"Chewie, we're gonna be pulling in customers from all over the Badlands!"

With a noncommittal grunt Chewbacca went to pick up the fallen plasma torch. Kamar's sun was lowering at the horizon, and he'd done just about all he could to make the ship s.p.a.ceworthy anyway.

He was large, even for a Wookiee-an immense, shambling man-shaped creature with radiant blue eyes and a luxurious red-gold-brown pelt. He had a bulbous black nose and a quick, fang-filled smile; he was gentle with those whom he liked and utterly ferocious toward anyone who provoked him. There were few of his own species to whom Chewbacca was as close to as Han Solo, and the Wookiee was, in turn, Han's only true friend in a very big galaxy.

Gathering his equipment, Chewbacca trudged back out from under the ship.

"Leave that stuff," Han enjoined him. "Sonniod's coming by to say h.e.l.lo." He indicated Sonniod's ship, a light cargo job, parked on her sandskid-mounted landing gear some distance out on the flats. As he had been close to the blast of his plasma torch, Chewbacca hadn't even heard the landing.

Sonniod, a compact, gray-haired little man with a c.o.c.ksure walk and a rakish tilt to his shapeless red bag of a hat, was approaching slowly behind Han. He took in the Falcon's temporary resting place with an amused eye, being a former smuggler and bootlegger. One of the fastest smuggling ships in s.p.a.ce, she looked out of place here in the middle of the Kamar Badlands, with little to see in any direction but sand, parched hills, miser-plants, barrel-scrub, and sting-brush. The hot white sun of Kamar was lowering and soon, Sonniod knew, night scavengers would be leaving their burrows and dens. The thought of digworms, bloodsniffers, nightswifts, and hunting packs of howlrunners made him shiver a little; Sonniod hated crawly things. He waved and called a greeting to Chewbacca, whom he'd always liked. The Wookiee returned the wave offhandedly, booming a friendly welcome in his own tongue while ascending the ramp to stow his welding equipment and run a test on his repair work.

The Millennium Falcon sat on her triangle of landing gear near a natural open-air amphitheater. The encircling slopes showed the prints and tail scuffs left on previous occasions by the Badlanders. Down in the middle of the depression the stubborn plantlife of Kamar had been cleared away. There rested a ma.s.s-audience holoprojector, a commercial model that resembled in size and shape a small s.p.a.cecraft's control console.

"I got word that you wanted a holofeature, any holofeature," Sonniod remarked, following Han down the side of the bowl. "Love is Waiting was all I could find on short notice."

"It'll do fine, just fine," Han a.s.sured him, fitting the cube into its niche in the projector. "These simpletons'll watch anything. I've been running the only holo I had, a travelogue, for the past eleven nights. They still keep coming back to gawk at it."

The sun was ready to set and dusk would come rapidly; this part of the Badlands was close to Kamar's equator. Removing the sweatband he'd been wearing around his forehead, Han bent over the holoprojector. "Everything checks out; we have ourselves a new feature tonight. Come on back to the Falcon and I'll let you help me take admission."

Sonniod scowled at having to turn around and climb the bowl again. "I got word on the rumor vine that you were here, but I couldn't understand how in the name of the Original Light you and the Wookiee ended up showing holo to the Kamar Badlanders. Last I heard, you two took some fire on the Rampa Rapids."

Han stopped and scowled at Sonniod. "Who says?"

The little man shrugged elaborately. "A ship looks like a stock freighter but she's leaking a vapor trail on her approach, and the Rampa Skywatch figures she's a water smuggler. They shoot at her when she won't heave to, but she dumps her load, maybe five thousand liters, and cuts deeper into the traffic pattern. What with the thousands of ships landing and lifting off all the time, they never got a positive I.D. on her. And you were seen on Rampa."

Han's eyes narrowed. "Too much chatter can get you into trouble. Didn't your mother ever tell you that, Sonniod?"

