"Well, yes, for the sake of safety, I will lower my volume, but I will not cease speaking."

C-3PO followed the astromech up into the cockpit. R2-D2's hemispherical head turned around, a complete sweep, as he evaluated the situation outside the cockpit viewports.

There were no guards to be seen, but his musical trill alerted C-3PO to the holocams placed so that they could observe the port and starboard hatches and ramp, the upper hatch.

"Yes, Artoo, it appears that we are to remain here."

The astromech trilled at him again, insistently.

"Well, no, they would not have placed a holocam to monitor the secret hatch out of the false escape pod."

Tweetle.

"Are you mad? I can't go out there alone! I'll be captured and scavenged for parts,"

R2-D2's response was decidedly unmusical. It sounded like air being forced through a Hutt's blubbery lips.

"There's no call for that. I recognize the danger Master Han and Mistress Leia face. I just have no wish to be terminated."

Tweetle.

"Yes. Perhaps they face termination, too."

C-3PO struggled with the notion the astromech had handed him. His duty was clear; though he had no skills pertinent to this task, he did have to rescue Han and Leia.

But rescue meant exposing himself to physical danger.

This was something he'd done many times over the decades usually under protest dictated by his self-preservation programming, but now that programming had become something more.

It had become an actual dread. The notion that he could be assaulted so vigorously that his mental process might be suspended forever filled him with an eerie programming static that made it hard for him to move.

On the other hand, the notion that Han and Leia might experience a similar amount of damage was even worse, and allowed him to regain use of his limbs. "What do I have to do?"

Tweetle.

"Oh, no."

The concealed hatch in the Falcon's lower hull slid open. Shiny droid legs lowered through it, waving fu-tilely as they sought the bay floor meters below. "Much farther, Artoo?"

The astromech whistled at him.

C-3PO's torso, then head emerged as he was lowered at a steady rate through the hatch. He held on to a gray cord that looked more like a power cable than climbing gear. In fact, the knob under his hand was a dataport plug. C-3PO looked around and then down at the dura-crete beneath him. "Oh, I can't look. Please make it fast."

Moments later, his feet touched down. The cable continued lowering, piling up in irregular coils on the bay floor.

R2 tweetled, impatient.

"Yes, yes, I'm going." C-3PO walked with exagger - ated care, like a sneak thief in a holocomedy, to the wall nearest the Falcon's stern.

Then he turned and crept along the wall to the corner, turned again, and crept toward the bay doors providing access to the street beyond. He kept his photoreceptors alert for other holocams, but saw none beyond those R2 had mentioned.

He plugged the cable into the dataport at the door. Now, in theory, R2-D2 would be able to work his magic on the computer handling access into and out of this bay.

The astromech offered a musical trill, a noise of victory.

"Excellent, Artoo! And-what? I have to what?"

"What we must know," said the man on the other side of the table, "is why you are here and what you are doing." He was of average height, with a dark little beard, a dark little mustache.

Dark little beady eyes, Han decided.

The man wore the uniform of Aphran's military security forces, but his accent was not of this world. He spoke Basic with the tones of someone from one of the Corporate Sector worlds.

"We're here testing the effectiveness of a series of spacer costumes being produced on Commenor," Han said. "And what I must know is, how did you see through them? Our sponsors will want to know, to make the costumes better next time."

"This is not funny," the man said.

"What's your name, pal?"

"I am Mudlath, Captain Mudlath, of Aphran Plane-taryExosecurity."

"Well, that's funny. See, you don't lack a sense of humor."

Leia gave her husband the eye. What he was doing wasn't likely to make things much worse, hut there was no way his taunts would make the situation better, either.

They sat around a table in a duracrete-lined room deep in the spaceport base. Han and Leia, their hands manacled behind their backs, their ankles bound together by cutproof cords half a meter long, sat on one side of the table; Captain Mudlath sat opposite, with two of his men, unfriendly-looking ones, flanking the one door out of the chamber.

"I am pleased that you're comfortable enough in your current circumstances to remain jovial," Mudlath said. "Now, you should admit it: you are here engaged in some military action directed against the Yuuzhan Vong, knowing full well that any action you take could embroil the people of this peaceful world in your destructive war."

Han considered. "Isn't destructive war kind of redundant? Until I see a constructive war, or even a giggly war, I have to think so."

Clearly exasperated, Mudlath turned his attention to Leia. "Surely you can ease your situation by being more cooperative than your husband."

"Well, he's angry," Leia explained. "And rightly so. We employed costumes precisely to save your people from any inconvenience. If the Yuuzhan Vong knew we were here, they might come, but if they didn't, they wouldn't. We were thinking of you, your needs and feelings, and you reward us with hostility. He should be angry."

"An interesting notion," Mudlath acknowledged. "But it still doesn't explain your mission here. I need the names of everyone you've spoken with since your arrival."

"Oh, dear." Leia thought about it. "Well, there was the officer who contacted us first. The one with the spaceport authority. I transmitted him our documents and we got a homing beacon from him."

"That's right." Han nodded. "He was friendly. Unlike you, Captain.

Then there was the baymaster who met us outside our bay. Rulacamp, wasn't it?"

"Elderly woman," Leia said. "Not very talkative."

"Then there was her aide, the one who liked my scar."

Sighing, Captain Mudlath cupped his chin in his hand. "Are you going to make me resort to sterner measures?"

"You mean torture?" Han perked up. "Well... if you have to. But make it a good one. One I haven't seen before. I was tortured by Darth Vader."

