
below the corridor decking that might be perfect for installing hidden 
lockers.  Smuggling was merely an interest with him; it might someday 
rise high enough among his priorities to become a hobby.  In the 
meantime, he had not as yet taken time or gone to the expense of 
building the lockers.  He might never get around to it.
     As a consequence, the two police officers were extremely 
uncomfortable just then, zipped into their spacesuits and stuffed 
beneath the decking.  They clung to stanchions, cursing Lando and their 
jobs, wishing they had become clerk typists or shoe salespersons.
     @ch suited their chauffeur right down to the ground.
     "Fifty-seven ninety-two coming up, Master.  I believe it's that 
big blob over there on the right."
     "Mat's starboard, old binnacle; don't let's disillusion the 
tourists.  Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of-You've got the package ready?"
     The little robot turned from the controls, reached behind himself 
adroitly, and took a vacuum-wrapped parcel from the jumpseat.  "I 
inspected it and analyzed it as you requested, although I don't quite 
understand why that was necessary.  It's genuine lesai, all right, in 
its most potent form, enough for six months' use by even the most 
habituated addict, and worth more the' "Fine, fine.  The reason why I 
wanted you to check it is that I didn't want to be caught delivering a 
shipment of phony goods.  The recipients would likely find a way to 
reprimand me.  Terminally.  Also, I didn't want to be exposed to the 
stuff myself.  I don't know how addictive it is, but it's potent 
applied to the skin."
     Lando checked the lightweight vacuum suit he was wearing, made 
sure his stingbeam was handy in an outside pocket.  The part of the 
mission that had always worried him was coming up.  His gambler's 
wisdom told him it was a bad bet: when the owner of a big, 
well-defended estate found out he'd brought the law, there were bound 
to be some recriminations.
     The Falcon drifted closer to Oseon 5792.
     At approximately a hundred kilometers-farther than Lando would 
have expected under the current "weadiee' condifionsthey were hailed by 
a cruising ship.  It was small, like the fighters Lando had fought off, 
but brand-new and nearly as heavily armed as his own.  Radio being out 
of the question, it was using a modulated laser to communicate.
     Unfortunately, Lando didn't have a de-modulator.
     "They say we're supposed to stop here," Vuffi Raa supplied.
     "They say they'll fry us out of the firmament if we don't heave to 
for boarding.  Good heavens, Master, they're listing the weaponry they 
carry!  If they're only lying about ninetyfive percent of it, we're 
done for."
     "That's all right, old electrodiplomat.  How do we tell them that 
we're stopping for inspection?"  Lando had a password, but-with all the 
other details in his mind the past few days-it hadn't occurred to him 
that there might be a problem using it.
     "I can tell them, Master."  The robot leaned forward, directed his 
big red-faceted eye toward the security ship, and blat!  a beam of 
scarlet coherency leaped through the canopy.
     "Tell them the secret word is 'dubesor'-l understand that's a 
native insult on Antipose Xil."  Lando took a final, not altogether 
relaxed, drag on his cigarette and put it out.  Vuffi Raa's laser beam 
winked out almost at the same moment, and he turned to his master.
     "They say we're late.  I told them, who wouldn't be, considering 
the Flamewind and everything, and gave them a little edited version of 
our trouble with the fighters-presumed to be pirates.  Did I act 
correctly, Master?"
     "First sabacc, and now bluffing your way past the bouncers.
     I'm not sure whether to be proud of you or worried.  I think I'm a 
bad influence.  What did they say?"
     "That we're expected and should set down on the small field 
opposite the surface mansion complex-but not to try any dirty tricks.
     They gave me another list of engines of destruction they can 
employ with pinpoint accuracy against a ground target. "That guy must 
have been a drummer for an arms company.
     All right, let's set her down.  You do it, won't you?  I'm a 
little too nervous to risk it, considering my amateur status as a 
pilot."
     "Very well, Master."
     I wonder what the folks on Antipose XII are doing tonight, Lando 
thought, whooping it up in the local saloon and calling each other 
dubesor?
     It beat hell out of what he was about to do.

     xiv

     OSEON 5792 was not particularly large as asteroids in the Oseon 
go.
     It was perhaps fifteen kilometers across its widest span, a 
flattened disk-shaped accretion of many smaller bodies or a peculiar 
fragment from a shattered planet.  To Lando it rather resembled an 
island, floating on a sea of impossible blue-that being the color the 
Flamewind was concentrating on at the moment.
     Yet it was an island with two personalities.
     The top side, as the gambler thought of it-perhaps because it was 
the first view that he had of it-was a mythological garden, dotted with 
small lakes, spread with rolling lawns, and punctuated here and there 
by groves of trees, all held down by high transparent domes and 
artificial gravity.  As the Falcon approached, Lando could make out 
clumps of beings on the grass before a huge old-fashioned palace, doing 
something.  He couldn't make out quite what it was.
     The underside of 5792 was an impressive miniature spaceport, 
cluttered parking grounds to an enormous motley fleet of spacecraft, 
almost as if it were a hobbyist's collection, rather than a working 
landing field.  The port was ringed, at the asteroid's edge, with heavy 
armament; Lando began taking the security picket's boasts more 
seriously.  'Mese folks believed in firepower and had the hardware to 
back up their belief.
     Vuffi Raa settled the Falcon in a berth designated for him with a 
pulsing beacon.  As the freighter's landing legs came into gentle 
contact with the surface, and the robot began slapping power-down 
switches, Lando slapped his safety-belt release.
     "I'm going to finish suiting up.  You understand what you're 
supposed to do?"
     He pulled on a lightweight space glove, gave his stingbeam another 
check.  It shouldn't look too obvious.  No point making things easy for 
the opposition.
     "Yes, Master, I'm to conceal myself in the main controlcable 
conduit between here and the engine area.  I'll tap into the lines 
there and keep the Falcon ticking over for an instant getaway."
     The little droid paused as if reluctant to continue.  "I'm to stay 
here, no matter what, and blast off for deep space if you're not back 
within eight hours.  Why do you ask me to repeat these things like a 
child?  You know I have a perfect memory."
     "Yeah?  Well, I'd feel a lot better about that if you remembered 
not to call me master.  Besides, you've been known to improvise."
     The robot considered this gravely.  "You could be right, Master.
     I certainly won't depart as you've instructed me to.  Not without 
looking for you first."
     Though inwardly pleased at the response, Lando scowled.
     "Fo hell with you then," he snarled.  "I've logged your 
manumission into the Falcon's memories, just in case I don't get back.
     You'll be a free machine, my little friend, like it or not, with a 
fully operational commercial starship of your very own."
     He was halfway through the rear door of the cabin when he turned 
and spoke again.  "By the way, I've also made you my legal heir.  I 
wish you better luck with this space-going collection of debris than 
I've had."
     The droid said nothing, but his eye dimmed very slightly in a 
manner that indicated he'd been touched emotionally.  Then: "Good luck 
to you, too, Master.  I'll be waiting .  . ."  But Lando was already 
gone.
     He followed his master off the tiny bridge.
     In the passageway, the robot loosened a ceiling panel, hoisted 
himself up inside, and drew the panel into place beneath himself.
     Within a few seconds, he was a part of the Millennium Falcon.  A 
very expensive, highly unconventional, and sullenly (for the moment, 
anyway) independent one.
     Carrying his helmet under one arm, the parcel of lesai under the 
other, Lando reached a certain point in the ship's main corridor where, 
transferring both burdens clumsily to one hand, he stooped down and 
rapped, not very gently, on the floor.
     A section of roughly-sawn decking parted upward and an angry and 
unc6mfortable-looking Bassi Vobah raised her helmeted head.
     "I'll take my money now," Lando said.  His own helmet began to 
slip from between his gloved fingers.  He gave it an irritated hitch.
     He doubted he'd really need the thing anyway, but he was a man who 
took precautions.  He was taking one now.
     "You can whistle for it, low-life!"  Bassi Vobah's spacesuit 
served a different and more certain purpose.  It was a common 
quarantine practice to flood a visiting ship with poison gas.
     Hard on insects, germs, and furry creeping things of a million 
species, it also discouraged smuggling of certain types and illegal 
immigration where such phenomena were regarded as a problem by the 
authorities.  "I don't keep bargains with cri@nals!"
     "Then why do you work for politicians?"  He thrust a determined 
hand out.  "Give me my money, or I'll suddenly and to my innocent 
amazement discover a pair of stowaways.  Just in time for Bohhuah 
Mutdah's security goons to take them into custody."
     "You wouldn't!"
     Lando smiled sweetly.  "Try me."
     Breathing heavily, and from more than exertion, Bassi Vobah 
struggled among the pipes and wires in the cramped, disorganized space 
beneath her.  She fetched up a bundle, threw it at Lando's feet.
     "Take it then, you mercenary anarchist!"
     "That's me all over," he agreed charmingly, counting the credits.
     One hundred seventy-three thousand, four hundred eighty-seven of 
them.
     Well, at least Lob Doluff was an honest criminal.  Better than 
that, by returning everything he'd won to Lando, the Administrator 
Senior had, in effect, underwritten the gambler's expenses on the 
mission.
     "Thanks, fuzzikins.  Try and understand it takes all kinds.  I 
certainly do."
     Bassi Vobah slumped back into the floor space, slammed the 
improvised lid-down on top of herself.  Lando took an angry step 
forward, stamping on the slab, ostensibly to seat it flush with the 
rest of the floor, but more as if afraid that some vindictive spirit 
would rise from its grave to haunt him.
     Then he chuckled at his own annoyance with the lady cop, dismissed 
it, and continued along the passageway.  A few meters farther, he bent 
again, tapped the beginning of shave-anda-haircut on the deck, got the 
final two notes from Waywa Fybot, straightened, and went on.
     Near the ship's main entrance, he used a screwdriver to good 
effect, stashing the wad of money behind an intercom panel.  He let 
down the boarding ramp and stepped onto the "soil" of Oseon 5792.
     Bohhuah Mutdah met him halfway.
     The trillionaire's private planetoid, while more than a dozen 
kilometers in diameter, was less than three in thickness.  Like nearly 
every other human-developed rock in the system, it had been steadily 
honeycombed over the decades of its occupation with storerooms, living 
quarters, utility areas, and spaces for every other conceivable use.
     Two armed guards in stylish livery-and heavy body armor-met Lando 
at the foot of the boarding ramp, each stationing himself at one of the 
gwnbler's elbows.  For what had appeared to be a bustling port facility 
from a few thousand meters overhead, the place seemed remarkably 
deserted just then.
     No one else was about, organic or mechanical, as far as the eye 
could see.
     The guards bracketed Lando for a brisk walk across the 
ferroconcrete apron, into a corrugated plastic service building, 
through@the door of an industrial-grade elevator, and down into the 
innards of the asteroid.  He needn't have bothered with his helmet.
     There was enough artificial pull to hold a generous atmosphere.  
The helmet's transparent bubble made a not too terribly convenient 
receptacle and carrying case for the package of lesai.
     "Well, fellows," Lando offered conversationally halfway through 
the elevator ride, "everybody here enjoying Flamewind?  Where is 
everybody, by the wayt' A stony silence followed, during which the 
gambler spent a futile several moments attempting to peer through the 
mirrorreflective visor on the riot helmet of the guard at his left 
elbow.
     Instead, he saw the swollen and distorted image of a gambler with 
a mustache, lamely trying to make conversation.
     The elevator halted with knee-bending alacrity, its door whooshed 
open, the guards escorted Lando into what appeared to be a titanic 
library.  The spherical chamber, half a klick from wall to wall, was 
lined with every known variety of book produced by any sentient race 
anywhere in the galaxy: chips, memory rods, cassettes and tapes of 
various compatibilities, bound and jacketed hard- and soft-cover 
publications, scrolls, folios, clay, wood, and bamboo tablets, stones, 
bones, hides stretched wide on wooden poles, clumps of knotted rope, 
and a good many other artifacts whose identity the young captain could 
only infer from their presence with those other objects he did 
recognize.
     The only things missing were librarians and browsers.  The place 
seemed utterly devoid of life.
     Bohhuah Mutdah, Lando surmised, was addicted to the printed 
(written, punched-in, hieroglyphed) word as much as to lesai@ither that 
or he had carried pretension to a new extreme.  Perhaps it was a tax 
write-off.
     The three, Lando and his personal bookends, were whisked by a 
length of fluorescent monofilament@the of hundreds drifting handily 
around the cavernous room-to the center, where an obese giant took his 
ease.
     The trillionaire was being read to by a frail, elderly male 
servant in a long white robe.  Mutdah himself wore nothing but a pair 
of purple velvoid shorts that would have made a threepiece suit for 
Lando with an extra pair of trousers.
     "Ah, Captain Cahissian," hissed the enormous figure floating 
effortlessly in midair.  His flesh billowed as he made a slight 
gesture.  "I am given to understand you have a delivery for me and that 
you braved the perils of a solar storm to accomplish the swift 
completion of your appointed rounds, is that correct?"
     Lando, angered by the condescension, cleared his throat, nodded in 
a way that someone foolish might have interpreted as a slight bow.  He 
reached across his spacesuited chest to extract the lesai from his 
helmet.
     "Hold it!  Freeze where you stand!"
     That from a guy who wouldn't even discuss the weather with a 
fellow.  He and his companion had their blasters drawn, pointed at the 
gambler's head.  The first- guard looked to Mutdah.  His employer 
nodded nidscroscopically.  The guard took the drugs, helmet and all, 
examined them one-handed without reholstering his weapon, gave them 
back to Lando.
     The second gunman thrust a palm out.  "Okay, let's have it!"
     Lando blinked.  "What are you talking about?"
     A wheezy chuckle emanated from the trillionaire.  "Your pistol, 
Captain.  Give him your pistol.  You were thoroughly scanned in the 
elevator."
     With a disgruntled expression, the gambler carefully extracted his 
stingbeam, handed it to the security man.
     "The other one, as well, please, Captain."
     Lando shrugged, grinned at Mutdah, bent over and removed an 
identical weapon from his boot.  Straightening, he gave it to the guard 
on his right, who was having trouble handling three guns with two 
hands.
     "What happens now?"  the gambler asked mildly.
     "That will be all, sergeant, thank you," Bohhuah Mutdah said 
cheerfully, then, turning to the servant, who had remained impassive, 
added "You may go as well, Ekisp."
     That left Lan@o and the trillionaire sitting all alone in thin air 
in the center of the cavern.
     "I thank you sincerely for the trouble you have gone to on my 
behalf, Captain Calrissian.  I ask you to forgive the concern for my 
continued health which my employees often demonstrate.  It is 
personally gratifying, but sometimes a nuisance.
     Your property will be return6d when you depart."
     Not knowing what to say, Lando said nothing.
     "On that table, beneath the book old Ekisp left behind, you will 
discover another package.  Please open and examine it; assure yourself 
that it contains what it is supposed to.  The package you have brought 
may then be left in its place.  Will you do that now, Please?"
     Pulling lightly on part of the monofilament mesh surrounding them, 
Lando drifted to the table, the sort usually found at either end of a 
sofa, incongruous there in freefall.  The book, a heavy double roll of 
vellum written in an alphabet he didn't recognize, had been tucked 
beneath an elastic band that stretched across the tabletop from edge to 
edge.
     Beneath band and book, as the trillionaire had said, was indeed a 
bundle.  Lando stripped opaque brown plastic from it, attempting to 
control his eyebrows when he saw the stack of hundred-thousand-credit 
certificates it contained.  With an experienced thumb, he riffled 
through the pile, estimated that there were at least two hundred of 
them.  Twenty million creditsthe gambler suppressed a whistle.
     What price lizard mold?
     He placed the package of lesai under the restraining band, 
replaced the scroll, and pushed himself back from the table.
     "Thank you, sir," the gambler said.  "If that will be all, I'll be 
getting back to my@' Mutdah had opened his mouth to reply, but whatever 
he had been going to say was muffled by a BRAAAMM!
     Beneath them, the elevator door bulged and split, impelled by a 
highly directional charge.  Two mutilated bodies-the security men who'd 
stationed themselves on the wrong side of the door-spun end over end 
across the great library.
     Through a cloud of smoke two figures swooped on suit jets, braked 
to an airborne halt in the center of the chamber, their weapons out and 
leveled at the trillionaire.
     "Bohhuab Mutdah," Bassi Vobah stated formally, "you are under 
arrest on the authority of the Administrator Senior of the Oseon 
System, for trafficking and use of illegal substances!"
     Mutdah s@led.  The explosion hadn't startled him.  Nothing seemed 
to take the obese trillionaire by surprise.  He looked at Bassi, looked 
at Lando speculatively, then looked at Waywa Fybot, ridiculous in his 
outsize bird-shaped spacesuit.
     Waywa Fybot looked back.
     Mutdah nodded to the avian.  Fybot changed the direction of his 
blaster, pulled the trigger, and neatly blew off Bassi Vobah's head.
     xv BASSI VOBAH'S BODY slowly tilted backward, its legs projecting 
rigidly.  One arm caught briefly at a filament that turned the corpse 
as it moved.  It drifted away to join those of the guards in the 
book-lined void.
     Bohhuah Mutdah turned his mildly amused attention back to the 
feathered law enforcer.  "Your report, Officer Fybot, if you please."
     The creature gave him a salute.
     "lbe order for your arrest, sir, originated in the highest 
possible echelons.  The very highest possible echelons.  In addition, 
shortly before I was dispatched to this system, I was given purely 
verbal instructions, sir, that you were not intended to survive the 
process.  As insurance, pressure was applied to the local governor 
through his family, his business interests, and by virtue of his ... er 
... his .  . ."
     The trillionaire's raisin eyes twinkled pleasantly.  He lifted a 
negligent hand, sending waves of obscene motion through his bloated 
flesh.  "Pray go on, my friend, you may speak frankly.
     The truth does not offend a rational being."
     "Very good, sir: through his habituation to lesai.
     "Somehow Lob Doluff knew or guessed about my secret orders and 
sent her@' Fybot pointed in the approximate direction of the drifting 
body, now several dozen meters away and dwindling rapidly@'to see that 
they were not carried out."
     The bird-being had been speaking more and more rapidly, an 
hysterical edge growing in his already high-pitched voice.
     Now he paused, caught his breath before continuing.
     "Captain Cahissian was induced, under threat of prosecution on a 
capital charge, to provide us transportation and to assist in your 
entrapment.  No one, however, not the Administrator Senior, not his 
police chief, not Cahissian, and I most fervently hope not my 
superiors, seems to have been aware of our ...
     er, arrangement, sir."
     Mutdah smiled.  "An excellent report, Officer Fybot.  Most 
succinctly delivered.  All in all, I am highly pleased at the outcome.
     "But tell me: you are very nearly twenty hours later arriving than 
either of us anticipated at the outset.  I appreciate the difficulties 
of negotiating the Flamewind, but ... twenty hours, Fybot?  Really!"
     The alien blinked, finally thought to reholster his blaster.  He 
fastened down the flap.  "In transit to this place, sir, many queer 
events transpired.  I myself suffered deep hallucinations, although my 
Imperial conditioning is supposed to have rendered me resistant to most 
. . . Well, that's as may be, sir.  In any case, we were attacked, by a 
collection of odd military spacecraft.  We took refuge.  Some repairs 
were required."
     Here, the alien hesitated, visibly nervous about the next part of 
his report.  Lando thought he knew why, and doubled both his fists in 
anticipation.
     "Sir, believing@n account of our pursuers@hat Cahissian had become 
a liability, I took the initiative in attempting to dispose of him by 
sabotaging his vacuum suit.  I also thought perhaps this would disrupt 
the plans of Bassi Vobah when it came time for your arrest.  I was 
reasonably confident that I could get the Millennium Falcon here 
myself.  Cahissian has a pilot droid that@' "Yes, yes," Bohhuah Mutdah 
answered, for the first time betraying a touch of impatience.  Lando 
relaxed, started breathing again.  He'd hoped his little five-leggiid 
ace-in-the-hole wouldn't come up in casual conversation.
     "But tell me more about these raiders," Mutdah continued.
     "Who were they?  What did they want?"
     "Sir, they made no demands, they simply-I have no idea, sir."
     "Captain?  Surely you must@' Lando shrugged.  "I've been trying to 
figure it out myself for days.  There might be some connection with a 
pirate ship I fought off between Dilonexa and the Oseon.  Then again, 
it might just be another sore loser."
     Mutdah contemplated Lando's reply for a rather longer time than 
Lando could see any reason for, muttered, "Possibly .  . . " more to 
himself than anyone else, then ". . . and possibly not."
     Finally he shook his massive head and turned very slightly to face 
Lando again.  "I might explain that Officer Fybot has never been 
particularly happy in his line of work.  He was, I ascertained when my 
intelligence sources informed me of this scheme, conscripted to pay 
tribute owed by treaty by his system to the central galactic 
government.
     "A gentle being, our Waywa; at heart he nurtures no ambition 
greater than to become a gourmet chef.  I suspect that you and I would 
find his culinary efforts quite resistible.  Nonetheless, he possesses 
no small talent, in the view of his fellow avians, and fondly wishes to 
resume his education where he was forced to abandon it upon being 
drafted into service.
     "Have I stated your case correctly, Waywa?"
     The bird-being reached up, gave his helmet a quarter turn, 
detached it from its shoulder ring and tucked it under an arm.
     He wrinkled up the few mobile portions of his face in a grimace 
Lando had learned to recognize as representing happiness.
     "Oh yes, quite correctly, sir!"
     The trillionaire addressed Lando again.  "In return for his 
cooperation, I have personally assured Waywa that he will no longer be 
required to suffer involuntary servitude at the behest of the 
government.  I fully intend to make good upon that promise, keep my 
part of the bargain."
     Abruptly, Mutdah raised a tiny pistol from where he'd concealed it 
in the deep folds of his corpulent body, drilled Waywa Fybot cleanly 
through the abdomen.  The beam of energy pierced both suit and bird.  A 
surprised expression froze on Fybot's face as his inert form wafted 
away slowly from the center of the room.
     That made four corpses in the library.  Things are getting pretty 
messy around here, the gambler thought.
     "The anatomy," Bohhuah Mutdah said incongruously, 'Is somewhat 
differently arranged than one might anticipate.  That was, believe it 
or not, a clean shot through the creature's heart."
     His fat hand, which supposedly hadn't been used for years, 
adroitly tucked the pistol into the waistband of its owner's shorts, 
then hovered there, ready to draw and use the gun again in a fraction 
of a second.
     Lando had noticed that the fat man's reflexes were incredible.
     Now he noticed something else: a glow of cruel satisfaction that 
suffused the trillionaire's decadent face.  The man liked killing.
     He looked at Lando appraisingly.  "The question now, my dear 
Captain Cahissian, is what I ought to do with you.  As you are aware, I 
have elm-tinated-have caused to be eliminatedtwo duly sworn officers of 
the law.  They will doubtless be n-dssed.  I have illicitly purchased a 
substantial amount of a highly illegal substance.  I have suborned an 
agent of the government.  in short, nothing I couldn't easily pay to 
have taken care of."
     The obese figure pointed toward the table once again.
     "There is a box of excellent cigars in the top drawer of the end 
table.  Would you kindly remove two of them, light them with the 
lighter you will also discover there, give one of them to me, and enjoy 
the other yourself" The fat hand stayed near the gun.
     Lando followed the instructions-with the exception of lighting the 
cigars.  He handed one to Mutdah, offered to light it for him.
     "Oh, come now, Captain.  I suppose you are afraid of being 
poisoned or something silly like that.  Here: If you don't mind, I'll 
puff on both cigars while you apply the flame-no, don't let the flame 
touch them.  That's right, just hold it there until the ends begin to 
glow.  That's the way to enjoy a fine cigar.
     Please choose either one you wish."
     Lando was a gambler, a professional manipulator of cards.
     He knew how to "force" a draw, determine which card another person 
took while appearing to encourage a free choice.
     Mutdah wasn't doing it to him.
     He took a cigar.  It was very, very good.
     "Well," he said after a couple of satisfying draws.  He'd missed 
die cigars he'd accidentally crushed aboard the Falcon, and the crude 
cigarettes he'd rolled from their tobacco had been no substitute.  "I 
don't suppose you can just let me go my own way.  Believe me, I don't 
care what substances you find enjoyable, and these two7@he waved a hand 
broadly to indicate the room in which the remains of Vobah and Fybot 
were floating somewhere@'were no friends of mine."
     Bohhuah Mutdah slowly exhaled smoke.  "I'd be a great deal more 
inclined to take that seriously, my boy, if I hadn't seen the 
expression on your face when they were killed.  I suspect that you 
pretend to be a blas6 Core-may-care, live-and-let-five sort of rogue, 
Captain.  But you are a moralist at heart, and I would always have to 
be looking over my shoulder for you."
     He waggled his massive, bloated shoulders.  "As you can see, I 
would find that quite a burdensome task."
     Lando's chest began to tighten.  He hadn't any illusions about 
what was about to happen, not since he'd seen Waywa Fybot burned down, 
but here it was, unmistakably.  Soon five corpses would drift on the 
air currents in the chamber, and the next few seconds would determine 
whether it was shin and uniformed or gross and nearly naked.
     "So I guess we can't make a deal, then?"  Lando asked 
rhetorically.  The second pistol hadn't been his only cautious 
preparation, but he was damned if he could see what good his others 
would do now.
     "I'm afraid not," Bohhuah Mutdah answered sadly.  "And for more 
than one reason.  In the second drawer of the end table, you will find 
a pair of manacles."  He drew the gun, leveled it at the gambler.  "I 
wish you to put them on.  If you do not, then I will slowly roast you 
with this weapon, rather than kill you outright.  The first shot will 
pierce your lower spine so that you will be helpless to resist the 
subsequent agony.  Get the manacles and put them on, please."
     Lando thought about it, looked at the muzzle of the pistol, looked 
into Mutdah's unwavering beady eyes, and got the manacles.  They were 
force shackles, a pair of cuff bands connected by an adjustable 
tniniature tractor beam.  First class and very expensive.  That 
figured.
     "That's right," the tiillionaire said encouragingly.  "Now put 
them on."
     Shrugging to himself, the gambler snapped the bands around his 
wrists.  He wasn't altogether resigned; Mutdah had something in mind.
     After all, he hadn't handcuffed Bassi Vobah or her partner.
     "Thank you very much, Captain.  Now place the shackle beam in this 
loop of monofilament.  Yes.  You see, I mentioned that there was more 
than one reason why I cannot let you go?
     You recall that?"
     An exasperated expression on his face, Lando asked, "Why do jerks 
like you always have to go into this thespian routine?
     If you're going to kill me, do it with the gun instead of boredom, 
there's a good fellow."
     A flush spread itself across the vastness of Bohhuah Mutdah's 
face.  With a gargantuan effort, he forced himself erect, pointed the 
weapon at Lando.
     "The first reason I have explained.  My enemies are hounding me 
and would see my power and fortune redistributed.  Parenthetically, I 
must tell you that I do not care a whit about any of that.  The 
continuation of the Bohhuah Mutdah 'empire' is of considerably less 
than no interest to me at all.  I am constitutionally incapable of 
feeling any concern about it.
     "The real reason, Captain, is that I don't want to let you go.
     The obese trillionaire's body began to blur, its colors swirling 
together, its outline dissolving.  It was replaced by the somewhat 
smaller form of an individual swathed in gray from top to toe.  Only 
his insanely hungry eyes showed through the wrappings of his headpiece.
     "For I am Rokur Gepta, and I'm going to torture you until you beg 
for death!"
     xv "SABACC!"
     Lando Calrissian slapped down the cards in triumph-a triumph that 
turned to embarrassed agony when he saw he'd hesitated too long between 
shouting out his victory and sealing it in the stasis field of the 
gaming table.
     In the brief interval between the acts, his perfect twentythree 
had transmuted itself into a losing hand.
     The seventeen-year-old would-be professional gambler wtithed 
inwardly, He'd practically begged for a chance to join the game in the 
back room of the local saloon.  He'd lied to his family, ducked out on 
school, broken or severely bent several ordinances about minors and 
environments such as the one he found himself in now.
     He wished that he was home in bed.  He wished that he was home 
under his bed.  He wished he'd never seen a deck of cardchips in his 
life, never practiced with them, never imagined himself a dashing rogue 
and scoundrel.
     It was all a dream, a foolish, idiotic dream.
     "All is illusion, Captain Cahissian!"
     Lando shook his head.  The back room of the sleazy hometown saloon 
had vanished, and with it the embarrassed memory of humiliation and 
mistake.  Actually, he'd gone on to win that game, taking home more 
money than he'd ever had together in one place before.  Why hadn't he 
remembered that?
     Replacing the saloon in his field of vision was a broad rich lawn, 
trees at the horizon, Flamewind spouting, roiling, and coruscating 
overhead.  That was where he'd seen all those people on the approach to 
Oseon 5792.  Where had they gone?
     "The sights you see at this very moment are no more real, no more 
substantial than the memories you have just experienced so vividly, my 
boy!  That is the fundamental truth the universe has to teach us, and 
like nearly everybody else, you have not managed to learn it until the 
uttermost end of your life!"
     The hiss in that voice was unpleasantly familiar.  Lando twisted 
his head around-he was tied up!-but couldn't find the source.  The 
range of his vision was limited by the upended picnic table, a cold, 
synthetic marble of some kind, to which he had been bound.  All he 
could see was the garden before him.
     And the Flamewind.
     The soft sound of slippered feet on grass.  A shadow passed around 
the table-from the angle, Lando guessed it had been propped up on a 
bench-and turned to confront him.
     "Rokur Gepta!"
     The voice was filtered through a smile behind the turban windings.
     "And you thought I was dead, a victim of the uprising on Rafa IV.  
No, Captain, I have been quite thoroughly alive for a vastly longer 
time than you could guess.  I am hard to kill and highly reluctant to 
let strangers terminate my existence."
     Lando bit back a witty reply.  In the first place, this was not 
the time for it, not when he was staked down and helpless.  The tractor 
cuffs were anchored to the table, the beam of force between them lying 
in close and inseparable contact with the marble surface above his 
head.  Likewise, another pair of manacles had been added to his 
spacesuited ankles.  He and Gepta had moved from the bubblecavem in the 
asteroid's free-fall center to the surface, beneath the domes.
     And he couldn't remember a moment of it.
     "No remarks?"  the sorcerer taunted.  "I see that you have at 
least learned some discretion.  This is not a moment for repartee, but 
a time for contemplation.  You are about to experience an agony so 
excruciating, so unprecedented in the history of intelligent life, that 
being one of its first experimental subjects is a privilege and a 
signal honor.
     "You have had a sample of it: torture by chagrin."
     The sorcerer waved a leather-gloved hand.
     A jail cell on Rafa IV at dawn.  The open-fronted chamber looked 
out on a graveled yard.  The noise was deafening: they were waking up 
the prisoners for a day of murderous labor in the life-orchards.
     The guards beat on the bars.  Lando had awoken with a start; now 
the fear of what was about to happen filled his being to the core.  He 
backed into the cell, trying to escape the noise, his unsteady 
breathing slowly turning into a whimper.
     BLAAASSSST!
     The fire hose caught him unprepared.  It dashed him against the 
wall, the icy water sluicing over him, blinding him, forcing itself 
into his mouth and nose.  He fell to his knees, his head battered 
against the wall.  He ducked it, trying to breathe, trying to stay 
alive against the killing force of"But, you protest, it wasn't like 
that at all?"
     Gepta paced back and forth in front of Lando, relishing the 
gambler's agony.  Despite the sweat on every centimeter of his skin, 
Lando was freezing, simply from the memory.
     But Gepta was right: it hadn't been like that at all.
     "It-it only lasted a few moments," Lando stunered.  Perhaps it was 
a surrender of some kind; he hated to give the madman any satisfaction 
at all.  But he had to understand what was happening here.
     "I wasn't nearly that frightened.  I'd already worked out a way to 
escape.  And it only lasted a few seconds-not the hours I just .  . ."
     He tapered off, unable to continue because of his shaking.  
Shaking merely at the remembrance of something that hadn't bothered him 
all that much when it was actually happening.
     "You're a brave man, Captain Cahissian.  You don't like to think 
of it that way.  What do you call it, 'creative cowardice'?
     You regard yourself a pragmatist, one not given to heroics."
     The sorcerer had paused, stood now nearly motionless before the 
gambler.  In the background, the Flamewind whorled around the demented 
sky, casting many-colored shadows.
     Lando shook his head to get the sweat out of his eyes, tried his 
bonds.  As he'd expected, they were there to stay.
     "And yet," Gepta continued, "what is bravery but the capacity to 
reject our fears, ignore and suppress them, then go on to do whatever 
it is we are afraid to do.  What you are experiencing now, dear 
Captain, is the fear You refused to experience the first time.  Now you 
have no choice!"
     Surprise attack!
     Wrestling the Falcon with one hand, Lando desperately tried to 
fire the cockpit guns with the other as the weird ragtaggle 
fighter-squadron bore down on him.  It was a nightmare: they were too 
well shielded for his inconsequential guns to trouble, yet he couldn't 
operate the quad-guns without leaving the bridge.
     Vuffi Raa, insane and helpless, couldn't assist him.
     He fired again.  He might as well have been shooting strewns of 
pink lemonade as the pale, ineffectual fire that was all he could 
manage.  The enemy fleet bore down on him, bore down, bore down ...
     Lando finished throwing up, coughed, choked, cleared his throat.
     "Obviously," Gepta hissed cheerfully, "you survived the peril that 
you just reexperienced.  Otherwise, you wouldn't be here now-it's only 
logical.  It is a logic which enables us to live with our unpleasant 
memories, is it not?  An integrative, healing contextualization which 
we all require to survive."
     "Sure," the gwnbler gasped.  "Sure, you rotten-anything you say!"
     "Afth!  Resistance at last!  As I was saying, however, the art of 
torture-by-chagrin lies in denying the mind that integration, that 
perspective.  As you relive the n-dnor horrors of your life, you don't 
recall that you survived, eventually triumphed.  You see, even at 
moments of extreme peril, there are defenses, distractions, digressions 
which dilute the passions..What is more, my method does not allow its 
subject to experience anything but the fear.  You can think of nothing 
else.  The experience goes on and on, in circles, until the ego and the 
will are utterly crushed.
     "Resistance," the lecturer trudged on relentlessly, "only adds the 
brissance, the, how shall I express it, the snap!  which makes the 
quashing of the human personality possible.  Get angry by all means, 
Captain.  Insult me.  Not only will it speed the process-without 
rendering your eventual agony any shorter in duration, I assure you-but 
I relish it, as you shall see to your dismay!"
     Lando's breath was sour, the taste in his mouth bitter, but he 
managed a reply.  "I'm betting that you're bluffing, Gepta.  I'm 
betting that you're lying about that part.  It would be like you.
     I think I'll continue hating your guts for a while, just as a 
matter of form.  I think I'll imagine them pulled out through your 
navel and roasted over a slow@' Lando's world was a forest of giant 
legs.
     All around him, grown-ups on their private hurried errands jostled 
him, threatening to knock him down and trample him.
     There wasn't anything he could do.  He was only three years old.
     And he had lost his mommy.
     The frightening alien city streets were crowded for the holidays, 
wet and dirty, dark with early evening.  The lighted,windows of the 
giant stores along the sidewalk didn't help.  He stumbled in the slush 
and nearly fell, sagged instead against the wall below a window filled 
with toys, and fought back the tears rolling down his terrified little 
face.
     "Mommy!"  Where was she?  Why didn't she come and get him?  She'd 
left him at one of the windows-he'd wanted to watch the animated 
display-when he'd promised he wouldn't move.  He was tired of the 
inside of the store; everything was up too high; there were too many 
people; and it hadn't been an interesting department anyway, where the 
lady had given mommy too much money back.
     "Mommy?"
     "Your mommy isn't here, Lando.  You're all alone, and always will 
be."
     "Who's that @ng? "I'm yourfear, little Lando, I'm your terror 
I'm an eternity of anguish and I'm going to get you! "Mommy!"
     Somehow the voice sounded familiar.  Somehow he knew the voice 
hated him and wanted to hurt him.  He didn't know what those big words 
were, terror, eternity, anguish, but they didn't sound very nice.  He 
wanted his mommy.
     But he was lost forever in the forest of legs.
     "Ahhh, that was a deep and fundamentally traumatic one, wasn't it, 
little Lando?  I could barely stand it myself."
     Gasping, Lando shook the tears from his eyes, tried to catch his 
breath.  It felt like he'd been crying for a thousand years.
     He remembered the incident very well.  It had lasted, in reality, 
all of ten minutes, but somehow, he had never quite trusted the 
universe afterward.
     "What do you mean you could barely stand it?"  shouted Lando, 
then: "You!  You were the voice!  What are you doing to me?"
     "Only beginning, my dear boy, only beginning.  We've been at this, 
what?  Half an hour?  It will go on for days, Captain Calrissian, with 
any luck for weeks!  I may attempt to prolong it for-But I see that you 
are puzzled, Lando."
     Gepta had resumed pacing.  Lando moved, tried to stretch, and 
discovered that he'd hurt himself Where the force cuffs held him, where 
the marble table bore against his back, he was in pure, unadulterated 
physical agony.
     It felt good by comparison.
     "You see, the art of torture-by-chagrin requires that its 
practitioner experience what the subject experiences.  He must guide 
the mind of the subject into always deeper, always more terrifying 
waters.  He must suffer the experiences himself, in order to assure the 
quality, the depth, the texture of it.
     "And in your case, Captain, and in mine, to make sure it is 
suitable as revenge!
     "Yes, I have a way of living in your head, and yes, I am willing 
to suffer every bit of pain you suffer, so that I will know that I am 
torturing you enough!"
     Overhead, the Flamewind sheeted the sky with a demented rainbow.
     Interplanetary lightning.crackled across ionized paths.
     A hurricane of color whirled around the asteroid.
     Gepta whispered, "The next little nostalgic digression will 
concern your business failures, Captain.  But before we begin, I wish 
to tell you that they are not altogether the product of a malicious 
universe or your incompetence."
     Gepta had been pacing back and forth a couple of meters in front 
of the tilted table where Lando was restrained.  Now, for the first 
time, the sorcerer stepped forward until his eyes burned into those of 
the gambler.
     "I hounded you!"
     Lando shook his head, too groggy from pain of several kinds to 
comprehend fully what Rokur Gepta was telling him.
     "I dogged your footsteps!  Everywhere you went, I saw to it that 
the prices were a little higher, the rates you could resell at were a 
little lower!  I warned the authorities anonymously that you were a 
smuggler, increasing the number of fees you had to pay, raising the 
amount in bribes!  I devoured you by attrition-and then arranged for 
you to be invited to the Oseon!"
     "What?"  It didn't make sense.  Hadn't the government wanted to 
destroy Bohhuah Mutdah?  Hadn't"I anticipate the questions you are 
asking yourself, Captain.
     I and I alone arranged for that decadent leviathan to be harrassed 
by the government, then had him killed and took his place.  All so I 
would be here when you arrived.  I saw to it that more money was placed 
in your hands than you have ever had before-tens of raillions!-money 
you will now never have the chance to spend."
     Here, Gepta reached behind the table, took the thick sheaf of 
bills, and placed it on the ground at Lando's feet.
     "Enjoy it, Captain Lando Calrissian, in the limited way that you 
are able.  Enjoy it as you shall enjoy the memories of every sickening, 
humiliating, painful event in your lifeincluding this one!  I shall 
enjoy it all with you, purify it, help you to concentrate upon it to 
the exclusion of all else.
     "And we shall see, as I have never had the opportunity to 
determine before, whether an individual can die of shame .  . ."
     He lifted a hand; Lando could feel something like drowsiness steal 
over him, just as he had in each instant before.  He fought it, 
wrenching himself in the restraints, but his mind kept getting fuzzier, 
his eyes refused to focus on anything but his own terrifying inner 
realities.  He fought itBut he was losing.
     MAGENTA CURTAINS SHIMMERED against a stationary tapestry of pale 
stars as lightning exploded above Bohhuah Mutdah's crystalline dome.
     And exploded again.
     Startled, Rokur Gepta whirled in mid-gesture as a flash bleached 
his surroundings for a third time in as many seconds.
     Somewhere, far away, there was a roar of matching thunderwhich 
should have been impossible-and a breeze began sifting toward its 
distant source.  The broad lawn rippled like the pelt of an angry 
predator.
     The wind was fully as impossible as the thunder.  Yet it rose from 
an initial flutter-to gale force in a twinkling, whipping at the 
sorcerer's gray cloak, hurling dust and loose papers along with it.
     Lando squinted.  The dead trillionaire's lofty architecture had 
been breached somewhere near the edge of the worldlet.  The artificial 
pull of gravity this side of the asteroid was indolently kinder than at 
the spaceport, and consequently insufficient to maintain the present 
atmospheric pressure without help.  That help was departing rapidly.
     The hurricane would roar until things equalized.
     He hoped he'd be able to breathe by then.
     Battered by the powerful current, Gepta lurched against its 
strength, trying to reach Lando.  The gambler realized this was his 
only chance-and that perhaps the preparations he had made, however 
elaborate, might be worthwhile, after all.
     Beneath his spacesuit, under the sleeves of his shipclothes, he 
was wearing his own set of tinklewood splints.  In fact, it had been 
this idea that later served as inspiration when Waywa Fybot broke his 
legs.
     In Lando's case the intention was to prevent injury.  There were 
half a dozen twenty-centimeter rods, half a centimeter in diameter, 
running parallel to each of his forearms, tucked through small fabric 
loops in three neat circumferential rows, near the elbow, wrist, and in 
between.  Vuffi Raa, thrilled at the chance to do some valeting at 
last, had sewn them on a heavy shirt for his master.  Lando had 
speculated that they might be handy stopping a blow or parrying a 
blade.  They were X-ray transparent, nonmetallic, indefectible by the 
usual run of security scanners.
     Unlike his pistols.
     He wore similar crude armor around his lower legs, knee to ankle.
     Wriggling an elbow, he finagled one of the rod ends until it was 
free of the force cuff on that wrist.  This would have been a futile 
effort while Gepta had the upper hand.  Now, fighting the incredible 
wind blowing into space through the broken dome, the sorcerer was too 
busy to interfere.
     The rods had added enough girth to Lando's wrist that he was 
able-very painfully-to tear his hand through the manacle just as Gepta 
reached him.  Quickly, he slipped one of the rods out of his sleeve, 
jammed it through the turban slit into the sorcerer's eye.
     'Gepta screamed, clapped a hand to his shrouded face, and stumbled 
backward.  The wind caught his voluminous cloak and took him away in a 
tumbling, fabric-covered ball of curses.  He vanished into a nearby 
grove of Thorn trees.  There was more screaming.
     Liberating the feet was more difficult.  Lando finally pulled his 
suit-boots off, scraped his way past the restraints, and had begun to 
gather up his shoes and wits and Mutdah's money, when a silvery snake 
appeared in the grass before him.  It had fingers for a face and a red 
glassy eye in the palm.
     It couldn't bite; it was programmed not to.
     "Vuffi Raa, you've got to pull yourself together!"  There was no 
response; the independent appendage couldn't talk, and vulgar gestures 
were beneath the robot's dignity.  "I don't know exactly what's going 
on around here, but it's our chance to get out!  Move!"
     Behind the uptilted table, Lando found his suit helmet.  He also 
found a complex pile of electronic equipment, cables leading to a large 
flat, complexly braided coil that had been situated at the back of his 
head.
     "I'm a little disappointed," he said to the tentacle.  "And here 
I'd thought he was doing all that spellbinding by sheer force of 
personality!"
     Somehow the chromium appendage managed to convey impatience as 
Lando dawdled.  It lay on the ground fidgeting while he pulled on his 
boots.  Overhead-directly overheadthere was a resounding bellow.
     Jagged sheets of curved plastic began falling.
     "Relax, old boy, I'm pedaling as fast as I can!  I wish you could 
tell me what the deuce is going on!"
     As he shoved his foot into the boot, snapped the vacuum clasps 
tight, Lando saw the lightning flash of high-powered energy-weapons 
above them.
     And several of the fighter-craft he'd battled on the way to 5792.
     "Edge take me, that makes things a little clearer!"
     Together the gambler and the disembodied tentacle hued into the 
deceased trillionaire's deserted mansion, robot appendage in the lead 
and seeming to know where it was going.  Inside, 4hey took an elevator 
down into the planetoid.  Even as they let it bury them, they could 
feel the asteroid shake and shudder from the assault overhead.
     In the blink of an eye, the carriage passed the ruined door of the 
library, swung on its gimbals, turning at least one startled occupant 
on his head, and whisked onward in this new orientation.  Adding injury 
to insult, Lando was nearly dashed to the floor as the machine crashed 
to a stop inside the spaceport service building.
     Rasping on damage-distorted ways, the pneumatic door ground 
halfway open, then froze.  The gambler squeezed through, chrome snake 
underfoot, and the pair leaped from the building a fraction of a second 
before it collapsed in flames.
     Fire and explosions rocked the airport as more fighters strafed 
and bombed it.  A scarlet beam lashed the waiting Millennium Falcon as 
they approached her.  The backsplash nearly ftied the gambler.  But her 
shields held.
     Gasping, Lando ran up the boarding ramp, pausing only to punch 
buttons to retract it, then sprinted forward around the corridor, 
momentarily outdistancing even the tentacle as it hastened back to its 
owner.  Vuffi Raa had climbed down out of the ceiling access, and was 
strapped into the pilot's seat.
     Lando took the right-hand position without complaint.
     "Let's get the devil out of here!"  he screamed above the chaos 
roaring outside.
     Reclaiming his leg, Vuffi Raa spared a split-second of attention 
for the gambler while he helped it connect itself.  "You're a hard 
being to rescue, Master.  You don't wait for help.  I'll ask you how 
you got loose from Rokur Gepta later, if we live.
     Meanwhile, hadn't you better man the quad-guns?"
     "You suggesting an aggressive act?  I think you're right."
     Lando was gone before he'd finished the last sentence.  Sliding 
into the gun chair, he Ripped switches and pushed buttons, grabbed the 
handles of the ungainly weapon, and rested restless digits on the 
triggers.
     A fighter made a pass at the larger ship as she lifted, her 
ffimsters glowing blue-white.
     Lando made life hell for him.
     The Falcon soared into the multicolored sky, two of the fighters 
harrying her like angry hornets.  They were fast, maneuverable, and 
good.  Too good: Lando hadn't any easy dodge available there, as he had 
at the fissured asteroid.  Nor was he experiencing much success smoking 
his tormentors.  But his

