Satisfied, he made a happy trilling noise and got back to work.

C-3PO got into the line of visitors and slowly, meter by meter, approached the prison's service entrance. He spoke down into the bag around his neck, whispering: "Artoo, I am three from the front of the line."

UNDERSTOOD.

The protocol droid looked ahead to the entrance. One human and a security droid stood there. The security droid was bulky, with black armor that suggested storm-trooper defenses, and a nearly featureless face with red-glowing eyes, a nightmare vision even for a droid. The human looked as though he were the droid's distant cousin, with similar armor and a similar build. He wore no helmet, and his eyes seemed to gleam redly in the light of dawn.

C-3PO took another step forward. "I am now two from the front of the line." GOOD. THE TIMING SHOULD WORK. "What timing?" There was no answer.

Now there was just one person in line ahead of C-3PO. The human guard, halfway into a brief interrogation of that person, scowled and held up a black-enameled corn-link. He spoke for a moment into it, then exercised an even deeper set of scowl muscles and turned to the droid.

"You take over for a minute," he said. "Payroll has to ask me a question in person."

The droid nodded. When the human guard had gone, it accepted the next visitor's identichip, ran it through its own internal slot, returned it to the man, then gave him a shove sufficient to throw the visitor down the stairs. "Refused," the droid said. "Next."

C-3PO moved up, irrationally feeling circuitry threaten to melt down in his vocal centers. "Good morning, sir, I wish to enter these-"

"Shut up. Identification,"

C-3PO handed over the chip that had, until just minutes before, been plugged into his datapad.

The security droid inserted it into the slot in its chest, then spat it out again and returned it. "Tadening Food-takers is authorized to enter," it said.

"Thank you, sir." C-3PO tried to move forward through the doorway, but the security droid's hand slapped into his chest, restraining him.

"Not so fast. Present possessions for search." Reluctantly, C-3PO held his bag up for inspection and opened its top flap. Clearly visible within the compartment were Leia's lightsaber, Han's modified DL-44 blaster pistol, vibroblades, a datapad, data cards. "This is the, um, requested fast meal for the Solos before their departure." The security droid peered at the items. "Identify these."

"Um, well, the two large packages are Corellian meat-lump. The one with the trigger housing is spiced, of course, and the other not."

Dismayed by the ridiculousness of his description, C-3PO pointed at the vibroblades and forged ahead. "Mealbread sticks." He indicated the other items. "Honey wafers for dessert."

"No vegetables?"

"No vegetables. I'm sure you know about Corellians." The security droid reached through its wireless datalink to the base computer and brought up three-dimensional representations of the types of food C-3PO had named. The database offered recently updated visuals on those foods, which, in every particular, including coloration, structure, and surface defects, matched the items in the bag. "Pass," said the security droid.

"Thank you, sir."

Once past the service entrance, C-3PO followed data microtransmissions that led him through a maze of service departments-laundry, electronic prisoner monitoring, visitor lanes. At the entrance to the kitchen he was met by a rolling cart that slid a slot open for him.

"You're sure this is the meal slot for the Solos," C-3POsaid.

The rolling cart beeped irritably at him. "Do not fret, I was not questioning your competence. I was merely making conversation." C-3PO dumped the contents of his bag out into the slot. The rolling cart slid the slot closed and banged its way back through the doors into the kitchen, still beeping in a less-than-friendly manner.

"Government service units," C-3PO sniffed. "Now, let us see if we can find our way back out of here."

But he was speaking only to himself. Until he found another datapad or comlink with a strong enough transmitter to connect directly with R2-D2, he was alone. R2-D2 had told him he was to make his break for freedom now, to exit the prison by the way he'd come and then move northward as fast as his golden legs would carry him. The astromech had told him to be brave.

"So this is what bravery is," he told himself. "How odd that it feels like petrification."

Han and Leia heard the service droid moving up the line of cells.

At each one, it announced, "Breakfast" in an irritating mechanical whine.

A series of thumps and thuds followed.

"I can tell," Han said, "that this will be an interesting dining experience."

The droid whined to a halt outside their door. "Last meal," it announced.

"Even better," Leia said.

Then items poured through the slot in the door. Han's blaster.

Leia's lightsaber. Other objects.

"You have got to be kidding," Han said.