"So was I," Leia said. "That was before we met."

"You'll have to go some to top him."

"Take them out of here." Mudlath suddenly sounded weary. "We'll get our answers later, and probably very unpleasantly."

C-3PO moved away from the bay where the Millennium falcon was being held. It was the hour before dawn, so he was slightly less conspicuous than a gleaming golden droid would be during the daylight, but he felt as obvious as a two-meter glow rod.

A pack hung around his neck; filled and then lowered to him by R2-D2, it held items the astromech had thought he would need for his trip.

He pulled out one of these now, a datapad, and opened it up. He keyed its audio input. "Artoo? Do you read me?"

The screen lit up: YES.

"Oh, I'm so relieved. So they are no longer jamming comlink frequencies?"

THEY ARE STILL JAMMING WITHIN THE BAY. BUT YOU PLUGGED ME INTO THE.

DOOR COMPUTER DIRECTLY, AND I'M TRANSMITTING THROUGH THAT TO A COMM UNIT.

OUTSIDE THE JAMMING FIELD.

"I don't need the details. A simple yes or no would have sufficed."

INCORRECT. THE PROPER ANSWER WOULD HAVE BEEN NO, THEY ARE STILL.

JAMMING COMLINK FREQUENCIES, AND YOU WOULD THEN HAVE BEEN MYSTIFIED AS TO.

HOW I WAS COMMUNICATING TO YOU.

"Your infernal devotion to minutiae is beginning to overload my logic circuits. Try a simple answer again. What do I do now?"

WHERE ARE YOU?.

C-3PO looked around and read in information. He was at a corner of two spacedock avenues, both now increasingly busy with pedestrian and landspeeder traffic. He saw humans, nonhumans, droids, self-motivated loaders, air-speeders, cargo speeders.

And avenue labels; they glowed atop posts. "I appear to be at the corner of Row Fourteen and Column Five.'

PROCEED TO THE SOUTHWEST CORNER OF ROW 25 AND COLUMN 10.

"How will I know which is the southwest corner?"

IF YOU MANAGE TO ARRIVE THERE WITHIN THE NEXT SEVEN STANDARD HOURS, EAST WILL BE THE DIRECTION WHERE THE SUN IS.

"Very funny. Ha-ha." Irritated to his cybernetic core, C-3PO set off toward the indicated destination.

Han gave up on the door. He backed away to the cot attached to the wall and sat there. "I can't get the access panel off," he complained.

"It's built like a prison."

"It is a prison," Leia said.

"That explains it. Can you do anything? With the Force?"

"Sure, if I had my lightsaber." Leia stood at the center of the room, studying the air vents, the slot in the door that doubtless was intended for the insertion of a food plate. "Which, you'll recall, I left behind with your favorite blaster, since they are both sort of identifiable. But give me a minute." She closed her eyes and tried to submerge herself in the Force, to feel whatever it was that it might choose to show her.

She could feel living things all around her, hundreds, thousands, too many to count, just as it was in any highly populated area. There were no pockets of dark side energy, no glowing beacons or other anomalies to focus on.

There was the door, and though her telekinetic skills were far inferior to those of most Jedi she knew, she did possess some. She focused on the door, tried to understand its internal structure as the Force showed it to her.

She could feel its metallic strength, feel little disconti-nuities that suggested moving parts. Soon enough, she distinguished the vertical bars that rose and descended from the door to keep it from swinging open.

Other bars, less formidable, slid in behind them to keep them from sliding into their unlocked position.

She plucked at the lower holding bar, felt it twitch under her effort. By concentrating further, she felt it slide free, just for a moment, before some other energy pulled it back into place.

Leia tried again with the upper bar. It, too, she could pry out of place for a moment-'not long enough to slide the main locking bar out of position.

She sighed and opened her eyes. "Not a chance," she said. "Not without a lot of practice. In maybe two, three days I might be able to handle one of the locks. In a few weeks, maybe I could do both at the same time and get that thing open."

"It's all right," he told her. "We'll get out of here some other way."

"How?"

"I have no idea."

TEN.

R2-D2 had been manufactured a long time ago, and those long years of experience meant that he had a store of knowledge of tricks, techniques, and strategies that made the programming of most other droids pale in comparison, and he found that he needed every one of them here.

Because, frustratingly enough, the prison computers of this spaceport were just unwilling to set his friends free.

Oh, he was able to obtain some information about them readily enough. Han and Leia shared a cell in the prison's deepest level and were labeled ENEMIES OF THE STATE and HOLD FOR SPECIAL ENVOY PICKUP.

The prison computers could be persuaded to keep secret the fact that R2-D2 was trying to get past them, He'd managed to forge himself a false ID as a security Program testing defensive program efficiency. All he had to endure from them was little expressions of mockery each time he failed to penetrate one of their protocols. Which was often.

The prison computers could not be persuaded that the Solo cell was actually unoccupied and ready for another occupant, which would have unlocked the thing. They could not be convinced that the Solos had military authority equivalent to the prison manager or head of security. They could not be induced to deliver captured explosives now held in a security division locker to that cell. They could not be tricked into transferring the Solos to a minimum-security level.

R2-D2 beeped in agitation. Prison computers, unlike humans, were never distracted or hungry. Their attention never flagged. This would take forever, and there was an indicator in the Solo file that they would be placed in the hands of outsystem visitors within the next couple of hours.

Distracted. Hungry. R2-D2 called up the computer protocols on prisoner needs and reviewed them.