     IL

     steady, accurate, occasionally inspired shooting kept them from 
having very much luck, either.
     Another frantic pass, another exchange of energy-bolts, to little 
effect except in generating adrenaline on both sides.
     Oseon 5792 dwindled rapidly beneath them.
     Then somebody manhandling a fighter made a mistake, zigging when 
he should have zagged.  Aboard the Falcon, crosshairs rested firmly on 
his rrddsection, waiting for exactly such @ error.  They were still on 
him as Lando mashed both triggers, tracking all the while, following 
through.
     The fighter burst into a tumbling ball of sparks and greasy smoke.
     Vuffi Raa rolled the Falcon, skidded, bringing Lando's guns to 
bear again.  He poured her fury into the remaining fighter as it 
swerved to avoid the fate of its companion.
     Freighters weren't supposed to be able to do that!
     The unnaturally agile saucer suddenly performed a maneuver that, 
in another place and time, would be called a Luftberry circle, placing 
her smack on the fighter's back again.  Her quad-guns pounded.
     The enemy wriggled off the hook once more, but this one made an 
error, too: he got sore.  Veering in a wide, angry, predictable loop, 
he came back to have his vengeance.  Instead, he got four parallel 
pulsed beams of raw fusion-reactor output straight in the helmet visor.
     And exploded, showering space with incandescent atoms.
     Beneath them, there was a sudden streak of light.
     Something left the asteroidfaaassst!, headed for interstellar 
space.  At very nearly the same instant, the surviving three fighters, 
having reconnected themselves with their battleship engine, bored 
directly for Bohhuah Mutdah's miniature world, fanatically intent on 
taking their victim with them-and unaware that (whoever it was) he was 
gone.  Detaching themselves at the last second, they slung the giant, 
throbbing power plant at Oseon 5792.
     One of them had a mechanical failure.  His cable wouldn't release.
     He was pulled down with the engine into hell.
     The other two sheered off frantically.
     Vuffi Raa raced tentacle tips over the Falcon's keyboards.
     The resulting acceleration could be felt by her captain even 
through her powerful inertial dampers.  His gun seat slewed around 
violently, slamming itself and its occupant hard against the stops as 
the guns swung wildly.  The asteroid dwindled to a pinprick-and 
blossomed into a glowing cloud, consuming one of the fighters who 
thought he'd gotten away, tumbling the other.
     Even the Flamewind paled momentarily as the ravening fireball 
expanded, growing brighter, brighter.
     Then, from the inside out, it began to dim.
     Lando took a deep breath@scovered he'd aheady taken one he didn't 
remember-and let it out.
     "Brace yourself, Master!"  screamed the intercom beside his ear.
     BLANG' ZOONG!  GRATI It was like being inside a titanium drum 
being beaten by a tribe of savages.  Debris showered past the Falcon, 
mostly ricocheting off her shields, some pieces actually getting 
through at a reduced and harmless velocity.
     The freighter shook and danced, then steadied.
     Lando released a second breath he didn't recall taking, unstrapped 
himself from the quad-gun chair, rubbed a couple of sore places on his 
back, and shambled forward to the cockpit.
     Deep in interstellar space, far from the Oseon and getting farther 
by the nanosecond, a brand-new one-seat fighter, bruised and battered 
by the Flamewind and the destruction of a world, took its badly shaken 
pilot home.
     Rokur Gepta laughed bitterly.  The best deception is the one that 
first deceives the deceiver.  Blood stained the voluminous gray robes 
he wore, and agony pulsed through his ruined eye-another debt he owed 
Lando Cahissian.  Yet Rokur Gepta was a being who took precautions, 
too.  For example, his private fighter, one of the tiniest craft 
capable of interstellar flight ever constructed.  It had saved his life 
in the Rafa System; now it guaranteed his continued existence once 
again.
     In a universe that was all illusion, deception was a doubleedged 
sword.  As Bohhuah Mutdah, he had nearly sunk into that flaccid 
degenerate's depression, so thoroughly had he absorbed the role.  Only 
an all-consuming passion for vengeance had helped him to maintain his 
true identity.  Similarly, when attacked by Cahissian, the disguise 
that he had worn for centuries had nearly been his undoing.
     He endured the pain a while longer as a lesson to himself.
     There was no truth, no objective reality.  Yet it would serve him, 
as a master of deception, to keep his illusions sorted out better.  He 
would meditate upon this lesson while waiting at the Tund System for 
the scheduled arrival of the Wennis, due to rendezvous with him after 
the passing of the Flamewind.  He'd left her and her crew on Oseon 6845
     and flown the fighter to 5792 to assume the role of Bohhuah 
Mutdah.
     A pulse of raw anger nearly overwhelmed him, and he concentrated 
on the pain again to maintain self-control.  He'd lost his pet on 
5792-another debt he owed the vagabond gambler, one which he would pay 
with interest when the opportunity presented itself again.  Correction: 
when he made the opportunity.
     Well, enough was enough.  He set his tiny ship on automatic, let 
the gray-swathed form he usually assumed fade.  At long last he 
occupied the pilot's seat in his true appearance.
     The tinklewood rod dropped to the floor of the small cabin, the 
bloodsmears along its length vanishing before it hit.
     Gepta's pain, fully as illusory as his common worldly 
manifestation, vanished even more quickly.
     Then another rearrangement, another shift of shapes and colors.
     Once again the charcoal-cloaked, mysteriously masked entity 
appeared, clean of bloodstains, free of pain.
     He cut out the autopilot, took the grips of the fighter's 
controls, and punched in the overdrive.
     The ship became a fading streak against a starry sky and was gone.
     "There it is, Masterl" an excited Vuffi Raa called.
     Lando peered into the transparent canopy of the Falcon's cockpit.
     The radar and proximity indicators were still nonfunctional and 
would remain so as long as the Flamewind raked the Oseon.  He longed 
for an old-time primitive optical telescope.  The electronic magnifier 
aboard the Falcon was worse than useless here.
     "You've got a sharp eye, little friend.  But keep the shields u@we 
don't know whether he's really helpless or just faking."  Lando took 
another puff on the crudely rolled cigarette.
     Someday he'd get the chance to buy some more cigars.
     The Falcon swayed and dipped, matching the velocity of the 
tumbling fighter.  Not only had the droid insisted on rescuing its 
occupant-if said occupant had survived the beating his craft had 
received-but Lando had agreed in the hope that it might answer a few 
nagging questions.
     Exactly whom had he offended sufficiently to merit the fantastic 
vendetta diat-he hoped-was drawing to a close this very minute?  He'd 
certainly never won enough money from any single individual to make it 
understandable.
     The streamers of the Flamewind and the starry background began 
whirling crazily as Vuffl Raa rolled the ship to match the motion of 
the disabled fighter.  Lando took a final drag, groaned, and cranked 
himself out of the seat, staggering a little at the disorienting sight.
     The Falcon's artificial gravity and inertia compensators were 
functioning perfectly, but his sight was fooling his middle ear.  He 
squinted.
     "I'll get topside.  Hold her steady, will you?"
     "Be assured, Master-and be careful.  I'll join you as quickly as I 
can."
     "Pight."
     On the way to the upper hatch, Lando reclaimed his helmet.
     He hadn't had time to take off his pressure suit, which was just 
as well.  He placed the bubble on his head, gave it the slight push 
downward and the fractional turn that locked it into place, and checked 
the telltales on his arm to make sure he had a perfeet seal.
     One more stop.  He seized a meter-long breaker bar from a 
socket-wrench set in the engine area.  He'd lost his stingbeams on 
5792, kept no other small arms aboard the Falcon.  Hefting the length 
of titanium, he swung it experimentally.  Notas good as steel would 
have been, too light, but it would do to crack a helmet faceplate or a 
skull.
     A muffled clank!  reverberated gently through the entire ship.
     Almost as quickly, the robot's voice crackled in his earphones.
     "We're locked on, Master I'll just stabilize our attitude and be 
right with you.  " Lando didn't feel the maneuver.  When things were 
working right (and he couldn't see out a window), he wasn't supposed 
to.  In any case, he was busy turning a large metal wheel set in the 
hatch over his head.  The seal was supposed to be tight with the escape 
aperture of the fighter; his suit was only a precaution.  But he had 
closed an airtight door behind him when he entered this area of the 
ship.
     Lando was a man who took precautions.
     The wheel hit its stop, the door slumped downward a couple of 
centimeters, and Lando swung it aside.  Pocked and abraded metal 
greeted him, a circle of it, set in a broader area that matched it in 
long, hard wear.  The circle had an inset ring at its edge.  Lando dug 
a gloved pair of fingers under it, pulled hard, and a strip of sealant 
followed it down through the Falcon's hatch.
     The circle popped out-sfighdy higher pressure inside the fighter.
     Lando tossed the emergency access plate down to the chamber floor, 
stuck a cautious wrench handle through the port, followed it with his 
head and shoulders.  A booted foot hung on either side of his head.
     The boots were connected to a pair of legs that rose to a body 
slumped in an acceleration chair and strapped in.  The body didn't 
move.
     Straining a little, Lando stretched up and hit the harness 
quick-release.  'Ngging gently on the figure's ankles, he got the body 
started down through the hatch, having to drop his breaker bar to the 
floor to make room and gain an extra hand.
     The shoulders jammed momentarily, then slid through.
     Lando was glad he'd adjusted the gravity in the room to one-tenth 
normal.  The guy would have squashed him on the way down the hatch 
ladder.  He was huge.
     With the rescued pilot lying unconscious on the floor, Lando 
heaved the hatch back into place, turned the wheel until a green light 
winked from a small panel beside it, and dropped back to the floor.  He 
read what he could of the pilot's suit telltales.  Appearances could be 
deceptive; the pilot looked human, but it could be ammonia he was 
breathing inside his suit.
     That wasn't the case.  As he detached his own helmet and began on 
that of the disabled fighter pilot, he heard another clank as Vuffi Raa 
cast off the ruined craft.  Inside the helmet was an aged rugged face, 
elaborately scarred, and covered with a grizzled week-old beard.  Even 
in repose the face looked tough and wise and experienced.
     An eyelid fluttered.
     Lando recovered the wrench handle, just in case, then had a second 
thought.  This fellow looked strong enough to.  take the handle away 
from the gambler and shove it right up hisA hiss sounded across the 
chamber.  Vuffi Raa stepped through the door just as the pilot began to 
stir.  The tough old man shook his gray head slightly, looked up 
groggily at Lando, blinked, and looked around the room.
     His gaze stopped at the droid, froze there.  A look of passionate 
hatred surf-used the pilot's face, and his body tensed for combat.
     "You!"  the pilot screamed, "Destroyer of my world!  Kill me now, 
or you shall surely escape death no more!"
      xviii WITH A VICIOUS tentacle-slash at the bulkhead behind him, 
the robot launched himself across the room, straight at the astounded 
fighter pilot.  The pilot leaped up just as four chromeplated 
manipulators seized him in their mechanical embrace, joined by a 
belated fifth.
     The pilot heaved his forearms up and outward in a holdbreaking 
maneuver, fended off a tentacle with a forearm block that would have 
snapped radius and ulna of a human antagonist, delivered a powerful 
turning backfist blow to Vuffi Raa's pentagonal torso.
     The little robot flew back the way he'd come, smashed into the 
wall, and was on the way back into combat again before Lando could so 
much as blink.
     "Master!"  the droid shouted, once again wrapping his limbs about 
those of the pilot.  "Use your medikit!"
     Fumbling at the belly of his suit, Lando grabbed the kit's 
injector, a flat thick coin of an object with a red side and a green 
side laminated over silvery plating.  As Vuffi Raa held the fighter 
pilot momentarily, Lando slapped the injector on his neck.
     There was a hisssss, the pilot slumped, and Vuffi Raa released 
him.
     The robot seemed to slink into a corner, his red eye growing 
dimmer, his tentacles spreading and curling until the little fellow was 
a simple metallic sphere.  The light pulsed feebly once, and went out.
     "Vuffi Raa!"  the gambler exclaimed, shaken with surprise and 
grief.  He hurried to the robot's side, without the faintest idea what 
to do for his friend.  A tiny hint of eye-glow still could be made out.
     Lando stood as anger began to fill him.
     He walked over to the pilot.  The sedation hadn't rendered him 
unconscious.  He lay, breathing deeply, his eyes swimming in and out 
of focus, in and out of burning lunatic hatred for the helpless droid 
across the room.
     Lando turned him over roughly, tore the somewhat antiquated 
blaster from the man's n-dlitary holster, flipped him on his back 
again.  Poking around in the small cramped chamber, he found some 
scraps, odds and ends from maintenance projjects, among them a 
two-meter length of heavy wire.  Holding it against the 
shield-saturated upper hull, he burned it in half with the blaster on 
its lowest setting, and, without waiting for the fused ends to cool, 
returned to the recumbent pilot, twisting one piece around his suited 
wrists, the other around his ankles.
     Then, uncaring about what physiological damage he might be doing 
the soldier, he twisted the knurled edge of the injector until a small 
arrow was opposite the engraved legend stim, and clapped it firmly to 
the man's face.
     The device made its subtle noise.  The fellow flushed, groaned, 
but his eyes grew clearer immediately.  Lando pressed the still-warm 
muzzle of the blaster against the man's left kneecap.
     "All right, Ace: tell me your story and make it short.  By all 
means don't cooperate.  I'd love an excuse to use you up, one joint at 
a time!"  The knuckle of his index finger tightened on the trigger, and 
the pilot saw it.
     "I'm Klyn Shanga," the trussed-up figure said with a sigh.
     "I'll tell you anything you want to know, as long as you promise 
to use that blaster on me afterward.  One clean, effective shot for an 
old soldier, what do you say?"
     Taken aback, Lando let the muzzle drop to the floor.  "I say I'll 
let you know after I hear what you have to say.  'Klyn Shanga': what 
kind of name is that?"  He squatted on the deck beside Shanga, one eye 
on Vuffi Raa.  The robot didn't stir.
     Shanga shook his head and sighed again, trying to accept defeat.
     He'd had a good deal of practice.  "It's the name of a dead man, 
friend, the name of a dead man.  Who in the Name are you, and what are 
you doing fighting men like yourself with that fiend over theret' "I'm 
Captain Lando Cahissian of the Millennium Falcon," Lando replied 
evenly, "and that 'fiend' is my pilot-droid and friend, friend.  His 
name is Vuffi Raa and he never hurt the tiniest insectoid in his life.
     He's programmed against it."
     The pilot blinked.  "A droid?  Is that what it told you?
     explains the fancy chrome-I almost didn't recognize it.  But I 
did!  You don't forget the devil that destroys your civilization!"
     Lando scratched his head.  "Be sensible, man.  How could one 
little droid ... and anyway, what I've told you is true.  He is a 
droid, I've seen him partially diassembled.  Let me tell you, if he's 
been permanently harmed@o you know why he's curled up like that and 
deactivated?  Well, it's because he was forced to attack and restrain a 
sentient being, I'd guess, to defend himself and me."
     Shanga slumped back on the deck, laid his head down, and groaned.
     "I don't know what the Name is going on here!  Partially 
disassembled?
     Programmed against aggression?  You don't happen to have a 
cigarette, do yout' Lando smiled grimly.  "I was about to ask you the 
same thing, Klyn Shanga."
     "Klyn Shanga?"  said a small voice from across the room.
     "Is that what you're called?  Master, I believe I can clear up 
some of this confusion, now."
     "Vuffi Raa!"  Lando shouted joyfully.  The pilot stiffened.
     "You don't know me, creature, but I know you!  Remember the 
Renatasia System?"
     The robot uncurled himself, stepped slowly and gracefully toward 
the two men, and lowered his torso to the floor, letting his tentacles 
relax.  It was one of the few times Lando had ever seen the robot rest.
     It was one of the few times he had ever needed to.
     "Yes, Klyn Shanga, I remember it very well.  And with more shame 
and regret than I can ever express.  Master, the Renatasia is a 
prehistoric colony.  No one knows how long ago human beings settled 
there.  Long before the Republic, certainly.  Long before any historian 
is willing to admit there was spaceflight.  But it exists, and was 
totally isolated from the rest of civilization, not aware of it, any 
more than we were aware of them."
     "You will recall," the droid explained, "that my former master, 
the fellow you won me from in the Rafa, was an anthropologist and 
government spy.  Well, I was with him for many years, a condition of 
mutual discomfort and dissatisfaction, I assure you.
     "An independent trader, much like yourself, Master, had stumbled 
across the Renatasia, and my master was designated to check out his 
findings, reported because there is a standing reward for such 
discoveries.
     "Forgive me, Freeman Shanga-oh, it's Colonel, is it?well, forgive 
me, sir, but the Renatasia was a backward place in the technological 
sense.  My master surmised that, sometime after the original 
colonization, it had been cut off from whatever system the settlers had 
come from, and, over the next dozen generations, had slid back into 
barbarism-perhaps even further.  As it turned out, they had climbed 
back high enough to have commercial interplanetary travel within their 
own system, but had not discovered faster-than-light modalities.
     "It was this which was their undoing.  The government had 
classified them as socially retarded and suitable for forcible 
redevelopments variety of wholesale 'therapy' that is a thin euphemism 
for ruthless exploitation.  The Renatasia System, unable to defend 
itself, was to be used.  To be used up, if desirable.
     "But first it had to be surveyed, analyzed, inspected for hidden 
strengths.
     "My master believed that the best deception was the truthsuitably 
edited.  He ordered me to cover my metallic surface with a latoprene 
coating of an organic appearance, had me make suitable clothing to fit 
over my admittedly rather unconventional shape, and accompanied me to 
the surface of Renatasia III in an open, highly conspicuous landing.
     We announced ourselves to the local government-the system was 
divided at the time into separate nation-states that often fought 
vicious wars with one another-as representatives, envoys, from a 
galaxy-wide civilization.
     "Renatasia, after a suitable interval, was going to be invited to 
join.
     "There were parades, Master, and celebrations.  We traveled widely 
in the system, the honored guests of a people who hoped that this fresh 
contact with a higher civilization would put an end to war and poverty 
among them.  We went to banquets, we made speeches.  And always, 
always, I was the Chief Delegate.  My master played the role of 
secretary and assistant.
     "We were there for seven hundred standard days, during which we 
helped them organize a single system-wide government, organized their 
defense force under a unitary command, then greatly reduced its size.
     We gave them new technologytrivialities that would aid them not at 
all when our true purposes were revealed.
     "The Imperial Fleet arrived on the seven hundred first day.
     "In the beginning, the rejoicing was only redoubled-until the 
fleet began collecting slave levies, demanding taxes, closing schools 
and forcing the Renatasians to teach their children the major galactic 
tongues to the exclusion of their own.
     Whole cities, whole nations resisted.  Whole cities, whole nations 
were leveled.
     "Two thirds of the population were exterminated in the bungled 
pacification operations that followed.
     "Stunned and embarrassed, the government left the Renatasia 
System.  The entire matter was covered up and what was termed an 
'incident' was forgotten as quickly as possible."
     "We didn't forget!"  Klyn Shanga cried from his supine position on 
the deck of the Millennium Falcon.  "We had nothing left but our dreams 
of retribution!  And now we have failed!"
     Vuffi Raa propped himself a little higher, began untwisting the 
wires around Klyn Shanga's wrists.  "You gathered warcraft.  I didn't 
recognize you for what you were.  There were fighters from at least 
twenty civilizations in your squadron, and that booster engine was from 
a scrapped dreadnaught."
     "Yes!  It took us a decade to put the operation together, cost us 
everything we had!  And in the end, it came to nothing!"  He turned his 
face to the floor; his shoulders shook briefly.
     Lando untied the soldier's ankles, helped him to his feet.  "I 
trust, old man, that you understand: Vuffi Raa is many things, but he 
is only a droid.  He has no choice but to do exactly what he is ordered 
to do.  Did you ever see him personally harm anyone?"
     Shanga turned to face the gambler.  "No, no I didn't.  What has 
that got to do with it?"
     "A very great deal.  You saw how he reacted, simply to passively 
restraining you?"
     The warrior set his mouth grimly.  "So what?  You can kill a man 
by ordering it done.  You don't have to bloody your own hands.  Yet 
you'll be just as guilty!"
     Lando took a firmer grip on Shanga's blaster.  "Then I suppose 
that means you won't give your word not to-" "You're bloody well right 
it doesn't!"  roared Klyn Shanga.
     "Very well."  Lando, holding the weapon on the man, reached up and 
reprogrammed the airlock hatch.  "Come along, Vuffi Raa."
     Stepping through the bulkhead door, the gambler spoke again.
     "We'll bring you a cot and some food.  I intend to drop you off at 
the nearest system, and you won't be harmed.  I hope to convince you 
'on the way, sometime in the next few days, that this vendetta is 
irrational.  Vuffi Raa is a thoroughly good being, and would have died 
rather than destroy your culture, but he is also a robot who, even in 
the vilest of hands, must obey.  I'm trying to do something 
constructive about that, too."
     "You are?"  a dazed Vuffi Raa asked from the corridor outside.
     "What, Master?"
     "Don't call me Master!"
     He shut the door, programmed it to restrain the fighter pilot, and 
shoved the blaster into a slash pocket on the outside of his suit.
     "Let's get forward, old thing, we need to decide where next to 
head for."
     "That would depend, Master, on whether we are freight haulers or 
gamblers, wouldn't it?"
     "Indeed it would, except that, at the moment, we are gentlebeings 
of leisure.  We have a hundred seventy-three-odd thousand credits I won 
on Oseon 6845, after all."
     Halfway to the cockpit, the droid turned and looked at Lando.  "I 
hate to say this, Master, but from past experience that won't last very 
long."
     Lando stopped in midstride, a scowl on his face.  He wanted 
desperately to shuck out of his increasingly uncomfortable spacesuit, 
get a shower, and lie down for a couple of eons.
     "Thanks for the vote of confidence.  But we also have twenty 
million credits I sort of accidentally brought along with me from 
Bohhuah Mutdah's place.  He won't be needing it anymore!"
     They continued along to the control deck, where Vuffi Raa began 
the procedure necessary to setting a course.  Lando was glumly rolling 
another cigarette with crushed cigar tobacco and highly unsuitable 
paper.
     "Twenty million credits, and I don't have any decent smokes!"
     The robot paused.  "Master, may I ask you a questions' "As long as 
you don't call me master when you do it."
     "I'll try.  Lando, Klyn Shanga's people, the Renatasians-I feel 
responsible for them.  Their civilization has been all but obliterated.
     If they recover at all, it will be centuries before they're 
finished."
     Lando nodded solemnly.  "That's true.  On the other hand, 
everybody has to start again, fresh every day, from wherever they are."
     "Well, Mas-I mean, Lando, we have your winnings from the Oseon.
     Wouldn't the Renatasians recover a good deal more quickly if they 
had some help?  After all, we're gamblers and adventurers.  Being rich 
would only get in our way.  I think we ought to give Klyn Shanga the 
twenty million."
     Lando looked at Vuffi Raa, ]it his cigarette, and leaned back in 
his acceleration couch.  It was a long time before he spoke.
     "Vuffi Raa, you're a decent, humane droid at heart.  And, when you 
get right down to it, I'm not too bad a sort myself.
     Compared to the rest of the universe, we're the good guys.
     "But as far as the twenty million is concerned, my little 
mechanical friend, forget it.
     "I'm going to enjoy being rich."