Leia nodded. "Well, that makes this my favorite prison ever."

They scrambled to the door and sorted out their possessions. Leia flipped open the datapad, read the words, R2-D2 STANDING BY. AUDIO OPEN. PRESS "ADVANCE" FOR ESCAPE ROUTE MAP.

AND "RETURN" FOR TEXT.

Leia broke into a brilliant smile. "Artoo?"

STANDING BY. SUGGEST YOU COMMENCE YOUR ESCAPE AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.

I AM UNABLE TO PREVENT THE MONITOR DROIDS FROM OBSERVING YOUR CELL. AT.

ANY MOMENT THEY MAY BEGIN WONDERING WHY YOU ARE NOT EATING YOUR FOOD.

"Understood," Leia said. She hit the ADVANCE button, taking a quick moment to note the first few elements of their escape path. "Short hallway, metal-bar obstacle - no problem-cut through the floor into the maintenance machinery section. Got it. Ready?" She handed the data-pad to Han.

"Ready." Han took up position beside the door, his blaster in hand.

Leia lit her lightsaber. She drove the point of the gleaming red bar of energy into the door at floor level, dragged it across the bottom of the door. She felt heavy resistance that had to be the metal bars there. Once she was past that, she repeated the process at the top of the door, her blade not quite horizontal because she was not tall enough to hold the lightsaber that high.

Once she was past the heaviest resistance there, she retreated into a defensive stance and nodded.

Han shoved. The door slid halfway open. He snatched back his hand as two guards on the other side fired blasters through the opening.

Leia caught both shots with her blade, batting one to the side, the other back through the opening. It struck a blue-clad guard there in the chest and he went down, his uniform flaming and smoking.

Han leaned out and fired twice through the opening, catching the other guard in the side and hurling him out of the way. He shoved at the door again, and it opened the rest of the way.

Han and Leia rounded the corner to the barred exit from this cell block. Han waited behind and began firing back the way they had come while Leia went to work on the bars, cutting through three of them at head height and again at ankle height. Incoming blasterfire flashed past Han's position, blackening the wall behind him. "Got it?" he called.

"Got it. Come on." She slid through the gap and turned to face Han.

He raced to her, leapt through the gap. In those few seconds, prison guards skidded into view past the corner he'd vacated. They began firing; Leia swatted the bolts from the air, reveling at being able to do something so simple, so gratifying, so direct. Some of her deflections sailed back the way they'd come and forced the guards into hiding.

This corridor was nothing but a duracrete tube angling gently upward. Han raced up it, pacing off a distance. He consulted the datapad in his hand, then fired his blaster into the floor, marking one point.

"That's our mark."

Leia raced to join him and plunged her lightsaber into the floor there, dragging it around in a crude circle. Han waited until he saw the first set of feet appear at the bottom of the ramp, then began firing on the pursuers. "How's it coming?"

"Slow. I forgot at first to angle the cut outward instead of inward."

"What difference-never mind." Cutting through the duracrete with the edges angled inward as they descended created a plug that would have to be hauled up; cutting it the other way would yield a plug that should just fall away.

Except that it didn't. Leia finished her cut and stepped back, panting, and the plug remained stubbornly in place.

Han continued firing. " Artoo!" he shouted. "How thick is the duracrete here, anyway?" He stole a glance at the datapad screen.

LESS THAN A METER.

"Then why doesn't it fall?"

Aggravated, Leia stamped on the plug. It remained obstinantly in place. "Check the map again," she said. "Maybe we'll have to cut through somewhere else."

"You check it!" Han tossed her the datapad and fired three times in quick succession. Return fire bounced off the duracrete around them. "I'm obviously not fit to read a map."

"No, you've got it right.''

"Fall, blast it! Fall!" Han stomped on the plug, ft didn't vibrate.

He leapt clean upon it.

It fell.

R2-D2 sent the command through the cable that snaked out through the false escape pod to the landing bay door computer datajack.

Immediately, his audio sensors picked up the grinding noise of the bay roof levering open.

He ejected the cable from his own datajack and watched it snake down through the hole to the bay floor below.

