The supervisor was frowning now, trying for a better look at Blue Max's guts. "No, computers are two levels up. But they won't let you in unless Hirken verifies it. You're not cleared, and you can't go into a restricted area if you're un-badged." He leaned closer to the scanner. "Listen, that really looks like some kind of computer module to me."

Han chuckled casually. "Here, look for yourself."

He stepped aside. The tech supervisor moved closer to the scanner, reaching down to work its focus controls. Then his own focus went completely dark.

Han, rubbing the edge of his hand, stood over the unconscious tech and looked around for a place to stow him. He had noticed a supply closet at the end of the scanner room. Han fastened the man's hands behind him with his own belt, gagged him with a dust cover off a scanner, and lugged the limp form into the closet. He paused to take the man's security badge, then closed the door.

He went back to the little computer-probe. "All right, Max; perk up."

Blue Max's photoreceptor lit up. Han removed his own sash and stripped the gaudy homemade medals and braid off his outfit. He yanked the epaulets and piping away, too, and what remained was a black body suit, a fair approximation of a tech's uniform. He placed the supervisor's security badge prominently on his chest, took Max up again, and set out. Of course, if anyone were to stop him or compare the miniature holoshot on his badge to his real face, he'd be tubed. But he was counting on his own luck, a convincing briskness of stride, and an air of purpose.

He went up two levels without mishap. Three Espos lounging in the guard booth near the elevator bank waved him on, seeing he was badged. He fought the impulse to smile. Stars' End was probably an uneventful tour of duty; no wonder the guards had gotten lax. After all, what could possibly happen here?

At the amphitheater, Pakka's amazing deftness hadn't even drawn an approving look from Viceprex Hirken. The cub had been using a hoop while rolling a balance-ball with his feet, doing flips.

"Enough of this," Hirken proclaimed, his well-tended hand flying up. Pakka stopped, glaring at the Viceprex. "Isn't that incompetent Marksman back yet?" The other execs, conferring among themselves, managed to reach a group decision that Han was still gone. Hirken's breath rasped.

He pointed to Atuarre. "Very well, Madam, you may dance. But be brief, and if your sharpshooting gaffer isn't back soon, I may dispense with him altogether."

Pakka had removed his props from the arena floor. Now Atuarre handed him the small whistle-flute Han had machined up for him. While the cub blew a few practice runs on it, Atuarre slipped on the finger-cymbals Han had fashioned for her and clinked them experimentally. The improvised instruments, even her anklet-chimes, all lacked the musical quality of Trianii authentics, she decided. But they would suffice, and might even convince the onlookers that they were seeing the real thing.

Pakka began playing a traditional air. Atuarre moved out onto the arena floor, following the music with a sinuous ease no human performer could quite match. Her streamers blew behind her, many-colored fans flickering from arms and legs, forehead and throat, as her finger-cymbals sounded and her anklets rang, precisely as they should.

Some of the preoccupation left Hirken's face and the faces of the other onlookers. Trianni ritual dancing had often been touted as a primitive, uninhibited art, but the truth was that it was high artistry. Its forms were ancient, exacting, demanding all a dancer's concentration. It required perfectionism, and a deep love of the dance itself. In spite of themselves, Hirken, his subordinates, and his wife were drawn into Atuarre's spinning, stalking, pouncing dance. And as she performed, she wondered how long she could hold her audience, and what would happen if she couldn't hold-them long enough.

Han, having found a computer terminal in an unoccupied room, set Max down next to it. While Max extended his adapter and entered the system, Han took a cautious look in the hall and closed the door.

He drew up a workstool by a readout screen. "You in, kid?"

"Just about, Captain. The techniques Rekkon taught me work here, too. There!" The screen lit up, flooded with symbols, diagrams, computer models, and columns of data.

"Way to go, Max. Now spot up the holding pens, or cells, or detention levels or whatever."

Blue Max flashed layout after layout on the screen, while his search moved many times faster, skimming huge amounts of data; this was the sort of thing he'd been built for. But at last he admitted, "I can't, Captain."