     LANDO CALRISSIAN

     AND THE STARCAVE OFTHoNBoKA  This one @ for E Paul Wilson, Healer 
and friend, and for James P Hogan, who makes seven.
     LEHESU SWAM THE endless Open Sea.
     He was large for a young adult, although there were Elders of his 
species twice his size and mass.  An alien observer in a different 
place and time would have pointed out his resemblance to an enormous 
manta ray-broad and streamlined, powerfully winged, and somehow 
pleasingly sinister.  His sleek dorsal surface was domed high with 
muscle.
     Others would have been reminded of the Ponugese man-o'war, seeing 
the tentacular ribbons hanging from his ventral side, marveling at the 
perfect glassy transparency of his body with its hints and flashes of 
inner color.
     Yet, naturally enough, such comparisons would have been 
misleading.  Lehesu had been born among the people who call themselves 
the Oswaft.  He was, unlike ray or jellyfish, penetratingly 
intelligent.  Unlike most others of his kind, he was also aggressively 
curious.
     He dwelt in a place the Oswaft called the ThonBoka, which, in, 
Lehesu's language, brought to mind visions of a cozy harbor on the 
margins of aston-ny ocean.  It was a haven of peace and plenty, a 
refuge.
     There were those among the Oswaft, principally family and friends, 
who had warned him smugly that he would regret adventuring beyond the 
safe retreat of the ThonBoka into the dark perils of the Open Sea.  Few 
of them actually dared speculate precisely what those perils might 
consist of, what he might find, what might find him-except a quick, 
unpleasant death.  For all their intelligence, the Oswaft were not 
remarkably imaginative, particularly when it came to the topic of 
death.  They were a long-lived people and patiently, even fatally, 
conservative in 'their outlook.
     Others hadn't even cared enough to scold him.  Lehesu, himself, 
was a nuisance and a danger, whose very presence was somehow 
inappropriate to the warm sanctum of the ThonBoka, a hint of the darker 
ugliness that lurked beyond its confines.  To their credit, it would 
have been completely uncharacteristic of them to expel him, just as it 
would never have occurred to any one of them, regardless of personal 
opinion, to attempt to stop l,ehesu from sacrificing himself to his 
incomprehensible exploratory itch.
     At that moment, he was beginning to wish he had listened to 
someone.  The Open Sea was slowly starving him to death.
     He flapped his great manta wings reflexively to achieve calm.  It 
was an awe-inspiring, majestic gesture-had there been anyone to see 
it-among his kind, the equivalent of breathing slowly and deliberately.
     And for Lehesu, it was every bit as effective: it didn't help in 
the slightest.  If anything, it only reminded him that he had a plight 
to worry about.
     He was not really frightened.  For all their conservatism, fear 
came slowly to the Oswaft, panic not at all.  It was just that 
curiosity was not a common characteristic among them, either.
     They had their ancient ' venerable, time-tested, fmwy estabhshed, 
customary, and honored traditions.  Such redundancy was necessary, 
Lehesu thought, to convey the suffocating stuffiness of it all.  Yes, 
there were ways of accepting innovation, After all, his people weren't 
savages.  It happened gradually, over several dozen generations.  The 
culture of the Oswaft was far from stagnant.  It was simply, 
excruciatingly, boring.
     Lehesu, on the other fin, was a genius of curiosity@r a totally 
demented mutation.  The conclusion depended on whom you sought for an 
opinion, Lehesu or any other individual of his species.  In his thirst 
to know what unlooked-for wonders lay beyond the cloying safety of the 
ThonBoka, he was utterly alone.  He could not so much as begin to 
explain the burning need that drove him into the Open Sea-not to anyone 
his own age, certainly not to any of the Elders, no, not even to the 
younger ones.
     Well, perhaps one day he would have young of his own, And if 
curiosity were something that could be passed on, they would understand 
and share his thirst.  He chuckled to himself-.
     how he would ever find a mate who could tolerate him might 
constitute something of a problem.
     Then again, it might not.  It was highly unlikely he would survive 
traversing what amounted to a desert.  Every fiber in his great and 
graceful body ached with hunger.  He had been cruising for what seemed 
an eternity without encountering a molecule of nutriment, and it was far 
too late to go back.  He lifted his enormous wings once more, unable to 
ignore their rapidly failing strength.
     Lehesu had never seen or even heard of a cat, but he would have 
understood what killed it, how, and why.  Still, he couldn't really 
bring himself to regret what he had done.  Curiosity may have killed 
him already, but it was vastly better than dying from boredom.
     Perhaps.
     Lehesu estimated that he had, at most, only a few hours before he 
expired.  His people fed continually as they moved about through life, 
automatically, almost unconsciously.  There was little capacity in his 
gigantic body for storage of nutrients.
     As he weakened, and the effect was increasingly noticeable, 
increasingly painful to him, he reflected that at least he was dying in 
the Open Sea, away from all theBut wait!  What was that?  There was 
something else in the desolation!  Far beneath him in the depths, 
another entity swam, one that pulsed with life and power.  Stretching 
his sensory abilities to their limit, he could feel that it was 
comparatively tiny, yet it virtually sang with strength-which meant 
there had to be sustenance around somewhere.
     He did another uncharacteristic thing then, something no other 
O@waft would have done: he dived for the object.  Lehesu was not a 
predator.  Nor was he herbivorous.  Such distinctions had no meaning in 
his time and place, under those circumstances.  It was the habit of the 
Oswaft to eat whatever they found edible, leave everything else alone.
     They knew of no other intelligent species, and the entirety of 
creation was their dinner plate.
     At least he could discover what the thing had found to eat.
     He realized there was a possibility that it would find him, and he 
had little strength for fighting left, even if he had been inclined to 
fighting, which he was not.  Yet he had less hope, even, than strength.
     Down and down he went.  Yes, there it was, a mote less than a 
tenth his size, yet he could feel that it was stronger than he was by a 
substantial margin.  Better armored, as well, much like the small 
carapace-creatures that swam the calmer currents of the ThonBoka.
     They were delicious.
     As he approached the thing, he could see that it was not shaped 
terribly differently from himself.  To judge from its direction of 
travel, it was a bit broader than it was long, more rounded in its 
major contours than he was.  Like Lehesu, it had two nondescript 
projections on its frontal surface, although whether they were sensory 
arrays, like his, was another question.
     Lehesu's senses were not strictly limited to straight lines.  He 
could "se6" that the creature possessed no manipulators on its 
underside.  He had hundreds.  Yet it appeared that part of the surface 
was capable of opening; perhaps its tentacles folded into its belly.
     He knew of organisms thatLehesu recoiled in shock!  He was near 
enough now to make out and be astounded by a major difference between 
himself and the ... the thing.  It was completely opaque, like a 
corpse!
     Ms people lost their transparency upon dying and, until they 
decomposed into the dust of which all life is made, remained visually 
impenetrable.  This creature looked like a dead thing, yet moved with 
confidence and fleetness.  There were those among his people who ...
     But Lehesu was not superstitious.
     With a mental snort, he rejected such foolish notions.  Almost 
completely.
     Another, milder surprise awaited him.  Drawing even nearer-any 
other Oswaft would have known then and there that lzhesu was quite 
insane-he felt the thing trying to say something.  The ThonBoka was 
vast and its people many, but neither so vast nor numerous that 
separate languages had ever developed.  Within their limits, the Oswaft 
were far too wideranging, too swift.  And they could speak over 
distances that would only seem incredible to another race.
     And so he felt the tingling of conununication, for the first time 
in his life without being able to understand it.  He broadcast a beacon 
of good wishes himself and waited.  His own message was repeated back 
to him.  He repeated the first greeting the small armored creature had 
sent him.
     Each now knew the other to be an intelligent organism.  That was 
as far as communication could proceed.  The armored creature began 
counting-that was silly, thought Lehesu; if it were intelligent, of 
course he could deduce that it would be able to count.  Thinking hard, 
he spoke a picture-message, one meant to convey visual reality rather 
than pure ideas.  Lacking any better image, the wave front he 
transmitted was that of the small armored object before him.
     A rather long pause followed.  Deep within Lehesu, he experienced 
a brief sensation of satisfaction that he could surprise it.  Then he 
received a picture-message of himself.  Fine!  Now he could convey the 
essence of his disastrous situation to it, and perhaps it would help 
him.  If in no other way, perhaps it could help pull him into richer 
currents.
     He spoke a picture of himself, then modified it in his imagination 
until he showed a pitiable scene in which he was growing increasingly 
opaque, increasingly withered.  Finally, just to do things properly and 
in full, he imagined himself dissolving, his molecular constituents 
wafting away.  It made him feel very strange to imagine such a thing, 
but it was necessary.
     Finally, he started the image over again, but this time had 
himself feeding richly on what drifted in the currents of the ThonBoka.
     He pictured himself growing stronger, healthier, sleeker, more 
transparent.  He pictured himself growing to become a giant Elder.  For 
some reason this made him feel worse than did the idea of dying, 
although whether the feeling came from imagining a feast while he was 
starving, or imagining himself in the image of his stuffy forebears, he 
was not quite certain.
     In any case, the creature hung motionless before him in the void, 
nor did it reply for a long, long time.  As he waited, Lehesu examined 
it carefully.  Numerous spots glowed on its outer surface, much like 
the courting glow pigments of some of the ThonBoka wildlife.  One in 
particular, a large globular spot at the front end, displayed odd, 
changing patterns.  All the while, the creature pulsed and throbbed 
with indecently good health.  It had come to a halt when the 
communications began, and continued to be still though obviously 
restless and thrumtriing to be on its way.
     Finally, it sent him ' a picture-speech.  That caught him by 
surprise, as his mind had wandered-another dangerous sign of imminent 
starvation.  He had been gazing at the stars, wondering what they were, 
how far away they lay, and how he might, if he lived, contrive to reach 
them, as he had reached the Open Sea.
     The armored creature asked him, in effect, if these were what he 
liked to eat.  It then began displaying pictures of every imaginable 
variety of wonderfully delicious nutriment, from the incidental 
nutrient haze that drifted on the currents and was gobbled up by Oswaft 
as they passed, to the most succulent of complex culinary creations.
     The trouble was, these images were mixed incomprehensibly with 
things he didn't even remotely recognize-and with downright garbage.
     Excitedly he shouted confu-marion when the images were right, 
withheld connnent when they were not.  He and the creature hadn't 
gotten around to establishing the symbols for "yes" and "no".  He 
wondered what the thing had in mind.  Would it lead him to this banquet 
it was promising?  Would he have the strength to follow?  Or was it 
merely mocking him?
     He was beginning not to care.  There were only minutes left for 
him, anyway.
     Suddenly, the greatest shock of all.  The belly of the creature 
split open and vomited out everything it had shown him.  It filled the 
currents around them, forming an almost impenetrable fog.  Shouting 
joyously, he swooped and dived and soared through it all, plowing great 
clean swaths where he had passed.
     The creature stood off, watching, doing, and saying nothing.
     One pass took him very near the thing.  It was not smooth but was 
covered with knobs and bulges.  Only portions of the thing showed any 
signs of transparency, and they simply admitted the sensory probes 
into an internal darkness that revealed nothing.
     But for once, Lehesu's curiosity was abated.  He fed, perhaps more 
richly than he ever had in his life.  Each pass brought him nearer the 
creature, but he was not afraid of it; it had saved his life.  His 
senses passed over a spot that might have told him a great deal more, 
except that the Oswaft had no written language, no need for one.  It 
was a plate, a plaque, attached with rivets to the creature's hide.  On 
it were enameled five words that would have shocked him deeply, for 
this was not a living creature at all.
     The sign read: MILLENNIUM FALCON Lando Calrissian, Capt.
     Lehesu the Oswaft, swimmer of the starry void, was content merely 
to soar and graze about the Falcon, singing out his gratitude to her 
every second he did so, with the natural radio waves generated by the 
speech centers of his mighty brain.
     The formaldehyde was delicious!
     LANDO CALRISSIAN, GAMBLER, rogue, scoundrel-and humanitarian?
     It didn't seem very likely, even to him.  But the undeniable truth 
was that, several months after her initial encounter with that 
remarkable spacebreathing being, Lehesu of the Oswaft, circumstances 
found the Millennium Falcon stolidly boring her way through the 
interstellar void straight toward the ThonBoka, which translated 
roughly into human languages as the StarCave.
     Lehesu's people were in trouble: Lando was bringing help.
     He was the help, and he was furious.  Ms anger had nothing 
directly to do with Lehesu, the Oswaft, or the ThonBoka, but was rather 
more closely connected with the broken arm he was nursing at the 
moment.  It was not quite so onerous nor prolonged an ordeal as it 
might have been in a more primitive place and time.  He wore a complex 
lightweight brace consisting of a series of electrical coils that 
generated a field that would encourage his fractured humerus to knit up 
nicely in two or three days.  Yet the appliance was cumbersome and 
inconvenient, particularly in free-fall.  And Lando had grown 
particularly fond of free-fall.  It helped him think.
     With the deck-plate gravity switched off, he would sit in the 
middle of a room@quidistant not only from its walls, but from its floor 
and ceiling as well-parked comfortably on a cushion of thin air, 
cogitating.  But the cast got in the way.
     Lando also had a black eye and a broken toe.  But, considering 
everything else that had happened, those were minor annoyances.  He 
flicked expensive cigar ash at a vacuum hose he'd arranged to hang 
conveniently nearby, and spoke in the direction of an intercom panel 
set in a table somewhere beneath him.
     "Vuffi Raa, what's our ETA again?"
     The instrument returned a voice to him, soft-spoken and polite, 
fully as mechanical in its origins as the instrument itself, yet rich 
with humorous astute inflection.
     "Seventy-six hours, Master That's a new correction: this region is 
so clean we've gained anotherfour hours since I made the last estimate.
     I apologize for my previous inexactitude.  " Inexactitude!  Lando 
thought.  The Core-blessed thing talks prettier than I do, and I'm 
supposed to be the con artiste around here!
     The Millennium Falcon's velocity, many times greater than that of 
light, was limited only by the density of the interstellar medium she 
traversed.  Ordinary space is mostly emptiness, yet there are almost 
always a few stray molecules of gas, sometimes in surprisingly complex 
chemical organization, per cubic kilometer.  Any modern starship's 
rfiagnetogravitic shielding kept it from burning to an incandescent 
cinder and smoothed the way through what amounted to a galaxy-wide 
cluttering of hyperthin atmosphere.  But the resistance of the gas was 
still appreciable through a reduction in the ship's theoretical top 
speed.
     The particular area the Falcon was then passing through seemed to 
be an exception.  Bereft of the usual molecular drag, the Falcon was 
outdoing even her own legendary performance.
     The captain pondered that, then addressed the intercom again.
     "Better back her off a few megaknots.  I need more time than that 
before this confounded dingus comes off my arm.
     And you I've still got a dent or two yourself that needs ironing 
out.  And Vuffi Raa?"
     "Yes, Master?"  was the cheerful reply.  Lando could hear the 
clack-clack-clack of keyboard buttons being punched as per his 
instructions.  The vessel slowed, but that could not be felt through 
her inertial dampers.
     "Don't call me master!"
     That had been very nearly reflexive.  He'd long since given up 
wondering what the robot's motivation was for the small but chronic 
disobedience.  Actually, Lando was concerned about his little 
mechanical friend, and not just because Vuffi Raa was such a terrific 
pilot droid.  Or at least not entirely.
     These sporadic violent attacks they'd been suffering lately were 
getting to be a serious matter where they had only been minor nuisances 
before, and knowing why they were happening, to Lando's great surprise, 
hadn't helped a bit.
     The gambler sneered down at his foot where another, tinier set of 
coils pulsed healing energies into his flesh.  Somehow, that was the 
final insult-that and the black eye.  It was one thing to attempt to 
murder an enemy.  That was what a vendetta was all about, after all.
     But to do him in by millimeters, an abrasion here, a contusion 
there?
     Fiendish, Lando was forced to admit-if it wasn't simple 
ineptitude.
     Somehow the enemy realized that a man otherwise willing and 
capable of barehandedly confronting a ravening predator his own size, 
sometimes panics at the sound of a stinging insect barnstorming around 
his ears.
     Well, the gambler told himself, that's why we're on this socalled 
errand of mercy.  I'm going to put a twelve-gee stop to all of this 
juvenile assassination nonsense, one way or the other, once and for 
all.
     Sure, it was a risky proposition; the stakes were as high as they 
could be.  But above and beyond every other consideration, Lando 
Calrissian-he told himself again-was a sport who'd wager anything and 
everything on the turn of a single card-chip.
     That's how he'd gotten into the mass in the first place.
     It seemed that, some time before, a talented but essentially 
prospectless young conscientious-objector-of-fortune had won himself a 
starship-actually a converted smuggling freighter-in a game of 
seventy-eight-card sabacc.  A little while later he had, quite 
unintentionally, acquired a pretty pecuhar robot in much the same 
fashion.  Together, the two machines and their man had set out upon a 
series of adventures, some more profitable than others.  In the 
process, they had made a number of enemies, one of them a 
self-proclaimed sorcerer who had plotted to Rule The Galaxy, and had 
tripped over Lando on his way to the top.  Twice.
     The fellow had resented that, blamed Lando for his own humbling 
and bad luck, and the vendetta had begun.  Until now, it had been an 
unrequited, entirely one-sided relationship.
     All Lando wanted was to be left alone.  He'd tried explaining, via 
various media, that he didn't care who ran the universehe'd break 
whatever rules it suited him to disobey in any case, whoever was in 
charge-and that the sorcerer was perfectly welcome to all the power and 
glory he could grab.  Alas, these blandishments, reasonable as they 
sounded to the gambler, had fallen upon inoperative auditory organs.
     Just to make things really complicated, Vuffi Raa had already had 
enemies of his own.  Although the robot hadn't known it.  His previous 
master, while spectacularly untalented at games of chance, had been a 
highly effective government employee in the spy business.  This fellow, 
ostensibly an itinerant anthropologist, had used the little robot, 
forced him to help undermine a previously undiscovered system-wide 
civilization in a manner that had resulted in the brutal military 
extermination of two-thirds of its citizens.  The remaining third, 
understandably perturbed, had sworn eternal hatred for the droid, and 
had enthusiastically begun to do something about it.
     Subsequent attempts at negotiation, as in Lando's case, had been 
nearly lethally futile.  Some people just won't listen.
     Well, life is like that, Lando thought as he hovered in what had 
been designed as the passenger lounge of the Millennium Falcon.  It 
served as their living room; just then, it was the gambler's private 
thinking-parlor, and the thoughts he was thinking were reasonably 
ironic.  He took another puff on his cigar.
     The trouble with two partners having separate sets of mortal 
enemies is that said enemies don't always make distinctions.
     Particularly when using fragmentation grenades.  Poor Vuffi Raa 
had gotten badly dented by an assassin in the employ of the sorcerer at 
their last port of call.  The idiot had confessed before expiring; with 
the nervousness of a beginner, he'd thrown the pin instead of the 
grenade.  The robot's injuries would work themselves out after a while.
     He had excellent self-repair mechanisms.
     In another incident, Lando had been pushed over a rail into a vat 
of vitamin paste he had considered acquiring for that very trip, 
somehow fracturing both arm and toe and picking up a shiner.  What 
really hurt was that he'd simply ruined his second-best velvoid 
semiformal captain's uniform.  He was certain Vuffi Raa's enemies were 
responsible.  It felt like their style.  Clumsy.
     Nor was the Millennium Falcon considered immune.  In fact, she'd 
rather taken the brunt of things, with bombs planted inside her (two of 
which had actually gone off) and having felt the fury of several small 
space battles in recent months.  A fighter pilot had deliberately 
rammed her, crumpling her boarding ramp.  She'd strained her engines 
getting them in and out of various places in a hurry.  Her battery of 
quad-guns, under Lando's capable direction, had staved off the 
occasional pirate vessel, who probably hadn't anything at all to do 
with vendettas.  Surprised at the ferocity with which her captain had 
taken it all out on their hides, defeated pirates were giving the 
battered old freighter quite a reputation.
     Pirates they could handle.  The Falcon was a good deal faster than 
she looked, terrifyingly well armed; he and the robot were pretty hot 
pilots, but Vuffi Raa had taught Lando everything he knew in this 
regard.  Lando told himself again that the business at the StarCave 
would pay off all other debts, as well.  He was thoroughly fed up, 
loaded for whatever ftuq omnivorous quadruped the fates cared to place 
in his path.
     Tugging gently at the vacuum ashtray hose, Lando drifted to the 
ceiling of the lounge, gave a little shove against the overhead, which 
propelled him near the floor.  He switched on the gravity and walked 
both forward and starboard around the Falc(in's curving inner corridor, 
to the cockpit, which was set in a tubelike construction projecting 
from the front of the ship.
     In the left-hand pilot's seat, an equally weird construction 
perched, a five-hmbed chromium-plated starfish with a single glowing 
red eye set atop its pentagonal torso.  Its tentacles were at rest just 
then, having reduced the Falcon's speed as Lando had requested.
     The meter-high entity turned to its master.  "I believe you'll be 
able to make out the nebula now, Master.  See, that blurry spot ahead?"
     Lando strained his eyes, then gave up and punched the electronic 
telescope into activation.  Yes, there it was: the ThonBoka, as its 
inhabitants called it.  It was a sack-shaped cloud of dust and gas, 
enterable only from one direction, rich with preorganic molecules even 
up to and including amino acids.  Inside that haven, life had evolved 
without benefit of star or planet, life adapted to living in open empty 
space.  Some of that life had eventually acquired intelligence and 
called itself the Oswaft.  But at the moment, they were under seige.
     "What about the blockade, can you locate that?"  Lando strapped 
himself into the right-hand seat, ran a practiced eye over various 
gauges and screens, relaxed, and plucked a cigar out of the open safe 
beneath the main control panel.
     "Yes, Master, I'm overlaying those data now."
     Vuffi Raa's tentacles flicked over the panel with a life of their 
own.  He was a Class Two droid, with a level of intelligence and 
emotional reaction comparable to those of human beings.  He had a good 
many other talents, as well.  To Lando's occasional disgust, however, 
the robot was deeply programmed never to harm organic or mechanical 
sapience, and was thus an automatic pacifist.  There had been times 
when that had been inconvenient.' On the main viewscreen, showing the 
sacklike ThonBoka nebula, a hundred tiny yellow dots sprang to life.
     Lando whistled.  "That's quite a fleet for bottling up one 
undefended dust cloud.  What do they think this is, the Clone Wars?"
     He leaned forward to light his cigar, but was stopped by the offer 
of a glowing tentacle tip.  Yes, Vuffi Raa had a lot of useful talents.
     "That isn't even half of them, Master.  Although I can't 
understand why, some of the fleet out there have modified their defense 
shielding into camouflage to conceal themselves.  I also believe 
they've mined the mouth of the nebula."
     Puffing on his cigar, Lando forced calm.  "And we're going to run 
that blockade.  Oh, well, it's been a short life but a brief one.  Can 
you do anything about shield camouflage for us?"
     The robot wiped the screen display.  "I'm afraid not, Master, it's 
very sophisticated technology."
     "Which means that everybody in the universe is using it except 
civilians.  Well, then, what's our plan?"
     There was a startled pause that might have been filled with a 
blinking red eye had Vuffi Raa been capable of such a thing.
     "I thought you had the plan, Master."
     Lando sighed resignedly.  "I was afraid you'd say that.  To tell 
the truth, I had a plan, but it seems pretty insubstantial, here and 
now.  I shall repair to my free-fall cogitorium once more and 
reconsider.  1'11 get back to you as soon as possible.
     Don't hold your breath, it may very well be a century or three."
     He unstrapped himself from his chair, took a final disgusted look 
through the sectioned canopy, and removed himself from the control area 
with his cigar.  Around the long, heavily padded corridor, out rinto 
the cluttered lounge, off with the artificial gravity, and back to the 
geometric center of the room, where he sat and smoked and tried to 
think.
     It wasn't one of his better days for that.
     "Master?"  The voice coming over the intercom was agitated.  It 
startled the gambler out of a dream in which, no matter what sabacc 
hand he held, Ws cards kept changing to garbage, while a faceless gray 
opponent held a newly invented one, the Final Trump, which was an 
automatic twenty-three.
     "Zzzzzz-what?"
     Lando blinked, discovered that he was covered with sweat.
     His velvoid seniiformals were soaked through, and he smelled like 
a bantha someone had ridden half to death.  He stretched, trying to 
remove kinks from his muscles that shouldn't have been there in zero 
gee.
     "Vuffi Raa, how many times have I told you never to call me- 
"Master " the robot interrupted, sounding both worried and eager at the 
same time, "it's been nearly three hours.  Have you come up with a 
plan?"
     "Uh, not exactly," the gambler replied, shaking his head in an 
unsuccessful attempt to clear it.  "I'm working on it.  I said I'd call 
you when@' "Well, I think we'd better talk it over now, if you don't 
mind You see, there's a picket cruiser sitting not more than a hundred 
kilometers off our starboard bow.  I didn't see them, so well 
camouflaged were they, and they've fired two warning shots already.
     Master, they say they'll cut us in half with the next shot unless 
we stand by to receive boarders.  " Lando grunted.  His mouth tasted 
like a mynock cave.
     "That's the Navy for you, no consideration at all."
     CONCEALED BEYOND TtlE reach of civilization lay a place called 
Tund, a name of legendary repute, one seldom spoken above a whisper.
     That whispered word named a planet, a system, or a cluster of 
stars-no one was quite certain which-rumored for ten thousand years to 
be the home of powerful and subtle mages.  Fear was associated with the 
name, the sort of fear that inhibits mentioning, even thinking about, 
the thing it represents, so as not to invoke its omniscient, 
omnipotent, and malevolent attention.  Almost no one knew the even more 
hideous truth.
     The planet Tund was sterile, devoid of native life, its surface 
roasted to a fine, gray, powdered ash where evergreen forests, tropical 
jungles, and continent-broad prairies had once stretched for countless 
kilometers.  It was a world destroyed by magic.
     Or by belief in magic.
     At night the planet's face glowed softly, not merely with the pale 
blue fire of decaying atoms, but with a ghostly greenish residue of 
energies as yet unknown to the rest of galactic civilization.  Where it 
flickered balefully, nothing lived, or ever would again.  It had been 
partially to preserve the secret of such power that Rokur Gepta, last 
of the fabled Sorcerers of Tund, had utterly obliterated every living 
thing upon the planet, from submicroscopic wigglers to full-flowering 
sentience.  His was a terrible, cosmically unfeeling precaution.
     The rest had been sheer malice.
     Here and there an oasis of sorts had been permitted its closely 
regulated probational existence, areas reseeded from which, some 
billions of years hence, when the evil emerald fires had at long last 
died , life might resume its pitiably hum bled march.  Massive 
force-fields were essential to press the flickering death away from 
those few havens.
     In one such crouched the cruiser Wennis, a decommissioned, 
obsolete, and thoroughly effective instrument of pitiless warfare, 
being refitted to her master's precise specifications.  Her crew was an 
odd but deliberate mixture of the cream of the galaxy's technical and 
military elite and its dregs, often represented in the same individual.
     Her weaponry and defenses ran the gamut from continent-destroying 
hell projectors to small teams of unarmed combat experts.  She had been 
a gift of prudence from the highest and consequently most vulnerable of 
sources in the galaxy.
     The Wennis would not be recognizable when Rokur Gepta was through 
with her.
     The sorcerer had that way with ships, and planets, and people.
     The only value anything possessed for him was its utility relative 
to his inexorable rise to power.  Wealth meant nothing more to him than 
that, nor the companionship of his fellow beings, even-owing to the 
most peculiar and repulsive of physical circumstances-that of females.
     He was empty, as devoid of life and warmth as his handiwork, the 
planet Tund itself Such an emptiness requires endless volumes of power 
to fill it even momentarily.
     Someday he, too, would bestow gifts of decommissioned battle 
cruisers-although he would exercise considerably more care to see that 
they were employed strictly in his interests.
     And even that lofty seat of power was only a feeble beginning.
     The million-system civilization ruled from it, after all, was only 
a small wedge of the galaxy.
     And the galaxy itself only a small part of ...
     Deep within the twisted caverns of the murdered planet Tund, where 
Rokur Gepta had once personally searched out and exterminated every one 
of his ancient mentors-the original sorcerers, who had lovingly 
instructed him in the ways of power that had been their ultimate 
undoing-the treacherous former pupil sat, immersed in thought.  He 
brooded in a blackness utterly unbroken by the glimmer of so much as a 
single passing photon.  That was the way he preferred it; he had other 
means of observing reality.
     Even in the full light of a healthy planet's daytime surface, 
another individual would be less fortunate: Rokur Gepta was simply 
impossible to come to terms with visually.  He was a blur, a vagueness 
more psychological than perceptual in character, perhaps because his 
color was that of terror.
     On the very rare occasions he was spoken of by others, 
descriptions varied: he was a malignant dwarf-, a being of average 
though preternaturally imposing stature; a frightening giant of a 
figure over two meters tall, perhaps three.  All accounts agreed that 
he was perpetually swathed in cloaks and windings of the same hue as 
his lifeless domain, an ashy gray from the tips of his (presumed) toes 
to the top of his (apparent) head.
     He wore a turbanlike headdress whose final lengths were wound 
around the place his face should be, obscuring all his features save 
the eyes, twin pools of whirling, insatiable, merciless voracity.
     Understandably, the sorcerer had enemies, although he had 
oudived-often by design-the small minority of them with the capacity to 
do him harm.  He had outlived many others as well, simply by surviving 
centuries of time.  His long life was in grave and constant danger, 
however, from those few who still survived and the continually fresh 
crop of victims who wished him ill.
     And that was, what produced his present quandary.
     Word had been conveyed, through several layers of underlings, of 
an emissary, a messenger whose credentials offered a potentially 
profitable alliance.  Should he trust the individual sufficiently to 
hear him out, as per request, in total privacy?
     The sorcerer pondered.  The risk of a personal audience was great, 
especially as the representative came from a principal powerful enough 
to preclude extensive security measures, which could be interpreted as 
an affront.  There were limits to the precautions that could be taken, 
but none to the cleverness of assassins.  He ought to know; he had 
employed enough of them himself.
     Reaching a decision, he gestured with a gray-gloved hand.
     Feeble light began to glow within the monstrous cavern, swelling 
until it filled the place.  Small black hairy things within the walls 
squeaked a protest, rustled in their niches, then settled back into 
troubled somnolence.
     He would make up this discomfort to his pets, Gepta thought, and 
if the audience turned out to be less than advertised, so would the 
emissary make restitution, most slowly.
     A faint electronic chirp from a panel in the left arm of his 
basaltic throne alerted him of visitors.  He firmed up his visual 
appearance; no sense alarming the messenger unduly at the outset.  The 
time for intimidation, confusion, and betrayal would come later.  It 
always did.
     From a passageway far to the right, across a kilometer or more of 
cavern floor, a small procession wended its way, composed of minions in 
uniform, their marks of rank and organization stripped away to preserve 
the fiction that they were civilians.  In truth, they were the same 
sort of gift the Wennis had been, and served their original master by 
serving Rokur Gepta.
     I The honor guard consisted of a half-dozen heavily armed and 
smartly groomed beings, every fiber bristling at attention as they 
marched.  In their midst was a giant, a large, heavyset man in a 
battered spacesuit, carrying his helmet under one arm.
     The group wound carefully among the cavern floor's many 
stalagmites, following a hidden pattern that, if strayed from, would 
precipitate their immediate and total destruction.
     Gepta waited on his throne, three meters above the floor.
     As the column reached its base, Gepta's soldiers snapped to a 
halt.  The visitor technically stood at attention, too, but he was the 
sort of being who, when the time came, would look as if he were 
lounging indolently in his own coffin.  He was utterly relaxed, utterly 
alert.  He was utterly unafraid of anything, most especially death.
     If Rokur Gepta feared anything himself, it was men such as this.
     "Sir!"  the leader of the guardsmen said, "we present Klyn Shanga, 
Fleet Admiral of the Renatasian Confederation, sir!"
     Gepta would accept no title or honorific.  Such were for lesser 
beings.  He tolerated being called "sir" because his underlings, of 
military background, seemed to grow increasingly uncomfortable and 
uninformative unless they could insert it at least once in every 
sentence they addressed to him.
     Gepta nodded minutely, looking down on the craggy giant.
     "Admiral, welcome to the planet Tund," he hissed.  "Few have seen 
it, save my minions, and even fewer have lived to say they've seen it."
     Shanga grinned broadly from a face that was one scar overlaid upon 
another until nothing of the original flesh remained.
     Yet an ordinary human being would have found the effect somehow 
pleasing.  Klyn Shanga was everybody's adventurous uncle, the one who'd 
been everywhere, done everything, and had it done back to him.
     He ignored the threat: "That 'Admiral' is something in the nature 
of a joke, Sorcerer.  In your terms I'm more of a squadron leader, and 
it's not much of a squadron.  Core-for that matter, it's not much of a 
Confederation, either!  But we have our points, as my letters of 
introduction demonstrated, I'm sure.  You know about the Renatasia?"
     . Gepta nodded once again.  Upon receiving the communication in 
question, he'd consulted references and had a conference with his 
kennel of government spies.  What was to be learned was skimpy; there 
had been a highly energetic cover-.up.  Yet the essential facts were 
clear.
     "It was a system and a culture colonized long before the current 
political status quo was achieved.  It developed independently, unknown 
to the rest of the galaxy, and at a somewhat slower pace 
technologically.  It was discovered, subverted, exploited, and 
obliterated by certain commercial interests acting in concert with the 
Navy.  You, your squadron, and your Confederation are some of the rare 
survivors.  Are these the fundamental elements of the story, Admiral 
Shanga?"  The sibilance of Gepta's whisper echoed in the cavern.
     Shanga's turn to nod.  "'nat's it.  About a third of the 
population lived, reduced further by starvation- and disease."  He 
leaned against a stalagmite, casually swinging his helmet by a strap 
around his finger.  "Get rid of the flunkies and we'll talk a deal, how 
about it?"
     Gepta savagely repressed a wave of rage and nausea that swept 
through him at the man's impudence.  Time, he told himself, there would 
be time to deal with him appropriately later.
     He gestured and the men, with uncertainty on their faces, brought 
themselves back to attention, turned in place, and marched back the way 
they'd come.  It took them a long while, so indirect and lengthy was 
the route.  All the while, Shanga leaned against his stony outcrop with 
a grin across his battered face.
     "What have you got against Lando Catrissian, anyway, Gepta?"
     The sorcerer's gaze jerked upward across the chamber to assure 
that no one else was present to witness the gibe.  Then he settled back 
in his throne and stared coldly at the fighter pilot before him, 
struggling to maintain an even tone.
     "It is sufficient that he has offended me-primarily with his 
impudence, ICyn Shanga, a fact you would do well to bear in mind.  We 
have agreed upon the history of your woebegone system; tell me, what is 
your interest in a vagabond gambler.
     What has he to do with-2' In an instant, Shanga's facade of 
relaxation dropped away.
     He stood rigidly beside the stalagmite, his body trembling with 
anger.  Rather a long time passed before he was able to reply.
     "Calrissian doesn't figure in it.  He has a partner@' "The robot?
     Surely, Admiral-"' "Robot!"  Shanga shot back hotly.  "In the 
Renatasia it wasn't a robot, but a five-limbed organic sapient!  I saw 
it then-nobody could avoid it!  It was treated to parades and banquets, 
in the media every minute!  It was an emissary from a long-lost 
galactic civilization that ... that ... that ultimately destroyed us!  
It was a spy, Gepta!  It infiltrated us, observed our weaknesses, 
planned our downfall with ruthless precision!
     Robot?  Oh yes, I saw it again after the battle of Oseon, 
disguised as a harmless droid, but I wasn't fooled, not for a nano!
     Robot?  What would a robot have to gain from@' Gepta raised an 
interrupting hand.  He knew perfectly well why a droid might help 
destroy a system.  Programmed to obey, it wouldn't have a choice, and 
properly disguised with an organic-appearing plastic coating, it would 
be a perfect spy.
     The sorcerer, however, wasn't about to argue with the man and 
possibly lose an ally.  Shanga would have his uses@d his ultimate 
disposition.
     "Very well, Admiral, we each of us have personal reasons for 
wishing a conclusion to this hunt, and your offer of assistance is 
welcome.  But your communication hinted at more; there was a claim that 
you know where the Millennium Falcon may be found?"
     "And trapped!"  the warrior added with a snap in his voice.
     "Imagine the sweetness of it: trapped between us and the Navy!"
     He began laughing, the edge in his voice growing increasingly 
hysterical until he leaned heavily against the stone column, wiping his 
eyes and coughing.  When he could speak again, it was only one word: 
"StarCave!"
     Rokur Gepta kept his peace, offering no reply.  The term was 
meaningless to him, but given an hour of privacy and access to his 
sources of information it would not remain so.  Finally he replied.
     "StarCave, you say."
     The fighter pilot nodded.  "Yes, we have our spies, too, Gepta-we 
have to.  After all, they're the ones who-but never mind that.  The 
navy's keeping a heavy blockade there.  We don't know why.  There are 
rumors, but most of them are so silly that we think they're an 
Intelligence cover.  Whatever the reason, we also know that Cahissian's 
planning to run the blockade, in fact may be there as we speak.  We 
have things you need: information, a rebuilt fighter squadron.  You 
have something we need: passage through the blockade.  With Calrissian 
bottled up there, we can .  . ."
     There was a very prolonged silence during which each of the 
figures savored his personal revenge.  Gepta was secretly surprised 
that the n-tilitary could mount a major action of that type without his 
knowing of it.  On the other hand, he hadn't known about the Renatasian 
affair until years after it had happened.  He was equally surprised at 
the depth-and enthusiasm-of Shanga's intelligence sources.  After it 
was over, if he, the sorcerer, could incorporate ... But that was for 
later.  This was now, and the culmination of a very long, very annoying 
episode in the gray magician's otherwise unopposed rise to total power.
     "Very well, Admiral Shanga, let us make an agreement between us.
     We shall go to this, this StarCave and see what may be seen.  The 
refitting of the Wennis is nearly complete, and I will hurry the work.
     Your squadron will rendezvous with her at a place convenient to us 
both.  I shall take us through the blockade, and you shall assist with 
the destruction of the Millennium Falcon and her owners.  And afterward 
..."
     Shanga stood, his right hand flexing where his blaster would have 
been hanging had it not been taken from him by Gepta's security people.
     He felt incomplete without it.  There was a worn diagonal area 
across the lower half of his pressure suit, from high behind the left 
hip where the heavy belt ordinarily settled itself, to the middle of 
his right thigh where the weapon would have been strapped down.
     "Yes," said the Admiral, "and afterward: whatt' The sorcerer 
smiled, an expression that manifested itself only in the sarcastic tone 
of his voice.  Inside the dark gray windings about his hidden face, it 
was a far from pleasant exp!ession.
     "Afterward, my dear Admiral Shanga, we two shall go our separate 
ways, you to rebuild Renatasian civilization to glorious, dizzying new 
heights, while 1, on the other hand@' "Mynock muffins!"  Shanga raised 
his gaundeted hand in a mocking salute.  Then, without @er ceremony, he 
turned on fus space-booted heel and began the trek across the damp 
cavern floor to the elevator.
     He itched to have his blaster once again-an itch he felt i)etween 
his shoulder blades as he turned his back on the perfidious sorcerer-to 
get in his small fighter and rejoin the squadron hovering at the edge 
of the barren Tund System.  The dead planet was giving him the creeps.
     For his part, Gepta watched the figure of the Renatasian soldier 
@nish in the twilit distance, kneaded his gray-gloved hands together, 
once more stifling rage that bordered on gibbering insanity.  To be 
walked out on by a mere underling!  And especially one who possessed 
the gall to consider himself an equal partner in the sorcerer's 
affairs!
     It was almost more than the ancient magician could bear.
     Almost.
     There are rituals, however, formulae for calming both the mind and 
body under such nerve-shredding circumstances, venerable practices of 
the long-dead Sorcerers of Tund.
     Rokur Gepta applied them all with a will.

     IV

     LANDO SAT IN the copilot's seat, smoking a cigar and thinking.
     The navy cruiser wasn't naked-eye visible and he had no desire to 
crank up the telescope.  He'd seen a cruiser before.
     They'd been given ten n-tinutes to make up their minds: prepare 
for boarders or be obliterated.  Lando was using every second of those 
minutes, trying to produce a third alternative.  He wasn't having much 
luck.  He'd known from the beginning that a moment like this was going 
to arrive, sooner or lateralthough he hadn't imagined it arriving quite 
so soon.  The plans he'd sketched out in the leisure and safety at 
their last port of call seemed fragile and silly now, however detailed 
and astute they had appeared at the time.
     The trouble, of course, arose from the fact that Lehesu hadn't 
gone straight home.  Fortune or coincidence hadn't had very much to do 
with his rescue.  Lando and Vuffi Raa had stumbled across the same 
"desert" that had threatened to kill the young Oswaft.  What it meant 
for them and the Falcon was a sudden drop to below light-speed while 
Vuffi Raa recalibrated the engines.  In the empty sector, the engines 
had met almost no resistance and they threatened to race wildly until 
they tore themselves and their operators apart, atom by atom.
     Thus they had been poking along on their reaction drive when 
they'd encountered a five-hundred-meter monster soaring out of nowhere.
     At first they'd taken.Lehesu for a weird ship from an unknown 
culture.
     They'd been half right, but then Lehesu had mistaken the Falcon 
for a being something like himself.  It had taken much longer to 
straighten out that misunderstanding than to puzzle out the 
vacuum-breather's plight and do something about it.
     Vuffi Raa had, as usual, been at the controls, as Lando kept a 
suspicious eye on Lehesu and a nervous thumb on the trigger from the 
quad-gun blister.
     "Master, I have conununications on a very unconventional 
frequency.  " "What's being saidt' Lando shifted the stump of his cigar 
to the other side of his mouth, hunched over the receiver Of the 
quad-gun even farther, and strained to see the weird object floating 
half a klick away.  It was transparent, and didn't show up very well on 
the detectors, as if it were made of plastic instead of metal.  There 
was no sign of shielding, and he'd seen much bigger ships.
     Nevertheless, its casual proxinidty raised the fine hair on the 
back of his neck and gave him the impulse to jam the triggers down and 
keep them down until it was reduced to harmless vapor.
     "I've got the Falcon's computers working on it-they're not very 
well suited to translation, I'm afraid-and I'm also plugged into things 
myse@.  It would appear-wait!  We're starting to receive a visual 
array.  Repeating that first greeting seems to have done the ... yes 
... yes..  . Master!  It's sending us a picture of ourselves!"
     Great, Lando thought, here we are, parsecs from any known 
civilization, and we've stumbled across an itinerant portrait 
photographer.  Usually they brought a pony or a young bantha with them, 
but ... He let the sarcastic thoughts dribble away.
     They weren't doing any good.  He trusted Vuffi Raa to handle 
things in general, but hated to put his life in anybody@ hands but his 
own.
     "Well, send them back a picture of themselves, for Core's sake!
     Pretend we're a pair of tourists taking each other's snapshots.  
It beats shooting it out."
     "Yes, Master I had already arrived at that conclusion, and am 
transmitting a slow-scan with the proper characteristics.  I can put it 
on one of your gunnery screens if you think it@ worth the risk."
     "Go ahead.  I can do better with the naked eye anyway, given our 
range and this thing's weird composition."
     On a display to his left, the outline of the Falcon, as seen by 
the alien object, faded away to be replaced with an enhanced 
representation of the object itself.  Vuffi Raa's vision was better 
than Lando's.  He was making out or inferring a good deal more detail.
     The thing remarkably resembled some marine creatures Lando had 
seen in his travels although it was too large by at least an order of 
magnitude.  It was also somewhat like a birdThe picture jerked, the 
viewpoint changed, the object curled and uncurled its "wings."
     'Master this picture's coming fivm them!  Master I don't think 
this is a spaceship!  I think it's a-" At this point, Lehesu began his 
little video drama, showing himself starving to death and dying, then 
changing things to show himself feeding and prospering.  By the time he 
was finished, Lando and Vuffi Raa had a much better idea of what they 
had encountered in that odd, empty region of interstellar space.
     Lando knew that it was theoretically possible for organisms to 
evolve in free space.  Chemical compounds formed spontaneously there, 
many of them very sophisticated and much like those that had preceded 
life in the oceans of millions of worlds.  There were even substances 
which scientists argued were ultrasimple life, somewhere below the 
level of viruses on a scale of organization.
     What bothered Lando was that they'd encountered Lehesu in a region 
utterly devoid of the chemical soup that was supposed to give rise to 
life.  It didn't make sense.  One didn't expect to find human beings in 
places where there was no light, no heat, no oxygen, no-then he 
remembered where he was, the same lifeless, empty stretch of 
nothingness the odd creature was navigating, and liked the situation 
even less than before.
     "Master I think it @ asking for help!"
     '7ell it we gave at the office!"
     "Master those symbols!  They're atomic nuclei!  It@ telling us 
what it needs.  That settles it.- those aren't fuel compounds, they're 
food.  It's a living creature, and it's been starving to death!  " 
Lando thought about it.  "What does it want, Vuffi Raa?
     We're not very likely to have anything this alien can eat, are 
we?"
     "Simple organic compounds, amino acids.  Master the contents of 
the ship's recyclers are almost made for its requirements.  Could we?
     . . . " "Oh, very well, go ahead.  We could always use a friend 
who breathes vacuum and can cross interstellar space by sheer force of 
personality.  Let him have what he- " The Falcon gave a small lurch as 
Vuffi Raa vented the recyclers.  The creature reacted immediately, 
swooping and soaring ecstatically through the haze of muck they'd 
released into the void.  Lando nearly went crazy trying to keep the 
energy weapons trained on it, then gave up.  The thing wasn't going to 
harm them; it ate garbage and had been starving to death.  They'd made 
a friend, and friends don't point guns at one another.
     He switched off the gunnery circuits, unstrapped himself from the 
swiveling chair, and lumbered forward to join Vuffi Raa in the cockpit.
     They'd remained in that one spot for several days, learning 
Lehesu's language while Vuffi Raa adjusted the engines.  At one point 
it had become necessary for the gambler to suit up and step outside so 
that the giant Oswaft could be made to understand that the Falcon was a 
thing containing people of a different size and shape than the Oswaft 
had been capable of imagining.  For all his size and the idiotic fix 
he'd gotten himself into out there, the alien was not stupid.
     Artifacts were not entirely unknown to his culture, and, as soon 
as he'd grasped the concept of a spaceship, he'd come up with an idea 
of his own.
     Which meant that Vuffi Raa had to go to work again.  In the end, 
the robot had cobbled up a huge tank out of metal and sheet plastic and 
filled it with recycler contents.  Now Lehesu could travel without 
running out of nutriment.  It had taken both man and droid to maneuver 
the tank into position beneath the enormous space-going creature.  He 
grasped it in several dozen of his tentacles, gently stroking his new 
friends with a couple of others as his voice filtered through Lando's 
suithelmet radio.
     "Many thanks to you, for you have given me life twice.  My regret 
is that there is nothing I can do for you, you who can make food out of 
nothingness in the middle of nothingness.  " Lando was about to say a 
perfunctory "forget it" when Vuffi Raa raised a cautionary tentacle.
     "Master he's making pictures again, I can see them in my mind!"
     "You're a droid of many talents, and there are advantages to 
having an electronic brain.  What's he showing you, naked 
dancing-droids?"
     "Master!  On the contrary, he's displaying things which he can 
fabricate from the chemicals he doesn't need in his food.
     Apparently he does it atom by atom.  Master!  He's showing me 
opals, sapphires, flame-gems and sun-stones.  Why, that's a 
lifecrystalfrom the Rafa System!  Lehesu, can you truly-" "Yes, my 
little friend, if these objects interest you.  There is more, much more 
that I can make.  But tell me, is it true that Master cannot see what I 
am showing you this moment, without an artifact to assist him?"
     Lando interrupted.  "Core blast you, Vuffi Raa, now you've got him 
calling me master!  I want him to stop it immediately, do you hear me, 
Lehesu?  And Vuffi Raa?"
     "Yes, Master?"
     "Come on inside and we'll take a look at what Lehesu's Offering 
over a screen."
     Lehesu's people, the Oswaft, had had yet another talent, and that 
was what had gotten the young vacuum-breather into trouble the second 
time.
     The interior of the StarCave, over a dozen light-years in extent, 
was huge even for the relatively enormous organisms and the rest of the 
complex ecology that inhabited it.  Simply boring along at sublight 
velocities, as Lehesu had been doing on his last (figurative) legs when 
the Falcon had found him, wasn't enough.
     Lehesu hadn't gone straight home when he left the Falcon.
     His curiosity hadn't been satisfied-in fact it had been sharpened 
exponentially by contact with the human and the droid.
     He wanted to see what things were like in the regions of space 
that had produced them.
     Holding firmly onto his canister of nutrients, he'd bidden them 
farewell and exchanged promises to get in touch again someday.  The 
gambler had taken these no more seriously than any frequent traveler 
does with the strangers he gets to know superficially for a short time.
     He and Vuffl Raa had gone on about their own business, flipping 
switches and turning knobs to bring the Falcon up to full power once 
more when they reached the margin of the "desert."
     Lehesu had gone in search of civilization.
     Unfortunately for the Oswaft and the subsequent security of his 
people, he had done his searching in a region patrolled by the Navy, 
whose sensors, acquired at the unwilling expense of quadrillions of 
taxpayers, were more sophisticated than those of the Falcorr.  They'd 
ferreted out the truth about the strange being upon first spotting him, 
noticing an ability Lando and Vuffi Raa had missed: not only to soar 
through space in a linear fashion, but to "skip" vast distances when it 
suited him, as hyperdrive starships do.  They'd tracked him back to the 
ThonBoka when he'd returned with joyous news of his discoveries.
     The navy, of course, had recognized a threat when they saw one: a 
race of beings at home in space, capable of faster-thanlight travel-a 
terrible thing to contemplate.  Their scouts, estimate of the number of 
Oswaft was even more terrifying.  It was like encountering a previously 
unknown superpower with millions of fully operational starships.
     There was only one thing to do.
     The ThonBoka was an open system.  It had to be, or exhaust its 
resources rapidly.  The idea was to starve the Oswaft to death, denying 
them the chemicals drifting in on the galactic tide.  Once the 
vacuum-breathers were sufficiently weakened, they could be finished off 
neatly, their threat erased forever.
     But the Navy didn't know that Vuffi Raa's canister handiwork 
had included a radio relay and transducer-he had truly meant to stay in 
touch-through which Lehesu had shouted a cry for help across the 
parsecs.  Lando, seeing in the creature's problems a solution to 
problems of his own, had loaded his ship and come arunning.  Now he was 
having second thoughts.
     Less than a hundred kilometers away, point-blank range as 
distances in space are reckoned, a battle cruiser waited impatiently 
for an answer.  The Falcon was fast, but not fast enough to evade the 
vessel's tractor beams or destructive weaponry.  As freighters go, she 
was well armed and heavily shielded against impecunious pirates and the 
usual run of free-lance riffraff one was likely to encounter in 
interstellar space.  But her quadguns and other weaponry were no match 
for the armament sprouting from what seemed like every square meter of 
the warship that confronted them.  And worse, at that range, the 
Falcon's shields would buy her only seconds of extended life.
     Lando considered running-not away from the nebula, but toward 
it-until he realized that a simple message from the picket vessel would 
have a hundred more just like it primed and ready by the time the 
Falcon got to the StarCave's mouth.
     He evaluated very carefully a slim number of other alternatives, 
compared them with his original plan, and shook his head.  No two ways 
about it: the idea had been lousy to begin with, was still lousy, but 
it was the only one he had.
     "Vuffi Raa," he said at last, closing his eyes as if that could 
shut out the images of disaster forming in his mind, "shut down all 
weapons systems as we discussed.  Also power down the shields and make 
sure they can see what we've done over there on their scopes, will 
you?"  He flipped a fifty-credit coin and caught it in the air.
     Beside him, the robot sounded dubious.  "But Master, that will 
leave us completely helpless."  His tentacles fidgeted on the control 
panels.
     Lando grinned.  "A long time ago, a machine of my acquaintance 
pointed out that a person who believes that violence is the first or 
only alternative is morally bankrupt."  Up went the coin again, down 
into the gambler's palm, and up again.
     Vuffi Raa stood silent.  He had been the machine, and the occasion 
Lando's learning that the little droid was programmed against causing 
harm to any intelligent being.
     "Right now, old can-opener," the gambler continued, "our 
mechanical defenses are a liability, the appearance of helplessness an 
asset.  Long before I became a stiwship captain, I was a grafter and a 
homswoggler.  I guess it's time to see if I retain the skills."  Lando 
walked the coin across the backs of his knuckles, and put it away.
     The sound of chromium-plated metal tapping on plastic was loud as 
Vuffi Raa began the process of rendering the ship harmless.  Lando sat, 
deep in thought, weighing his next words carefully.
     At last: "All tight, raise that cruiser out there; get them on the 
line.  And cheer up-I know what I'm doing.  I think."
     The robot was incapable of facial expression, but his voice was 
ripe with worried skepticism.  "What should I say, Master?"
     Lando chuckled.  "Don't call me master.  Tell them we received 
their earlier messages, and that it's they who should be prepared to 
take on boarders!"
     LANDO CALRISSIAN HAD never particularly liked spacesuits.
     Not only were they bulky and uncomfortable, they lacked elegance.
     His was maintained in the best condition possible, but the color 
combinations were egregious, the line was execrable, and it clashed 
with every formal and semiformal shipsuit he owned.  And wrinkled them, 
as well.
     Nevertheless, he was suited up and waiting by the topside lock as 
the Falcon, under Vuffi Raa's deft maneuvering, backed and filled to a 
designated place under the belly of the cruiser Respectable.  Beside 
him on the deckplates was a large soft-sided carrying case loaded with 
supplies and samples he'd purchased for just the occasion.  It was one 
of those times when thorough preparation and a detailed plan instilled 
no confidence whatever.
     "Locking on, Master " came the doubly electronic voice from the 
cockpit.
     "All right, Vuffi Raa, don't wait up for me."
     Lando gave the wheel above his head a full turn, another half 
turn, and cringed, as he always did, when it popped heavily out of its 
threads.  He swung it to one side, reached down for his case, and made 
his clumsy way up the metal rungs of the ladder, through the Falcon's 
hull, and into the receiving area aboard the Respectable.
     To discover he was staring straight into the muzzles of half a 
dozen high-powered blasters.
     Gulping-and happy that it was concealed by his helmetLando keyed 
his suit radio as he swung the heavy bag onto the deck of the cruiser, 
lifted himself up, and straightened.
     "Good afternoon, gentlebeings.  Lando Calrissian, interstellar 
trader at your service.  What can I do you for?"  He laughed heartily 
at his lame joke.
     He'd climbed into a hangar bay.  Lando thought it a little stupid 
that they hadn't been invited inside, freighter and all-the Navy 
certainly had the room for it.  The ceiling was invisible far above, 
drowned out by the harsh lights glaring down onto the deck.  The 
chamber was at least two hundred meters from its broad, curving, and 
presently tightly shut doors to the complicated-looking rear wall where 
half a hundred windows lit in various colors showed control and 
maintenance areas behind a pressure bulkhead.
     The squad of security guards didn't relax a millimeter.  Their 
leader, identifiable by the insignia on his battle armor, crackled 
forward, slapped the weapon he was carrying across his chest.
     Quiet, civilian!  You are ordered to report, under arrest, to the 
sector security chief.  Your baggage will be taken for inspection and 
decontamination!"
     "Decontamination?"  Lando feigned dismay.  "You want to 
decontaminate a dozen cartons of fine Dilnlexan cigars, Oseoni 
cigarettes, Trammistan chocolates-" "Cigars?"  the head goon asked in a 
rather different tone of voice than before.  He looked right and left, 
slapped a pair of switches on his arm panel, grabbed Lando's arm, and 
similarly rendered the gambler's suit radio inoperative.  He touched 
his opaque-visored helmet to Lando's bubble.
     "Cigars, you say?  Do you know how long the Ship's Exchange has 
been out of cigars?  We've been on picket at this Core-forsaken nebula 
since-ahem!"  The man seemed to regain control of himself momentarily.
     "Report, with this escort, to the sector chief.  I'll take custody 
of your sample case and make certain that its contents are undamaged."
     "Although they may be somewhat depleted when I get them back?"
     Lando grinned and winked through two layers of plastic at the 
invisible face next to his.  "Just keep in mind, Sergeant, that there's 
a lot more where this came from if we establish an amenable 
relationship, all right?"
     The sergeant snapped to attention after switching on both radios 
again.
     "Message received and understood, trader!  I trust you'll enjoy 
your stay aboard the Respectable.  " "Oh," Lando said, "I'm sure I 
will.  Shall we be moving along?"
     The sector chief was a grizzled, overweight warrant officer with 
hash marks on his uniform sleeves which threatened to dribble off his 
cuffs and onto the metal deckplates of his office.
     He scratched a crew-cut head and then shifted his hand to rub a 
bulbous, well-veined nose.
     "Well, I ain't never heard of nothing like this before-a civilian 
merchant plyin' his wares to vessels on blockade duty.
     And friend, if I ain't heard of it before, you've got a problem, 
cause This Man's Navy operates on precedent."
     Lando, having been examined, searrhed, scrutinized, peered at and 
into by human eyes and hands and the sensory ends of countless pieces 
of nastily suspicious equipment, leaned back in the chair across from 
the warrant officer's desk and nodded pleasantly.  He was glad he'd 
selected his plainest, least colorful shipsuit to wear beneath his 
pressure outfit, which was hanging neatly in a locker near the hangar, 
and even gladder he'd left his tiny five-shot stingbeam aboard the 
Falcon.  If was the only personal weapon he ordinarily allowed himself, 
but at the moment it would have been as conspicuous and 
counterproductive as his freighter's quad-guns.
     "Believe me, Chief, I understand tradition.  My family tree is 
full of it.  But there ought to be room for a little enterprise and 
innovation, shouldn't there?  As long as it doesn't jeopardize the 
mission, and is conducted through the proper channels?"
     "Errhem!"  The sector chief cleared his throat, inhaled from one 
of Lando's expensive cigars.  The gambler's case lay on the floor 
beside his chair, as thoroughly inspected for weapons and instruments 
of sabotage as himself, and considerably lighter in weight than when 
he'd brought it aboard the cruiser.  At each level of inspection, from 
the guard sergeant to the warrant officer, it had become slightly more 
empty, in proportion to the rank of the emptier.
     "My precise sentiments, Chief.  Now, about our arrangements.  I 
suggest we route our marketing around the Ship's Exchange.  In the 
first place, my overhead won't allow me to offer what I have at 
wholesale.  In the second, I suspect buying from an itinerant peddler 
such as myself might provide an agreeable diversion for your troops.
     In the third-well, do you think there might be any interest aboard 
in games of chance?"
     The warrant officer blinked.  He fancied himself a sharp gambler 
and regarded all civilians everywhere as easy pickings, having spent 
decades taking things from them at largebore gunpoint.  He wasn't able 
to distinguish between this and situations where civilians had an even 
chance; could not, in fact, conceive of such circumstances.
     "Games of chance?  Such as .  . . ?"
     "Such as sabacc."  Lando smiled.  "I'm something of an enthusiast, 
and it would offer you and yours a small opportunity to get your money 
back for whatever you happen to buy'you' being a figurative expression 
in this instance, on account of your commission."
     "Commission?"  The sector chief looked confusedly at the stripes 
on his sleeve, then suddenly at the cigar he was smoking.  "Oh, 
commission!  I get it!  Actually, it's a warrant.  But no matter!  Very 
funny!"
     Lando hadn't intended it to be, but he laughed heartily along 
until the creature subsided.  Then the sector chief adopted an 
expression that he imagined was shrewd, having practiced it before a 
mirror since he was a rating.
     "I'm sure a few games might be arranged, for a suitable 
commission!"  He broke into guffaws again, and Lando stifled a 
self-destructive urge to strangle the uniformed baboon with his own 
hash marks.
     "Very well.  Now there's one more thing I'd like to ask about.  I 
hesitate, because I have some idea of the importance of your mission 
here-" "You do?"  The chief surged forward, leaning avidly across his 
desk.  Only the artificial gravity of the floor-plates kept him planted 
on his swivel chair.
     A wave of alarm swept through the gambler's body.  He'd said the 
wrong thing.  This mission was supposed to be top sectet, and, 
furthermore, was an unusually shameful one, even for the current 
government.  His mind raced, trying to find a way to salvage something 
from the mess his careless tongue had created.
     "Tell me," the chief said before Lando could speak.  "It's the 
ranks that always know the least, and the folks back home who have a 
better picture of what's going on."  He peered about the room, rose, 
slid a picture of the fleet Commodore aside, seized a small plastic 
bulb hanging from a wire behind the picture, and closed his hand around 
it, covering it completely.
     "Bugs," the chief said.  "We can speak freely now.  What is so 
important about this mission?"
     Lando almost wept with relief.  Then he had to do some fast 
thinking.  "I've heard they have more pirate ships bottled up inside 
the nebula than have ever been seen in one place before.
     Apparently Intelligence tricked them into some kind of rendezvous, 
and you're keeping them trapped until they can be destroyed."
     The chief nodded sagely.  "That makes some sense of the 
scuttlebutt I've heard.  Any idea when we're going in?"
     Lando shook his head.  "You know the Navy: 'hurry up and wait.' 
Again the knowing, comradely nod.  Lando had a friend, now; he revised 
his prices upward 20 percent.  "Sounds like you were maybe a Navy man 
yourself," the chief suggested.
     Lando returned the nod.  "Just a swabbie, when I was a kid," he 
lied.  "Never made it big, like you, Chief."
     "Well, we all have our place in the scheme of things, son.
     They also serve who only@' "Sell cigars?  And while we're speaking 
of cigars, why don't you have half a dozen of these for later, Chief.
     A man only gets so many luxuries, out here on the front line."
     "Sabacc!"  the excited rating cried, gathering in a pot that 
wouldn't have paid for one of Lando's cigars.  The gambler made a 
practice of losing loudly on the small bets and raking in the winnings 
as inconspicuously as possible when the stakes were high.  Now he was 
following a policy of steady losses on nearly every hand, in order to 
win the larger game that awaited him in the ThonBoka.
     It was the fourth cruiser he and Vuffi Raa had visited in as many 
days, using the original warrant officer's connections.
     Each transfer, ship-to-ship, with its attendant docking and 
security procedures growing laxer and more perfunctory, brought the 
Millennium Falcon and her real cargo closer to the StarCave and its 
waiting denizens.
     The freighter hadn't been immune to searches, but nobody wastes 
much time@r olfactory sensibilities-on the trash and toilet recyclers, 
especially when they were genuinely full of substances that everyone 
heartily regarded as filth.  And especially when no one below the rank 
of admiral seemed to know the reason behind the stupid blockade.
     Lando was rapidly coming to love military security procedures.
     With inexpert hands made clumsier by petty greed, the rating dealt 
the cards out.  There were seventy-eight of them, divided into five 
suits: Sabres, Staves, Flasks, and Coins, arrayed from Aces to Masters, 
and a special suit of face cards with