Sonniod put on a big grin. "What she told me was never to talk to strangers. And I haven't, not about this, Solo. But I'd have thought you'd have known better. Didn't you check for leakage?"

Han relaxed and shifted his feet. "Next time I'll install the d.a.m.n tanks myself. That was pure R'alla mineral water, sweet and natural and expensive as h.e.l.l to haul-worth a fortune on Rampa, where all they've got is that recycled chemical soup. Too bad. Anybody who makes it down the Rampa Rapids with a load of fresh water these days is a rich man."

What Han didn't mention, though he a.s.sumed Sonniod had concluded as much, was that he and Chewbacca had lost all the money they had saved during those two-and-a-half minutes of fun and excitement in the Rampa approach corridors.

"As it was, I landed with nothing but the general cargo I was lugging as cover. And somebody messed up on that, too! Instead of twelve of the Lockfiller holo models, I had eleven of them and this old Brosso Mark II. The consignee would only accept the eleven Lockfillers and finally wouldn't pay because he'd been shorted. The shipper liquidated right after I lifted off, and you know how much I hate police and courts, so I was stuck with that holoprojector."

"Well, I see you didn't let it put you out of business, Solo, I'll say that for you," Sonniod granted.

"Inspiration's my specialty," Han agreed. "I knew it was time to get out of the Corporate Sector for a while anyway, and I figured the locals out here in the Badlands would be crazy over holos. I was right; wait till you see. Oh, and thanks for fronting for the holo."

"I didn't," Sonniod answered as they resumed their way. "I know someone who rents them, and Love Is Waiting is about the oldest he's got. On my return leg I'll swap him whatever you've got and pick up a bit of cash on the side. My cut, all right?"

The deal sounded good to Han.

They returned to the Falcon, where a variety of local trade goods had been heaped at the foot of the starship's main ramp. As Han and Sonniod arrived, a labor 'droid came clumping down the ramp bearing a plastic-extrusion carton containing more Kamarian wares of various sorts.

The 'droid was somewhat shorter than Han, but barrel-chested and long-armed, and moved with the slight stiffness that indicated a heavy-duty suspension system. It had been designed in the image of man, with red photoreceptors for eyes and a small vocoder grille set in his blank metallic face where a mouth would have been. His durable body was finished in a deep, gleaming green.

"How'd you afford a brand-new 'droid?" Sonniod asked as the machine in question set down its burden.

"I didn't," Han answered. "He said they wanted to see the galaxy, but sometimes I think they're both circuit-crazy."

Sonniod looked puzzled. "Both?"

"Watch." The 'droid having completed his ch.o.r.e, Han commanded, "Hey, Bollux, open up."

"Of course, Captain Solo," Bollux answered in a casual drawl, and obligingly pulled his long arms back out of the way. His chest plastron parted down the center with a hiss of pressurized air and the halves swung outward. Nestled among the other elements in his chest was a small, vaguely cubical computer module, an independent machine ent.i.ty painted a deep blue. A single photoreceptor mounted in a turret at the module's top came alight, swiveled, and came to rest on Han.

"h.e.l.lo, Captain," piped a childlike voice from a diminutive vocoder grille.

"Well, of all the-" Sonniod exclaimed, leaning closer for a better look as the computer's photoreceptor inspected him up and down.

"That's Blue Max," Han told him. "Max because he's packed to his little eyebrows with computer-probe capacity and Blue for obvious reasons. Some outlaw-techs put these two together like that." He thought it best not to go into the wild tangle of crime, conflict, and deception surrounding a previous adventure at the secret Authority installation known as Stars' End.

Bollux's original, ancient body had been all but destroyed there, but the outlaw-techs had provided him with a new one. The 'droid had opted for a body much like his old one, insisting that durability, versatility, and the capacity to do useful work had always been the means to his survival. He had even retained his slow speech pattern, having found that it gave him more time to think and made humans regard him as easygoing.