"What d'you mean, can't? They're here, they've gotta be. Look again, you little moron!"

"There're no cells," Max answered indignantly. "If there were, I'd have seen them. The only living arrangements in the whole base are the employees' housing, the Es...o...b..rracks, and the exec suites, all on the other side of the complex-and Hirken's apartments here in the tower."

"All right," Han ordered, "put a floor plan of this joint up, level by level, on the screen, starting with Hirken's amus.e.m.e.nt park."

A floor plan of the dome, complete with the garden and amphitheater, lit the readout. The next two levels below it proved to be filled with the Viceprex's ostentatious personal quarters. The one after that confused Han. "Max, what're those subdivisions? Offices?"

"It doesn't say here," the computer answered. "The property books list medical equipment, holo-recording gear, surgical servos, operating tables, things like that."

A thought struck Han. "Max, what's Hirken's t.i.tle? His official corporate job-slot, I mean."

"Vice-President in charge of Corporate Security, it says."

Han nodded grimly. "Keep digging; we're in the right place. That's no clinic up there, it's an interrogation center, probably Hirken's idea of a rec room. What's on the next floor down?"

"Nothing for humans. The next level is three floors high, Captain. Just heavy machinery; there's an industrial-capacity power hookup there, and an air lock. See, here's the floor plan and a power-routing schematic."

Max showed it. Han leaned closer to the screen, studying the myriad lines. One, marked in a different color and located near the elevators, attracted his attention, He asked the computer what it was.

"It's a security viewer, Captain. There's a surveillance system in parts of the tower. I'll patch in."

The screen flickered, then resolved into the brightness of a visual image. Han stared. He'd found the lost ones.

The room was filled, stack upon stack, with stasis booths. Inside each, a prisoner was frozen in time, stopped between one instant and the next by the booth's level-entropy field. That explained why there were no prisoner facilities, no arrangements for handling crowds of captive ent.i.ties, and only a minimal guard complement on duty. Hirken had all his victims suspended in time; they'd require little in the way of formal accommodations. The Security Viceprex need take prisoners out only when he chose to question them, then pop them back into stasis when he was done. So he robbed his prisoners of their very lives, taking away every part of their existence except interrogation.

"There must be thousands of them," Han breathed. "Hirken can move them in and out of that air lock like freight. Power consumption up there must be terrific. Max, where's their plant?"

"We're sitting on it," Max answered, though that anthropomorphism couldn't really apply to him. He filled the screen with a basic diagram of the tower. Han whistled softly. Beneath Stars' End was a power-generating plant large enough to service a battle fortress, or a capital-cla.s.s warship.

"And here are the primary defense designs," Max added. There were force fields on all sides of the tower, and one overhead, ready to spring into existence instantly. Stars' End itself was, as Han had already noticed, made of enhanced-bonding armor plate. According to specs, it was equipped with an anticoncussion field as well, so that no amount of high explosives could damage its occupants. The Authority had spared no expense to make its security arrangements complete.

But that helped only if the enemy were outside, and Han was as inside as he could get. "Is there a prisoner roster?"

"Got it! They had it filed: Transient Persons."

Han swore under his breath at bureaucratic euphemisms. "Okay, is Chewie's name on it?"

There was the briefest of pauses. "No, Captain. But I found Atuarre's mate! And Jessa's father!" He flashed two more images on the screen, arrest mugshots. Atuarre's mate's coloring was redder than hers, it turned out, and Doc's grizzled features hadn't changed. "And here's Rekkon's nephew," Max added. The mug was of a young black face with broad, strong lines that promised a resemblance to the boy's uncle.

"Jackpot!" Max squealed a moment later, a very uncomputerish exclamation. Chewbacca's big hairy face flashed on the readout. He hadn't been in a very good mood for the mugshot; he was disheveled, but his snarl promised death to the photographer. The Wookiee's eyes looked gla.s.sy, and Han a.s.sumed that the Espos had tranquilized him as soon as they'd taken him.