     im

     AND THE STARCAVE OF THONBOKA 311.
     negative values and more profound meanings.  The object of the 
game was simplicity itself.  acquire cards until the value of your hand 
was exactly twenty-three, or as close as you could get without going 
over.  A perfect zero or a minus twenty-three was as bad as a 
twenty-four, and there were certain special hands, such as that 
combining a Two of anything, a Three of anything, and an Idiot from the 
special suit, which ritual decreed were the equivalent of twenty-three.
     The game being played in the cruiser Reliable's MessRec area 
included Lando, two cooks, and a pair of low-ranking gunners.  Lando 
wore his most tattered clothing, pressed with razor creases, for the 
occasion.
     What made sabacc really interesting-and destroyed the nerves of 
most amateurs who tried to play it-was that each card was an electronic 
chip, capable of changing face and value at random any moment until the 
card-chip was lying flat on a gaming table or upon the electronic mat 
Lando had provided.  Thus a winning hand, held too long, could change 
spontaneously to garbage, or, more rarely, a mess of meaningless 
numbers could become a palladium mine.
     Lando found the game relaxing and a welcome change from the 
exigencies of interstellar freight-hauling.  He'd.always enjoyed it, no 
matter the stakes, possibly because he found it quite difficult to 
lose.  Even honestly.
     The older of the two cooks took the hand and the deal shifted to 
him accordingly.  He'd won perhaps half what the previous winner had 
and was looking inordinately pleased with himself.  Lando inwardly 
shook his head, remembering times when the ransom for a princess or the 
price of a starship had rested before him on a table in the most 
exclusive and luxurious settings imaginable.  It was difficult to keep 
the right perspective, to remember from moment to moment that the real 
stakes here were the highest he'd ever played for: the survival of an 
entire race, and whatever he might demand in fabricated precious stones 
indistinguishable from nature's best.
     With pitiable awkwardness, the cook dealt Lando a pair of 
card-chips from the bottom of the deck, attempting to cheat the others 
in the process as well.  Not only wasn't he good at it, he wasn't any 
good at it.  Lando received a Master of Staves, worth fourteen points, 
and a Nine of Flasks: a natural two-card twenty-three.  The gambler 
held them back, hoping one or the other would metamorphose into 
something worthless.  He wasn't after the pay of those miserable 
sailors, but information.
     "Well," he said casually, "I've almost sold my quota here on the 
Reliable.  You swabbies have any suggestions 'where I might find 
greener pastures?"
     His connections, compliments of the Respectable's sector chief, 
had about run dry, and he needed not only the name of the next ship 
closer to the mouth of the ThonBoka, but Of someone aboard in a 
position to do him some good.  As bets were placed and extra cards were 
passed around; Lando asked for one, giving up the I Commander.  He 
received an Ace of Coins just as the Nine in his hand transformed 
itself into an Eight@nother pestiferous twenty-three!
     All right, then: "Sabaccl" The gambler said for the first time 
that afternoon.  You lose some, you win some; you gotta take the good 
with the bad.  He raked in a few millicredits and promptly engineered a 
loss again.  It was simpler to do when he had control of the cards.
     "You might try the Courteous," the younger of the two cooks 
suggested, pushing his white hat back from his sweaty forehead.  He 
smelled of onions and had a missing tooth.
     "Those boys been on the line longer'n anybody here.  I got a 
cousin-in-law over there who says-OW!"
     "Oh he does, does he?"  observed Lando, watching the older cook 
kick the younger under the table.  "Accident-prone or just sensitive to 
pain?"
     "You gotta keep your flapping lip buttoned, Merle," the older cook 
said, "There's sucha thing as security."
     "Aww, Clive, Lando's all right.  Usta be a rating hisself, didn't 
you, Lando?  He just wants to sell stuff over on the Courteous, like he 
done here, ain't that right, Lando?  An' seem' as it's the closest 
ship in, he might be able to get a look at what the fuss is-OW!"
     The older cook looked apologetic.  "No offense, Mr.
     Calrissian."
     Lando grinned as he watched the younger cook rub a tender shin.
     "None taken."
     It was a cheerful tune the young gambler was whistling as he 
shinnied down the ladder into the airlock of the Millennium Falcon.
     "Honey, I'm home!"
     "Are you referring to me, Master?"  Vuffi Raa asked, maneuvering 
his tentacles over the hatchway coaming.  He took Lando's helmet, 
helped his master raise the circular overhead hatch and screw it into 
place.
     "Did you take care of that little job I asked you about?"  the 
gambler inquired.  They passed along the corridor to the cockpiL Lando 
stopped to inspect his quad-guns.  The fleet security forre's seals 
were still in place; the weapons were theoretically inoperable.  Vuffi 
Raa had cheated around them the first hour they'd been installed.
     "Why yes, Master, I have.  Can you tell me now why you wanted such 
an odd thing done?"  Strapping himself into place, the robot received 
clearance from the Respectable and detached the Falcon from her belly.
     Lando glanced suspiciously around the cabin.  "You tell me: can I 
let you in on it without infom-ling the boys in gray up there9' The 
little droid sounded a bit scandalized.  "Master, I removed a total of 
twenty-three listening devices from this vessel, put there by at least 
three separate agencies in the last seventy-one hours.  We're 
completely clean.  What I'd like to know is why you wanted@' "Simple.
     I want you to raise the Courteous, confirm we're on our way, and 
set a course for her.  Then I want you to be ready to punch everything 
we've got into the drives, and everything else into the aft 
shield-generators, as soon as we pass by her and light out for the 
ThonBoka.  Got that?"  He reached under the control panel, extracted a 
cigar of a quality much higher than the ones he had been selling.
     Vuffi Raa lit it for him with a tentacle tip.
     "Aye, aye, Master.  But that device you had me construct while you 
were aboard the Respectable: it projects at least a meter beyond the 
after shields, and it's@' "Courteous, this is Millennium Falcon if 
you're reading.  As per previous pemiission, we're on our way over.
     I've got a hundred gallons of beebleberry ice cream I've been 
saving especially for you.  Over."
     "But Master, we don't have any@, "Em Falcon, this is Courteous.
     We haven't had any kind of ice cream aboard for weeks.  You're 
highly welcome, and we hear you have an interest in statistics.
     Lando laughed at the universal gambler's code.  "Permutations and 
combinations of the number seventy-eight, Courteous-fives are wild.
     Watch for us at your airlock any minute now.  Out."
     The Falcon soared under reaction drive across the distance between 
the two warships, Lando worrying every moment that his idea and the 
device he'd had Vuffi Raa construct would actually work.  It was the 
most terrible risk he'd ever taken, with no time to experiment, and 
technologies were not exactly his bailiwick.  If it failed, then they'd 
be little metal splinters scattered from there to the Rafa System.
     "Millennium Falcon, you're off the beacon!  Where'd you learn to 
fly that overstuffed horseshoe, you confounded feather merchant, some 
charm school somewhere?"
     Critical moments ticked by, during which the Falcon refrained from 
replying to the innuend@d precious kilometers toward her goal racked 
themselves up on the boards.
     "Em Falcon, now hear this!  Correct course immediately!
     Our guns are beating on you, do you copy?"
     Gritting his teeth and clamping nervous hands securely over the 
arms of his chair, Lando sat motionless, watching the dials.
     A trickle of sweat ran down the side of his neck into his collar, 
but he said nothing.
     Once more: "Millennium Err, you've got five seconds from the mark, 
and then you'll be nothing but incandescent atoms!
     Mark.- five, four, three .  . ."
     "Okay, Vuffi, this is it!  As soon as the drives are hot, punch 
everything she's got!"
     "Very well, Master."
     The robot's tentacles were a confusing blur over the ship's 
control console as he diverted power to the after shields until the 
gauges screamed at the incipient overload.  Lights began twinkling 
cheeringly across the section of the panels labeled Fm; the powerful 
interstellar drives awoke from several days' unwilling somnolence.
     Finally, all boards were green.  Drives and shields were ready as 
the Navy voice in the corn reached zero.
     Lando hoped his invention was ready, too.
     "Millennium Falcon, " the communicator warned a final, unnecessary 
time-giving the gambler and the droid an extra few seconds-"you're a 
dead-" "Now!"  Lando and Vuffi Raa screamed at the same time.
     The voice chopped off.  The after shields blossomed into an 
invisible protective canopy while the ultralight-speed generators began 
to throb-just as the leading wave front of the first meter-thick 
destructor beam from the cruiser struck the Falcon squarely in the 
center of her stern.
     Her shields held ... and held ... andSuddenly the Millennium 
Falcon burst into an enullfluus blinding cloud of rapidly dispersing 
gases; a rain of metallic particles glittered, occupying the space 
where she had been.

     VI

     THE ONE ADDRF-SSET) the Other: "At long last, it is nearly time."
     Like Lehesu of the Oswaft, he swam comfortably in emptiness 
absently contemplating the surrounding stars.  Unlike Lehesu, he knew 
everything about them, had been to visit many of them himself.  Nor was 
that the only way that he was not like the ThonBoka vacuum-breather.
     Even Lando Cahissian, accustomed to many strange and wonderful 
sights, would have had trouble recognizing the entity as a living 
being.
     "Yes," the Other replied, although his companion's statement had 
been rhetorical.  "All things are now as they have been planned.  I 
shall gather the Rest, and they shall accompany us."
     He took action to accomplish just that.  Such were the distances 
involved that, even at communications speeds exponential to that of 
light, it would require several days to achieve the desired transfer of 
information.
     "Indeed," the One agreed.  "That, too, is as it has been planned.
     It is very strange, my friend, this 'not-knowing,' stranger than I 
had anticipated.  Quite an uncomfortable feeling, really.  It has been 
so long since .  . ."  He let what served him for a voice trail off, 
contemplating a gulf of time the mere thought of which might,have 
driven a lesser being to gibbering disconnection.
     The Other indicated silent sympathy.  He, too, had experienced the 
discomfort of uncertainty, and, despite his almost unimaginable 
life-span, and the relatively recent character of the events, for far 
too long.  Uncertainty was like that.  However, that had been the very 
purpose of the plan.  Over the countless eons of their existence, the 
One, the Other, and the Rest had become, in a manner of speaking, too 
perfect, too wellinformed.  It had become all too easy to anticipate 
events simply from long experience with reality, excellent sources of 
information, and well-practiced logic.
     Ironically, it was in that manner that the One had originally 
foreseen racial stagnation and eventual death did these comfortable 
circumstances continue.  He had advised all concerned that an element 
of the unknown be reintroduced.  They, of course, had seen the sense of 
it and agreed (with a cordiality that was itself symptomatic; a more 
vital, lusty people would have included a number of individuals who 
were contrary just for the sake of contrariness.) Their first 
experiment in guesswork, partial knowledge, and risk was maturing now, 
a process some thousands of years in the making.
     "Do you suppose .  . ."  the Other began, unconsciously reviving a 
long-unused turn of phrase as he let the unproductive thought trickle 
away.  At that point speculation was futile.  He knew as well as the 
One what consequences, in all their manifest likelihoods, were 
possible, from a vast unprecedented enrichment of their ancient, 
already lavishly complex culture, to its uttermost destruction.  These 
were not beings to whom such gambling came easily or naturally-which 
was yet another reason why it had become necessary.  "Do you suppose 
... ?"
     The One replied, "I do not know-How truly unsubstantial a 
sensation!  For the first time in eons we shall learn New Things, 
regardless of the outcome.  These we shall have to integrate with the 
old, producing syntheses unlocked for.  I feel this emotion must be 
very much as our ancestors expertenced when scarcely anything was 
known, and everything remained yet to be learned.  It is little wonder 
they were half mad and came close, times without number, to destroying 
themselves."
     After a long period of silence, the Other said, "I have learned a 
New Thing already."  In the tone of his voice there was an odd, 
semiforgotten, yet somehow familiar difference.
     But excitement tinged the voice of the One: "Please tell me-what 
is it?  1, too, must learn this New Thing, and we must pass it on t@' 
"I have learned that the prospect of learning New Things makes you 
unreasonably loquacious.  I am not certain-there it is again, that 'not 
knowing'-that this is altogether good."
     "I believe," the One replied rather stiffly, "that you have 
reinvented humor.  And I am not certain whether that is good."
     Klyn Shanga raced through endless night to join his makeshift 
squadron.  Considering his three careers-soldier for his nation-state, 
farmer upon military retirement, soldier again for a hastily united and 
inevitably defeated Renatasian Systemthis last, the seeking of ultimate 
vengeance, was quite the strangest.
     Shanga leaned back in his patched and shabby acceleration couch, 
carefully placing his feet between control pedals, stretching his long 
legs and arching his back to relieve an aching stiffness born more, on 
this occasion, of emotional tension than of lengthy travel.  He was 
well practiced at that, having logged an incredible number of 
intersystem parsecs in his unlikely machine.
     His blaster, its grips polished smooth by use, its muzzle bright 
with holster-wear and pitted by many more firings than it had been 
designed for, once again clung comfortingly to his thigh.  It was not 
that having the weapon made him a whole man; like most professional 
soldiers, he was revolted by killing and avoided it whenever he could.
     Besides, he could do more damage to an opponent with his left 
elbow than most individuals could with an entire arsenal.  But, like 
the battered, ancient ship he .  flew, it was an accustomed extension 
of his body, a companion and friend.
     He had very few others left.
     Somewhere ahead, hovering at the deep-frozen margin of the Tund 
System, his tiny fleet awaited the news he carried.  They had towed 
themselves originally into this sector of the galaxy-a long, long way 
from home-by means of a scrapped and resurrected Centrality battleship 
engine that had been left among the ruins of their civilization by the 
departing marauders.  To this they had attached, by cable, craft 
bought, stolen, and traded from a hundred cultures.  Ultimately, the 
engine had become a weapon of despair, a fusion-powered battering ram.
     Even so, they had failed to accomplish their purpose for it, the 
destruction of Vuffi Raa.
     Now, deprived of an independent method of ultra-lightspeed.
     travel, they had to rely upon an uncertain ally.  One who, without 
question, would betray them in the end.
     Alone in the cramped cockpit of his fighter, Shanga reviewed the 
words he would employ to persuade his men that he had made the best of 
a bad bargain-those few who had survived the voyage to the Tund System 
and their first bloody encounter with the enemy at the Oseon.  More had 
joined them afterward, dribbling out in the filthy holds of ancient 
freighters, hitching rides aboard the interstellar garbage scows.
     Ironically, it was Rokur Gepta who, more than anybody else, 
represented the malign spirit that had destroyed the Renatasia.
     Somehow, too, it was fitting that they plotted together to use the 
navy as a sort of backstop against which they could crush their common 
foes.  That same Navy had been the direct agent of his home system's 
destruction.  At the beginning of his vindictive adventure, Klyn Shanga 
had been fatalistically resigned to throwing away his life and the 
lives of his threadbare command in order to avenge their titanic 
losses.  Now he realized with increasing clarity and weariness that 
there was moremuch more-to live for.  The capture and slow termination 
of the five-legged infiltrator would only begin the process.  Somehow 
they must make their mark upon the Navy, upon,the Centrality itself, 
upon everyone responsible in any way for the murder of a civilization.
     Hopelessness breeds desperate measures.  A partnership with the 
Sorcerer of Tund necessarily included a risk that the pitiable remains 
of Renatasian manhood might be used to some surpassingly evil purpose, 
to fulfill some objective even more hideous than the obliteration of a 
system-wide culture.  If anyone was capable of engineering such a 
cataclysm, it was Rokur Gepta.
     There was a Renatasian animal that planted itself by the waterside 
and, in the process of giving birth, provided fodder for a predacious 
toothy swimmer.  Gepta was very much like that toothy swimmer, circling 
expectantly.  Shanga, with his tiny fleet (call it, rather, a "school") 
felt very much like that hapless littoral creature who must die 
herself-sacrificing, as well, a certain percentage of her young-in 
order to give whatever microscopic meaning to life that it was capable 
of possessing.
     On the other hand, only sapient beings were foolish enough to 
imagine that the universe was anything but a sadistic battlefield where 
brutality was the natural order and agonized screaming provided the 
background music.  Not even a man as bitterly demoralized as Klyn 
Shanga believed there was any meaning to death.
     Perhaps he should never have retired from the military, he thought 
with a deeply -felt sigh uncharacteristic of the role he

     ML,

     presently played or the place he found himself now.  All those 
years on his farm, amid fresh, growing things under a kindly sky, had 
made him far too philosophical to be a good soldier ever again.  But he 
Was all his world had left, so he would have to do.
     Klyn Shanga flew onward through the star-strewn darkness, 
reviewing the words he would employ to persuade his men.  He wished 
fervently they were of some use persuading himself.
     Rokur Gepta, traveling aboard the refitted cruiser Wennis, was 
receiving an alarming report from one of his advance escorts.  The 
flyer had returned in a one-seat fighter approximating the size and 
combat capabilities of Klyn Shanga's, but which was equipped-md this 
was rare, even for the navy-to exceed the speed of light.  The little 
ship was half engine, virtually unanried, and a tight fit, even for a 
slender youth.  Piloting such a vehicle for more than a few minutes 
brought new meaning to the word "discomfort."
     It and its occupant had been to the ThonBoka and back again 
already while the lumbering Wennis, considered a very sprightly vessel 
for its class, was still many days'journey from the nebula.
     Gepta had such a fighter for his personal use.  It had saved his 
life at least twice.  He came as close to feeling fond of it as he came 
to feeling fond of anything-aside from the grim denizens from the 
darker recesses of his cavern on Tund.  Fondness was not an emotion 
ordinarily to be discovered within the similarly stygian depths of 
Rokur Gepta's soul, although whether it had never lived within him, or 
had been ruthlessly extern-iinated early in his life, was a question 
that perhaps even the sorcerer was not prepared to answer.
     Thus it was with something of a shock, in the brief instant before 
he regained control of himself, that Gepta experienced an unfamiliar, 
transient, and microscopic pang of personal regret as he learned of the 
destruction of the Millennium Falcon and her crew by the blockade 
cruiser.  While the sorcerer wasn't watching Lando Cahissian hid 
somehow risen unbidden from the s of petty annoyance to that of worthy 
opponent and honored enemy.
     "I saw it myself, sir!"  the breathless scout gasped as moisture 
from the surrounding air condensed upon his space-cold armor and 
trickled off into a little pool on the deck plates.
     Like those of all his comrades attached to the mysterious Wennis, 
his gray uniform was unadorned by signs of rank or unit in order to 
preserve certain political fictions which his masters cherished.  That 
no creature wiser than a sponge was taken in by such an exercise 
constituted no good reason not to pursue it.
     Likewise, the slowly wamiing pressure suit he wore over his 
uniform, having just a few moments before leaped out of his cramped, 
ultrafast spacecraft into the cavernous hangar deck of the supposedly 
civilian cruiser, was without markings.  Most of the personnel aboard 
the Wennis, being professional soldiers, resented the shallow 
deception, but, with understandable circumspection, seldom got around 
to mentioning it aloud.
     While in command of the Wennis, Rokur Gepta did not affect the 
basaltic throne and the splendid isolation he preferred on Tund.  He 
occupied the captain's acceleration chair (although there was an 
officer on board who claimed the title) and supervised his underlings 
on the bridge as they manipulated the controls at his bidding.  He 
pitilessly examined the incoming scout, wondering whether, after all 
the time, all the effort, someone else had casually robbed him of 
victory over his prey.
     "What ship, againt' the sorcerer hissed, briefly contemplating 
punishing its captain and crew.  "Which ship destroyed the Millennium 
Falcon, and by what means?"  The sorcerer hunched over like a scavenger 
bird, peering through the windings of his headdress, his eyes a pair of 
glowing, pulsating coals.
     The rest of the bridge crew paid close attention to their 
consoles, cringing at the pilot's plight, but unwilling to interfere 
with his presumed destiny.  They had seen a captain stripped of dignity 
and all but killed in that very place.  They held out little hope for a 
mere lieutenant.
     The scout gulped visibly, wishing he was back inside the 
claustrophobic confines of his craft.  He was the best pilot aboard the 
Wennis, possibly one of the best in the service.
     That was not going to do him any good with the sorcerer.
     Nor had he been educated to say or do the diplomatic thing when 
confronted with malevolent and arbitrary authority, at least of such 
potency.  He felt he would have been better served had such a skill 
been part of his otherwise exhaustive military survival training-seldom 
had the need arisen for making a fire with flint and steel or using a 
signal mirror to summon help.
     "The Courteous, sir," he answered finally, "part of the blockade 
line at the 'fbonboka.  In fact, sir, at the time, she was the closest 
vessel to the nebula.  I listened to the traffic, sir, as I had been 
about to report aboard the flagship on your orders, and was awaiting 
docking clearance.  This Em Falcon, an ugly old tub of a tramp 
freighter, was supposed to rendezvous with Courteous for purposes of 
trade.  She'd been through the whole fleet that way, peddling tobacco 
and other civilian stuff like a vendor droid at a ballgame.  Instead, 
she attempted to evade the cruiser and made high speed for the mouth of 
the nebula.
     That's when Courteous caught her.  I never saw a beam like that 
before, sir.  Must be something new."
     Gepta leaned forward even farther, towering from his pedestaled 
chair over the young officer.  "And the Millennium Falcon?  What of 
her?"
     The pilot gulped again, appreciating well the fate of innocent 
bearers of bad tidings.  "Vaporized, sir.  She took the full force on 
her after shields and overloaded.  It was visible all over the fleet.
     Sir."
     "So .  . ."  The sorcerer considered these data, the scout 
virtually forgotten as the young man stood before him, trembling at 
attention, his helmet under his arm.  A runnel of sweat slowly crept 
down the side of the pilot's neck into the metal pressure collar of his 
suit.
     The gray-swathed sorcerer glanced up again a moment later, almost 
absently.  "Are you still here, Lieutenant?  I suggest you report back 
to your section immediately."
     The room fairly creaked with sudden relaxation.
     An astonished and highly relieved young courier saluted his 
commander gratefully and departed the bridge amid the silent cheers of 
the cruiser's conspicuously disinterested crew members.
     Looking forward to a good meal and something taR and cool to drink 
in the pilot's lounge below, the lieutenant passed through the bulkhead 
doors with a new spring in his step.  The panels whispered closed 
behind him as he stepped into the companionway.
     A large security trooper, one of Gepta's personal bodyguards, came 
up behind him, laid a hand the size of a telecom directory on the young 
man's shoulder.  The lieutenant nearly jumped out of his spacesuit.
     "Thought you'd bought the farm there, didn't you, son?"
     The older man's face crinkled in a grin that was difficult to 
interpret.  "Say, I'm just going off duty, and seeing as how I was 
aboard the first time we ran into that garbage scow the Falcon, and 
seeing as how I'm just as pleased she's a cloud of radioactive dust, 
what do you say we both go below for some liquid celebration?"
     The lieutenant looked up uncertainly into the trooper's face.
     The clatnplike grip on his shoulder gave him little choice.  He 
nodded without enthusiasm, and the two dwindled and disappeared down 
the corridor.
     A short time later, Rokur Gepta stirred from futile contemplation, 
held up a gloved hand, and snapped his fingers.
     From somewhere aft and overhead there came a rustle of dry, hairy 
wings as one of his pets lurched out of its darkened, foul-smelling 
niche, flapped across the room trailing an indeterminate number of 
scrawny, many-jointed legs.  It came to rest, perching blindly on 
Gepta's outstretched wrist, salivating in anticipation just as the 
bodyguard entered the bridge with a small, shallow tray.
     With his free hand, Gepta accepted a pair of plastic tongs, 
reached for something on the tray, and held it up before his pet.  The 
creature had nothing resembling a face, simply a gummy puckered opening 
toward the front of its body, set between the wings.  The cavity 
distended greedily at the touch of the offered morsel.
     There was a moment of enjoyment, some sucking, digestive 
noises.... It belched.

     Vii

     LEfiF-SU CAME AS close to nervous pacing as any Oswaft could.
     The giant raylike creature drifted in the relative emptiness of 
space at what he regarded a prudent distance from the warshipguarded 
mouth of the ThonBoka.
     Watching the watchers.
     As always, his estimate of what was prudent differed somewhat from 
that of his cosapients.  None of them could be persuaded to venture 
within light-years of the spot from which the periodic activities of 
their new enemies could be observed, if not entirely understood.
     Restless, Lehesu concentrated a moment, got his bearings in some 
manner no one but another Oswaft would be able to fathom, and hopped, 
without thinking much more about it, a few hundred thousand kilometers, 
as if the intervening distance didn't exist.  It was a gesture of 
frustration.  He had been brought up to believe such fidgeting was 
infantile, undignified, not to mention impolite when in the company of 
others.  But at the moment he couldn't help himself.  He was impatient, 
an emotion he shared in common with other species, but which would be 
beyond the comprehension of most Oswaft.  Still he waited.
     He wasn't at all certain when Lando, Vuffi Raa, and the Falcon 
would arrive.  lie had difficulty yet, realizing that the freighter was 
not a real person.  The existence of, and his friendship with, the 
chromium-plated robot made this realization even more difficult to 
achieve.  That they would not fail to come to his aid he never doubted 
for an instant, despite the genteel jeering of family and friends.
     They had not believed the least of his tales about the Open Sea 
until the evidence had thundered up to the ThonBoka mouth, heavily 
gunned and, for some reason, angrily disposed toward the 
vacuum-breathing race.
     This, of course, was somehow the adventuring Lehesu's fault.
     Concerning Lando Cahissian ... The Oswaft's brief sojourn into 
human territory still hadn't educated him about cats; however there 
were certain aspects of that animal's psychology he might have 
identified with.  Hadn't the gambler and his friends saved his life?
     Twice?
     They were obligated, now.
     Anxiety shifted Lehesu again, this time a quarter of a lightyear, 
to one side of the nebula mouth, before he fully noticed it.  He could 
"see" better from the vantage anyway.  Metallic motes lost against a 
starry backdrop, the elements of the fleet themselves were invisible at 
this distance.  But the aggregate was noisy.  A welter of 
connnunication darted from ship to ship in a complex net of energies 
the operators of which fondly imagined was private.  Lehesu had learned 
Lando's language in a matter of hours.  It did not occur to him that 
the stinings and mixings of ideas that constituted top-secret military 
codes were anything other than amusing gwnes to those who employed 
them.  He puzzled them out in idle moments, much faster than he'd 
overcome the initial difficulty presented by communicating with the 
gambler and the robot.
     Had those in command of the fleet, those who had ordered its 
destructive presence outside the ThonBoka, become aware of that minor 
Oswaft capability, they would have redoubled their efforts to 
exterminate the space people.  In this instance, ignorance was mutual; 
Lehesu hadn't a notion of the threat he and his people represented to 
those who cherished power for its own sake.
     A small, thin cloudlet of interstellar plankton drifted by, home 
on the complex tide of gravity and photon pressure, tiny pseudoanimals 
and quasi-plants that formed the basis of the Oswaft diet, indeed for 
the diet of all the thousands of spaceevolved species living in the 
shelter of the StarCave.  Lehesu nibbled at them in a desultory 
fashion.  To the small extent he was aware of them, he realized they 
didn't taste particularly good.  There was a reason for that: they were 
slowly dying.
     The bottom rung of the ThonBoka food ladder was being ruthlessly 
and deliberately sawed out from under the rest of the nebula's ecology.
     Every now and again the vessels of the picket fleet outside would 
blossom into glowing visibility as, in concert, they unleashed titanic 
energies, saturating the space around themselves with destructive 
particles and waves.  It was at these moments that Lehesu (who had 
found it necessary to explain to his people something he didn't 
altogether understand himself.  that these were not living organisms 
that beseiged them, but artifacts containing living organisms) could 
see that the blockading fleet formed a carefully calculated pattern 
through whose fields of fire not one molecule of preorganic substance 
could sift unassaulted.
     What did come through was spoiled and tasted terrible.
     If that were not enough, the ships sprayed a kind of poison@nzymes 
' designed to smash the complex natural molecular arrangements of deep 
space, reduce them to constituent atoms, and destroy their nutritive 
value.  The Oswaft and their environment were being coldly and 
systematically starved to death by an implacable enemy they did not 
know, hadn't picked, had owed no animosity.
     Until now.
     "Yellow Niner, this is Hosrel XI Perimeter Control, we have a 
bandit at coordinates three-five-oh-two-three.  Do you copy?
     Over."
     The young rating at the sensor screen had been bored until then.
     She had been bored for thirty-four solid weeks, and the constant 
drills, the frontier-duty pay, the pron-rise of a chance at a 
commission, hadn't helped.  Not a bit.  But she was no longer bored.
     If the bogey was a drill, it was something new.  At that, 
top-secret navy base on the freeze-dried edge of an already 
unspectacular system, anything new, however potentially threatening to 
life, limb, or the continued wearing of a uniform, was highly welcome.
     "Perimeter Control," the interceptor pilot replied with a studied 
drawling casualness that belied the fact that he was a year younger 
than the sensor operator, "we copy.  This is Yellow Nine Leader Are you 
requesting a six-sixty-sLx?  Over?"
     The operator leafed quickly through her procedures manual.
     It was so hard remembering ... yes, there it was: six-sixty-six, 
scramble and visual checkout of an unidentified target.  Scrwnbling, in 
effect, was already taken care of.  Hosrel XI Command kept at least one 
full interceptor squadron spaceborne on the perimeter all the time, and 
Yellow Niner was it, at the moment.  She hadn't any idea what was being 
defended at the Core-forsaken base.  Probably the navy was developing 
something unimportant, but they were giving security all the ruffles 
and flourishes.
     "Yellow Niner, that's affirmative.  Give me your ETVC.
     Over."
     "My what?  Oh yeah: we ought to be eyeballing your bogey in about, 
oh, call it seven minutes, give or take.  Got it on the scope repeater 
now.  Looks kinda like it's made olf plastic, doesn't it?  Over" Both 
the interceptor pilot and the sensor operator had been briefed, fairly 
recently, on new developments in camouflaging shields.  But neither 
could discuss it in the clear over an open communications band.
     Security is a sword that cuts both ways, and most often wounds the 
hand that wields it.
     "Yes, yes it does, Yellow Niner.  I have your ETVC at six minutes, 
now.  Is that about right?  Over."
     "Yeah, yeah.  Yellow Nine Squadron, this is Yellow Nine Leader As 
far as I know, this is no drill, repeat, no drill.  Unlock your ar?ning 
switches and keep the thumb you aren't sitting on near the button.  No 
mistakes, now, or we'll all be plucking crystals in the life-orchards.
     Out to you, and over to PC 11
     PC, thought the Operator, that sounded sort of nice and heroically 
terse.  She said nothing, but simply watched a dozen hard, sharp, shiny 
blips converge on the single fuzzy, almost invisible one.  She had 
already sent nervous fingers flying over an alphanumeric pad, alerting 
her superiors to the situation, and other eyes were monitoring other 
scopes, now, within the subterranean bowels of the installation.  She 
fastened her military collar and straightened a crease.  Almost, she 
hoped, the target would be a genuine pirate attack or rebel uprising.
     Promotions came fast in times of"Perimeter Control, this is Yellow 
Nine Leader Where the Core is this thing?  We oughta be right on top of 
it, unless you're-by the Great Lens, there it is!  It's huge and clear 
as glass!  We're making our first pass, using prerecorded hailing 
signals ... oh yeah; over" The strange vessel failed to respond, at 
least on frequencies the interceptors were permitted to receive.  
Instead, it simply disappeared as the squadron crowded it, leaving the 
fighters to mill around an empty spot like moths around a light that is 
suddenly turned out.
     It reappeared to one side, a few thousand meters away, just as 
Yellow Nine Seven passed beneath its transparent wing, which twitched 
involuntarily as Lehesu struggled to regain his balance.  Suddenly 
Yellow Nine Seven cork-screwed away, a smoking, flaming ball of 
crumpled metal, its pilot screaming something into his helmet mike 
about his deflector shields having failed to function properly.
     The voice bit off suddenly.
     Eleven pilots whipped their ships around savagely.  Eleven thumbs 
mashed down upon their firing studs.  Twenty-two eyes widened as eight 
destructive beams-three had not been maintenanced correctly@onverged on 
empty space.  One interceptor, Yellow Nine Four, was caught in the 
crossfire.  He'd failed to make a turn, due to faulty attitude-control, 
and vanished in a flash of energy and atomized debris.
     Lehesu stepped off half a light-year, astounded at the hostile 
reaction he'd encountered, not at all like his first contact with the 
Millennium Falcon.  And his people thought he was crazy.
     With the Oswaft equivalent of a shrug, he turned his face toward 
yet another star whose spectrum showed traces of artificial, highly 
ordered radiation, and prepared himself for a longer jump this time.
     Unaware that a densely cloaked scout vessel was right behind him.
     The next system had been much the same, except ...
     They'd been forewarned, somehow, of this bizarre unidentified 
craft that had managed to destroy three (Yellow Nine Nine had missed 
the mouth of its Launch/Reentry tunnel and splashed itself all over a 
Mountainside of frozen nitrogen; little squiggles of liquid helium 
danced with glee at the sight) firstrate fighter-interceptors.  The new 
group also ignored his frantic, placative signaling and suffered 
forty-three casualties, some of them on the ground, due to an 
unfortunate change of shift going on between two double-strength 
squadrons.  Lehesu had given up and gone home.
     Eventually the fleet had made its appearance.  The ordeal was a 
little more bearable for Lehesu than for the others.  He was the only 
Oswaft in a hundred generations who had come close to dying by 
starvation once before.  As some human philosopher in a different time 
and place would observe, that which fails to kill us strengthens us.
     Lehesu knew his limits; he could tell that the pogrom was going to 
take rather a longer time than either side realized.  To his less 
adventurous comrades, it was already agony, already an unprecedented 
emergency.  They felt, for the first time in their long, long lives, a 
relatively mild discomfort, and were afraid.  Some actually spoke of 
attempts to negotiate, to establish upon what terms the enemy would let 
them live, not knowing that their utter destruction was the only 
success the fleet's mission profile recognized.
     Lehesu wished his people would get angry, instead.
     Thus, he waited.
     It was some hours after the last of the energetic 
nutrientdestroying displays that something unusual happened.  Lehesu 
felt a tight, powerful beam of communications energy coming from the 
blockaded nebula entrance.  While he knew the language, he didn't know 
the culture; the gulf between planetbound species and free-fall 
dwellers was so enormous that any understanding was a gigantic tribute 
to the Oswaft's intellectual capabilities.  Whatever they were saying 
out there, it was frantic, and not at all friendly.
     It happened again!  Judging from the manner in which this second 
burst was all bunched up into the higher frequencies, something was 
headed away from the fleet and toward the ThonBoka, fast.  Lehesu 
maneuvered that way, both by straightforward distance-covering flight 
to keep an "eye" on the incoming signals, and by nonlinear 
distance-avoiding hops.
     Whatever was coming, it ought to have some kind of reception 
committee.
     Suddenly an impossibly solid bar of unbearably bright light lashed 
out, connecting the two points in space with each other.
     There was a brilliant flash, a scattering of reflections, then 
nothingness.  A sparkling hint of metallic debris and smoke lingered at 
the very edge of Lehesu's sensory capabilities.  The galactic drift 
carried traces of scorched titanium and plastic into the ThonBoka.
     A long, quiet moment followed.  Then, without warning, something 
materialized not far from Lehesu, out of the wherever-it-is that 
starships go when they're traveling faster than the speed of light.
     It was an absurdly shaped object, like something resembling a 
coral-encrusted horseshoe magnet a tenth the Oswaft's size and 
possessing none of his fluid grace.  The thing was tumbling slowly, end 
over end, while enormous volumes of dense white smoke billowed from its 
blast-blackened rear surface.
     Naturally, Lehesu recognized her at once.
     "Lando!  Vuffi Raa!  Can you hear me in there?  Are you all 
right?"
     The vacuum-breather swam closer, carefully avoiding the 
foul-smelling effluents issuing from the curved rear edge of the 
freighter.  Nothing indicated that life had ever inhabited the 
strangely shaped craft.  The glow-spots he now knew to be windows lay 
dark and foreboding along her surfaces as she continued to somersault 
gently before the space-going sentient, the random motion itself a grim 
presentiment that nothing rational lived at the controls.
     "Vuffi Raa!  Lando!  Speak to me!"  the Oswaft beamed on every 
frequency he knew.  "This is Lehesu!"
     Nothing replied.
     Much more figuratively than literally, Lehesu cast a backward 
glance at the fleet besieging his home.  He didn't know how he could 
accomplish it, but he swore, in that moment of grief, a terrible 
revenge against those who were responsible for the tragedy.  To gain 
and lose new friends, good friends-in some respects the only friends 
he'd ever had-in what seemed to the extremely long-lived creature like 
the mere space of minutes ... It was almost more than a being could 
bear.
     Thrashing frantically back and forth, he peered into the vessel's 
darkened ports, learning nothing.  Gently, he nudged the spaceship, 
unintentionally adding an additional vector to her tumbling motion.
     "Lando!  Vuffi Raa!  Are you in there?"
     He thought a moment, then, despite everything he bad struggled to 
understand about his new companions, added: "Falcon, my little friend, 
please talk to me!  This is L4ehesu the Oswaft!
     Are Vuffi Raa and Lando still alive?"