"When they were manumitted they asked to sign on with me," Han told Sonniod. "They're swapping labor for pa.s.sage."

"Those are the last of the trade articles we've acc.u.mulated, sir," Bollux informed Han.

"Good. Close up and go re-stow all the loose gear we had to move around." The plastron halves swished shut on Blue Max, and Bollux obediently returned up the ramp.

"But, Solo, I thought you always said you disavow all machinery that talks back," Sonniod reminded him.

"A little help comes in handy sometimes," Han answered defensively. He avoided further comment, remarking, "Ah, the rush is about to start."

Out of the gloom, figures were hurrying toward the starship, pausing at a cautious distance. The Kamar Badlanders were smaller and more supple than other Kamarians, and their segmented exoskeletal chitin was thinner and of a lighter color, matching the hues of their home terrain. Most of them rested in the characteristic pose of their kind, on their lowermost set of extremities and their thick, segmented, prehensile tails.

Lisstik, one of the few Badlanders whom Han could tell from the others, approached the Falcon's ramp. Lisstik had been among the very few to watch the holos on the first evening Han had offered them, and he'd shown up every evening thereafter. He seemed to be a leader among his kind. Now Lisstik was sitting on his tail, leaving his upper two sets of brachia free to gesture and interweave as Kamarians loved to do. The Badlander's faceted, insectile eyes showed no emotion Han had ever been able to read.

Lisstik wore an unusual ornament, a burned-out control integrator that Chewbacca had cast aside. The Kamarian had scavenged and now wore it, bound by a woven band to the front of his gleaming, spherical skull. Lisstik spoke a few phrases of Basic, possibly one of the reasons he was a leader. Once more he asked Han the question that had become something of a formula between them. In a voice filled with clicks and glottal stops, he queried, "Will we see mak-tk-klp, your holo-sss, tonight? We have our q'mai."

"Sure, why not?" Han replied. "Just leave the q'mai in the usual place and take a-" he almost said "seat," which would have been a difficult concept for a Kamarian, "-a place below. The show starts when everybody's down there."

Lisstik made the common Kamarian affirmative, a clashing-together of the central joints of his upper extremities, sounding like small cymbals. From his side he uncorded a wound sc.r.a.p of miser-plant leaf and laid it down on a trading tarp Han had spread out at the base of the ramp. Lisstik then scuttled down into the open-air theater with the swift, fluid gait of his species.

Others began to follow, leaving this leaf-wrapped treasure or that handicraft or artwork. Often one Badlander would offer something that const.i.tuted the contributions for himself and several companions. Han raised no objection; business was good and there was no reason to push for all the market would bear. He liked to think he was building good will. The Badlanders, who weren't used to congregating, tended to find their places on the slopes in small cl.u.s.ters, keeping as much distance between groups as possible.

Among the payments were water-extraction tubes, pharynx flutes, minutely carved gaming pieces, odd jewelry intended for the exotic Kamarian anatomy, amulets, a digworm opener chipped from gla.s.sy stone and nearly as sharp as machined metal, and a delicate prayer necklace. Earlier on, Han had been forced to dissuade his customers from bringing him nightswift gruel, boiled howlrunner, roast stingworm, and other local delicacies.

Han picked up the twist of leaf Lisstik had left, opened it on his palm and showed it to Sonniod. Two small, crude gemstones and a sliver of some milky crystal lay there.

"You'll never get to be a man of leisure at this rate, Solo," opined Sonniod.

Han shrugged, rewrapping the stones. "All I want is a new stake so I can lay in a cargo and get the Falcon repaired."

Sonniod studied the starship that had once been, and still looked very much like, a stock light freighter. That she was heavily armed and amazingly speedy was something Han preferred not to have show externally. Such display of force would have been too likely to arouse the curiosity of those entrusted with enforcement of the law.