"Is he okay?" Han demanded. Max put up the arrest record. No, Chewbacca hadn't been badly injured, but three officers had been killed in apprehending him, the forms said. He hadn't given a name, which explained why it had been difficult for Max to locate him. The list of charges nearly ran off the screen, with a final, ominous, handwritten notation at the bottom listing time of scheduled interrogation. Han glanced at a wall clock; it was no more than hours before Chewbacca was due to enter Viceprex Hirken's torture mill.

"Max, we're up against it. We have to do something right now; I'm not going to let them take Chewie's mind apart. Can we deactivate defensive systems?"

The computer replied: "Sorry, Captain. All the primaries are controlled through that belt unit Hirken carries."

"What about secondaries?"

Max sounded dubious. "I can get to the standby, but how will you deactivate the Viceprex's belt unit?"

"I dunno; how's he wired up? There must be ancillary equipment; the d.a.m.n box is too small to be self-contained and still control this whole tower."

Max gave the answer. Receptor circuitry ran through Stars' End, built into the walls on each level.

"Show me the top-level circuitry diagrams." Han studied them carefully, memorizing points of reference-doors, elevators, and support girders.

"Okay, Max, now I want you to cut into the secondary control systems and rearrange power-flow priorities. When the secondaries cut in, I want that umbrella shield, the deflector directly overhead, to start load-shedding its power back to the plant, but I want you to prejudice the systems' safeguards, so that they notice the deflector droppage but not the feedback."

"Captain Solo, that'll start an overload spiral. You could blow the whole tower up."

"Only if I get to Hirken's primaries," Han said, half to himself, half to Max. "Get crackin'."

High above, Viceprex Hirken had realized that he was being played for a fool.

As fascinated as he'd been by Atuarre's dance, he'd recognized in a fundamental, ever-suspicious part of his mind that he was being diverted. What he desired was to see mechanized combat. This dance artistry, though pretty enough, was no subst.i.tute.

He stood, fingering a b.u.t.ton on his belt unit. Lights came up, and Pakka stopped playing. Atuarre looked around her, as if awakening from a dream. "What-"

"Enough of this," Hirken decreed. Uul-Rha-Shan, his reptilian gunman, stood at his side, hoping for the order to slay. But instead, Hirken said, "I've seen enough, Trianii. You're clearly stalling. You think me an imbecile?" Then he motioned to Bollux. "You ridiculous excuses for entertainers brought this obsolete 'droid to me purely as a fraud, never planning to give me value for my money. You'd hoped to plead mechanical failure and get me to reimburse you for your trip, or even reward you for your efforts. Isn't that so?"

Her quiet "No, Viceprex" was ignored.

Hirken was not convinced. "Prepare that 'droid for combat, and bring out my Mark X," he ordered the techs and Espos around him.

Atuarre drew herself up, enraged, and afraid for Bollux. But she could see Hirken was adamant, and she had her cub to think of. Furthermore she could do Han and her mate little good here. "With your permission, Excellency, I will return to my ship." Onboard the Falcon, at least, more options would be available.

Hirken waved her away, preoccupied with his Executioner, laughing his humorless laugh. "Go, go. And if you see that worthless liar of a Marksman of yours, you'd be wise to take him with you. And don't think I won't lodge a complaint. I'll have your Guild membership revoked."

She glanced to where Bollux was being ushered down to the arena, helpless to aid him. "Lord Hirken, surely this is illegal. That is our 'droid-"

"Brought here to defraud me," he finished for her, "but I'll have my value from it. Now leave, if you're going to, or watch if you wish." He wagged a finger, and an Espo sergeant barked an order. Tall, stern guards fell in, one to either side of the two Trianii.

Atuarre couldn't restrain her hiss. She grabbed Pakka's paw and stormed toward the elevator, the cub bouncing along behind. Uul-Rha-Shan's dry laugh was like a stab of hatred.

Down in the computer center, the readout screen, which had been showing a small part of the modification Blue Max was making, went blank for a moment.