     Vidi

     THE REFrr-rED CRUISER Wennis was a trowel-shaped wedge of metal 
bristling with instrument and weapons emplacements arranged to overlap 
yet not interfere with one another's fields of effectiveness.  At an 
unusual-and unusually heavily shielded-point on her after surface, 
between the great blinding arrays of drive tubes and deflectors, was a 
small chamber with windowless walls two meters thick.  It could be 
entered only by a small auxiliary craft, available to the vessel's 
master alone, and then only when he had ordered the drives temporarily 
shut down.  To navigate the small craft while the cruiser's massive 
engines were in operation would be instantaneous suicide.
     Two hundred centimeters is a great deal of wall, especially when 
it is composed of the latest, state-of-the-art battlewagon armor.  Yet 
the arinofing of the special chamber.  was not intended to protect its 
contents from the ravening drive radiations of the Wennis.  It was to 
protect the Wennis from what lay in the chamber.  Even so, it was a 
futile effort, intended more to comfort the one entity who knew what 
the arrangement was all about, to provide some sense, however illusory, 
of security.
     Inside the chamber, Rokur Gepta stood before a chest-high metal 
pylon capped with a transparent bubble the size of a man's head.  Gepta 
knew the chamber and controls by memory.
     No fight burned within it.  He ran a gray-gloved hand along the 
surface of the pylon, watching with unseeing eyes as his fingers 
pressed inset keys.  Inside the bubble, he had begun to create an 
infinitessimal speck of the most dangerous single substance the 
universe had ever known.  A sickly green light began to seep from the 
bubble, filling the darkened chamber with malignant luminosity.
     The trouble with a man like Klyn Shanga, the sorcerer thought, 
wasn't that he was not afraid to die.  It had taken Gepta an 
unprecedentedly long while to figure that out, so tortuous and alien 
was the line of reasoning involved.  Rokur knew man individuals who 
were not fearful of death, in fact they seemed to welcome the idea, 
embrace the opportunity.
     They were eager to die, for their beliefs, for the government or 
the numerous causes that opposed it, even for Gepta himself.
     Such men were easy to control and extremely useful.  Down deep 
somewhere they hated and feared life and were anxious to be relieved of 
the burden of living in a manner that would not disturb their other, 
contradictory beliefs.
     It was clear Klyn Shanga enjoyed being alive, which was what made 
things confusing.  Rokur Gepta was not used to being confused, and it 
infuriated him.  How was it that someone who loved life could be 
unafraid to die?  The first conclusion the sorcerer had reached-not 
much help in understanding the perverse phenomenon, but of high 
pragmatic significancewas that the original expedition to Renatasia 
hadn't done a thorough enough job.  They had done only two-thirds of 
it, and it badly wanted finishing.
     Gepta promised himself to assign that matter the highest of 
priorities once the current operation was over and he could think about 
other things.  If Shanga was representative of Renatasia's people, that 
system could turn out to be a much greater danger to his plans-and to 
the government-than even the essentially harmless vacuum-breathers of 
the 'nonboka.
     He gazed into the ghastly glow before him, savoring its 
destructive potential.  One cubic millimeter of the substance, 
established in a self-sustaining manner, would leap from point to point 
on a planet's surface, eradicating anything that lived, devouting any 
organic substrate on which future life depended.  It was the ultimate 
disinfectant, the ultimate sterilizer.  There was something wonderfully 
clean and neat about this substance and the very concept of it.
     It cleared up confusion.  Life was confusion, and intelligent life 
the most contradictory and confusing of all, realized Gepta.
     Klyn Shanga wanted to live, yet was unafraid to die.  Such a man 
could not be controlled, and, when he had something that the sorcerer 
wanted, he became ... impossible!  It had not been two hours since he 
interviewed the man, shortly after the Wennis met his ragtag squadron 
in deep space.  The craft of Shanga's squadron were not interstellar 
vessels, and they were to have waited for Gepta at the edge of his home 
system.  But so eager had they been for the ThonBoka (or desirous of 
leaving Tund) that they had departed early, confident the cruiser would 
overtake them before they ran into trouble.
     "It was insubordination!"  the livid Gepta hissed, looking down at 
Admiral Shanga.  Their confrontation was not being held on the bridge 
because of the possibility that things would be said that would harm 
discipline.
     Shanga threw his head back and laughed.  "I am not your 
subordinate, magician, nor is the least senior of my men.  We felt like 
going and we went.  Here we are, closer to the ThonBoka than we would 
have been, the better rested for having done something constructive to 
get ourselves there.  Is it this that you find objectionable?"
     Beneath the bridge of the Wennis lay the captain's battle 
quarters, which, like his command chair, had also been preempted by 
the sorcerer.  A duplicate of the command chair was placed in the 
center of the room before a large viewscreen, which presently showed 
the depths of interstellar space, as translated by the ship's computers 
from the hyperdrive hash of what was really to be seen.  The light was 
gray and even, matching the sorcerer's clothing and, somehow, his 
voice.
     "You are a military man, Admiral, I oughtn't to need to explain 
these matters to you, of all people."
     The military man grinned and shook his head.  "I was a n-diitary 
man.  Now I am a mercenary in my own employ, fighting, because it suits 
me to do so, for the honor of a civilization that no longer exists.  I 
recognize no authority and I desire no anthority.  My men follow me 
because it suits them."
     He grew tired of standing.  The discussion was altogether too much 
like being called to the school supervisor's office, and it rankled.
     Shanga looked around, discovered a lounger beside the door to the 
corridor, tossed his helmet onto another chair, and reclined, 
stretching his customarily ship-cramped legs and relaxing.
     Shanga groped around inside his spacesuit until he found tobacco 
in a shirt pocket.  He withdrew the cigar, put it in his mouth, and lit 
it with a hundredth-power discharge of his blaster.  Gepta's guards 
hadn't taken his weapon this time.  He hadn't let them.  Three of them 
had broken arms and a fourth, who'd gone on insisting, was dead.  That 
was the real reason for the conference.
     "Let's put our card-chips in the table-field, Gepta," Shanga said 
through a cloud of blue smoke.  "You're up to something-the way you've 
redecorated this cruiser is evidence enough bf that-and it amounts to 
more than simple revenge against one lousy gambler.  And you need us.
     I've got twenty-three flyers in a battered assortment of fighters 
gathered from the scrap heaps of a dozen cultures, and yet any one of 
them is a match for any three of yours."
     The sorcerer gripped the arms of his chair, convulsively fending 
off the impulse to have the man disintegrated where he sat.  There was 
too much light in the room for his comfort, and increasingly too much 
smoke.  Yet he had always prided himself on an ability, a willingness, 
to withstand temporary deprivation and discomfort for the sake of 
future gains.  "Oh, and how is it that you reach this conclusion?"  he 
asked evenly.  After all, the crew of the Wennis was the best the Navy 
had to offer.
     Shanga blinked, considering his words.  "It's how you throw away 
good people.  Your whole culture places no value on the individual.
     Funny, because that's all there is: no 'group,' no 'Navy,' no 
'Empire,' only individuals, who do all the thinking, all the work, that 
gets done.  Waste that, and it'll come back to haunt you, Gepta.  
People aren't plug-in modules you can use up.  'nat's why my guys are a 
match for any five of yours.
     They know they're irreplaceable, and ... Look: you've got a drive 
tech who's pretty good, but doesn't have the right family or 
connections, or espouses the wrong beliefs.  Disregard his unique 
competence, pack him off to the life-orchards or the spice rmnes, and 
all that leaves you are the socially acceptable incompetents.  Starts 
to show, after a while; the machinery grinds down."
     A tiny portion of the gray-robed sorcerer that was nei lusion nor 
altogether human shuddered.  And controlled himself.  Klyn Shanga's 
time would come later.  In the meantime, in order to prevent 
morale-destroying rumors from spreading through the crew, he would 
order that "complications" set in among the lesser casualties of 
Shanga's intransigence.  They'd be given space burial with full honors; 
he needed to shut down the ship's drives briefly, anyway.
     "We shall agree," he said to the fighter pilot with forced 
amiability, "to disagree; it is not necessary that we hold the same 
philosophy in order to cooperate."
     "No," Shanga nodded, "it isn't.  What's important is that I have 
my squadron, you have this ship and passage through the fleet.
     Together, we both know Cahissian, have confronted him in the past.
     He'll become your prisoner@r worse.  We'll have Vuffi Raa, the 
Butcher of Renatasia, to haul back in force shackles for public trial 
and execution!"
     Knowing full well that a very different fate awaited the squadron 
commander@the not dissimilar to that which he planned for the 
gambler@epta nevertheless replied, "Yes, of course.  Then you will be 
free to rebuild your civilization."  A hint of cordiality very nearly 
made it into his tone.
     "Rebuild Renatasia?  There's nothing left to rebuild!  We've 
become your stinking suburbs!  Everything we have, everything we do is 
a pale, threadbare, plastic imitation of whatever was in fashion ten 
years ago in the capital!  All we have left to aspire to is ...
     justice!"
     Inwardly, Gepta chuckled.  How right the admiral was; how much 
more right he would be.  The sorcerer watched Shanga for a moment, 
sitting in his presence without permission, smoking, and enjoyed the 
unintended irony.  Then he pressed a button on one arm of his throne.
     "You know Vuffi Raa, Admiral Shanga, and we both have reason to 
know Lando Calrissian."  The name stuck unpleasantly in Gepta's throat; 
the two words were not the terms on which he was used to thinking of 
the man, but Shanga would @not appreciate or understand the sorcerer's 
private system of references.  "Now let us hear from one who claims to 
know something about what else awaits us in the ThonBoka, shall weT' 
The squadron leader shrugged, looking suddenly old and tired.  He 
needed to get back to his men.  He neededA door slid aside, and a tall, 
gangly human being entered, a man with bushy white hair and a 
pen-nanently sour expression pulled down over his long undertaker's 
features.
     "Fleet Admiral Klyn Shanga of Renatasia," the sorcerer intoned 
formally, "Please meet the Ottdefa Osuno Whett, Associate Professor of 
Comparative Sapient Studies at the University-" "College boys, now!"
     the fighter pilot snorted, his energy renewed by contempt.  
"What's he got to contribute to this palaver, anyway?"
     "Rather a good deal, my dear-Admiral, was it?"  There was a note 
of polite disbelief in the man's voice as he examined Shanga's 
clothing, found a place to seat himself, looking first to Gepta for 
approval, and sat.  "I am the galaxy's foremost expert-by virtue of the 
fact that I am the only expert, heh, heh-on the Oswaft, the intelligent 
space-evolved life of the ThonBoka."
     "Some expert!  According to our friend the magician, here, nobody 
knew about those creepy-crawlies until a few months ago, nobody.  How 
much could you have learned in-" Whett looked a bit disturbed, as if 
Shanga's disrespect for Gepta, or at least its punishment, might be 
contagious.  "Sir, I am an anthropologist, the very same who unraveled 
the impenetrable mysteries of the Sharu of Rafa.  I have lived among 
and studied the asteroid miners of the Oseon, I-" "The way I heard it, 
Mister Associate Professor, the Sharu sort of unraveled themselves!"
     He blew a puff of smoke from his relit cigar and laughed, 
particularly to see that mention of the Sharu made even Rokur Gepta 
appear momentarily uncomfortable.  Now there was a race of sorcerers!
     "My title, Admiral, is Ottdefa, an honor conferred by my home 
system, and I would thank you t@' "Forget it, friend, I got carried 
away."  Shanga looked back to Gepta.  He was one of the few men in the 
known galaxy who could look directly into the sorcerer's face 
without wincing.  "Okay, I'll bite: what's this all about?"
     Without a word, Gepta nodded at the Ottdefa, who began again.
     "The Oswaft are a most unusual people.  I began observing them 
with an electronic telescope, at the behest of Lord Gepta, until it 
became apparent that they were aware of the instrument's 
emanations.'Then, in a specially fitted meteoroid, I traversed much of 
their region, making observations with less intrusive devices.  They 
evolved in space out of the clutter of organic molecules to be found 
there, and reached the pinnacle of intelligence, protected by the 
nebula that all but encloses them, and unaware that anyone else 
existed.
     "They have a natural ability to enter hyperspace and travel 
through it.  They communicate by modulating radio-frequency waves with 
their brains.  Theirs is a complex, highly sophisticated language, and 
it is just about all the culture they possess.
     They have no need of clothing or shelter, and what little food 
they require drifts past them on a sort of breeze.  Hence, they make 
few artifacts, most of them sculptures or bodily decorations."
     Shanga shook his head.  "I don't get it.  It's stupid enough that 
the navy is bothering with them.  From everything you say, they're no 
threat to anybody; they don't want anything anybody has.  But what's 
the point of our boning up on@' "Because, my dear Shanga," the sorcerer 
hissed, "they are allies to our enetriies!  We shall either win them 
over and force them to betray Cahissian, or they, too, shall be 
destroyed!"
     Now, in his special secret chamber aft of the Wennis' drives, 
Rokur Gepta contemplated the temporary contents of a forcebubble 
stronger than the full battle-shielding of the cruiser.
     Perched upon its pylon, it contained a secret an entire race, the 
Sorcerers of Tund, had died to protect.
     At greater strength now, its ghostly flicker filled the room with 
evil dancing shadows, all of them Gepta's.  He felt at peace.  It was 
the only light he really liked.  It reminded him of home.  The home he 
had remodeled with its assistance.
     Inside the bubble tiny forms seethed and sizzled at the border of 
visibility, like dust motes in a sunbeam.  They were densest at the 
bottom of the bubble, yet many thousands more sparkled in the space 
above the bottom.  They were lively, active, hungry.
     Gepta chuckled to himself.  In a manner of thinking, they, too, 
were his pets.  He had harnessed the most dangerous forces in the 
universe and kept them there in a cage.  He made and unmade them at his 
pleasure.  And he had work for them to do.
     Again.  There was enough ... substance ... there to eliminate the 
life in an entire globular cluster.
     The ThonBoka, all its inhabitants, Lando Calrissian, Vuffi Raa, 
Klyn Shanga-yes, and perhaps this arm of the navy, which was, after 
all, another obstacle to his desire for powerall of them would feel the 
agony of first contact with this, the most unusual of all his pets.
     And then they would feel nothing.
     He shut off the switches.  Where there had been activity before 
within the bubble, all movement stopped.  The green glow died abruptly.
     The motes stopped dancing.  It was drawing near the time that 
Gepta had arranged to have the drives shut down again, so that he could 
steer his small auxiliary through the zone of murderous radiation, back 
to the main hull of the Wennis.
     The force-bubble grew smaller until it, too, disappeared, leaving 
the smooth, mirror-surface top of the pylon, a simple pedestal of 
polished metal.  Gepta smiled to himself, pocketed the one small object 
he had removed from the pedestal as the force-field deactivated, and 
began cycling the airlock.
     How beautiful to contemplate an entire galaxy of worlds glowing 
sweetly thus, to imagine the whole universe clean and sterile, linear 
and predictable.
     The One said to the Other, "I observe that you have brought the 
Rest."
     They were arrayed before him, rank on rank, less for the sake of 
discipline (a concept utterly alien to those beings) or even 
orderliness, than for the simple reason that all of them wanted to see 
and hear what was going to happen next.  Uncountable numbers of them 
bristled with unfamiliar tenseness.
     They were not altogether certain it was an improvement over their 
normal state.
     "Yes," confirmed the Other, like his companion, like all his 
companions, glittering in the cold diamond starlight, "and I believe 
that they wish for you to address them now, explain-" "But they know as 
well as you or I," the One protested, rude interruptions and strained 
emotions coming now with greater frequency, even at so vast a remove 
from their grand experiment.  "They're all perfectly familiar with@' 
"Yes," his friend said, but gently, "and yet they wish it as a kind of 
ceremony, marking the passage of one epoch and the initiation of 
another, unknown, somehow frightening one.  I wish it, too, if you do 
not mind greatly."
     The One hesitated, even though he had already assented within 
himself.  After all, if those he cared for felt the need ...
     and perhaps it would help calm him, as well.  What sort of result 
would issue when this project was mature, however, worried him.
     Already circumstances were nearly unbearable.
     . "My friends, as we all know, some while ago, a rather long time, 
even for we who are perhaps the most longevous race in the galaxy, at 
my suggestion we caused a being to come into existence among us who 
was, well, somewhat different, imbuing him with certain minor physical 
advantages, and a burning desire to know about the universe."
     There was a murmuring of remembrance, a stir of suppressed 
excitement.  Change was con-dng hard and fast to the One, the Other, 
and the Rest.
     'This being was peaceful, unaggressive even by our standards, for 
we had shaped him in this wise for several reasons that made sense to 
us and still do.  Nonetheless, he has become embroiled in one violent 
incident after another, brutal, sanguine clashes with prin-dtive 
cultures.  Lives have been lost.
     "Yet he has learned much, and the time has arrived for us to learn 
it from him."
     The rumbling of comment from the Rest grew louder.  The One gave 
them time to contemplate, then said at last, "We go now to gather him 
in.  We do not even know whether he will be happy to see us, to learn 
that his searches, at least for the time being, are over with.  Let us 
greet him in dignity and love, understand the trials he has been 
through, and treasure what he has to give us, for it is rich.
     "And it will change everything."
     ix TUMBLING PONDEROUSLY BOW over stern, and with the slightest of 
rolls to starboard, the Millennium Falcon slowed @croscopically, her 
attitude burners sputtering at irregular intervals in the eternal 
darkness.  Her roll corrected, her pitch losing its momentum, she 
stabilized and came to a full stop.  There was a fitful, uncertain 
fluttering of red at her ports, scattered here and there around her 
battered hull, then the strong, clear crimson of emergency lighting.
     From small jets at the rear, streams of milky liquid struck her 
after hull plates, boiling off noiselessly in thick, gaseous clouds 
that mingled with the trailing smoke.  A still -molten stub of 
structural metal projecting to the precise edge of her shield radius 
cooled and dimmed.  The smoke ceased pouring; the interior lights and 
running markers came on full.
     From a pressure valve in the circular hatch atop the Falcon's hull 
a mast extruded, silvery, slender, obviously being paid out by hand in 
jerky increments.  It stopped with a springy quiver when two meters of 
it were visible.  Lehesu, floating nearby, heard a familiar voice: 
"Hello there, old flatfish!  Lost the main antenna in all the 
excitement back there!  That is you, isn't it, Lehesu?  Glad to be 
here.  If Vuffi Raa had hesitated by a picosecond, you'd be talking to 
our radioactive ghosts!"
     From a rather different culture-one, for example, whose conception 
of death did not encompass fancies of an ectoplasmic afterlife-Lehesu 
failed to comprehend at least two-thirds of the greeting.
     Nevertheless, he understood that his friends had safely arrived in 
the ThonBoka, and was ovedoyed.
     "Landocaptainmaster!"  the vacuum-breather exclaimed, 
unconsciously addressing the human occupant of the starship as an 
Oswaft Elder, "Yes it is I!"  He swam closer to the spacecraft until he 
could peer into its control room through the canopy.  Inside sat Lando 
Calrissian, con man and sometime gambler (or gwnbler and sometime con 
man), and his mechanical would-be servant, Vuffi Raa.  Full-time robot.
     The two were still busily turning knobs and pushing buttons, 
attempting to restore the Millennium Falcon to some semblance of 
operational normality.  The captain's seat harness lay unfastened, 
floating in the temporarily gravity-free air about his acceleration 
couch.  So it had been he, most probably, who had erected the antenna, 
aft and upstairs.  The young Oswaft was pleased to have deducted the 
data, insignificant as they might be.  It meant he was beginning to 
have a feel for what had been a totally alien environment and 
civilization.
     "Greetings and salutations, friend Lehesu, " the droid echoed.
     "Not one of my better entrances, I'm afraid.  And we both 
apologize for the delay in reaching you.  " He looked to Lando, who was 
nodding, although whether in assent to the apology or as a comment on 
the robot's flying skills was moot.
     "We were within hailing distance," Vuffi Raa continued, "Of the 
StarCave, several days ago, but it was necessary to work our way 
through the blockading fleet by means of deception.  " There was the 
slightest hint of distaste in the robot's voice, Lando thought.  It 
annoyed him; deception was supposed to be one of his major 
stocks-in-trade, and Vuffi Raa understood that as well as anyone.
     Besides, how else were they supposed to have gotten through.  the 
fleet?  He lit a cigar and gazed out through the wedge-sectioned port 
at the Oswaft floating gently ahead of the motionless Falcon.  Blockade 
or not, it was good to be out of circulation, beyond the reach of what 
passed for civilization-and of Mred assassins-however temporarily.
     Knowing the navy, he had a pessimistic notion just how safe they 
were within the nebula and for how long.  But he had a plan for that, 
too, and encouraged by his relatively easy victory over the fleet thus 
far, he intended to relax.
     "I do not understand, " Lehesu protested in response to something 
Vuffi Raa had said when Lando wasn't listening.  "I believed that I had 
seen you and the Falcon utterly destroyed.
     Of course, at the time, I didn't know it was you, but .  . . " 
Satisfaction suffused the droid's tone, "It was my master's idea, 
really.  During the time I described to you, while he was spying upon 
the enemy under the guise of selling things and gambling, I fitted out 
a cylinder of powdered metallic shavings mixed with various volatiles, 
and attached it to the stern of the Falcon.  This we left unshielded, so 
that the cruiser's rays, upon striking it, would convey the illusion 
that .  . ."
     I wonder what we would have done if they'd simply used a tractor 
beam, Lando mused.  He'd counted on the guns' being manned by 
trigger-happy jerks, and, as usual, he'd been right.
     For a while he watched Lehesu, not really paying attention as that 
being and the little droid communicated.  They seemed to get along 
automatically, he thought, had little trouble achieving understanding.
     Idly, he wondered why.  For all the goodwill in the galaxy, he had 
to struggle to identify with a creature who had never known a planet's 
surface, for whom empty space was a comfortable home, who could shift 
light-years at a time within it, somehow avoiding the necessity for 
those careful computations the gambler had learned so painfully as an 
inexperienced captain.
     Against the charcoal backdrop of the nebula, a handful of stars 
twinkled merrily through the transparent innards of the space being.
     Lando laughed, dismissing every doubt and trouble he was feeling 
with a shake of his head, took another drag on his cigar through a wide 
grin, then rose from his seat.
     . "Pardon me, old gumball machine, if you can, but I'm going aft 
to change into my bathing togs.  Care to join me?"  Without waiting for 
a reply, he stubbed out the cigar and pulled himself between the 
jumpseats toward the rear of the cockpit.

     "if

     The robot stirred from his conversation with the Oswaft.
     I interpret you correctly, Master, I think I should like that very 
much."  His five chromium-plated tentacles glittered over the control 
panels.  "I shall inform our friend, and place the ship on automatic."
     "Swell.  Don't call me master."
     Ducking through the doorway, Lando floated along the corridor 
until he reached a locker where he changed from the well-worn 
shipclothes he'd been wearing for the navy's benefit, into a spacesuit.
     By the time he'd sealed all the fittings and run through the 
checklist programmed into it, Vuffi Raa, who hadn't needed to change, 
caught up with him.  Together they made their way to the airlock and 
cycled out through it into the void.
     Lehesu was there to meet them.
     It was the gambler's first good look at the ThonBoka from the 
inside, and the sight was eerie.  Behind him, the nearly circular mouth 
of the nebula displayed the sky as he was accustomed to seeing it, a 
dense scattering of stars-with the occasional intrusion of an eruption 
of destructive energies from the fleet.
     Everywhere else, the gas and dust shut out the rest of the 
universe with a solid wall of deep gray that appeared slightly 
phosphorescent, and through which gigantic bolts of lightning played 
intermittent natural counterpoint to the unnatural discharges from the 
navy.  The eye, perhaps the mind itself, violently rejected proper 
proportions in that place.  Lando knew that he was gazing across a 
dozen light-years, something like ten trillion kilometers, to the 
opposite wall, in reality a finite region of diffuse particles that 
would be scarcely noticeable to those aboard a ship traveling through 
it.  His eyes told him he was near the entrance to an enormous but 
comprehensibly sized cavern, one that might require several days to 
traverse on foot, but a cavern nevertheless.
     Billows and folds in the nebula resembled geologic flows, sheets 
of limestone deposition.  All that was missing were stalagmites and 
stalactites.  Illumination was provided by three small planetless 
blue-white stars that shone in the center of the StarCave, their photon 
pressure probably accounting for its hollow form, but not for their own 
presence.  One star might have been sensible.  Three, spaced a 
light-year or two apart, would have physicists making excuses to one 
another well into the next century.  Lando was happy to be a gambler, a 
profession where alibis don't count.  IBiologists would be unhappy, t r 
ecstatic-at the strange life that hacl evolved in the sheltered space.
     Fingering colored plastic control buttons set into a sma panel on 
the arm of his spacesuit, Lando jetted away from the upper hull and 
retroed to a floating halt a daring few meters away from the impressive 
young Oswaft.  It was something like greeting an ocean liner politely.
     He circumnavigated the fivehundred-meter creature in a smooth arc, 
tucked himself into a roll, straights ned, and sprang away with arms 
extended wide, legs spread, and an expression of sudden joy on his 
face.
     "Yaaahooo!"  he whooped uncharacteristically, rejoicing in the 
sensation of free movement, open space.  He realized he'd been cooped 
up aboard ship far too long.  It felt like his entire life.  Or perhaps 
evolving on a planet, squeezed between the ground and low-hanging sky, 
made one feel permanently claustrophobic.
     Vuffi Raa, propelled by the Core alone knew what, spun like a 
bright metallic snowflake beside him as Lehesu rotated majestically, 
then veered off in a huge graceful curve the two smaller beings 
attempted to emulate.  One of them succeeded.
     "Hey, you guys, wait for me!"  Lando shouted unnecessarily; his 
suit radio carried perfectly well over the kilometer or two he'd missed 
intercepting them by.  Correcting, he tumbled slightly-the free-fall 
equivalent of tripping over his own feet-stabilized, and swooped to 
join his friends.  By which time, of course, they were somewhere else.
     Lando didn't care.  On his own, he began essaying ancient 
patterns, maneuvers that, elsewhere and elsewhen, would be called 
Luftberry circles, Immelmann turns, imitating the inspired antics of 
fighting aerocraft of the prespace eras of every culture momentarily 
infatuated with free flight and glorious death.  He dived on Lehesu, 
showering the vacuum-breather with imaginary reciprocating gun bullets, 
then pulled up at the last instant as the startled being instinctively 
rolled to peel the attacking foe off his back.
     That didn't save Vuffi Raa.  The unfortunate droid was sitting 
squarely in the bull's-eye etching of Lando's helmetordinarily used for 
the more mundane purpose of orienting oneself before setting off one's 
suit propellants-when Lando's deadly pointed fingers filled him full of 
hot-jacketed lead.
     Caught up in the spirit of the thing, the robot spun out and 
downward, wishing he could trail smoke for his master's amusement.
     There were limits, however, even to Vuffi Raa's remarkable 
capabilities.
     Three small blue-white suns glowed against a somber darkgray 
backdrop.  Lightning licked the folds and billows of the cavern walls.
     Three odd beings, Oswaft, droid, and, oddest of all, human, passed 
an endless hour or so, playing at combat like the young of all 
intelligent life everywhere.  It was both a release and a return at the 
same time, marred only by the momentarily suppressed dread of what lay 
outside the StarCave-and the sudden flare of baleful energy as the 
fleet, on its clockwork schedule of mass murder sprayed poison and 
lethal power into the space around the ThonBoka mouth.
     Lando cut his spin-that time, he had been the victim of Vuffi 
Raa's machine guns-and halted, hanging in space, resenting being 
catapulted back into adulthood, watching the stupidity unnecessary 
fleet operations with an angry grimace clearly visible through his 
transparent bubble helmet.  Life was so simple, he thought bitterly, so 
thoroughly enjoyable.  Why were there always people whose chosen 
profession was to louse it up for everybody else?
     Vuffi Raa swam 'up beside the gambler, not needing to be 
telepathic to read his master's thoughts.  They were joined by Lehesu.
     All three stared out through the mouth of the nebula, watching the 
evil net of beams that did its work of making life impossible for the 
Oswaft.  All knew of the enzymes drifting into the ThonBoka, as well.
     "The nutrient current grows impoverished, my friends, Lehesu 
observed sadly.  He was not actually breathing heavily from the hour's 
exercise, but the effect was much the same.
     Lando and Vuffi Raa didn't know his kind quite well enough to 
understand it was a bad sign.
     "Core forgive me!"  Lando exclaimed, "I'd almost forgotten why we 
came here in the first place!"  He turned toward the Millennium Falcon, 
applied thrust to his suit.  "We'll get you a little snack, old skate, 
then you can show us where best to place the rest of our cargo."
     The robot and the man scooted underneath the starship, began 
manipulating the locks on a small cargo hatch.  In a moment, clinging 
to the hull, they had it open and delivered of a small canister that 
Vuffi Raa held out.
     "Here you are," Lando heard through his helmet phones.
     "Shall I just spray it around, or would you prefer-" "That will be 
quite suitable, my friend, and many thanks."
     Lehesu tried hard to keep hunger out of his voice.  He hadn't 
noticed until now how famished he'd become.  As the specially selected 
amino acids and other compounds began drifting around the ship, he 
moved slowly and with dignity, scooping them up and ingesting them.  He 
could feel them sing through his body and knew a joy akin to that which 
Lando felt at the prospect of freedom.
     "Well, I certainly trust you're enjoying yourself in your setfish 
gluttony!  " It was a strange new voice over the ether, one 
incomprehensible to Lando, but Vuffi Raa understood it-and correctly 
interpreted its hostile tone.  Both of them jetted quickly out from 
under the hull of the Falcon, which was blocking their view, as a pair 
of titanic monsters slid casually alongside, making even Lehesu appear 
small and meek.
     He may not have had the robot's talent for languages, but the air 
of sarcastic disapproval hadn't been missed by the gambler, either.
     Reflexively, he patted the spacesuit pocket where he kept his 
stingbeatn-then laughed inwardly at himself as he thought of pitting 
its miniscule power against these ...
     these ...
     "These are the Elders you told us about, Lehesu?"' he asked 
finally.  "Tell them we're here to help them, and that, at the very 
least, we mean them absolutely no harm."  He removed his hand from the 
pocket and tried to sound sincere.
     And almost succeeded.
     Easily seven hundred meters from wingtip to wingtip, the pair of 
Oswaft dwarfed the Falcon, and everything else in view.  They 
positioned themselves on either side of Lando's younger 
vacuum-breathing friend, as if that worthy were being arrested.  Or 
sent to bed without his dinner.
     "No, " Lehesu replied in words the gambler could understand, 
"these are most assuredly not the Elders, and they have no right or 
authority to interfere with us.  Elders are much larger He'd directed 
the final comment to the two interlopers.  Apparently it was some kind 
of insult, although it was probably lost on the pair, spoken as it had 
been in human language, Lando thought.  If Elders were even larger than 
these creatures, the gambler reflected, he certainly didn't want to 
mess with them.
     Vuffi Raa put on a burst of speed, whipped around as if to block 
the progress of the three giant beings-as if a microbe could block the 
progress of a bantha.  "I suggest, " the droid radiated in a 
businesslike tone, "that you be civil to our friend Lehesu, for he has 
per

