For the first time, the officer spoke. “There is the possibility of some delay - of 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 officer 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 enemies, 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.”
V
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, needed 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, blonde 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 hand
ed 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. “Thirty-seven!” it exclaimed.
“Amazing!”
Lob Doluff stood pat.
Bassi Vobah took another card, said nothing.
Del 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. “Twenty-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 Demise.”
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 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 ultra-lightspeed 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 phase-shift adaptor.”
Lando studied the boards, while rubbing several bruises.
“Yes, but 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-”
“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 tried 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 minus-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 Oseon 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 forty-seven-odd thousand credits he'd acquired that evening, and a tiny, unobtrusive five-shot stingbeam 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 intercom 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.”
Star Wars - The Adventures of Lando Calrissian Trilogy Page 20