"She looks s.p.a.ceworthy enough to me," Sonniod commented. "Same old Falcon-looks like a garbage sledge, performs like an interceptor."

"She'll run, now that Chewie's welded the hull," Han conceded, "but some of the control circuitry that was shot up over Rampa was about ready to give up when we got here. Before we came out into the Badlands we had to lay in some new components, and about the only thing you can get here on Kamar is fluidic systems."

Sonniod's face turned sour. "Fluidics? Solo, dear fellow, I'd rather steer my ship with a blunt pole. Why couldn't you get some decent circuitry?"

Han was poring over the rest of this take. "This is a nowhere planet, pal. They've still got nationalism and their weapons-in the advanced places, I mean; not out here in the Badlands-are at the missile-delivered, nuclear-explosive stage. So, of course, someone developed a charged-particle beam to mess up missile circuitry, and naturally everyone turned to fluidics, because shielded circuitry was a little beyond them. So now fluidics is the only type of advanced systems they've got here. We had to load up on adaptor fittings and interface routers and use gas and liquid fluidic components. I hate them."

Han stood up again. "I can't stand the thought of all those flow-tracks and microvalves in the Falcon and I can't wait to rip 'em out and retool her." He held up and studied with pleasure a statuette carved from black stone, exquisitely detailed and no bigger than his thumb. "And the way things are going, that shouldn't take too much longer."

He put the statuette down in the much smaller of two piles of goods that had been stacked around the starship's ramp. The larger one consisted of trade articles of relatively great bulk and little value, including musical instruments, cooking utensils, tunneling tools, chitin paints, and the portable awnings the Badlanders sometimes used. The smaller pile held all the semiprecious stones, much of the artwork, and a number of the finer tools and implements. The ama.s.sed goods had been cluttering up the Falcon, stored here and there in available corners of the ship over the past eleven local days. While Chewbacca had been completing repairs that afternoon, Bollux and Han had hauled all the stuff out for sorting and to determine just what it was they had acc.u.mulated.

"Maybe not," Sonniod agreed. "Badlanders don't usually trade like this; they're very jealous of their territory. I'm amazed that you've got them flocking together here."

"There's n.o.body who doesn't enjoy a good show," Han told him. "Especially if they're stuck out in a hole like this place. Or else I wouldn't have all this junk." He watched the last of the stream of Kamarians make their way down and take up their three-point resting positions. "Wonderful customers," he sighed fondly.

"But what'll you do with all the bulky stuff?" Sonniod asked, falling in as Han started down for the center of the amphitheater again.

"We're planning a going-out-of-business sale," Han declared. "Very good deals, everything must go. Super discounts for steady customers and compact items offered in trade." He rubbed his jaw. "I may even sell old Lisstik the holoprojector when I go. I'd hate to see the old Solo Holo-theater close down."

"Sentimentalist. So I don't suppose you need work right now?"

Han looked quickly at Sonniod. "What kind of work?"

Sonniod shook his head. "I don't know. Word's out back in the Corporate Sector that there're jobs to be had, runs to be made. n.o.body seems to know the details and you never hear names, but word is that if you make yourself available, you'll be contacted."

"I've never worked blind," Han said.

"Nor I. That's why I didn't get in on it. I thought you might be sufficiently hard up to be interested. I must say I'm glad you're not, Solo; it all sounds a bit too tricky. I just thought you might like to know."

a.s.suring himself of the holoprojector's settings, Han nodded. "Thanks, but don't worry about us; life's a banquet. I might even do this some more, hire out a few projectors and hire local crews on these slowpoke worlds to run them for a split. It could be a sweet, legal little racket, and I wouldn't even have to get shot at."

"By the way," Sonniod said, "what's the other feature, the one you've been showing all along?"

"Oh, that. It's a travelogue, Varn, World of Water. You know, life among the amphiboid fishers and ocean farmers in the archipelagoes, deep-seat wildlife, ocean-bed fights to the death between some really big lossors and a pack of cheeb, things like that. Want to hear the narrative? I've got it all memorized."