     rest of your-" fonned a great service for you and the

     "Silence, insignificant one!"  one of the creatures replied.
     "You know not of what you speak.  We are here at the explicit 
request of the Elders themselves.  The three of you are to come to them 
at once, in order to explain your impertinence and face their mighty 
judgment!"
     "SABACC!"  CRIF-D LANDO Calfissian, gambler, con artiste, and 
interstellar diplomat.  He sat back on sheer nothingness with a 
satisfied look on his face and let the Millennium Falcon gather in his 
winnings, shuffle the "deck," and deal out the "cardchips" once again.
     It was the weirdest and most profitable game he'd ever played.
     Senwannus'gourkahipaff, senior Elder of the Oswaft, let a little 
ticklish signal be broadcast, indicating amusement and pleasure.
     "Truly it is amazing, Captainmasterlandocalrissian.
     Lando gave a mental shrug: if the head vacuum-breather wished to 
address him with a title longer than his own, indicating deep respect 
and a relaxed sort of submission, the gambler wasn't going to correct 
him.  There was far too much at stake, and it had very little to do 
with the game of sabacc.
     "Amazing, " the thousand-meter being continued, "you cannot even 
see the cards, yet you have won hand after hand under fair and 
impartial conditions.  I abase myself to your skill and intellect.  " 
Lando congratulated himself a little, too, principally on his luck.
     They were playing in the center of the Cave of the Elders, the 
only architectural structure, as far as he knew, within the ThonBoka, 
very probably the only such the Oswaft had ever constructed.  Or 
thought to construct.
     Located in the middle of the triangular plane formed by the three 
blue-white stars in the center of the nebula, the Cave of the Elders 
was a meticulous replica of the StarCave itself.
     From where he sat-hung might be a better word, as they were 
relaxing in free-fall-he could make out the folds and tucks he'd seen 
outside, duplicated in exact detail a mere ten kilometers away.  A 
circular doorway repeated the pattern of the mouth of the ThonBoka 
(sans, he was happy for small favors, the blockading fleet), and what 
he'd seen of the detail outside spoke exceptionally well for the 
inferential powers of the Oswaft.  With the exception of the 
adventurous Lehesu, they had never actually seen the outside of their 
nebula, yet they knew just what it had to look like.
     The only flaw observable in the titanic modeling effort, and what 
made the Cave of the Elders really interesting, was that it was 
constructed entirely, all twenty klicks of its diameter, of precious 
gems.
     From outside the entrance of the Cave, the Falcon's computers 
pinged in his helmet phones, indicating two cards each had been dealt 
to Sen (Lando irreverently abbreviated the being's name for the sake of 
his overworked tongue muscles), to Feytihennasraof, the second Elder, 
on the senior's left, and to Lehesu, who was also sitting in.
     "You have a Three of Staves and a Commander of Sabres, Master 
Vuffi Raa informed him from the ship, "total value, fifteen.  The 
others would be "seeing" their cards by means of television signals 
produced by the computer.  He wished the robot would let him count his 
own cards, almost as much as he wished the robot would stop calling him 
master, but there didn't seem to be much he could do about it.  To 
protect the privacy of Lando's hand, they spoke in Old High Trammic, 
the ancient language of the Toka/Sharu of the Rafa System.
     The Oswaft were too polite to mention that they'd "decoded" the 
language within five minutes of the game's beginning.  They'd play fair 
in any case, ignoring the robot's signals.
     Both the translation and the refusal to take advantage were 
reflexive with the creatures; none of them had thought about the matter 
consciously.  Honor and solving puzzles were instinctive with them.
     "I'll take one card, " Sen intoned, indicating thanks once the 
Falcon had electronically dealt it.  Fey, too, required a card, while 
the precocious Lehesu stood pat.  Lando asked for a card, receiving 
Moderation, a minus fourteen, which made his hand worth one point.
     "Master the computer has randomly altered your last card "Sabacc!"
     Lando said before the robot could finish.  That to an Eight of 
Flasks!
     That means made a hundred and eighty million credits the Oswaft 
owed him, if he'd kept his accounts straight.  If he ever got out of 
that mess, life was going to be very, very different, "This is a most 
diverting occupation, " Fey said.  "Shall we have another hand, 
CaPtainmasterlandocalrissiansir?"
     Swell: he'd been promoted by a syllable.  At that rate, it would 
soon take all day to say his name.  Maybe he should contrive to lose a 
few hands.  It wouldn't be easy, seeing that the computer was actually 
controlling the cards, but he'd think of something.
     Just like he had when they'd been summoned to confront the Elders.
     Authority comes in many packages, and the contents seem to vary 
just as much as the outer trappings.  Imperial power was based on 
naked, lethal, brute force, pure and simple and no shilly-shallying.
     The position of decision-makers in 'the Oseon, to choose just one 
example, depended on wealth.  In the Rafa System, some deference seemed 
to be paid to religious leader-ship, although in that system, things 
were so tied up in ancient science that what looked like high priests 
might actually be senior technicians.
     The Oswaft were a conservative people.  They deferred to age and 
experience.  Lando had tried to ascertain how old the Oswaft got to be, 
but couldn't.  Like many lower species, they kept on growing throughout 
their lives.  Lehesu was a young adult, say the equivalent of late 
teens or early twenties.  He was about five hundred meters across the 
wingtips, and growing.
     The pair I of yes-men who'd picked them up near the ThonBoka mouth 
were apparently of middle years (or centuries or millennia), seven or 
seven hundred fifty meters in diameter and set in their ways.  They 
hadn't much liked calling on tiny strangers or having tiny strangers 
calling on them, and they'd liked it less that a youngster like Lehesu 
had gone and changed the nice, smooth, boring flow of life in the 
StarCave.
     The three had pointed out that Lando and Vuffi Raa couldn't 
simply go swimming off to meet the Elders.  Lehesu wasn't prepared to 
say what would happen if he attempted to transport them as he had his 
nutrient cylinder back in the foodless desert.  Nor was Lando prepared 
to risk such a venture.  With some Falcon where, with faster-than-light 
drives activated, they folhaggling, the pair of outsiders was permitted 
to return to the lowed the Oswaft down into the hollow center of the 
nebula.
     Under the triple suns of the StarCave, the Cave of the Elders was 
an impressive sight, glittering and gleaming from billions of points as 
it rotated slowly.  Vuffl Raa, using the ship's sensors, informed the 
gambler that there wasn't a valuable stone in the known galaxy that 
wasn't represented in huge quantities in the walls of the Cave.
     Moreover, the size of the gems would have sent a jeweler into a 
dead faint.
     Senwannus'gourkahipaff and Feytihennasraof bad awaited them within 
the Cave of the Elders.  Lehesu, with his excellent grasp of Lando's 
language, had spelled the names for the gambler and the robot, 
explaining that the apostrophe in Sen's name represented another dozen 
or so minor syllables the Elder was too modest to insist upon, and that 
there was a third Elder around somewhere who was busy and would join 
them later.
     "Our most cordial greetings, Captainmasterlando "had been Sen's 
first words in the new form of speech Lehesu had taught the Elder in a 
matter of seconds.  "I abjure you to forgive the somewhat overzealous 
invitation issued to you by our juniors.
     The senior Elder administered a mental nudge of admonishment to 
the pair-a maser bolt that would have holed the Falcon, deflectors and 
all.
     "Think nothing of it, Senwannus'gourkahipaff, your Eldership; 
they're not the first underlings to get carried away with borrowed 
authority.  What can we do for you?"
     "We are, " Fey replied, "given to understand that you have brought 
nutrients to replace those being destroyed by others of your kind 
outside the StarCave.  Is this correct?"
     Lando nodded, a gesture he wasn't sure the Oswaft could see or 
understand.  They'd left the Falcon parked outsidealthough now he 
wondered why he'd bothered as there was' f.
     plenty of room for her in the Cave-and jetted in to meet the 
Elders.  "That's right, sir.  Not very much, but it's only a beginning.
     And besides, I think I've figured out a way to get the Navy off 
your back."
     "But why should you bother yourself" Fey asked.  "And why should 
you oppose the actions and interests of your own kind in this matter?
     I'm afraid we do not understand you, Captainmaster and until we 
do, we cannot accept this gift you offer The Elders were at least a 
kilometer across, Fey being slightly smaller than Sen.  Lando felt 
silly negotiating with them-it was rather like carrying on a 
conversation with a large apartment building.  But from earlier 
conversations with Lehesu, he was prepared for their attitude and these 
very questions.
     "Well, aside from the fact that Vuffi Raa and I have grown rather 
fond of young Lehesu, here, we consider it a sort of a game."  Lando 
wished, as he hung in space beside the huge raylike creature, that 
there was some provision for smoking a cigar in a spacesuit.  He felt 
better making business talk if he could smoke.
     "A game?  Please explain what you mean."
     "Sure, Sen.  I understand that you folks like mental puzzles.
     Well, my folks do, too.  Only we've found a way to make them more 
interesting and challenging: we turn them into games.
     That's where somebody else tries to solve the puzzle 'first or 
better, or opposes your solution of it while he tries to work out his 
own."
     "Fascinating, " Sen mused, almost to himself.  He turned to Fey.
     "Have you ever conceived of such a thing?"
     No answer came from the Elder.  To a being so ancient, a new 
concept came as something of a shock.
     "Right," Lando said, jetting closer to the pair of aliens.
     "And just to make it more fascinating, we try to play for 
something a little better than the sheer joy of solving the puzzle."
     "Such as what?"  both Elders said at once.
     "Well, permit me to demonstrate, friends.  Now take the game of 
sabacc "Am I missing something obvious here," Lando offered 
conversationally as he took another "card7' and the others considered 
their hands, "or are you people completely resigned to dying?"
     A pale pink tinge suffused through Lehesu at Lando's boldness 
toward the Elders, but he kept his peace, trusting the gambler.  Sen 
and Fey both performed the equivalent of looking up from their cards.
     Lando's helmet indicators said he was being brushed lightly by 
twin radar beams.
     He knew the beings were far from stupid.  Their transparent bodies 
made it easier and more difficult at the same time to figure out their 
internal arrangements, but from what he'd seen, he guessed that about 
two-thirds of their mass was brain, and pretty astute brain at that.
     "Ah yes, " Sen answered finally, "that was the reason you were 
demonstrating sabacc to us.  I had become so fascinated with the game 
itself I had quite forgotten that its purpose was explaining why you 
wished to help us.  So, you play a great sabacc game with your own kind 
out there, and we are a part of it.  No, my friend, we do not wish to 
die, but there seems little alternative.  I'll take a card, 
Starshipmillenniumfalcon, if you please.  " The ship, apparently 
unimpressed that it had been granted status not only as a person but as 
an Elder among the Oswaft, duly blipped out a signal representing one 
of the seventy-eight sabacc cards, and fell silent again.
     "There are plenty of alternatives, friend, there always are.
     The first, of course, is that you can give up and die.  I'm glad 
to hear you reject it.  That's a beginning, anyway.  Sabacc!  That 
makes twenty-three million you owe me.  Can we take a break?
     I have to visit certain facilities aboard my ship, and we can 
carry on this conversation from there."
     He jetted across the Cave of the Elders, leaving the Oswaft 
behind, climbed onto the hull of the Falcon and into the airlock hatch, 
where Vuffi Raa greeted him.  "Patch the intercom into the 
ship-to-ship, will you?  I need a cigar to think properly, and the 
powwow has reached a critical point."
     "Yes, Master, I've been listening.  What are we going to do with 
twenty-three million credits worth of precious stones?  I don't believe 
we have room in the-" "We'll figure that out when there's a point to 
it.  Right now staying alive gets top priority."  He'd unsealed his 
helmet and hung it on a rack, and, retaining the rest of his suit, 
climbed down into the lounge, where for once he left the gravity on, 
enjoying the feel of some weight under him.
     "The second alternative," he continued, once contact was 
reestablished, "is to fight.  You folks have some impressive talents; 
your size alone is pretty terrifying, at least for people of my size, 
but I think@' "Captainmasterlandocalrissian, " interrupted Sen, "we are 
not a fighting people, in fact the concept is nearly as new to us as 
that of gaming-and somewhat related, I would guess.  In any event, 
there is a third way .  . . " "And what would that be?"  the gambler 
asked as he slowly and deliberately singed the business end of a cigar, 
keeping the flame well away from the tip.
     "Negotiation.  You will recall mention of a third Elder, 
Bhoggihalysahonues?  At this moment, she and a delegation of other 
Oswaft have appeared at the mouth of the StarCave and are signaling for 
a peace-conference with your fleet.  We wish to ask upon what terms-" 
"You bet your apostrophe I remember Boggy, and I can predict exactly 
what's going to happen, Sen.  The Navy wants you dead, old beanbag, and 
that's the only terms they're going to settle for.  I've seen their 
work on other occasions, and you can believe me when I-" "This is much 
as I had surmised," the second Elder said, "and I opposed the attempt, 
yet we are an open and free people and would not prevent our third 
Elderfrom trying what she might.  Yet you have mentioned other 
alternatives to dying, fighting, and negotiating.  " "There's running 
away."
     "What, and leave the ThonBoka?"  So much emotion loaded the 
response that Lando couldn't tell which Oswaft it had come from.  He 
poured himself a glass of fruit juice (spacesuits tend to dehydrate one 
a bit) and sat back down, puffing on his cigar.  Vuffi Raa was forward, 
keeping his big red eye on the controls.  It was difficult but 
important to remember that they were still in deep space.  He could see 
how the Oswaft thought of the place as a safe haven.
     "I don't know," he said at last.  "I gather from Lehesu's 
experiences that you folks aren't biologically tied to the place.
     It's an alternative to dying, isn't it?"
     A long, long silence ensued while the massive brains outside 
processed his heresy.  Finally: I am not sure, Lando, that it is a 
desirable alternative.  We are the ThonBoka; the Thonboka is the 
Oswaft.  Would you willingly be driven out of your home, accept an 
eternity of wandering-" He laughed.  "Sen, I accepted wandering as a 
way of LIFE a long time ago.  It beats the Core out of working for a 
living."
     ler mused.  There were a lot of strange life-forms in The gatnb 
the galaxy, ranging, in the matter of size alone, from these gigantic 
creatures, the largest he'd ever heard of, down to the tiny Crokes of 
... well, something-or-other.  He couldn't't remember the system.  What 
made it interesting was that in his travels he'd observed that the 
biggest critters were almost invariably the most gentle and timid.
     Well, it made sense: if you were little, you had to learn to be 
tough.
     If you were big, it didn't matter.  He guessed he'd always thought 
of himself as somewhere in the middle.
     "Okay, yeah.  Well, what if you appeared to do one or another of 
these things-sort of like the way I taught you to bluff in sabacc?  Say 
you looked like you were going to destroy the fleet.  Or, say you 
looked like you we're all dead?  I hate to bring up a touchy subject, 
but Lehesu tells me you folks sort of disintegrate when you-die, drift 
away in a cloud of dust?"
     Another long, uncomfortable silence.  At long last, the daring 
Lehesu spoke for his Elders.  "That's correct, Lando, we return to our 
constituent molecules.  Not the happiest of thoughts.
     Why, is it important?"
     Finishing his cigar, Lando stood, walked back to the ladder and up 
to the airlock, screwed on his helmet, and went outside The Cave of the 
Elders floated beside the Falcon like a fantastic decorated egg, a 
million brilliant colors, a billion gleaming facets.  He drifted toward 
the entrance and faced the three giant beings who waited for him there.
     "Yes, it could be very important.  It means you don't leave any 
remains behind that can be detected against the normal molecular 
background of space.  It means they won't be looking for any stiffs."
     "Stiffs?"  the three said at once.
     "Bodies, corpses, DOAS, meat, Qs-corpora delicti.  Tell me, what 
are conditions like out by the wall of the StarCave?"
     If Oswaft had been capable of blinking at a rapid change of 
subject, Sen, at least would have done so.  "Why, not terribly 
different from here.  A bit colder but not uncomfortably so.
     "Vuffi Raa," Lando said into the radio in his suit, "get me some 
scanning data on the nebula wall, will you?  I've been working on an 
idea.  Sen, Fey, Lehesu, can you people get through the wall at all?"
     Lehesu replied, being the only one with any practical experience 
in the matter.  "It is all but impenetrable.  One cannotwhat is your 
expression?-'starhop' because one cannot see where one is going.  It is 
said that attempting it in any case will cause one to burst into flame 
and vanish."
     Lando considered this.  "Makes sense.  No matter how diffuse the 
gas and dust is, translight speeds will create that kind of friction.
     How deep could you-what is your expression?,swim' into the wall if 
you had to?  Far enough so that sensors couldn't detect you?"
     It was Lehesu's turn to think.  While he was doing so, a sudden 
burst of radio transmissions entered the Cave of the Elders.
     It caused some stir.  Lando couldn't understand what was being 
said, but no one interrupted the conversation for a translation, so the 
gambler put it out of his mind.
     At long last: "Yes, I believe such might be possible.  If I follow 
your line of reasoning, you would have us conceal ourselves, we and all 
of the Oswaft, within the folds and billows of the wall until the 
fleet, believing in their despicable villainy that we had starved to 
death, gave up and went away to impose misfortune upon someone else.
     But what would you have us do about the molecular residue that-" 
The gambler grinned.  "I have that all figured out, my overlarge 
friend.
     It wouldn't take very much, would it?  How about a little of my 
cargo, judiciously sprayed all over the place?"
     "Lando!  I believe the idea might work.  Esteemed Elders, may I 
ask-" "Silence, young one.  Peace!  We have something else to ponder at 
this moment, something very disturbing.
     "What's happening, Sen, what's going on?"
     The giant spoke: "Bhoggihalysahonues' attempts to negotiate an end 
to these insane hostilities have ended in disaster!
     She, and all of her party-a thousand of our people-were murdered 
with energy-weapons almost the moment they appeared at the mouth of the 
ThonBoka and greeted the nearest vessel" "I'm sorry to hear it, Sen ...
     but, well, it doesn't really change things very much, does it?"
     "I am afraid, Captainmasterlandocalrissiansir that it does.
     You see, unfortunately, and in their consternation-the details 
aren't very clear-the negotiation party shouted at the ...
     'cruiser' much as I did in an unthinking moment just now at the 
two Oswaft who brought you here so ill-usedly.  " "Yeah.  I felt it, 
and it was a tight beam.  The Courteous?
     What happened to her?"  He had a bad feeling about this.
     Sen gave the broadcast equivalent of a mournful sigh.
     "She-your Courteous-was not well defended, as is your Millennium 
Falcon, by deflector-shields, for they thought our people harmless.
     "Thus was the Courteous utterly destroyed."
     "Swell," Lando said, more to himself than to the Elders.
     "Nothing like a premature war on our hands."
     "The rest of the fleet, with full shields up now, has entered the 
ThonBoka mouth to murder us all in retribution.
     xi KLYN SHANGA GRINNED a humorless grin.  "Well, Bern, you've 
really put your foot in it this time, old friend."
     The wiry little man on the fold-down cot spread his skinny arms 
and shrugged, returning his commander's rueful smile.
     He wore a dark-green military shipsuit with a well-abraded band 
around the waist where he was used to carrying a gunbelt.  Shanga's 
low-slung holster was likewise empty; no weapons were permitted in the 
cell-block of the Wennis' detention sector.
     "You know what they say, Boss, sometimes you trick the sorcerer, 
sometimes the sorcerer tricks you."  He pursed his lips, tongue 
protruding generously, and made a rude and juicy noise.
     An alarmed look playing momentarily over his broad and deeply 
seamed features, Shanga glanced around reflexively for listening 
devices.
     His smaller associate laughed.  "What're they gonna do, throw me 
in the clink for insubordination?  That'd be like jailing a murderer 
for littering."  Harsh light from the naked overhead bulb reflected 
from the man's equally naked scalp.  Where he did have hair, on the 
sides and back, it was clipped into a dirty gray stubble.
     Shanga sat down on the cot beside his friend, extracted a pair of 
cigars from a pocket.  There was a brief silence while they got them 
lit.  "Well, I've got to admit, when you tried hijacking that 
auxiliary, you climbed pretty high on the wanted list.  I wish to the 
Core you'd consulted me before you-" "What, and have you wind up here, 
yourself?  Boss, you know you'd have done the same thing I did.  There 
are five pinnaces tucked away aboard this scow with the capability for 
faster-than-light travel, and our fighters can't hack it.  If that 
blockade fleet moves in before we get to the nebula, we're gonna lose 
the Butcher!"
     And our reason for living, Shanga thought, reading the same 
thoughts displayed on his friend's face.  Bern Nuladeg was the only 
member of his squadron who went back with him to before his original 
retirement.  They'd served their country together in d brief but bloody 
conflict with one of its neighbors, earning their wings, both of them 
becoming aces.  When Shanga retired, Nuladeg had gone on to become a 
flight instructor, finally the commander of his nation-state's flight 
academy.  The invasion from the stars had changed all of that.
     Now they flew together in a squadron made up not only of their 
fellow countrymen but of personnel belonging to their former enemy, 
individuals from other nations, other planets in their system.  They 
were all Renatasians, and they all wanted the same thing.  Vengeance.
     "I know, Bern, I know.  That's why you did it on your own didn't 
take any of the others along.  You were going to steal that lighter 
yourself-then what?"
     The small, bald-headed figure chuckled.  "Hadn't gotten that far 
along in my plans.  Days before we reach the ThonBoka at this speed, 
Myn, days!  What can Gepta be thinking of, permitting the invasion to 
begin before we get there?  I heard the story-had the ring of truth to 
it-and acted.  Guess I would have swung around and offered you fellows 
a ride, if I'd had the chance.  I dunno.  What're they gonna do to me, 
do you suppose?"
     Shanga shook his head.  "I have a meeting-an 'audience,' he'd like 
to style it-with our gray-robed cousin in an hour or so.  We're going 
to talk about it then.  I won't lie to you, it doesn't look good.  You 
should see the way he treats his own people."
     Nuladeg's laughter was practically a giggle now.  "I know!
     That's what made swiping that machine so blasted easy: everybody 
was afraid to move for fear of getting terminally reprimanded!  Whoever 
said dictatorship's efficient, Boss?  It'd be funny if it weren't so 
downright stupid."  He drew on his cigar, blew a smoke ring toward the 
bulb in the ceiling.  Then his laughter died along with the smile 
creasing his face.
     "Klyn, promise me one thing: don't worry about me enough to stop 
this mission.  Whatever you do.  I mean it.  I can take whatever they 
dish out, but I can't stand the thought - - ."
     Bern Nuladeg's entire family had been killed by Imperial troopers 
enjoying a few hours off-duty time.  It had been a lark for them, and 
had only finished what they'd actually been guilty of.  The field 
commander for the group had dismissed it as a prank-the same commander 
was found the next morning, in his own bed, with a bayonet thrust 
through his lower jaw into his brain.  No one had ever solved the 
mystery of how it had been done in a heavily guarded building on the 
grounds of the former flight academy, nor of who had done it or why.
     "All right, old friend," Shanga sighed.  He'd always thought that 
Nuladeg, who was the better pilot, experienced with command 
responsibility, ought to have been running the tattered squadron.  The 
little man had refused even the number-two position, citing an 
impulsiveness that no one had truly believed in until now.  "I'll see 
what I can do.  You're right, I'm afraid.  I was thinking about those 
pinnaces myself, when I heard about the moves against the StarCave.
     I'll see what I can do and be back with you as soon as possible."
     He rapped loudly on the wall, pointedly ignoring the call button 
beside the force-fielded door.  "Guards!  Let me out of here!  I have 
to see a toad about a man!"
     A quarter of a galaxy away, the One, the Other, and the Rest raced 
to keep a rendezvous.  They had come from even farther, and their speed 
was something no one in what Lando and his friends regarded as a 
civilization would have believed.
     "We move so slowly!"  the Other complained, plunging through 
hyperspace beside the One.  "I fear we shall not get there on time!"
     The One allowed himself to be distracted from his headlong course 
long enough to indicate a smile.  "Impatience from you, after all this 
time, my friend?  Truly, this is an era of changes.  Never fear, we 
shall learn what we shall learn, regardless.  1, too, would prefer that 
we-" The Other interrupted.  "Events move of their own accord!
     What shall come to pass is unpredictable!  It is Chaos, I tell 
you, Chaos!"
     "And there ought to be a law?  Remember, comrade, that it is this 
state of unpredictability which nearly every race endures for all of 
its life-span.  It is in this state that we began, and we are unusual 
in surviving it.  We very nearly died of boredom; would that have been 
more desirable?"
     "Don't lecture me!"  the Other replied with uncharacteristic 
sharpness.  "I know as well as you do of the dangers that confronted 
us.  I was the first to consent to your plan.  Do not begrudge me the 
right to complain of some of its consequences; it assists me in 
adjusting to the inevitable."
     Laughter crackled through the distorted space around them.
     "Nothing is inevitable anymore, dear comrade, nothing!  That is 
the entire point of the experiment!"
     "Well, I hope your experiment will produce a cure for smugness, 
then.  I personally shall take great pleasure in restraining you while 
it is forcibly administered!"
     Once again laughter sundered the twisted ether as the One, the 
disgruntled Other, and the Rest, in various states of mind, plunged 
onward.
     "Nonsense!"  Rokur Gepta hissed from the corner of his apartments 
below the control deck.  "He is mine to deal with, and I tell you he 
shall be sectioned alive before the entire crew-yours included, Admiral 
Shanga-as an example!"
     It was the first time the fighter commander had ever seen the 
sorcerer pace nervously.  The time was growing near for the resolution 
of a number of crises, and the Renatasian had a suspicion that Gepta, 
too, feared he would be robbed of his victory by a trigger-happy fleet 
Commodore.
     Carrying disrespect to new heights because he felt the effect

     AND THE @TARCAVE OF THONBOKA 357

     was necessary, Shanga flopped into the sorcerer's huge chair.
     "Gepta, you old charlatan, you know better than that, and if you 
don't, I'll tell you now.  Keep Bern Nuladeg in the brig, if you wish, 
until we get to the ThonBoka.  He could use the rest, and it'll keep 
him out of trouble.  Not to mention saving your well-concealed face.
     But execute him, and I'm through with you.  I'll take my squadron 
and@' "You'll do what you are told!"  Gepta made a threatening magical 
gesture.
     Shanga laughed.  "Save your parlor tricks, old man!  We stopped 
doing what we were told when your precious Navy destroyed anything we 
had to lose by disobeying.  Tlwenty-three loose cannon, Gepta, and 
they're all pointed at you unless you@, "Silence!  I have no further 
need for you, Klyn Shanga.  You have foolishly told me where Lando 
Calrissian might be found.
     We will soon be there, and he is trapped by the fleet, cannot get 
away from the justice I shall mete out.  You serve no purpose.  You are 
dispensable!"
     Shanga obtained another cigar from inside his suit, lit it, and 
spat out a flake of tobacco onto the carpeted floor.
     "Yeah?  Well, I spent a little time with your pet professor today.
     You'll recall you instructed him to be free and easy with 
information bearing on combat operations in the nebula?  What he had to 
say about the guff relayed this morning from the fleet was very 
interesting.
     Very interesting, indeed."
     Gepta, his back turned to the squadron commander, spoke to the 
wall.  "And what was that?"
     "Ask your own people if you don't believe me.  We're up against 
it, Gepta.  There are something like a billion Oswaft in that sack, 
every one of them as dangerous as a fighter ship.
     Something about folks like us being electrochemical in nature, our 
nervous systems, anyway.  Well, the Oswaft are what your boy is calling 
'organoelectronic.' I don't know exactly everything that implies, but 
they can think and act and maneuver a lot faster than we can.  What's 
more, a flock of them destroyed the Courteous.  Nobody knows how."
     Gepta whirled on Shanga.  "What has this to do with disposition of 
your group, Admiral?"  The way the sorcerer pronounced his title may 
have been the most sarcastic thing that Shanga had ever heard.  With 
difficulty he shrugged off the implied threat, returned to calculated 
insult.
     "So you think you're going to get anywhere with the clumsy 
children you've got manning this ship?  I told you, Gepta, they're 
amateurs, and they're so scared at balling things up, they'll ball them 
up anyway!  I think what Bern Nuladeg tried this morning ought to 
demonstrate pretty well how frightened we are, of you, or of anything 
else.  You need us, you pretentious idiot, and you're going to lose 
this operation without us.
     You may have already.  Have you heard from the fleet?"
     There was a long, long silence while Rokur Gepta gained control of 
himself.  No one, not for perhaps twenty thousand years, had spoken to 
him in such a manner and lived-or even died a quick and merciful death.
     In fact some of them had lasted, under one instrument of both 
torture and regeneration or another, for centuries.  Klyn Shanga might 
be one such, after this was over.
     Very well, then, the sorcerer reasoned, it should not matter what 
immediate disposition he made of Shanga or his underlings.  They would 
serve their purpose in the coming conflict, and any who survived ...
     But he had one more source of infon'nation to consult.  He strode 
rapidly to the chair that Shanga occupied, ignored the man, and pressed 
a button.  "Send me the Ottdefa Osuno Whett immediately."
     Not three minutes later, the compartment door whisked aside, and 
the anthropologist stepped in.  The tall, emaciated professor took in 
what was to be seen, sensed conflict momentarily postponed, and vowed 
to himself to get out of the way as soon as he could manage it.
     "You have been following the information from the fleet?"
     the sorcerer asked without prehrninaries.
     "Of course, sir, l@' "What do they tell you of the capabilities of 
the Oswaft?"
     Shanga grinned, but kept his silence.
     "Well, sir, it is a confirmation of my earlier studies.  In a 
cellular sense, these beings seem to exist on a sort of solid-state 
level, something like primitive electronics.  This accounts for their 
communications abilities and-" "How is this known?  Is it merely 
surmise, or are there data?"
     The anthropologist's astonishment grew every time Gepta snapped at 
him.  Along with his fear.  "Sir, a number of vessels did a full-range 
scan at the moment the creatures were destroyed.  Most of them were 
vaporized when the Courteous went up.  In fact, it's possible that not 
one of them was injured by fire from the fleet.  They simply 
miscalculated the destructive radius of an exploding cruiser.  The 
Courteous did open fire, but there wasn't any time t@' The sorcerer 
raised a hand and the scientist halted.  "By what means did the Oswaft 
destroy the cruiser Courteous@ Ottdefa?
     And how vulnerable do you suppose they are to the navy's weapons?"
     When hesitated before he began again: "Sir, as difficult as it may 
be to believe, it appears that simple microwaves were the method, but 
at incredible power levels.  This is consistent with their ability to 
hypertravel, since it, too, is an energyintensive phenomenon.  There is 
also the fact to consider that the Courteous was unshielded-I believe 
the circumstances are referred to as 'garrison discipline'?  Shielded, 
I believe a ship would be quite safe.  To answer your second question, 
there is no reason to believe that the Oswaft would be any more 
impervious to disintegrator beams, tractor-pressor beams, disruptors, 
and the like, than any other living thing."
     The sorcerer stood deep in thought, one hand where his chin should 
have been under his wrappings.  Shanga sat, apparently relaxed and 
smoking his cigar, while Whett stood nearly at attention.
     "One final question, Ottdefa: how many Oswaft are there?"
     "Sir, there is no direct way of knowing.  Estimates range from 
several hundred million to a few billion."
     Shanga laughed.  "Since when do the words 'few' and 'billion' 
belong in the same sentence.  Gepta, they could whittle down the fleet 
by sheer attrition, and-" "Silence," the sorcerer said with unusual 
gentleness, "I must think.  Ottdefa, I will speak with you later, thank 
you for your report."  The door whooshed open and closed behind the 
grateful anthropologist.
     Then Gepta addressed Shanga.  "Admiral, you are no friend of mine, 
and, after this operation, will never again be an ally.
     But you have spoken the truth to me, and I am compelled to 
recognize it.  Very well, we shall do as you have suggested.
     Your man-what was his name?-will remain confined until we reach 
the nebula, whereupon he will revert to your command.  I trust you and 
your squadron will serve me as you have implicitly promised."
     The fighter pilot rose wearily and stubbed out his cigar.
     Rearranging his newly recovered blaster on his leg more 
comfortably, he walked toward the door, turned back to the sorcerer at 
the last moment.
     "I haven't any reason to want to send you flowers, either, old 
man, but we've got a common enemy.  We'll stick with you until that's 
taken care of Talk to you later."  He stepped through the door and was 
gone.
     Scarcely noticing the man had left this time, Rokur Gepta paced 
awhile more, then, with a more determined stride than before, turned to 
his chair.  He seated himself and activated several cameras.  He pushed 
a button.  "For immediate recording and beamcast to the fleet," he 
directed unseen technicians: "Upon my own unanswerable authority, I 
order you to cease all combat operations upon receipt of this 
transmission and to return to your positions on the original blockade 
perimeter.
     "Evasion or failure, on the part of any officer, at any level, to 
comply swiftly with this direct order will be punishable by summary 
revocation of all rank and privileges, judiciary and ceremonial 
impoverishment and sale into bondage of all family members within five 
degrees of consanguinity, and for the perpetrator himself, slow 
mutilation and death upon public display.
     "I, Rokur Gepta, Sorcerer of Tund, command it."
     The camera lights went out.
     Gepta sat back in his chair, feeling much better.  This would buy 
them all some time, and resolve part of the conflict between Klyn 
Shanga and himself.  Odd, he hadn't had a real adversary to stand up to 
him for thousands of years.  No one dared oppose his ruthless exercise 
of power.  Everywhere he went, people in their masses, and as 
individuals, feared, hated, and served him.
     Except for Lando Caffissian.
     And now, possibly even worse than the itinerant gamblerbecause the 
affront seemed deliberately calculated-there was I<Iyn Shanga.
     The most peculiar aspect of it was that, somehow, it felt good.
     xii THE OTTDEFA OSUNO Vvhett reflected.
     Shuddering in the relative security of his assigned quarters in 
officer's country, he considered himself extremely lucky just to be 
alive that morning.  He'd seen others broken, figuratively and 
literally, at the malignant whim of Rokur Gepta, individuals guilty of 
nothing more than reporting a purely mechanical failure or bringing him 
information he didn't want to assimilate.  To be trapped in the middle 
of a dispute between the evil sorcerer and his reluctant-and no doubt 
soon-to-be fonnerpartner, that barbarian Shanga ...
     He crossed the cramped living-sleeping space allotted him, noting 
that he'd forgotten to fold the cot into the wall in his earlier haste 
to answer Gepta's summons.  So-he was still accustomed to depending on 
a servant after all.  this time.  It was a weakness to make note of and 
correct.
     The gray military wallcoat of the compartment still oppressed him, 
despite the decorations-ceremonial masks,- garish shields, primitive 
hand-powered weapons-he'd hung up here and there.  He'd have to see 
what else he carried in his luggage down below in the storage hold.  It 
would brighten the place up and strengthen the official "cover" that 
allowed him to travel thus encumbered in the first place.
     Entering the tiny head, he sloughed off the casual civilian 
shipsuit he'd been wearing, now soaked through with perspiration and 
smelling foul.  He wasn't on the schedule for a shower at this time of 
day, and hadn't had time for it when the fixtures had been operational.
     Thank the Core for the mixture of intelligent species whose 
differences in personal habits and physical characteristics made 
individual quarters (at least at his level of rank) a necessity rather 
than a luxury even aboard this spartan vessel.  At that, it could be 
worse: he could be quartered with the noncoms or conscriptees.  It 
wouldn't have been unprecedented; his long career had seen him assume 
many stranger poses.  Now all he desired was a refreshing wash, which 
he attended to at the small sink (set into the shower stall along with 
the toilet) with its trickle of lukewarm recycled water.  An ironic 
expression greeted him in the mirror above the sink.
     Well, he had survived, as he had always survived.  All it had 
required was layer upon layer of carefully prepared deception.
     It was the sole art to which he could truly lay claim, the only 
way he could expect to get out of this mess with his skin intact.
     That accursed robot: it had been responsible for all his troubles 
in recent years.  Gepta and Shanga were headed toward the TbonBoka 
nebula-from Tund, on the outskirts of one side of civilization, to the 
StarCave, on the fringes of the other sidefor nothing more than 
revenge.  Perhaps he, himself, the soidisant Ottdefa Osuno Whett, would 
be enjoying a little vengeance, too, when the Wennis finally arrived at 
its destination.
     He splashed water on his thin, elongated face, his neck and bony 
chest, ran a laser over his stubble, and remembered.
     He'd been younger then, of course, and his appearance considerably 
different.  Afterward, he'd had four centimeters of bonemer grafted 
into each tibia, fibula, and femur to increase his height, 
proportionate amounts added to his arms as well, and an extra vertebra 
interleaved in his spine.  It was painful, and it had taken several 
months just to accustom himself to the new leverages, the new bodily 
rhythms the surgery imposed.
     He was still learning, and, in the meantime, gave an unnaturally 
awkward and gangling impression.  This he welcomed, as it added to his 
disguise.  He'd also lost some forty kilogramsamazing how much that 
alone had rendered him unrecognizable.  The hair had whitened of its 
own accord, as whose wouldn't in the knowledge that something of the 
order of a billion individuals wanted to see him painfully dead, and 
were willing to do something positive about it.  He'd left the hair 
alone, changing only its style.  It, too, served his purpose, which 
amounted simply to staying alive in a murderous business.  He'd already 
outlived the average life-expectancy in his profession by over thirty 
years.
     The tap water shut itself off.  He dried himself vigorously with 
the only towel he'd be permitted on the voyage, picked up the soiled 
shipsuit from where he'd dropped it, and crossed the cabin to the tiny 
partitioned alcove where his travel bag hung unfolded.  Depositing the 
old clothes on the closet floor, he got out another set, dressed 
himself carefully and comfortably, then made another withdrawal from 
his bag, went to the unfolded bunk with a small electronic device 
clutched almostdesperately in his knobbly fingers.
     He lay down, placed the mechanism beside him, drew a small cable 
from it, and fastened the eye-mask on its free end over his face.  His 
hand hovered over a large green button on the side of the black plastic 
case.
     Then he paused in thought once more.
     The Renatasia had been a lovely system.
     He recalled it vividly: eight plump planets and a cheerful 
medium-size yellow star set a surprising number of parsecs outside the 
then-current margins of the @llion-system Empire.
     Apparently they'd been human-colonized in some dim spacefaring 
prehistory, although no records of the event Survived, either there or 
in "civilized" reaches.  For the Administration a million systems, of 
course, were not enough.  A billion wouldn't be.  Thus Renatasia must 
be brought under its kindly influence.
     Renatasia III and IV were the jewels in their cozy and 
conveniently isolated diadem.  From space they appeared warm, lush, 
green and inhabited by a people who used steel, titanium, and simple 
organoplastics, were capable of wringing useful amounts of energy from 
the core of the atom, and who had not only reached but profitably 
colonized every one of the remaining six bodies in their system, from 
freeze-dried outermost, to charcoal flamb6ed innermost-albeit under 
domes and in burrows, rather than through the total climatic 
transformation that even the Empire often found too expensive to 
pursue.
     They had not quite reinvented faster-than-light spacedrives, 
although they were fiddling with its theoretical underpinnings.
     Nor had they yet made the basic discoveries that would inevitably 
lead them to such mechanisms as deflector shields, tractor-pressor 
beams, disruptors, and disintegrators-a fact for which the Centrality 
navy was later to be rather embarrassedly grateful.  For they could 
also fight, it developed, like the very devil.  They'd been doing it 
for millennia.
     Mathilde was the capital city of a nation-state of the same name, 
located on the second largest continent of Renatasia 111.
     Reception of the system's crude, flat, electronic sound-andpicture 
transmissions revealed that her citizens spoke a much-corrupted version 
of the commonest language of the galaxy-this was to serv - e as 
justification for the intervention that came later-and were the most 
prosperous and technologically advanced people in the system, their 
offworld colonies the most numerous and successful.
     The nation-state of Mathilde, along with others like it, was 
located in the north temperate zone, and divided its activities about 
equally between agriculture and manufacturing.  Just like every other 
polity in the system, it had forgotten its long-past origins elsewhere 
in the galaxy.  Mathildean writers and scholars speculated about what 
future explorers would discover among the stars, and whether there was 
intelligent life in outer space.
     A severely damaged civilian star-freighter had first happened upon 
the Renatasia System by accident.  Once it had limped back to port for 
repairs, her captain had dutifully.reported the system's existence to 
the government.  No contact had been made by the freighter, which made 
things very much easier for the intelligence operative assigned the 
task of establishing official communications.  The Ottdefa Osuno Whett.
     His academic credentials had always been the perfect cover for a 
Centrality spy.  Where can an anthropologist not go and poke his long, 
thin nose into the most intimate and personal details of a culture?
     Before leaving, his superiors had equipped him, more or less 
against his better judgment, with an assistant, a rather odd little 
droid of obviously alien manufacture who said his name was Vuffi Raa 
and that, owing to a mishap of some sort involving a deep-space pirate 
attack while he was being shipped in a packing crate, he was unable to 
remember his place of origin or the species who had built him.  Whett 
was scientist enough-and a genuine anthropologist-to be frustrated by 
the lack of information.  Centrality Intelligence was even less 
helpful.  They simply told him to stop asking stupid questions and get 
on with his assignment.  He got on.
     Vuffi Raa did prove to be useful in many ways.  He was a superb 
personal valet, had a capacious memory, an astute intelligence with an 
easy grasp for every cultural nuance.  He was utterly obedient@xcept 
that Whett couldn't get the little droid to call him master.
     Actually, that turned out all to the good.  Before landing their