With a little musical squeal that betrayed his eagerness, the astromech rolled out of the escape pod and up to the Falcon's bridge. He plugged into the dataport there and began an abbreviated, computer-speed power-up sequence. It wouldn't take long for the spaceport authority to realize that a supposedly unoccupied bay was opening to release a supposedly impounded transport, and he wanted to be out of here by then.

It wasn't every day R2-D2 got to fly the Millennium Falcon, after all.

Captain Mudlath was in his office, calculating just what he could purchase with the Solo reward, when his comlink buzzed into life.

"Captain," his administrative aide told him, "the Solos have escaped."

Mudlath actually felt himself grow dizzy for a moment as adrenaline jolted through him. "This had better be a joke," he said. "And a funny enough joke that I laugh until I forget about killing you."

"They're not out of the prison," his aide said. "They won't get out. But they're out of their cell."

Mudlath lowered his voice to a near-whisper. "I suggest you put them back in their cell." Not waiting for a reply, he switched the comlink off, then sat back to try to Persuade his stomach muscles to unclench.

If he didn't get them back... well, his Peace Brigade superiors would not only decline to reward him for the capture of the Solos, but they might choose to take the news badly. And if things continued as they were, and the Peace Brigade became the legitimate government of this backwater planet, he might have to leave. Quickly. Surreptitiously.

Jarred back into activity, he reached into a desk drawer and pulled out a handful of identichips taken from prisoners. Perhaps, with a little modification, one of them would serve to get him off-world.

The duracrete under Han's feet fell into darkness, but only about three meters, a deep enough drop for him to begin to worry that he was dropping into a mine shaft, a short enough drop that, with his experience, he was able to absorb most of the shock of impact with bent knees, to roll forward off the plug and across another hard floor to come up on his feet with a minimum of bruises.

A minimum. Not none. His middle-aged back would feel that one in the morning. Amazingly, he still had his blaster pistol in hand.

He was in another duracrete tunnel, this one illuminated only by the hole overhead. A hole in which Leia's face suddenly appeared. "Are you all right?"

"Get down here!"

She leapt in headfirst, rotating in midair to land on her feet atop the plug. Her landing was so light compared to his that he couldn't help but grin. "You do that just like a Jedi."

"Hush. Where to now?" She handed him the datapad.

He checked the datapad screen and turned in the approximate direction they'd been running while in the tunnel above. "There'll be a metal door there giving us access into a metal scrap compactor. We take a left and get out the door at the end."

"No, Han. Not another compactor. Once in a lifetime is enough."

The map on the screen suddenly blanked, replaced by words: I INITIATED A POWER SHUTDOWN ON THE COMPACTOR. IT CANNOT BE ACTIVATED UNTIL IT GOES THROUGH A FULL START-UP PROCEDURE. IT WILL BE THREE HOURS AT.

LEAST.

"Well," Leia allowed, "that's all right, then."

More shapes blocked the hole above. Han and Leia ran before they could begin firing.

Seeing through the Falcon's holocam eyes and sensor screens, R2-D2 sent the transport up on repulsorlifts. The transport wobbled like a plate being balanced atop a stick and he marvelled that humans, with their reflexes that crawled in relation to the speed of droid calculations, could learn to pilot vehicles so well.

He managed to get the Falcon clear of the bay before its ceiling panels began to swing down again. His trill was a little like laughter-the spaceport authorities had noticed just a little too late. Now that he was above the bay, he was clear of whatever comm-jamming equipment they had put in place; he could once again detect and interact with Han and Leia's datapad.

Now he had to make sure he got the Falcon to the Prison. Not just to the prison, he reminded himself, but to the prison and in one piece.

Furious, Han kicked at the pile of metal scrap leaning against the exit door from the compacting chamber.

"Artoo, you didn't say anything about having to dig our way out!"

SORRY. THE COMPUTER SYSTEM DIDN'T MENTION THAT THE COMPACTOR WAS.

HALF FULL. THEY ARE IN VIOLATION OF THEIR OWN REGULATIONS. THAT IS.

PROBABLY WHY THEY DO NOT HAVE THE LOAD LISTED.

"Leia, can you cut through this? Or through the wall?"

Leia bounced her lightsaber blade off the glossy blue wall of the chamber and shook her head. "Magnetically sealed. I can cut through the pile. In a few minutes." Then she heard the sound of mechanical voices from behind her. She spun. "Which we don't have."