"Max? You all right?" Han asked worriedly.

"Captain Solo, they're activating that combat machine, the Mark X. They're putting it in with Bollux!" Even as the computer-probe spoke, the rapid-fire images of the Mark-X Executioner's engineering details replaced one another on the screen. Max's voice was filled with alarm. "The Mark X's controls and power are independent of this system; I can't touch it! Captain, we have to get back upstairs right now. Bollux needs me!"

"What about Atuarre?"

"They're summoning an elevator and notifying security that she's leaving. We've got to get up there!"

Han was shaking his head, unmindful that Max's photoreceptor was off. "Sorry, Max, there're too many other things I need to do here. Besides, we couldn't help Bollux now."

The readout went blank and the photoreceptor came on. Blue Max's voice trembled. "Captain Solo, I'm not doing anything else for you until you take me to Bollux. I can help him."

Han struck the probe, not gently, with the heel of his hand. "Get back to work, Max. I'm serious." For answer, Max withdrew his adapter from the network. Han, infuriated, s.n.a.t.c.hed the little computer up and held it high overhead.

"Do what I told you, or I'll leave you here in pieces!"

Max's reply was somber. "Go ahead, then, Captain. Bollux would do whatever he had to if I were in trouble."

Han paused in the midst of dashing the computer to the floor. It occurred to him that Max's concern for his friend was no different from Han's own for Chewbacca. He lowered the probe, looking at it as if for the first time. "I'll be d.a.m.ned. You sure you can help Bollux?"

"Just get me there, Captain; you'll see!"

"I hope. Which car was going to the dome?"

Max told him, and he set out for the elevators at once, slinging the probe over his shoulder. When he got there, he removed the security badge and punched for a downward ride. The wrong car stopped; he let it wait and go on, and punched the descent b.u.t.ton again.

He lucked out. The car containing Atuarre, Pakka, and their two guards had stopped a number of times on its way down. She saw Han and pulled her cub off the car with her. The Espos had to hurry to avoid being left behind.

Han took the two Trianii aside a pace or two, but the Espos made it plain that they were keeping an eye on all three.

"We were going to the ship," Atuarre told him in low tones. "I didn't know what else to do. Solo-Captain, Hirken is putting Bollux in with that Executioner machine of his!"

"I know. Max has some kind of angle on that." He saw one of the Espos speaking on a com-link. "Listen, the lost ones are here, thousands of 'em. Max rigged the tower; Hirken'll have to let everybody go if he wants to keep breathing. Go get the ship ready. If I can just get my hands on a blaster, the fix is in, sister."

"Captain, I meant to tell you," Max interrupted. "I was rechecking the figures. I think you should know-"

"Not now, Max!" Han pulled Atuarre and Pakka back toward the elevator, hitting both the up and the down b.u.t.tons. One of the Espos fell in with the Trianii again, but the other stationed himself with Han, explaining, "The Viceprex says it's all right for you to come up. You can take home what's left of your 'droid after the fight."

The techs and Espos hurried Bollux down into the arena as the transparisteel slabs raised from their hidden slots in the floor. Hirken knew now that this was no gladiator 'droid, and so gave the command that Bollux be equipped with a blast shield, to make things more interesting. The shield, an oblong of dura-armor plate fitted with grips, weighed down the old 'droid's long arm as he tried to adjust to what was happening.

Bollux knew he would never escape so many armed men. He had known many humans in his long years of function and could recognize hatred by now. That was what he saw on the Viceprex's face. But Bollux had come through a number of seemingly terminal situations and had no intention of being demolished now if he could avoid it.

A door panel slid up in the far wall forming one arc of the arena. There was a squeal of drive wheels, the rattling of treads. The Mark-X Executioner rolled out into the light.

It was half again as tall as Bollux and far broader, though it moved on two thick caterpillar tracks instead of legs. From the treads and support housing rose a thick trunk, armored in gray alloy plate. The Executioner's many arms were folded close to it now, inactive, each one furnished with a different weapon.