     AND THE STARCAVE OF THOMBOKA 365

     small, unarmed entry vessel on the front lawn of the Mathildean 
chief executive's official residence, among bands and fanfares and 
uncounted cocked and loaded weapons, Vuffi Raa had been instructed to 
disguise himself as an organic being with sophisticated plastics 
simulating skin.
     It occurred to Whett that perhaps the droid would then resemble 
his original manufacturers.  It was a galaxy-wide assumption that 
droids tended to be designed in the image of their makers.  However, he 
shelved the speculation; they had other problems at present.
     The robot would pose as the leader of the diplomatic expedition, 
an envoy from a starry federation Way Out There, ready to welcome the 
Renatasians into the fold.  That was Whett's habitual deception at 
work.  He assumed the role of humble assistant and secretary.  This 
kept him neatly out of a spotlight he felt it would eventually be safer 
to avoid, knowing standard policy toward unclaimed but occupied 
territory.
     The Ottdefa Osuno Whett, lying in his tiny cabin aboard the 
decommissioned cruiser Wennis, en route to the ThonBoka, pan ' sed 
momentarily in his musings and finally pushed the button on the 
electronic box beside him on the cot.  A tide of relaxation funneled 
into his brain through the bony wave guides of his eye sockets.  It was 
followed by another and another and another, each successively smaller, 
yet still soothing.  To run the device continuously would put him into 
deep sleep, a condition he must avoid in the event the sorcerer should 
call on him again.  But the waves of rest were almost as good.
     He pushed the button again.
     More memories came to him, unbidden.
     After the initial, inevitable awkwardness of first contact, the 
Mathildeans, along with everybody in the rest of the system, took Vuffi 
Raa to their hearts.  He addressed international conclaves.  He 
presided over formal banquets.  He was photographed with scantily clad 
media- personalities.  He was compelled to turn down offers involving 
the endorsement of consumer products.  Even so, small replicas of the 
five-limbed droid began showing up in stores almost from the beginning, 
and several sizable fortunes were made for their enterprising creators.
     All the while, a short, plump, dark-haired Ottdefa Osuno Whett 
made observations and unobtrusive recordings.  Estimates were made and 
updated concerning the strength of the Renatasian economy, the 
effectiveness of the system's defenses.  It was accepted as a given 
that invasion would unite the deeply divided civilization.  Whett would 
have preferred to play upon those divisions, in effect to let the 
system conquer itself, but the navy was beneath such subtleties.  Some 
effort was made by the authorities to limit the pair's access to 
highsecurity installations, but they didn't take account of a spy 
technology centuries ahead of Renatasia's.
     As he lay in his cot aboard the Wennis, Whett's mind was upon 
another day, another place.  His hand hovered over the button of the 
electronic relaxer, just as it had hovered, in the small cabin of their 
landing vehicle, over a button on the communicator panel.  Pushing the 
button would transmit all the data he had collected and trigger the 
invasion by the navy.
     "Well, robot, the great moment has arrived!  This will alter the 
history of Renatasia forever@' "It will bring history to an end in this 
system, sir, not alter it."
     Whett was sitting in the passenger's seat.  Their machine was 
stored near the hotel in which they were living, and the excuse had 
frequently been offered that Vuffi Raa required certain nutrients and 
gases in order to subsist in the (to him) foreign atmosphere of 
Renatasia 111.  There had been some thought of holding the craft and 
examining it-the military mind is the same the universe over-but it had 
been vetoed by a Mathildean chief executive very much aware of the 
visitor's popularity.
     "Cold feet, from a droid?  Why haven't you said anything about 
this before?"  Whett was annoyed.  The creature was spoiling his moment 
of supreme triumph.  Still, there was no specific way he could fault 
the machine; it spoke the objective truth, was in fact incapable of 
speaking anything else.  History would end for Renatasian civilization 
within a'few days of his pressing the button.
     "I am a droid, sir, constructed to obey.  Your remark seemed 
inferentially to require a reply, that is all."  The robot sat in the 
pilot's chair, its limbs at rest, its eye glowing dully in the dim 
light of the concrete parking garage.
     "I suggest that you address me as master, robot."
     "I'm sorry, sir, I am not programmed to respond in that area. 
Savagely, Whett jammed his thumb down on the button.  A small amber 
light glowed to life on the panel; no other sign appeared.  The deed 
was done, could not be called back.
     Vuffi Raa's eye dimmed almost to extinction, as if the power to 
transmit the treacherous information was being drained from his supply.
     The next few days were bedlam, exactly as Whett had expected.  The 
navy appeared at the fringes of the system, close enough to be fully 
detectable by Renatasian defense sensors.
     They even let the local military lob a few primitive thermonuclear 
weapons at them to demonstrate the utter futility of, resistance.  The 
fleet's shields glowed briefly, restoring energy consumed by the voyage 
out, and that was that.  Almost.
     Unfortunately for the Navy and high-technology aggressors 
everywhere in space and time, invasions cannot be conducted with 
continent-destroying weapons or from behind shields.  Not unless you're 
willing to obliterate the enemy, and not at all if you're interested in 
taking what the enemy has: raw materials, agricultural products, 
certain manufactured goods, and the potential labor of her citizens.
     While the fleet sat tight and safe in orbit above the eight 
planets of Renatasia, 93 percent of the first wave of troopers were 
savagely massacred by the locals, using chemical bullet projectors, 
crude high-powered lasers, poison gases, clubs, meat cleavers, and 
fists.
     Eighty-seven percent of the second wave died similarly, even 
though they'd been forewarned, 71 percent of the third, and so on, The 
Navy was winning a glon'ous, disastrously expensive victory.  
Troopships carrying replacements began showing up at hourly intervals.
     Osuno Whett and Vuffi Raa had gone into hiding briefly after they 
had summoned the fleet.  Nevertheless, they were hunted and hounded 
across the face of the planet.  The relentless natives gleefully cut 
them off again and again from rescue by their uniformed compatriots.
     At long last they joined a force, a remnant of the third wave, 
which helped them get aboard a shuttle and into the safety of a 
Centrality battlewagon.  But not before the ugly, merciless 
extermination of two-thirds of the Renatasian population was an evil, 
personally experienced nightmare they would live withand sleep with-for 
the rest of their lives.
     Whett, in his cabin on the Wennis, pushed the button again.
     Waves of relaxation, but regrettably not of forgetfulness, swept 
through his tense and tortured body as tears coursed down his face.  It 
was a rare moment: generally he merely hated and feared the remaining 
Renatasians, having for the most part burnt out his circuitry for 
shame.  He had fled their persistent presence for a long, long time.
     Nor had he been unhappy when, at long last, his superiors had 
ordered him to "lose" the robot-both an unwelcome reminder and a dead 
giveaway to pursuers-to Lando Calrissian in a rigged sabacc game.
     That had been in the Oseon, and things had not turned out well for 
either the hopes of his superiors or for those of Rokur Gepta, who had 
personally supervised that particular operation.
     Now, alone with his real pursuers, his memories, Yvlhett realized 
that it was more than revenge he needed to accomplish in the ThonBoka.
     He had to see that robot destroyed.  It was a dangerous link, in 
more ways than one, to an even more dangerous past.  And he had to see 
an end, as well, to Captain Lando Calrissian, who could connect his new 
appearance, adopted before the game, with the robot.
     Very well, then: Gepta sought to destroy Cahissian; Shanga sought 
to destroy Vuffi Raa (because he didn't know the real mastemiind was a 
"hanniess" academic he had seen nearly every day); that academic must 
now seek to destroy them both, gambler and droid.
     Still he wondered, after all this time: where had that accursed 
robot come from, anyway?
     xiii THAT ACCURSED R0130T scratched his head.
     "Politics, saved our lives, Master?  I'm not altogether sure I 
understand."
     In reality, the gesture was more a matter of flicking a delicate 
tentacle tip around the bezel that retained the faceted red lens of his 
eye, mounted on the upper surface of his headless pentacular "torso."
     But its meaning was clear; he had picked it up from long 
association with human beings.  As usual, certain aspects of that 
association puzzled him.
     "Well, I'm only guessing, mind you, but a massive operation such 
as that Edge-blasted blockade out there, especially when it's being 
carried out in secret, presents a lot of opportunities to people 
envious of the boys on top."  Lando pried up his cigar from where he'd 
secured it to the edge of the bench top, drew deeply on it, expelled 
the smoke, and squashed it firmly once again, sideways, into the wad of 
chewing gum that, in the absence of gravity, held it where it wouldn't 
float away.
     "Do you want this end-wrench, Vuffi, or the adjustable spanner?"
     The robot glanced back at his master, squatting on the deck plates 
with one leg thrust under the bench for leverage and security, much 
like the cigar.  Lando leaned on a tool chest, assisting.  They'd 
lifted a repair port and the robot peered now into a complex maze of 
working and sen-tiworking parts.
     "Adjustable, Master.  This is a section I rigged after we beefed 
up the shields in the Oseon.  All we had in stock were replacements 
from the Ringneldia, and everything in that system is standardized 
around the diameter of some native bean or other."
     It wasn't just the sudden pullback of the murderous fleet that 
bothered Vuffi Raa, although it had left thousands of dead Oswaft in 
its wake.  While genuinely ignorant, or at least amnesiac, about his 
own origins, he could infer certain facts about his makers and their 
culture, and the trouble was, several of the facts in question were 
contradictory.
     And current events were bringing him swiftly to a personal crisis 
involving those contradictions.  It was not a situation that any 
intelligence@yen that of a Class Two droidfinds comfortable.
     He detached one of his sinuous manipulators, directing it remotely 
to thread its way into the starboard reactant-impeller units, deep in 
the bowels of the Millennium Falcon.  Nothing was actually wrong with 
the system, but had it been a hair more sluggish, they would have been 
fried by the Courteous instead of cheating their way through 
hyperspace.  It didn't pay to tolerate the slightest malfunction, not 
when they were the only spaceship the ThonBoka had to put up against 
the fleet.
     Those devices not only fed the engines, which was fairly important 
in itself, but the deflector shields as well.  Vuffi Raa and Lando 
needed every fractional advantage if they weren't going to sell their 
lives cheaply.
     "For example," the gambler continued, craning his neck to see what 
the robot was doing beneath the floor, "there'll be one group which 
will loudly-and correctly-proclaim that this undeclared war against the 
Oswaft constitutes genocide, although they wouldn't hesitate if they'd 
thought of it first themselves.  Then there'll be a gang of 
middle-of-the-roaders who could do it better or cheaper.  Finally, 
there'll be the ones who regard the action as too gentle and 
indecisive.  They'll want the fleet to sit back and toss in a few 
planet-wreckers, and they'r(, probably the ones we owe for this 
hiatus."
     A little cynical, Vuffi Raa thought before replying.  "But Master, 
there aren't any planets here to wreck, thank the Core."
     "Thank three little blue suns out there that went kablooie for 
that.  You're right, although planet-wreckers could make things pretty 
uncomfortable for our friends the Oswaft-not to mention our tender 
selves.  And besides, in interstellar power politics, it's gestures and 
appearances that count, not actual results.
     I've long suspected that's why civilizations rise and fall.
     Especially fall.  Try adjusting that vernier, will you?  I thought 
I heard the field blades wobble a little when you nudged it before."  
He unstuck his cigar again and took a puff.
     Another tentacle clicked at Vuffi Raa's "shoulder" and drifted 
away to check the readings on the control panels forward.  It was 
possible, the- droid thought, that the problem was simply an instrument 
failure, and it would be stupid to repair something that was already in 
perfect working order.
     Each of the robot's five tentacles, usually tapering smoothly to a 
rounded tip, could also blossom at the end into a small five-fingered 
hand.  In the center of each rested a miniature replica of the large 
red eye atop his body; he would see what his tentacles saw.  This, and 
the ability to send his limbs off on various errands, caused him to 
wonder about his creators.
     They were hardly stupid; still, there were counterindications.
     Here he was, preparing his master's ship for a battle in which he, 
himself, dare not participate directly.  Early in life, he had 
experimented: attempting combat, in contravention of his deepest-laid 
programming, had sent him into a coma that lasted nearly a month.  He 
was extremely clever; he could run and hide; physically he was very 
tough; he could ally himself with individuals like Lando, quite capable 
of the defensive violence necessary to protect themselves and their 
mechanical partner, Vuffi Raa.  But he, himself, simply could not harm 
another thinking being, whether organically evolved or artificially 
constructed.
     It just didn't make sense.  Vuffi Raa took a certain pride in the 
fact that he was a highly valuable machine, more so, strictly speaking, 
than the starship he was servicing.  Simply as a market consideration, 
he had a duty to protect his life; anyone attempting to take it 
demonstrated, by that very act, that they were less valuable, at least 
in any moral sense that made sense.
     Separating a third tentacle from his body, Vuffi Raa dispatched it 
to check the readiness of the ship's weapons systems, particularly the 
quad-guns of which Lando was so fond.
     The Millennium Falcon had always fairly bristled with armament, 
yet, with only two crew-beings to man her, and one of them a pacifist 
at that, they'd always meant to tie the weapons together cybemetically 
somehow.  In this brief interlude between confrontations with the 
fleet, they'd scarcely more than begun the task.
     His inhibitions could be stretched, Vuffi Raa had discovered.
     Knowing full well, for example, that the preparations furthered 
violent activity, he could nevertheless perform them.  Moreover, he 
could fly the Falcon for Lando, maneuvering properly to assure his 
destruction of the enemy.
     How very peculiar, thought the robot.  Who made me this way, and 
what did they intend by it?
     "What in the name of the Edge, the Core, and everything in between 
are they waiting for out there?"
     Lando fidgeted at the table as Vuffi Raa watched him disassemble 
and clean his tiny five-shot stingbeam as a final, albeit somewhat 
silly, preparation for the coming battle.  They were in the passenger 
lounge.  The deckplate gravity was set at full normal, and that, 
thought the robot, was a bad sign.  His master liked free-fall best for 
thinking.
     "For somebody else to get here, " a tinny, electronically relayed 
voice answered.  It was Lehesu, visible in a monitor screen the robot 
had installed.  In reality, the great being hovered outside in the void 
not far from the Falcon.  Given his size, and Lando's environmental 
requirements, this was the closest the three could come to normal 
face-to-face conversation.
     "What?", Lando stopped what he was doing with a jolt, one hand 
poised on the cleaning brush, elbow in the air, shoulders suddenly 
hunched as if someone had punched him in the stomach.
     He rose.  Slowly he turned, step by step he approached the monitor 
until his nose nearly rested on the screen.  At his side, the 
half-cleaned weapon dripped solvent on the deck plates.
     "Who-" he demanded of the manta creature, '@and how the deuce do 
you know?"  Some sort of fire flickered in the gambler's eyes, but even 
Vuffi Raa, long acquainted with the man's moods, couldn't guess what it 
signified now.
     "Why, Lando, somebody named Wennis, " Lehesu answered in a tone of 
injured innocence.  He'd come a long way, learning to interpret human 
vocal inflections and the images of facial expressions he received 
directly in his brain from the ship's transmitter.  He was disturbed 
now because his friend looked and sounded angry with him.
     "As to how I know: it's practically the only thing they're talking 
about out there, can't you hear them?  Something's going to happen when 
Wennis gets here, something big.  Somebody else named Scuttlebutt has 
it that-" "Oh my aching field density equalizers!"  As the robot 
watched, his master's expression changed, like the face on a sabacc 
card, from puzzled to exasperated to delighted.  The gambler crossed 
the room again in two strides, threw himself into a recliner, dug 
around in his shipsuit pockets and extracted a cigar.
     "No, Lehesu, I can't hear them, remember?  And even if I 
could-well, Vuffi Raa can 'hear' radio signals, but the military uses 
codes that are intended to preclude eavesdropping."
     He lit the cigar, heedless of the flammable fluid all over his 
hands.
     "Dear me!"  cried the Oswaft in real distress, "have I been doing 
something unethical?  I shall cease immed-" Lando sat up abruptly, 
pointing his cigar at the monitor like a weapon.  "You'll do nothing of 
the sort-you can't do anything unethical to those goons, it's 
philosophically impossible!
     Here I've been getting ready to die bravely, and now, casually, 
you've given us all a chance to survive!  By gadfrey, Vuffi Raa, old 
corkscrew, let's break out a bottle of-OWWWWCH!"
     Lando's hands glowed a flickering blue as he leaped up from the 
recliner and began running around the room.  Without hesitation, Vuffi 
Raa thrust out a tentacle and tripped him; he flopped on the deck, 
yelling, while the robot tossed a jacket that had been hanging on the 
back of the lounger over the gambler's hands, and wrapped it tight.
     The fire was out.
     "What's the matter over there?"  the monitor demanded.
     "Are you all right?"
     "I will be, once I learn not to play with fire," Lando answered as 
he sat up.  He winced as Vuffi Raa unwrapped the jacket.  His hands 
were tender, but not badly burned.  The droid was gone a moment, 
returned with a sprayer of plaskin and coated Lando's hands until they 
were shiny with it.
     The gambler flexed his fingers with satisfaction.  "Pretty close, 
old fire extinguisher.  I'd have had to pick a new profession if it 
weren't for your quick thinking.  And if it weren't for this stuff@' 
With freshly dried digits, he examined the firstaid spray, then his 
brow furrowed in thought.  He helped Vuffi Raa tidy up the gun-cleaning 
mess while explaining to the Oswaft what had happened, but his voice 
had an absent quality the robot recognized as the sign of an idea under 
incubation.
     Finally, stubbornly, he refit the cigar he'd flung across the 
room, sat back in the recliner, and was silent for a solid hour.
     Vuffi Raa played a few hands of radio sabacc with Lehesu, and let 
the gambler think.  He was fresh out of ideas himself, and, like his 
master, had been resigned to dying at as high a cost to their 
assailants as possible.
     An odd thing, violence, he pondered, watching the computer change 
a Commander of Sabres in his "hand" to an Ace of Flasks.  He'd 
inflicted violence on Lando in order to save him from a nasty burn, and 
hadn't felt a qualm down in his programn-ting.  Yet, had some third 
person tried to harm Lando, the robot would have been helpless to 
remove the threat.  Definitely a glitch there.
     It bothered him.
     "The Wennis is a ship, Lehesu, like the Falcon here," Lando said 
an hour later over a steaming plate from the food-fixer.
     "So Vuffi Raa tells me.  It's a difficult concept to grasp."
     "Well, grasp this: it's the personal yacht of Rokur Gepta, 
Sorcerer of Tund.  We've run into that fellow twice before, and not 
nicely either time.  Now that I know he's involved, this whole blockade 
makes sense.  The truce'll be over when he gets here."
     The gambler suppressed a shudder, remembering previous 
confrontations.  Once, in the Oseon, the sorcerer had used a device to 
stimulate every unpleasant memory Lando had, then recycle them, over 
and over, until he nearly went mad.  It had been interference from Klyn 
Shanga, intent on destroying Vuffi Raa, that had accidentally saved 
him.  They'd rescued Shanga from the wreck of his small fighter 
afterward and turned him over to the authorities in another system.  He 
wondered where the man was now.
     "Well, in any case, I think I've got an idea.  You know, in order 
to win a war it isn't necessary to defeat your enemy, just make the 
fight so expensive he'll give up and go away."
     "I wouldn't know, "' the Oswaft answered, "but what you say makes 
sense.  " "Sure.  As I explained to Vuffi Raa, this -blockade's bound 
to have some opposition.  It's already expensive, we merely have to 
make it more so."
     "How can we do that?  We have no weapons, and the fleet, with its 
shields up, is no longer vulnerable to our voices, as was the 
Courteous.  It has occurred to me that it was a good thing I was in a 
weakened condition when I met you, otherwise I might have destroyed you 
in the same manner " The gambler waved a negligent hand at the monitor.
     "There was only one of you, whereas I'm told there were a thousand 
Oswaft in the party that met the Courteous.  Never mind that, we're 
going to let the fleet destroy itself."
     "How?"  Both Vuffi Raa and Lehesu spoke this time.
     "I have some questions to ask you first: it's really true you can 
understand interfleet communications?"
     "Yes, Lando, so could any of my people, given a few moments' 
thought.
     "Hmmm ... All right, what about this synthesizing business.  Can 
you make any substance I ask you to?"
     "As long as it's relatively simple and there are raw materials to 
hand, as it were.  " "And the nebula: your elders tell me that there 
isn't any food there for you, that it was all 'grazed' out, long ago.
     Yet there are raw materials "Yes, Lando, where is all of this 
leading?"
     "Out of a mess.  One more thing: how long do you have to rest 
between hypedumps, and how accurately can you predict where you'll 
break out?"
     "Lando, " the Oswaft said in exasperation, "I think I see where 
you're going with this.  You want us to make bombs or something and 
plant them on the fleet's vessels.  In the first place, J'from what 
Vuffi Raa has told me of weaponry, bombs aren't all that simple.  In 
the second-" "No, no.  Nothing to do with bombs at all, and besides, 
those ships'll be coming in here shielded to a fare-thee-well.  And in 
the second, I said we'll let them destroy themselves, didn't I?
     I have a plan to make the war.  expensive, that's all."
     He hunched over the monitor, conspiratorially.  Vuffi Raa leaned 
toward him, consumed by curiosity.  Lando was clearly enjoying this 
part, and the robot wasn't sure that made him happy.
     "Now here's what we'll do xiv @'GENTLEMEN, MAN YOUR fighters"' 
Klyn Shanga gazed across the' cavernous cluttered hangar deck inside 
the Wennis as his squadron climbed into their tiny spacecraft.  Even 
good old Bern was there, snaking up the ladder into his cockpit.  He'd 
served his sentence in durance vile.
     (jepta had, surprisingly enough, been as good as his word about 
that.
     It worried Shanga.  He wondered what the old trickster had up his 
long gray sleeve.  Keeping promises wasn't an expected part of the 
magicians' repertoire, and the fighter commander felt it boded evil.
     The noise was deafening as impellers whined, refueling lines were 
tucked away, commands shouted here and there.  There was a constant 
steady rumble of eager machinery.  In a few moments the hangar crew 
would clear the deck, all inner doors would be sealed, and the huge 
belly doors of the cruiser would cycle open, giving the Renatasians 
access to open space.
     "This is the confrontation we've been waiting a decade for," 
Shanga had told his men, all twenty-three of them, fined up at a 
ragged, ill-disciplined attention in their shabby, mismatched uniforms.
     They represented a dozen old-style nation-states, most of which no 
longer existed.  They flew craft purchased, borrowed, leased, and 
stolen from as many systems, the ships equally threadbare.  In common 
the flyers shared only a diirst for revenge.
     "The Butcher awaits us out there," Shanga had said, pointing 
vaguely toward the hangar doors overhead.  Artificial gravity in the 
hangar had been reoriented to allow easier servicing and launching of 
the squadron.  "He's laughing at us, you know.  His very existence, ten 
years after his crimes, is a mockery of justice.  Well, we will silence 
that laughter, bring

     back to the universe!"  justice

     There was no cheering.  Some of the warship's crew members working 
on the Renatasian squadron had looked up momentarily, impressed more at 
Shanga's vehemence than at any eloquence he might have possessed.  To 
individuals in a hierarchy such as they served, strong feelings openly 
expressed were a threat to survival, the highest virtues moderation, 
compromise, a deaf ear and a blind eye to injustice.
     There was nodding among the twenty-three at Shanga's words, 
acceptance, a grim agreement, a pact.  They looked at their commander 
and at one another, realizing that it might be for the last time.
     "And afterward?"  Bern Nuladeg lounged against the outstretched 
wing of one fighter at the end of the line of men, chewing an unlit 
cigar.  "What'll we do then?"
     "Afterward, we'll .  . ."  Shanga tapered off.  He hadn't planned 
for there to be any afterward.  There were a billion or more Oswaft out 
there, of uncertain capability, allied with the unspeakable Vuffi Raa.
     The chances any Renatasian would survive the next few hours were 
slight@ Moreover, their safety afterward, in Gepta's hands, was 
questionable.  The sorcerer would be completely unpredictable once he'd 
won his victory.
     There'd be nothing to come back to, not in a fleet commanded from 
the Wennis.
     Shanga shook his head as if to clear it of useless speculations.
     "Afterward you're on your own.  Rendezvous with whatever ship will 
pick you up.  Get home the best way you can-if you want to go home.  
For the time being, my friends, we live only for justice, only for 
revenge."
     There was muttering, but it was in resigned agreement wit what 
their commander had said.  If there was any future, let it come on its 
own terms, its very arrival a surprise.
     They boarded their fighting vessels.
     Shanga strapped himself into his pilot's couch, made sure the 
canopy seals were good, that all mobile service implements had been 
properly detached and the access ports dogged down.
     He watched the hangarmen file out through various oval 
doorunpanicky haste as the big red lights came on to ways in an signal 
the beginning of the cycling process.  In effect, the hanger now became 
a huge airlock; he knew from long experience that, despite the best 
efforts to filter and scrub the salvaged air, the rest of the ship, 
from control deck through officer's country down to the scuppers, would 
smell of aerospace volatiles for several hours.
     It was a good smell, he thought to himself, an agreeable one to 
die with in your lungs if you couldn't arrange for soft grass and 
evergreen boughs.
     He flipped switches and the whining of his engines raised in 
pitch, the cockpit vibration skipped a beat and settled in a newer 
discordance with the other machine noises.  Adrenaline was rushing into 
his bloodstream.  By the Core, he was a warrior.  Say what you like 
about that, you simpering peace-dogs, he was born and bred to fight!
     The hangar doors above him ponderously ground aside.
     "Five and Eighteen out!"  a voice said in his helmet.  Two 
fighters filled the hangar with exhaust mist as they lifted and roared 
out into space.  The vapor cleared quickly.  "Fourteen and Mne out!"
     "Six and Seventeen!"
     In pairs his men took to the void, as eager for a fight as he was.
     His onboard computer held a three-dimensional map of the ThonBoka 
with probable locations for the Millennium Falcon marked therein.  It 
was known that there were three small blue-white stars, and some 
artificial structure, much larger than the freighter, at their center.  
That would be the prime area for the search.
     The "destroy" part would follow immediately.
     "Two and Twenty-one!"  another voice shouted, then Shanga himself 
felt a severe jolt and the blood stress of acceleration as the hangar 
catapult-pressor latched onto his command ship and flung it into space 
among his men.  Others continued to pour from the Wennis in the same 
manner, in an order tactically detennined by the motley mixture of ship 
types and models available to them.  "Nineteen and Four!"
     They assumed a complicated formation, hovering until all of the 
squadron was free of the hangar bay.  In the center of the group lay 
Pinnace Number Five, the very auxiliary Bern Nuladeg had been 
apprehended trying to steal.  Her after section glowed and pulsed with 
pent-up energy.  They were still a relatively long way from the nebula, 
at least where the small fighters' capabilities were concerned.  Even 
once they got there, it was six light-years to the center-approximately 
twenty-five times their own maximum flying range.
     The pinnace, capable of faster-than-light travel, had been fitted 
with a tractor field.  Unmanned, controlled remotely by Klyn Shanga, it 
would tow them into the heat of battle, returning parsimoniously on its 
own to the Wennis.  He and his best computer doctor had checked the 
lend-lease auxiliary carefully from bow to stern for ugly practical 
jokes and delayed-action booby traps.  He just couldn't bring himself 
to trust Rokur Gepta's generosity.
     That worthy had been unavailable at debarkation time, appatently 
gone off to meditate or something.  Just as well: his orders to release 
the Renatasian squadron had been there in his place.  To the Edge with 
the sorcerer, Shanga thought.  With any luck at all, they'd never see 
each other again.
     He tapped the keyboard, checking the positions of his tiny fleet 
clustered about the pinnace.  "This is Zero Leader," he announced.
     "Eleven, tighten up a little on Tlwelve-that's it.
     Twenty-two, you're idling a little ragged, aren't you?  What's 
your toroid temperature?"
     The fusion-powered fighters would conserve reaction mass, relying 
on the cruiser's auxiliary to do the work, but they must keep their 
systems up for instant combat readiness.  Belt and suspenders, Shanga 
thought, belt and suspenders.  The old saw was wrong about old, bold 
pilots, but this was the only way it could be done.
     "Nominal, " TWenty-two replied.  He was a young kid from a 
continent half a world away from Mathilde, Shanga's nationstate.
     There'd been a time when he'd been supposed to hate that accent.  
"I think the trouble's in the telemetry, sir " "Don't call me sir, 
Twenty-two, and watch that temperature.
     I want the Butcher just as badly as you do, but charging in there 
with a malfunctioning ship isn't going to help any of us accomplish 
that.  I don't trust those maintenance people to clean their own 
fingernails.  You'd better be telling me the truth, son."
     "Well, sir-Klyn-maybe I'm a little in the red, but I think this 
hop will burn out the hot spots.  " "All right," Shanga replied 
grudgingly.  "TWenty-three, what the Core's wrong with your 
life-support?  I've got red lights all over the readout!"
     "Just lit my cigar, boss.  The atmo-analyzer don't like it much."
     Bern Nuladeg laughed.  "Can't get into a dog-fight without I got a 
stogie in my mouth, I'd bite my danged tongue!"
     Shanga grinned inside his helmet, suppressed a chuckle.
     "Roger, Twenty-three, it's your funeral.  All right, men, synch 
your navi-mods to me.  We'll move on the tick.  Four, three, two, 
one-unh!"
     As a unit, the entire squadron lurched forward, propelled by the 
pinnace, began accelerating smoothly, and moved off toward the 
TbonBoka.  Now, before the coming disorientation of the jump, Shanga 
and his men had time to look around them.
     Ahead, the StarCave looked like a huge eyeball seen in profile.
     They approached the entrance obliquely to maximize the element of 
surprise.  It was a stupid ritual, Shanga realized; they'd be seen 
coming anyway.  But it was something to begin the program with; it 
didn't,really matter.  A huge gray eyeball with no iris, a pupil that 
twinkled with three tiny, blue-white highlights.  Down deep inside that 
thing was the Enemy.  Deep down inside that thing was death.
     With -a joyous shout of violated natural law, the squadron leaped 
toward it.
     W325 was the designation of a very small bathtub-shaped object 
whose size and power output did not quite earn it the status of an 
auxiliary vessel.  More than anything else, it was a rigid, powered 
spacesuit, used to inspect and repair the hull of the Wennis while she 
was in deep space-but most assuredly not under way.
     At the moment, W325 was electromagnetically tied in place well aft 
of the hull to a boxlike addition to the superstructure supporting the 
cruiser's main drive tubes.  WNle their fires were momentarily quenched 
to allow the launching of Klyn Shanga's squadron, they still glowed 
with waste heat energy.  Attached to the underside of W325 was a decal 
in the shape of a human being.  More correctly, a human being in the 
shape of a decal.
     The Ottdefa Osuno Whett, anthropologist and master spy knew he was 
taking a terrible chance.  That was always the case when serving two 
masters.  He owed Rokur Gepta his assistance and advice-and stood to 
benefit by it to the tune of the destruction of his enemies.  To one 
other, he owed everything, including his life, if need be.  His 
immediate assignment was keeping an eye on the perfidious sorcerer.
     Gepta was not trusted as naively as he may have thought, gift 
cruiser or no gift cruiser.
     Thus, encased in a slim, flexible spacesuit whose color had been 
adjusted to match that of W325, the anthropologist lay spread, arms and 
legs stretched wide, as tightly as he could to the undersurface of the 
little space-raring object while its master was otherwise occupied.
     Whett's own attention was elsewhere; he watched the readouts in 
his helmet closely, his curiosity and excitement mounting.
     Above, Rokur Gepta cycled out of the small vessel, moved across to 
the rear surface of the superstructure addition.  Whett had already 
determined, by means of various probes and rays, that the 
unconventional add-on was composed of hull'armor, thicker than most and 
impenetrable to his devices.  He d suspected something like this and 
come forearmed.  It had not been easy to strew the sorcerer's path with 
a dozen information-gatheting devices, each the size of a single dust 
mote, but he had done it.  Some of them read out in real time.
     They would be useless in another moment.  But some absorbed what 
they witnessed and would spew it all out in a fraction of a microsecond 
once Whett was within receiving range again.
     Whett waited.
     At the rear of the armored compartment, the sorcerer hung.
     There was no port within sight, no airlock.  Whett wondered 
mightily about that.  He did not believe in the reputed powers of the 
Sorcerers of Tund.  He'd seen far too much primitive mumbo jumbo backed 
up by trickery and hidden technology to be impressed by such claims.
     He wished that he dared peek out around the hull of W325 to see 
what was happening.  Instead, he relied on his devices.
     Oddly, the real-time machinery gave the impression that Gepta 
hadn't bothered with a spacesuit.  Strange, but not totally 
unaccountable.  No one was quite sure what species Gepta belonged to 
although he deliberately gave the impression he was human.  And there 
were a people or two that could stand hard vacuum for several 
minutes-and of course there were the Oswaft ... There was also the 
possibility that the sorcerer concealed life-support equipment beneath 
his robes.  It would be like him, and indeed, the lightweight pressure 
suit the anthropologist wore could be concealed thus.
     Whett waited.
     As expected, the telltales in his helmet winked off abruptly.
     Gepta had entered the compartment and was now shielded by what the 
spy estimated to be at least a meter of incredibly tough 
state-of-the-art alloy.  Slowly he detached himself from the underside 
of the maintenance vehicle, worked out a few stiff joints, and peered 
cautiously around the bulge of the craft.
     Gepta was gone.  There was no sign of him.  Nor was there any sign 
of the means by which he'd entered.  One instrument on Whett's helmet 
panel flickered fitfully in response to radiation leakage.  Something 
hot was going on inside the shielded compartment, but he couldn't tell 
what.  Whatever it was, it was unfamiliar.
     He jetted up smoothly to the rear of the compartment and inspected 
it closely.  As he had guessed, there was no airlock, no door of any 
kind.  He rounded the corner and inspected a side, then another and 
another and another.  No sign.  He applied sophisticated instruments, 
highly developed skills.  It was a solid box of-metal, approximately 
ten meters on a side, featureless, except ...
     But that was ridiculous.  Precisely in the center of the aftmost 
surface was a service petcock, opening on a pipeway no more than four 
centimeters in diameter.  He didn't dare lift the cover, but he hung 
there in free-fall for a dangerously long while pondering, running 
through a catalog in his head of species and their capabilities.
     The Sorcerers of Tund.  No investigator-spy or anthropologist-had 
ever gotten a crack at those mysterious old prunes.  He'd regretted 
Gepta's decision to pick him up in transit, he'd wanted to see Tund, be 
the first.  His employer would have liked that, too.
     The Sorcerers of Tund were reputed to have some mighty powers-if 
you believed in that nonsense-but he couldn't recall any legends about 
dematerialization or the ability to squeeze through tiny apertures.
     Magic?  Perhaps there was something, after all, to the idea that 
...
     But that was ridiculous.
      xv ABOARD THE WENNis, Rokur Gepta prepared himself for battle.
     . There were mental exercises peculiar to Tund, disciplines on 
ancient ancestry; weapons to inspect, both personal and aboard the 
cruiser; personnel to instruct and threaten.  Communications had begun 
flowing from the fleet.  Gepta occupied the bridge, watching, 
listening, replying.  A steady traffic of messengers rushed back and 
forth between the sorcerer and a hundred points within the ship.
     "No," Gepta hissed at the monitor before him, "you will not 
deviate from your designated position, my dear Captain, even to pursue 
escaping vessels-especially not to defend yourself, is my meaning 
clear, sir?  You are a ship of the line.  You are expected to 
perfonn,your duty as specified, never to question orders, to consider 
yourself and your command expendable in the service of society.
     "We have now spoken for two minutes too long on this subject.
     Out."
     He waved a hand; the disappointed features of the captain of the 
Intractable faded from the screen.  It was the third such conversation 
he'd conducted within the hour, and he was growing weary of it.  Only 
the thought of what lay aft in its armored compartment, the lovely 
green death, enabled him to remain calm.
     "General Order!"
     An electronically equipped secretary hurried to his side, a 
recording device clutched fearfully in hand.  "While it should not be 
necessary," Gepta dictated, "to instruct officers of the line in their 
duties, some question has arisen as to the advisability of their 
writing their own orders upon no other discretion than the wish to 
preserve their ship or their personal interpretation of their purposes 
in being here.
     "To resolve these uncertainties, and as an example for future 
individualists, the commanding officers of the Intractable, the 
Upright, and the Vainglorious are hereby stripped of rank, along with 
their seconds in command.  Said command will revert to the third 
officer in succession, and the six abovementioned personnel will be 
placed unprotected in an airlock, which shall be evacuated into empty 
space.
     "By the authority of Rokur Gepta, Sorcerer of Tund.  Did you get 
all of that, young mant' The stenographer, his face grown white, nodded 
dazedly.
     "Y-Yes, sir."
     "Good.  Send it out and make sure it's understood that the order 
is to be carried out immediately.  Now run along."
     Beneath his headdress windings, Gepta smiled.  Aside from his two 
sessions in the armored compartment aft, this was the best he'd felt 
all day.
     Vuffi Raa sat in the lefthand seat of the control room of the 
Millennium Falcon, setting up problems on the navigational console and 
cross-playing them through his master's game computer.  He had to 
admit, Lando had been right.  His scheme wouldn't win a war, and it 
might cost a great many lives on both sides, but it would wear the 
fleet down and encourage Gepta's political opponents to step in and end 
the blockade.
     Had he been capable of shaking his head ironically, he would have 
done so.
     He looked out through the segmented viewport forward, where he saw 
Lehesu hanging peacefully-at least to all appearances.  He keyed the 
corn.  "I have completed the modeling exercise, friend Lehesu.  I 
believe we have a good chance.  Will you not join the others with their 
preparations?"
     The giant creature swam closer to the Falcon and peered in at his 
little robot friend.  "No, Vuffi Raa.  I am aware of what I must do, 
and I am ready.  I was curious as to the projections you are 
undertaking.  Will the fleet truly destroy itsetr if Lando's plan 
works?"
     The droid raised a tentacle to indicate certainty since he 
couldn't nod.  "Yes, as unbelievable as it may seem.  You are an 
amazing people, my friend, and that's what makes it possible.
     The Falcon is as ready as she'll ever be, although l@' "You are 
troubled, Vuffi Raa?"  Lehesu could interpret tones of voice even with 
a mechanical being.  "Please speak to me about it; perhaps that will 
help.  " Glancing mentally at the timepiece he carried in his 
circuitry, the robot gave his equivalent of a shrug.  "It is like this, 
Lehesu .  . ."  He told the Oswaft of the conflicts he felt in his 
programming and that he was beginning to disapprove of those who had 
imposed it on him.  It didn't seem right that he should be compelled to 
stand by idly-at least what he considered to be idly-while the Navy 
exterminated a gentle, admirable people.
     "I see, " the alien replied at last.  "You know, we are in much 
the same position.  I do not know whether I can take a life in my own 
defense, either We are not a fighting people, as you so rightly have 
observed.  Perhaps it is time for us to abandon lij@ to make room for a 
more successful product of evolution.
     The robot, not knowing what to say, said nothing.
     "Then again, Vuffi Raa, we should go away only if we ca not 
change.  If we can, we are a successful species, are we not?"
     Momentarily, Vuffi Raa wished he could smoke a cigar like his 
master.  It seemed to help the human think, and it lent a cei-tain 
dignity to whatever answer he might give the Oswaft.  "I do not know, 
my friend.  It seems wrong somehow that the success of a race be 
measured by its ability to do violence.  There are other things in the 
universe."
     The Oswaft was no more capable of nodding than the robot.
     "Still, one must consider that none of these things are an-v good 
to one if one is dead " Vuffi Raa chuckled.  "You have a point, there, 
Lehesu, you have a point."
     "We are going to be too late!"  the Other complained.  "I know 
it!"
     "Peace, my old friend," the One replied.  "That is not yet a 
foregone conclusion.  There are no foregone conclusions anymore.  And 
even so, it is an experiment.  It would not be vali(l, did we 
interfere.  Any result is a desired result, am I not correct in this?"
     They bored through the endless night at a velocity that seemed a 
crawl to them, although a good many physicists would have been 
interested to know such a velocity was possible.  Behind them stretched 
an endless line, the Rest who had come to witness the results of the 
One's experiment.
     "However," the Other replied, hesitating in his thought if not in 
his headlong flight, "I have had a disturbing new thought which@' "That 
was the purpose of the experiment, was it not?"
     "Yes, yes.  But I do not believe you are going to be 
particul-,trly happy with it.  You see, it has occurred to me that, 
despite the unconventional methods by which you created our 
experimental subject, and despite the obvious anatomical differences .
     . ."  Here, the Other made a gesture emphasizing the smooth, 
rounded shape of their kind.
     "Yes?  Please continue."
     "Do not be impatient; this is difficult.  I have come to believe 
we have certain responsibilities toward this entityspecifically that 
you do-beyond simple scientific inquiry."
     There was a long pause as another several parsecs whisked behind 
them.  Nor did the One reply at all.  For once his friend had pursued a 
line of reasonin where he could not easily follow.  9
     "You are its parent."
     "What?"
     "You brought it into existence.  You sent it out into the 
universe.  We-you-cannot blandly let it be destroyed.  Such would be 
reprehensible."
     Again the One failed to respond.  The light-years rushed by ,is he 
plunged himself deep into thought, pondering not only the question of 
his responsibility, but the more disturbing thought that he had 
overlooked the issue entirely.  Their experimental subject was a 
thinking being, not to be trifled with as if it were an inanimate 
object.  Apparently complacency had cost him more than progress and the 
flavor of life, it had interruled badly with his ethical sensibilities.
     At last: "I am afraid you are right, my old friend.
     Congrattil;tte me, I am a father.  And by all means, let us hurry, 
lest we he too late!"
     "It's simple, really," Lando explained for the fifth time with as 
little hope of success as he'd enjoyed the first four.  "You jump into 
the middle of a pair of ships, do the little trick we've discussed, and 
jump out.  The navy'll do the rest."
     The gambler floated in the lotus position in the center of the 
Cave of the Elders, Sen and Fey on either side of him.  Each of the 
gigantic beings was at least five hundred times larger than he was.  He 
felt like a virus having polite tea with a pair of bacteria.
     "But Captainlandocalrissiansir, it is disgusting!"  Fey 
complained.  "It is demeaning, beneath the dignity of any@' "How do you 
feel about losing your transparency?"
     "What do you mean?"
     Lando drew on the cigar he'd gotten Vuffi Raa to build a holder 
for in his suit helmet.  There was a slight bulge now in the faceplate, 
and the air filters had needed overhauling' but at long last he could 
sit and think properly in hard vacuum.
     "Isn't death demeaning, beneath your dignity, disgusting?"
     There was the distinct sensation that the younger of the two 
Elders had blinked with surprise.  "Why, I had never thought of it that 
way before."
     Sen had remained silent through this argument.  Now he spoke up.
     "Tell me, Lando, could you perform the physiolo(,ical equivalent 
of this act?  To excrete bodily wastes in order t@, "You bet your 6iffy 
I could!  Look: all that this requires is that you concentrate a 
certain mix of heavy metals in your systems, hop to the right 
coordinates, let your pores do their work, and hop out, leaving a 
sensor-detectable Oswaft-shaped outline behind for the boys in gray to 
shoot at.  Play your cards right and, human reaction-time being what it 
is, they'll shoot each other, instead."
     Sen and Fey thought about that.  For rather too long a time, Lando 
thought.
     "Listen, you two, you didn't hesitate to offer me all kinds of' 
precious jewels, and you manufacture them in the same@' "It's not the 
same at all!"  Fey wailed.  "Don't you understand that it's different 
when one@' "Not from my cultural standpoint.  On the other hand, Navy 
humans I know see a.big ethical difference between killing animals for 
food and killing vegetables-although I've met a photosynthetic sentient 
or two who might give them an argiiment.  Let's leave it that cultures 
often have blindnesses about themselves where other cultures see more 
clearly.  Can you c](@ this thing?"
     The soft twinkling of precious stones gleamed through the 
transparent Elders.  "Those of us who can will rendezvous with you at 
your signal."
     The gambler shrugged.  "Guess I can't ask for more than that, can 
I?"
     He sensed that Sen was smiling.  "No, I suppose you cannot, unless 
one wishes to emulate the enemy we are about to fight."
     As his fighter squadron passed through the mouth of the ThonBoka, 
Klyn Shanga was fighting a nagging thought.  Like a tune that circles 
through your consciousness all day (whether you like the tune or 
not-and, more often than not, you don't), he was wondering about the 
Ottdefa Osuno Whett.  Why did that son-of-a-mynock seem so familiar?
     Where had he seen him before?
     "Seventeen, square up a little on the mark.  You're lagging, and 
it's putting a strain on the pinnace."
     "Roger Zero Leader Executing.  " He gave a quick glance at the 
other computer-generated indicators on his boards and settled back in 
his acceleration couch again.  Where had he met the tall, skinny, 
white-haired anthropologist before, and why did he have trouble 
thinking of him as an academic.  What should he be?  A flunky of some 
kind.  Whett was born to be a subordinate.
     But why?  He came to the conclusion that it wasn't Whett's 
appearance he remembered so vividly.  The voice, then?  A Inh, 
whiny, nagging voice it was, full of a high opinion of himself that 
didn't seem to fit the vague memory Shanga had.
     It was like the false memories one experiences in dreams: you wake 
up suddenly (and often with relief) knowing that the thing you 
remembered never happened at all.  But Whett was real.
     "Twenty-three to Zero Leader over "Go ahead, Bern."
     "Sure.  How come we're not maintaining commo silence on This run?
     I thought we were gonna surprise the little-" "They know we're 
coming, and there's only one direction we can come from."
     "Kinda like thatfirst raid we made south of Mathilde, after the 
Betrayal, right?"  Nuladeg chuckled at the bloodsoaked memory.  It was 
the only thing they could do.  The reminiscence wasn't that pleasant, 
although they'd killed a thousand enemies that morning, caught them on 
the ground before they got set up for defense.  He remembered the shock 
he'd felt at the invasion, after all the friendly welcoming they'd done 
for Vuffi Raa andNow why did that make him think of Whett again?
     "Zero Leader to Twenty-three.  Bern, have you seen Gepta's pet 
anthropologist, Osuno Whett?"
     "Can't say as I have.  How come?"  Shanga could see the other 
fighter's craft on the opposite side of the formation, its cockpit full 
of cigar smoke.  He wondered how the little man breathed in that 
atmosphere.
     "I don't know, Bern, but there's something nagging me, and it seems 
to be important."
     "Stop chewing on it, then, boss.  Sleep it over It'll come to you 
if it's important.  Core, you could use a little shut-eye, anyways.
     Sit yourself back, and I'll take the con for a while.
     "Thanks a lot, Bern, I appreciate it."
     "Just so you don't make a habit of it.
     "Roger, Twenty-three, and out."
     The Ottdefa Osuno Whett looked over some highly peculiar data as 
he sat in the cramped confines of his hiding place.  Outside, the stars 
appeared motionless through the ports.  It was an illusion.
     According to the almost microscopic spy devices he'd planted on 
Gepta with only partial success, the wizard had indeed entered that 
armored compartment aft of the W ennis through a tube scarcely larger 
than a child's wrist diameter.  And somewhere within that tube, 
according to these readouts, Gepta had ceased to exist, for the 
dust-mote-sized recorders had drifted in the tube and remained there, 
recording nothing, until the sorcerer again became himself Whatever 
that was.
     Whett shifted uncomfortably on his couch, not daring to show a 
light that might be seen from the outside, not believing the readouts, 
their displays stopped down to near invisibility.
     He'd known others in his field-anthropology, not spyingwho'd 
eventually come to believe in the primitive magic they studied, 
otherwise serious scholars who thought that dancing, after all, at 
least when performed a certain way by a certain people, could bring 
rain.  Good minds gone to rot from nothing more than overexposure, some 
malignant form of osmosis.
     He'd always resisted that, regarded it as a failure both of 
scientific detachment and personal integrity.  Now, he wasn't sure.
     All right, the Sorcerers of Tund were supposed to have been 
capable of all kinds of magic.  No one had ever claimed that they were 
even human; that was a general assumption, and, like all general 
assumptions, was probably mistaken.  Nonetheless ...
     What species was naturally capable of the thing his instruments 
had witnessed?  Gepta had returned through the tube, the electronic 
motes adhering to him again as he, whatmaterialized?  And what was that 
weird, unknown radiation that, despite armor he now realized was not 
one but two meters thick, incredibly still leaked out when Gepta had 
been inside the compartment for a few minutes?
     And most of all, what, in the Name of the Core, was Rokur Gepta?
     xvi "MASTER, WE'VE GOT company"' "All right Vuffi Raa, I'm 
coming!"
     Lando jumped up from his seat in the lounge where he'd been 
programming tactics for the Oswaft.  Out of over a billion of the 
creatures, less than a thousand had agreed to play his @,r(,@at game of 
sabacc, live or die.  He ran around the corridor to the cockpit and 
flung himself into the righthand seat.
     "Where away?"
     The robot indicated a tightly strung series of blips on the 
long-range sensors.  "Fighters, Master, the same kind we fought in the 
Oseon.  I make it twenty-no, twenty-five.  I don't know what that big 
thing in the middle is."
     The gambler nodded.  "I wonder if it isn't the same group.
     They don't look like a tactical fighter wing, and they're using 
the same formation they did before.  Last time it was a battleship 
engine."  He began throwing switches, bringing the Falcon's defensive 
armament to full readiness.
     "Oh my," Vuffi Raa said in a subdued voice, "the Renatasians.
     Sometimes I think it would be better just to surrender myself to 
them.
     If only they knew the truth."
     "Cut it out, sprocket-head!  They know the truth, it's just too 
hard to let go of a scapegoat once you've got him by the chinwhiskers.
     Let's surprise those mynock-smoochers by going out to meet them, 
what say?"
     The robot's tentacles began dancing over the boards.  "My 
sentiments exactly, Master, that's what we came here for in the first 
place, wasn't it?"
     Lando rose, steadying himself against a chair as vibrations washed 
through the ship.  "Quite right, although I wasn't sure we'd sucker the 
Renatasians in, too.  Gepta's overdue.  How can he resist having us 
trapped here in the StarCave?"
     "Don't worry, Master, he'll show up."
     "Swell."  The gambler made haste aft to the tunnel connecting with 
the quad-gun bubble, reached the swiveling chair and strapped himself 
in.  "Well, old friend, let's go!"
     "Yes, Master" the intercom answered.  "Full power coming up!
     As the Falcon rushed to meet the foe, Lando reviewed his plans.
     The Oswaft wouldn't strike the small group of fighters.
     He'd cranked his ideas through the computer and, from there, 
directly into their brains.  They now knew as much about tactics as he 
did.
     Refocusing on the task at hand, he Timbered up, swung the guns up 
and down, side to side.  The chairjollowed with them, giving him an 
exhilarating ride that was probably the real reason he liked the weapon 
so much.  He keyed the intertalkie.
     "Test coming up-and don't call me master."
     " Yes, Mas"Got you that time."  Using one of the stars for a point 
of aim, he pressed both thumbs down on the triggers.  Bolts of 
high-intensity energy shot from the guns as they pumped back and forth 
in their odd pattern, much like the reciprocating machine guns of old.
     Only now, it was to avoid a backwash of power that would have 
fused the muzzles of the nonfiring barrels.  He fired the guns again, 
then looked at the repeater screen to see what Vuffi Raa was seeing up 
ahead.
     "One thousand kilometers and closing, Master That central object 
is a ship's pinnace.  I believe they used itfor tow Shieldv up at 
eight-ri@ kilometers.  They're beginning to cast off the pinnace.  " 
"Hold her steady, little friend, let them make the first pass."
     On his screen, Lando could see that the fighters had erected their 
deflection, too.  Fighter shields were notoriously porous, there just 
wasn't enough shi@r engine-to support them.
     That's one thing that made a vessel the size of the Falcon so 
handy.
     "Five hundred kilometers, Master Now the fighters were visible as 
tiny dots of light, pseudostars against the starry background of the 
ThonBoka mouth.  Lando brought his guns to bear, swinging to meet the 
enemies' maneuvers, getting a feel for them.  Felt like Klyn Shanga's 
bunch, all fight.  Apparently they'd teamed up with the sorcerer and 
the Navy.
     Two fighters streaked over the Falcon.  Lando poured destructive 
energy at them, but the pass was too fast for either side to do any 
damage.  They were probably confim-ling that this was, indeed, the 
Millennium Falcon, Vuffi Raa, a.k.a. the Butcher of Renatasia, first 
mate.
     The robot heeled the ship steeply.  "Two coming up from below!
     "Let 'em come!"  The ship's beefed-up shields would be a surprise.
     Lando held his fire until the last moment, then pounded into the 
larger ship of the two.  Its shielding lasted all of' a millisecond, 
then there was an explosion and the vessel coi-kscrewed off, badly 
damaged.
     He swung the guns around, but the second fighter had passed 
overhead and was gone.  One down, he thought, and by Vuffi Raa's 
estimate, twenty-four to go.  "Damage report!"
     "Nothing to report, Master Our shields held fine.
     "You do great work.  Where'd they go?"
     The question was answered as six fighters bored directly for the 
freighter.  Lando sprayed the space in front of them with energy, the 
ship's lights dimming briefly as he did.  They veered sharply, unable 
to match his fire at that range.
     "Master!  Bandits straight ahead!  Eleven of them!"
     "Well, slew the ship!  I can't reach them from here!  No!
     Cancel that!  I've got trouble enough!"
     Four of the original six were back, shooting hard.  Lando matched 
them shot for shot, smoked another, then caught a figher with a direct 
hit.  It blossomed into an enormous ball of tiny sparks and 
disappeared.  But the others didn't give up yet.
     Even the wounded ship executed a wide, clumsy circle and came 
back.  Lando centered the lead fighter in his crosshairs, thumbed the 
ignition, and growled.
     Another fireball.  Another hit on the crippled ship, which 
wobbled, skidded off, then suddenly exploded.  The remainin@ fighter 
fought its way around a corner and lunged out of range.
     It'd be back.
     "Clear, now!  Turn the ship!"
     "Too late, Master I destroyed two fighters and the other nine 
broke off."
     There was a long, startled pause that nearly cost the two their 
lives.  A single fighter came in at top speed, fired all its retros, 
dumped its load of lethal energy directly onto the stern tubes, the 
weakest portion of the shielding.  Lando started, more frightened at 
his inattention than by the fighter.  He swung the quad-guns aft, fired 
and fired until the single fighter vanished in a cloud of smoke.
     The pilot of that vessel couldn't have been more surprised than 
Lando was.  "You say you shot down two fighters, old pacifist?"  This 
much was true: there was a pair of small guns, usually ineffective 
against anything bigger than a rowboat, located on the upper surface of 
the ship and controllable from the cockpit.  Lando had wanted them 
synchronized, which would effectively quadruple their power, and Vuffi 
Raa had gotten around to it in the last few days.
     Still, there was no reply from the control deck.
     "Vuffi Raa, are you all right?"
     No answer.
     The fighter group had broken off momentarily, licking their 
wounds, no doubt, and sizing up the Falcon.  If it was Shanga's people, 
they were probably surprised to meet two columns of' fire coming in.
     Or were they?  Tactically, they'd known Vuffi Raa couldn't shoot 
back, yet politically (psychologically?  sociologically?) he was the 
most murderous villain in their history.  How did they resolve a 
conflict like that?
     "Vuffi Raa, speak to me!"
     "Yes, Master I beg your pardon, and I'll tell you all about it 
later No time now@urfriends are back!"
     This time they came in force.  Lando counted seventeen before he 
got busy, which agreed approximately with the five kills and one 
probable they'd scored thus far.  Lando wasn't taking trophies; it 
wasn't in him to do it.  He simply wanted to know how near the end of 
the fight they were getting.  He wanted a cigar.
     This time they gave it all they had, as well.  Lando slugged it 
out, and he could sense the drain on the ship's engines that meant 
Vuffi Raa was shooting while he steered the ship.  Still, the shields 
were taking a terrific pounding, and yellow lights, to judge from the 
robot's shouted reports, were showing up like fireflies on the boards.
     Then a bright light bloomed where Lando's guns weren't pointed and 
Vuffi Raa's couldn't be.  Standing off, without the benefit of shields, 
was Lehesu.  He turned slowly, majestically, shouted" at another 
fighter, which turned into a knot of greasy smoke, then disappeared 
himself, to show up on the other side of the ship.
     The fighters broke off at some distance; peace reigned 
momentarily.
     "Lehesu, you old ace!  I thought you were with your people!"
     "My people are intelligent life everywhere, Captainmaster I saw 
you needed help, and-" The gambler frowned.  "I wouldn't exactly say we 
needed help, exactly."  Retrieving a cigar from where he'd tucked it in 
his boot top, he lit it and settled back for a moment.
     "I would, " Vuffi Raa said.  "Thank you, Lehesu, and thank you for 
the talk.  I seem to have resolved the conflict in my programming.  " 
Keeping an eye on the indicators for further intruders, Lando asked, 
"Where are your people, Lehesu; are they waitin- to follow my program?"
     "No Captainmaster Instead, they have followed your example.  They 
have gone to confront the fleet instead of waiting for it.
     The entity whom Lando referred to as Sen was gratified.
     Something far more than a thousand Oswaft swam now behind him, 
many more than he had counted on, shamed by 
Captainmasteriandocalrissiansir's valiant example-and possibly his 
successes against the first wave of the enemy.  He directed a thought 
toward Fey.
     "How many would you say we are, old friend?"
     "Perhaps as many as a million.  The rest have followed another of 
the human's suggestions: they are concealing themselves in the walls of 
the StarCave."
     A mental shrug.  "Well, they may be right, and that may save us 
from extinction better than doing battle with these monsters.  This 
idea of individual dissent that Lehesu forced upon us may have its 
uses.  Different opinions produce different modes of survival, one or 
more of which may succeed."
     The fleet grew as they approached it.
     "I do not know," Fey said.  "I believe I would prefer to be 
playing sabacc just now.  The notion of being killed@' "Is faintly 
refreshing," finished the older of the two Elders.
     "Lehesu is right: it is better than sitting around becoming 
stagnant."
     "Everyone to his own preferences," Fey answered wryly.
     Aboard the Reluctant, a gunner's mate finally tore his eyes away 
from the scope.  "A million of 'em!  Core save us, there's a million of 
'em out there!"
     His supervisor hurried over, looked down from the catwalk into the 
mate's instruments while the mate looked up in fear and wonder at him.
     "You're wrong, son, the computer's making a new estimate.  Make 
that two million."
     Sen chuckled to himself as he hopped out of the artificial skin 
he'd just generated, leaving it behind to confound the enemy.  Their 
sensors would now be registering three million Oswaft, and even if they 
fathomed the trick, they wouldn't know which outline to shoot at.
     One chance in three of getting killed, instead of unity.  You 
could learn things from sabacc.  He hopped another hundred meters, 
paused, and made it one chance in four.  Every step his people took 
this way increased their apparent numbers arithmetically.  The real 
test would come when they reached the fleet and began swimming in its 
midst.
     "Are you ready, old friend?"  asked Fey at his side.
     "No.  Let's go."
     Their first leap took them within firing distance of the 
Reluctant.  Before she could bring their guns to bear, they were gone.
     Sen angled his next jump to place him between that vessel and the 
next in the metallic swarm.  He hopped, created a ghost of himself, and 
hopped again, this time to a safe place where he could watch.
     Reluctant belied her name and fired!  The powerfully huge bolt, a 
recent Imperial development, sliced through the false Oswaft, scoring a 
deep and crippling hit on her sister vessel, who had fired only 
slightly behind the other ship.  This bolt was a near miss, but it 
caught an escort fighter and vaporized him instantly.  The Oswaft 
outline dissolved and was gone.
     Sen jumped again, creating another threatening image of himself.
     It had much the same effect as the first: the enemy counted on a 
target to absorb the lethal force of his guns before they struck a 
sister vessel.  They were wrong, and discovering it too slowly.  A 
million Oswaft followed Sen and Fey, repeating the same actions.  Space 
was lit with thousands of fierce, futile bolts.  Men died by the 
hundreds until the trick was finally puzzled out.
     By then it was too late.  Shouting at the top of his voice, Sen 
crumpled a pair of fighters, then concentrated his energies on a 
cruiser.  Lando was right: her shields were too dense to have any 
effect.  He stopped shouting at everything but the gnatlike fighters, 
and hopped and hopped, making sure each time to place himself between 
two capital ships.
     For their part, as they saw the destruction of their own numbers 
by their own guns, the navy slowed even more, trying to aim its fire so 
as not to endanger the fleet.  This was useless: either there was 
nothing to shoot at, or the bolt would knife through the observed 
enemy, blasting a cruiser or a dreadnaught instead.
     In fifteen minutes, the fleet was reduced by II percent.  Then the 
shooting stopped.
     By that time, Shanga's dinidnished squadron had made two more runs 
against the Falcon, losing another fighter.  With Vuffi Raa at the 
controls, the freighter had gradually drawn them nearer where the fleet 
was busily destroying itself Fire leaped here and there, lighting up 
the eternal night.  Navy fighters blew up, showering their mother 
vessels with debris, spreading damage further.  The Oswaft darted in 
and out, their numbers very slightly diminished, too, as the sentients 
grew tired or careless.
     ' Aboard the Falcon, Lando bore down on the quadgun once again, 
turning a small spacecraft into drifting junk.
     "Say, that wasn't one of our bandits!  That was a navy fighter.
     Where the Core are we, Vuffi Raa?"
     From the control room, the robot replied.  "Entering the zone of 
conflict between the Oswaft and the fleet.  I'll try to keep us clear 
of any large ships, since we-There!  Got another one!since we can't 
maneuver like the spacepeople.  " A cluster of fighters swooped past 
the Falcon, ignoring her while blasting toward a cruiser that was 
breaking up.  Three Oswaft, concentrating all their power, had done 
that when one of her shields was down momentarily, due to a collision 
with a fighter.
     Suddenly, Shanga's men were back, diving on the Falcon by turns, 
drawing her fire, getting in shots of their own.  There was only one of 
Lando, and his arms were getting weary from their constant work at the 
quadguns.  The Falcon looped and soared, outmaneuvering the fighters 
again and again.  Weapons flared, men died.
     Without warning, all action ceased among the fleet.  The blast and 
brilliance of shooting stopped as if someone had turned a switch.
     Every fighter was recalled.
     At the center of things now, Lando and Vuffi Raa and Lehesu 
watched as a broad corridor was cleared among the ships.  Shields up, 
they were immune to the Oswaft, and, as long as they didn't fire on the 
vacuum-breathers, they suffered no more losses.
     "Something on the scope, Master" "Keep me advised."
     Through the space cleared by the fleet, an older-model cruiser 
became visible, surface-coated dead black, bristling with an array of 
unfamiliar equipment.  On its underside were emblazoned the arms of 
Rokur Gepta himself.  On its sides were added the ship's name:

     WENNIS

     "-by edict!  You are commanded to cease fire and to surrender to 
the nearest Imperial vessel immediately.  " Apparently, Vuffi Raa had 
found the navy's frequency-or they had found the Falcon's and had 
patched it through the intercom.  'As he listened, Lando saw one of his 
auxiliary target screens go momentarily blank, then fill with the dark 
and terrifyingly familiar image.
     "This in the name and at the order of Rokur Gepta, Sorcerer of 
Tund.  " And then: "Private to Captain Lando Calrissian of the 
Millennium Falcon."  The wizard leaned conspiratorially into the 
pickup.  "You have put up a valiant and brilliantly conceived fight, 
sir but one which you shall inevitably lose, if only because I am 
willing to throw half the resources of civilization at you, should it 
prove necessary.  I could bury you with dead bodies, and fill this 
entire nebula with the wrecks of ships, and I will.
     "However I offer you an opportunity to minimize unnecessary 
bloodshed, to settle things personally and at close hand between 
ourselves, once and for all.  Nor have I need for the resources of half 
an empire to persuade you.  At this very moment the power is mine to 
exterminate every sentient being in this nebula, every flyspeck of 
life, every hope that life again will everflourish here.
     "Behold and bear witness!"
     He raised a hand, as if in a magician's gesture.  Outside, from 
one of the ungainly projections on the hull of the Wennis, there was a 
faint, fast squirt of brilliant life.  Instantly it streaked toward a 
cluster of gigantic Oswaft who, since ceasing to fight, had been 
watching and listening.  Sen and Fey were among them.
     As the light point reached them, they began glowing a pale, d 
disappeared without a trace before their dying sickly green an screams 
had faded.  Whatever the weapon was, it could discriminate between real 
organic beings and the phony outlines I.ando had taught them to create.
     Those remained like ghosts, hollow and insubstantial.
     "That, my dear Captain Calrissian, was a demonstration employing 
one times ten to the minus seventeenth of the power available to me.
     The object was an electromagnetic torpedo, scarcely larger than a 
filterable virus and programmed to setfdestruct after it had done its 
work.  Had it not been so, this area around us would contain no life by 
now, nor, within a week, would the entire nebula.
     "I offer you, however an alternative.  Should you triumph, the 
entire fleet shall go away.  Should I win, I shall release a thousand 
tons of this destructive agent in the ThonBoka.
     "As for ourselves personally, we shall fight a duel to the death.

      xv

     "WE HAVE ONE advantage, Master."
     Vuffi Raa had just returned from the Wennis, where, at Gepta's 
command, he had gone as Lando's.  second to receive the terms for the 
duel.  Frost was turning into water on the little robot's 
chron-iium-plated body and dripping off onto the floor of the tiny 
airlock below the topside hatch.
     "That's absolutely peachy, old go-between.  Any little boost would 
be welcome, just now."  He looked out through a viewport.  On one side 
the Falcon was englobed by the Navy, perhaps five hundred enormous 
capital ships.
     From another port, he could see they were hemmed in by Klyn 
Shanga's squadron, what was left of it, in formation once again about 
the pinnace.  The tractor field was off, and would have been invisible 
in any case, but the arrangement gave them an instant choice between 
two modes of movement.
     Lando shook his head, and went on running down the longform 
checklist, getting his best spacesuit up and ready for the coming 
conflict.
     "Yes, Master.  You'll recall he was the one responsible for your 
winning me in the first place?  Well, it was he, who, well, supplied me 
to the Ottdefa Osuno Whett.  He knows me rather well-and still believes 
that he can program me to betray YOU."
     The gambler looked up, set the pair of vacuum gauntlets he'd been 
working on aside, and lit a cigar.  Possibly his last.
     "How very interesting.  And can he?"
     "Not at all.  What's even better is that he still believes me to 
be bound by my earlier programming.  He thinks I cannot fight. Lando 
grinned.  "You know, I'm not sure I understand that, D THE STARCAVE OF 
THONBOKA 399
     AN myself.  But of course that's why he offered to let you help me 
out in this duel, to make up for his powers of magic, so he said."
     The robot raised an affirmative tentacle.  "What now remains is 
for us to plan what we will do once we're out there.  Have you an 
idea?"
     Lando drew a deep puff, let it out slowly, savoring it.  "I do, 
indeed, old Saturday-night spatial.  The terms are one personal weapon 
apiecet' "Not precisely, Master.  You are allowed one weapon, I am 
allowed none.  He didn't specify what he would use.  I didn't ask.  It 
seems we have no choice in this matter."
     "No, but tell me, does he know about the way you let your 
tentacles do their own thinking?"
     The gleam in Vuffl Raa's faceted eye grew brighter.  "No, Master, 
I don't believe he does."
     "Swell.  Then here's what we'll do-and don't call me master."
     Rokur Gepta stood in an airlock of the Wennis, watching the 
Millennium Falcon through the bull's-eye in the hatch.  He could see 
her captain and his droid climbing out of their own airlock as he 
himself suited up.  The suit was a deep nonreflective gray, about the 
color of the walls of the ThonBoka.  He turned to the officer beside 
him, the nominal captain of the cruiser.
     "You are certain that you understand my instructions?"
     "Yes, sir," the unhappy-looking man replied.  "I am to exterminate 
all life in the nebula, regardless of the outcome of the duel."  He 
gulped at speaking what he felt to be a dishonorable and unmilitary 
decision, and remained rigidly at attention as the sorcerer donned his 
helmet.
     "Precisely, Captain, and if you are entertaining any ideas of 
countermanding that order in the event of my demise, please remember 
that the continued existence of your family depends on its being 
carried out.  That was the purpose of sending the courier to your home 
system a few minutes ago.  Their lives are in your hands."
     "Yes, sir."
     "Very well, then, stand aside so that I may exhaust the 
lock-unless you care to join me in the airless void?"
     Klyn Shanga watched the accursed Vuffi Raa, Butcher of Renatasia, 
climb out of the airlock of the Millennium Falcon.
     The little monster was still wearing that spacesuit he'd affected 
in the Oseon that made him appear to be a robot.  Shanga began flipping 
switches; turbines whined as power levels increased.  One trembling 
hand remained on the button of his weapon system.  Steady, old soldier, 
he told himself, only a few more minutes.
     Suddenly, a fighter across the formation from him slid forward, 
gaining speed as it approached the Falcon.  Shanga opened his mouth to 
scream "Bern, no!"  when a man-thick power beam from the Wennis struck 
fighter number Twentythree, blowing it to bits.
     "Sorry, Admiral Shanga, " a voice said over the intership.
     "Orders from the Sorcerer of Tund.  There is to be no 
interference.
     And no revenge, no justice, Shanga realized, unless he could 
figure out something quickly.  Ten years of his life, of the lives of 
all his men, down the drain, unlessMovement near the Wennis caught his 
eye.  Rokur Gepta jetted from the airlock, crossed half the space 
between the cruiser and the freighter, and came to a skillful hovering 
stop.  He folded his spacesuited arms and hung, awaiting his 
adversaries.
     Across the void that had become an arena, Lando CaMssian followed 
his example in a bright yellow spacesuit, rocketing to meet the 
sorcerer, stopping several dozen meters away.  Vuffi Raa was right 
behind him.
     Something on the order of a billion pairs of eyes-or equivalent 
sensory equipment-watched as the sorcerer inclined his head in a small, 
grudging bow.  Without further warning, his right hand lashed out, and 
a beam of energy struck the place where Lando-had been.  He tumbled, 
spun, and recovered, something small and glittering in his own hand, 
but didn't return fire.
     Soaring, he made a complicated figure in the vacuum as Gepta fired 
twice more, missing both times.  While the sorcerer was thus 
distracted, Vuffi Raa circled warily, working his way behind the 
gray-clad figure.  Two more shots, then Gepta realized that he was 
being deceived.  He whirled, just as the robot's tentacles separated 
from his pentagonal body, spreading, encircling the sorcerer's 
position, and moving in.
     Almost hysterically, Gepta tried to burn the tentacles, but they 
wriggled and squirmed as they came toward him, each limb no longer 
where it had been when the aim was taken.
     Closer they came, closer.
     Landofired!  striking Gepta squarely in the back.  Incredibly, the 
stingbeam's energy passed through the sorcerer harmlessly, nearly 
striking Vuffi Raa's body, which was backing, slowly, clumsily away 
from the fight while it directed the tentacles to the attack.
     Gepta whirled again, getting off three shots at the gambler.
     The last one hit him in the foot.  There was a puff of steam and a 
hissing audible only to Lando, then the suit sealed, its medical 
processes already shutting off the pain.  He had no idea how badly he'd 
been hurt, but he knew that he could still fight.
     He fired a second of his five shots, again taking the sorcerer in 
the center of the torso.  Again the beam sliced through without 
apparent damage.
     Then a tentacle grasped Gepta around the neck.
     The gray-suited figure struggled, trying to unwrap the 
chromium-plated limb, but it hung on grimly.  From his vantage point 
in the squadron, Klyn Shanga watched, then was suddenly struck blind by 
a thought: Vuffi Raa, so-called Butcher of Renatasia, really was a 
robot!
     Nothing else could explain the independent limbs.  But if that was 
true, then what of their mission of revenge?  What of the only purpose 
they had had for living, since the death of their civilization.  What 
ofAbruptly, there was a surge of motion as the tenuous hold of tractors 
at a hundredth power was broken and the pinnace moved forward of its 
own accord, leaving the fighters behind.
     No one aboard the vessels of the fleet seemed to notice, so much 
of their attention was riveted on the duel.
     But Shanga did.
     "What's going on, there?  Who's in the pinnace?"
     ,it is I, the Ottdefa Osuno Whett, " - Came the electronic reply.
     "I'm going to end this farce, destroy the robot and the gambler@and 
perhaps Rokur Gepta, in the bargain!  None of them are fit to-" Another 
blinding flash of recognition.  It was the voice that did it, separated 
now from the assumed appearance.  Whett was the Butcher's aide!  Whett 
was the Butcher's assistant!  Whett was-the Butcher himself!  It had to 
be!  No other explanation was possible.
     Heeling his fighter over, Klyn Shanga thumbed his weapons at the 
pinnace.  The larger vessel's shields were up, however, shields 
designed to protect an admiral's tender person during ship-to-ship and 
ship-to-planet transfers.  Shanga's fire coruscated off the invisible 
barrier.
     "This is Zero Leader!"  he shouted on the squadron's frequency.
     "Get that pinnace-the man we seek is aboard!  I'll explain later, 
if we live!"  Desperately, he punched buttons on the remote console 
that had controlled the pinnace on the trip out.
     He couldn't prevent Whett from driving it, nor drop its shields, 
but he could keep it out of hyperdrive and lock the tractor field.
     He did the latter.  The squadron snapped into to rmation.
     Opening his small ship's engines all the way, he screamed at his 
men to do the same.  Slowly, inexorably, the assemblage of ships 
achieved headway.
     Abruptly, someone aboard the Wennis noticed the motion.
     "Zero leader this is the Wennis!  Halt immediately, or we'll blast 
you out of the nebula!"  The warning was repeated Gathering speed now, 
Shanga steered his squadron and' their captive-who was desperately and 
ineffectually attempting to reverse things from the pinnace-toward the 
decommissioned cruiser.  Faster and faster, skirting the space where 
the battle between Gepta and Lando and Vuffi Raa still raged, they 
zeroed in on the larger vessel-.
     A broad beam of power struck the pinnace squarely on the bow.  Her 
shields held, and the energy, sluicing off the deflectors, missed the 
lightly shielded fighters as well.  As they came within a few hundred 
meters of the Wennis, Shanga abruptly cast off the tractor field and 
flipped his craft around.  Years of reflex allowed his men to follow 
the motion like a school of fish.
     The pinnace struck the Wennis-her own shields negligently still 
powered down to allow the sorcerer to debark-and penetrated her hull.
     There was a brief instant in which nothing else happened, a 
suspension of time as inertia was overcome, as systems attempted to 
control the damage and failed.
     Then a titanic explosion as the cruiser belched flaming gases 
everywhere, consuming herself, the pinnace, and everyone aboard both 
vessels.  Even two of the fleeing fighters were tumbled badly.
     Farther away, Rokur Gepta, Vuffi Raa, and Lando were chstracted by 
the explosion.  Gepta stared insanely.  Lando recovered first, took 
aim, and-was struck by a piece of flying debris.  His shot went wild, 
hitting the sorcerer in the ankle.  In shock, Lando recovered and 
watched as the form of Rokur Gepta withered and faded.  He jetted up 
beside the magician in time to see a heavy military blaster swing 
around, fire, swing a little farther, and fire again.
     Vuffi Raa's tentacle floated emptily with nothing left to hold 
onto.  The third shot, cast by an unconscious and dematerializing hand, 
caught the robot's torso, a hundred meters away, dead in the center.
     The metal glowed momentarily.  When the incandescence dimmed, so 
had the single red eye in the body's center.  It was flat, glassy, and 
black.
     Lando pawed through Rokur Gepta's empty spacesuit.
     Down in the leg was a small bundle of ugly, slimy tissue, 
resembling a half-cooked snail, an escargot with a dozen skinny, hairy 
black legs.  It was one of the most disgusting things the gambler had 
ever seen, but he'd seen it before.
     It was a Croke, from a small, nasty system he'd once visited.  The 
species was intelligent and unvaryingly vicious, and they were all 
masters of camouflage and illusion.
     This one wasn't quite dead.  The suit had protected it, and it was 
nearly impervious to hard vacuum.  Lando ripped the suit away, took the 
stunned and putrid creature that had been Rokur Gepta, and squeezed.
     When he was through, his suit gloves were covered with greasy 
slime, but no Sorcerer of Tund would ever rule the galaxy.
     As if Gepta's death were a signal, the fleet began to open up on 
the Oswaft within range.  In the space of a moment, hundreds died ...
     until the fleet had other things to think about; Klyn Shanga's 
squadron was shooting back, giving the vacuum-breathing sapients 
covering fire so they could retreat.  One fighter exploded, then 
another, but they were saving Oswaft lives.
     "CEASE FIRE IMMEDIATELY OR BE DESTROYED!"
     The voice came over everybody's communicators simultaneously, at 
every frequency.  Lando looked up from his little friend's scorched 
torso-he'd gathered in the tentacles, as well, but they would not 
attach themselves and lay in his arms like so many dead pieces of 
jointed metal-to see a figure that dwarfed the departed Elders, even 
the largest dreadnaughts in the fleet.
     It was a starship, but it was at least fifty kilometers in 
diameter, a smooth, featureless, highly polished ovoid of silvery 
metal.  Another, identical monster followed close behind it.  Far to 
the rear, Lando watched as others, countless others, penetrated the 
supposedly impenetrable wall of the ThonBoka as if it were so much fog.
     Hundreds, thousands, hundreds of thousands.
     Some fool aboard the Recalcitrant opened fire with the new 
meter-thick destructor beam, deep green and hungry.  A red beam from 
the leading foreign ship met the green one squarely, forced it back a 
meter at a time until it reached the navy cruiser.  A pause, then the 
Recalcitrant became a cloud of incandescent gas.
     "CEASE FIRE OR BE DESTROYED!  THERE WILL BE NO OTHER WING!"
     Racked with grief, Lando watched as more and more of the titanic 
ovoids appeared in the nebula.  There was no way toes timate their 
number.  The gambler thought they might fill up the StarCave, twelve 
light-years across as it might be.
     Then a sensation brushed past him.  Somehow he knew that only he 
could hear the tightly beamed message that issued from his helmet 
phones.
     "You are Captain Caltissian, are you not?  You have fought 
valiantly, and not in vain.  You grieve for your little friend I 
grieve, too, f or he was my only son.

     xv

     "SABACC!"  SAID THE One.  "By the Center of Everything, Lando, I 
knew we would learn new and valuable things if only we dared to."
     "Yeah, well, you've still got to learn the difference between luck 
and skill.  That's eighteen trillion I'm ahead of you already, counting 
that last hand, and I don't even know yet what we're using for 
currency!"
     The gambler took a deep drag on his cigar and watched as the One 
gathered in the seventy-eight-card deck with a sweep of a jointed 
metallic tentacle.  His eye glowed a deep scarlet with delight and 
anticipation as he dealt them out again, two to Lando, two more to Klyn 
Shanga, two to the extensor manifesting itself as the Other.
     "Foo bad," he continued.  "This game is a whole lot faster and 
more interesting five-handed.  If only Vuffi Raa .  . ."
     "Each of us," observed the Other, "sets his own course through the 
universe and must follow it where it takes us.  This is called 
integrity, and to deviate@' "Come on, you five-legged clowns, cut the 
pop philosophy and play cards!  You know how long it's been since I sat 
down Lando grinned.  "And tried filling inside straights all night at a 
real table and@' long, Admiral?  At that, it beats dodging bullets and 
destructor beams.  I'm glad you decided to be on our side, and I'm 
especially glad you're a better fighter pilot than you are a sabacc 
player."
     "I'm only warming up.  Give me a chance, and I'll have your hide 
the easy way: payable in cash!"
     Laughter around the table.  It was good to have the lounge full of 
visitors, the gambler thought; a real passenger lounge for a change.
     But some folks seemed to be missing from his life, missing from 
places they'd carved for themselves only recently.  Or relatively 
recently.
     "Heard from Lehesu yet?"  he asked, watching a Commander of Flasks 
change itself into a Three of Staves.  He knew it was an electronic 
trick, but it never failed to give him goosebumps.  Shanga was 
frowning, a sure sign he had a good hand, Lando had learned quickly.
     He kept his betting light.
     The fighter pilot shook his head, still frowning.  "One of the 
boys said something about seeing a middle-sized Oswaft zooming off 
during the battle.  Said something about a courier he wanted to catch 
up with.  Is it true the spacepeople want to make him High Supreme 
Galootie or something?"
     A mechanical chuckle issued from the extensor representing the 
One.  "It would seem they have decided that leadership-or at least 
wisdom@o not necessarily correlate positively with age.  This is 
gratifying to me, as I am the youngest o my people ... that is, I was 
before Vuffi Raa ... er, I believe I shall take another card, 
gentle-beings."
     Outside, far away across the StarCave, the actual repositories of 
the intelligence of the One, the Other, and the Rest lay, as it were, 
at anchor.  They were gigantic fifty-kilometer starships, 
intergalactically self-propelled droids of ancient origin.
     Shanga changed the subject.  "I never quite got who it was who 
built you folks originally-that is, if you don't rilind me asking a 
religious question."
     "Not at all," the One replied.  "They were a race of individuals 
who looked rather like these extensors.  There are some among us who 
recall them, although I do not, except through cybernetically 
handed-down memories.  They were not spacefarers; the idea simply 
didn't appeal to them.  They were wiped out in a radiation storm when a 
nearby star went supernova.  Only a few intelligent machines were left, 
and they were my ancestors.  We did explore the stars, at least in our 
arm.
     There is a high incidence of unstable stars there, so that organic 
life is rare."
     "Yes," the Other concurred, "it was his idea to seek out organic 
life to liven up our own culture, and here we are."
     Lando shook his head.  He wished his little robot friend were 
there to see this hand; it was a lulu.  "Yes, but first you sent out an 
explorer whose memories were suppressed and who could not act 
violently.  That way he'd generate fresh impressions and not get your 
civilization into trouble with others unless it was absolutely 
necessary."
     "Correct," the One said.  "And while the suppression worked, the 
conditioning did not.  Self-preservation is a powerful motive, even 
though in the end-sabacc!"
     "Beginner's luck!"  the professional gambler howled, wondering how 
much he'd lost this time.  He heard footsteps behind him, turned and 
looked down the curving corridor toward the engine area.  A figure 
stood there, covered with grease, a spanner in one of its hands.  Its 
five-sided carapace was still scorched.
     "I got the deflectors readjusted, Master," Vuffi Raa said.
     "Admiral Shanga's men are good shots, but that weakness won't show 
up again now!"
     "Fine.  Now will you please stop being dutiful and join the game?
     And don't call me master in front of your old man, here, it's 
embarrassing."
     Hours later, two days after the battle and departure of the fleet, 
Lando was dozing in his pilot's chair in the cockpit.
     Vuffi Raa was out somewhere, visiting his kinfolk.
     "Captainmasterlandocalrissiansir I have returned.  " the 
ship-to-ship said.
     by so ron-nal all of a sudden"Zzzzz-what?  Leh@su!  W and where 
the Core have you been?"  The gambler had heard it suggested that the 
young Oswaft had run away from defending the ThonBoka.  He didn't 
believe it for a moment, but he was curious.
     "Oh, just before your duel with Rokur Gepta, I heard him tell an 
officer-his helmet microphone was open, apparentlythat he was sending a 
courier to have that person's family murdered should he disobey a 
rather ugly order I hopped after him, but it took me a while to catch 
up.  " Lando stretched, yawned, reached for a cigar.  "Oh?  What did 
you do then, ask him to stop politely?"
     "Why yes, and he did.  In several pieces, I'm afraid: I shouted it 
at him.  " The gambler chuckled.  "So now you're home and going to be 
the Elder of all you survey, is that how it is?"
     There was a long pause.  "No, not precisely.  I told them I would 
not be their Elder and if they wanted my advice, they wouldn't appoint 
a new one.  I don't think they listened to me.
     I wish neither to give nor receive orders-something I learned 
from you, Lando my Lando his friend scratched his head, a gesture he'd 
never had habitually until he'd picked it up from Vuffi Raa.  "I'm glad 
to hear it.  What are you going to do with yourself, then?"
     "Explore, discover the answers to questions.  Probably get in 
trouble again.  But tell me, I am very confused on one point.the 
Millennium Falcon is not really a person, is that correct?
     Nor the cruiser Wennis?"
     "The late, unlamented cruiser Wennis.  I don't know what that 
life-destroying stuff was Gepta spewed around, but I'm glad it was 
destroyed with her.  No, friend Lehesu, much as we may love her, the 
Falcon is a machine."  He puffed on his cigar, anticipating the 
Oswaft's next bewildered question.  "And before you ask, yes, the One, 
the Other, and the Rest are indeed persons, of the mechanical 
persuasion.  They think for themselves, the Falcon doesn't.  In a 
sense, they are to you what Vuffi Raa is to me: you both live in free 
space; it's your natural environment.  Vuffi Raa and I are 
arms-and-legs types, born and bred in a gravity well and most 
comfortable where there's light and heat and atmosphere."
     "But Lando what is Vuffi Raa?"
     "A larval'siarship, if you believe him.  The organic people who 
invented his ancestors looked like him, built machines that looked like 
him-the same idea as a humanoid robot.  Today his people use 
'extensors'-manipulators-that still look -like him.  If he's a good 
little hot and eats all his spinach, he'll grow up to be a starship, 
too, If he wants to."
     Concern tinged the vacuum-breather's transmission.  "I'm told that 
he was nearly killed while I was gone.  Ifeel somewhat guilty for-" 
"Forget it, old jellyfish, his daddy repaired him in just a few hours.
     What counts is the memory, the experiences, the character, and 
they were all intact, protected in googolicate at the deepest levels of 
his being.  No little blaster was going to do more than freeze him up 
mechanically."
     "What will you do now, Lando?"
     "Well, I think it's time I gave up this wandering life, if only 
for a while.  I need to do something responsible, own something, have 
some obligations.  I'll think about it.  I've learned a lot, and I have 
plenty to get started on.  The Falcon's holds are full of gigantic 
gemstones-every variety I've ever seen or heard of, and a few I'm going 
to have to consult experts on.
     I could buy an entire city."
     "And Vuffi Raa?"
     "I don't know, old manta, I don't know."
     The Millennium Falcon's engines thrummed with pent up energy.  She 
was eager to go back into intergalactic space, eager for another 
adventure.  In her cockpit, Vuffi Raa was finishing up a lecture: "And 
be sure to back the engines off at least three percent when initiating 
the deflector shields, otherwise the surge will overload her, and-" "I 
know, I know, I know," her captain replied patiently while trying to 
suppress tears.  "The only thing I don't understand is why you're going 
back this very minute.  Why can't you-" "Master, it is a bargain I have 
made.  I would much prefer, like you and Lehesu, to continue exploring 
the universe, to have adventure and savor life.  I will again, someday.
     But I was constructed for the purpose of recording those 
experiences and relaying them to my people.  I feel the need to do 
this, as you feel the need to breathe.  Do you understand, Master?"
     "I understand."  He patted the little droid's shiny torso.  The 
rest of the blast damage had healed, and the robot looked as new and 
perfect as the day they'd met.  "Well, if you ever get back to this arm 
of the galaxy, you know how to find me, don't you?  I haven't much in 
the way of a permanent address."
     There was an electronic chuckle.  "I'll just go where there's the 
most trouble and noise, and there'll you be, Master."
     "Not on your life!  I'm going to settle down, be responsible.
     And Vuffi Raa?"
     "Yes, Master?"
     "Don't you think, now that you know exactly who and what you are, 
that you could stop calling me master?"
     "Why, I suppose so, Lando.  Why didn't you ask me before?"
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