Bollux employed a trick he had learned from one of his first human owners, and simply omitted from computations the logical conclusion that his destruction was now a high order of probability. Among humans, he knew, this tactic was called ignoring certain death. Bollux thought of it as excluding counterproductive data. He'd been doing it for a long time now, which was why he was still functional.

The Executioner's cranial turret swung, its sensors locking in on the 'droid. The Mark X was the latest word in combat automata, an extremely successful, highly specialized killing machine. It could have zeroed in on the unarmed, general-purpose labor 'droid and vaporized him right then and there, but was, naturally, programmed to give its owner a more enjoyable show than that. The Executioner was also a machine with a purpose.

The Mark X began rolling, moving with quick precision, maneuvering toward Bollux. The 'droid backed away clumsily, contending with the unfamiliar task of holding and manipulating his blast shield. The Executioner circled, studying Bollux from all sides, gauging his reactions, while the 'droid watched from behind his shield.

"Commence!" called Viceprex Hirken through the arena's amplifiers. The Mark X, voice-keyed to him, changed to attack mode. It came directly to bear on Bollux, rushing at him at top speed. The 'droid dodged one way, then another, but his efforts were all antic.i.p.ated by the Executioner. It compensated for his every move, rumbling to crush him under its tread.

"Cancel!" rasped Hirken over the amplifiers. The Mark X stopped just short of Bollux, allowing the old 'droid to totter awkwardly back from it.

"Resume!" ordered the Viceprex. The Executioner cranked into motion again, selecting another destructive option from its a.r.s.enal. Servos hummed and a weapon arm came up, its end supporting a flame projector. Bollux saw it and brought his shield up just in time.

A gush of fire arced from the nozzle of the flame gun, splashing against the walls of the arena, throwing a burning stream across Bollux's shield. The Mark X brought the nozzle of its weapon back for another pa.s.s at low angle, to cut the 'droid's legs out from under him. Bollux barely managed to crash clumsily to his knees and ground his shield before flame washed across it, making puddles of fire on the floor around him. The Mark X was rolling again, preparing for a clearer shot, when Hirken canceled that mode, too.

Bollux struggled to his feet, using the shield for leverage. He could feel his internal mechanisms overheating, his bearings especially. His gyro-balance circuitry hadn't been built with this sort of constant punishment in mind.

Then the Mark X was coming in again. Bollux ignored the inevitable, making his sluggish parts respond, moving with some mechanical equivalent of pain, but still functional.

Han came out of the elevator at a run. The Espos there, aware that the Viceprex wished him to see the spectacle, let him pa.s.s.

He skidded to a stop at the top row of the little amphitheater. Hirken was seated below with his wife and subordinates, cheering their champion and laughing at the ludicrous Bollux as the Executioner raised another weapon arm. This one was provided with a bracket of flechette-missile pods.

Bollux saw it, too, and used a trick, or, as he thought of it, a last variable. Crouching, still holding his shield, he loosed the heavy-duty suspension in his legs and jumped out of the Mark X's cross hairs like some giant red insect. Miniature missiles exploded against the clear arena walls in a cloud, filling the amphitheater with crashing eruptions in spite of the sound-suppression system out in the seating area.

Hirken and his people roared their frustration. Han flung himself down the steps to the arena, three at a time. Bollux had landed badly; the strain on his mechanisms was becoming insuperable. The Viceprex changed his combat-automaton's programming once more.

The Executioner retracted its missile-arm. Articulated catch-cables extended from ports in its sides, like metallic tentacles, and two circular saws swung out, their arms locking into position. The sawblades spun, creating a peculiar sound, the molecules of their cutting edges vibrating in a way that would shear through metal as easily as through air. The Mark X moved toward Bollux, its cables weaving, for a terminal embrace.

Hirken spied Han reaching the arena's edge. "Fraud! Now, watch a true combat-automaton at work!" He shook with gruesome laughter, all the affected charms of corporate board rooms stripped from him now. His wife and subordinates followed suit dutifully.