"Thank you, no," Sonniod replied, pulling his lower lip thoughtfully. "I wonder how they'll react to a new feature?"

"They'll love it," Han insisted. "Singing, dancing; they'll be tapping their little pincers off."

"Solo, what was the word Lisstik used for the admission price?"

"Q'mai." Han was finishing fine adjustments. "They didn't have any word for 'admission,' but I finally got the idea across to Lisstik in spotty Basic and he said the word's q'mai. Why?"

"I've heard it before, here on Kamar." Sonniod put the thought aside for the moment. The holofeature appeared in ma.s.s-audience projection, filling the air over the natural amphitheater. The Badlanders, who had been swaying gently in the hot night breeze and clicking and chittering among themselves, now became utterly silent.

Love is Waiting was standard fare, Han recalled. It opened without credits or t.i.tle, which would appear shortly, superimposed on the opening number. That was just as well, Han reflected, since abstract symbols would mean about as much to Kamar Badlanders as particle physics meant to a digworm. He wondered what they would think of human ch.o.r.eography and music, of which there had been none in Varn, World of Water.

The feature opened with the woebegone hero stepping off a transporter beltway en route, with some misgiving, to a job with a planetary modification firm. A catchy beat, intended to inform the viewer that a production number was coming, began. Something appeared to make the Badlanders uneasy, however. The clicking and chittering grew louder, nor did it abate when the hero collided with the ingenue and their introduction led to his song cue.

Before the hero had even gotten through the first of his lyrics, discord among the Kamarians was drowning out the music. Several times Han caught the name of Lisstik. He raised the volume a little, hoping the crowd would settle down, puzzling over what had them so agitated.

A stone sailed out of the darkness and bounced off the holoprojector with a crash. From the light spilled by the dancing, singing figures overhead there could be seen the angry waving of Kamarian upper extremities. Multi-faceted eyes threw the light back out of the dark in a million fragments.

Another rock clanked against the holoprojector, making Sonniod jump, and a flung howlrunner thighbone, remains of someone's dinner, just missed Han.

"Solo-" began Sonniod, but Han wasn't listening.

Having spotted Lisstik, Han shouted up the slopes at him. "Hey, what's going on? Tell 'em to calm down! Give it a chance, will you?"

But it was no use yelling to Lisstik. The Kamarian was surrounded by an irate crowd of his fellows, all waving their upper extremities and thrashing tails, making more noise than Han had ever heard Badlanders make. One of them swiped at the burned-out integrator banded to Lisstik's skull. Elsewhere on the slopes around the holoprojector, shoving, arguments and differences of opinion had erupted into violent disagreement.

"Oh, my," said Sonniod in a very small voice. "Solo, I just remembered what q'mai means; I heard it in one of the population centers to the north. It doesn't mean 'admission,' it means 'offering.' Quick, where's the other holo, the travelogue?"

By then a mob of hostile Badlanders was slowly closing in around the holoprojector. Han's hand descended toward his blaster. "Back onboard the Falcon, why? What are you talking about?"

"Don't you stop and a.n.a.lyze things, ever? You've been showing them holos of a world with more water than they'd ever dreamed existed, filled with cultures and life forms that they've never even fantasized about. You haven't set up a holotheater, you idiot; you've started a religion!"

Han gulped, pulling his blaster indecisively as the Badlanders closed in. "Well, how could I know? I'm a pilot, not an alien-contact officer!"

He took a handful of Sonniod's coverall sleeve and, pulling gently, led him back slowly toward the Falcon. He heard Chewbacca's alarmed roaring from farther up the slope. Overhead, the hero and the ingenue and everybody else at the transporter beltway were engaged in a meticulously ch.o.r.eographed dance routine built around the ticket kiosks and turnstiles.

The Badlanders at that side of the circle began to give way uncertainly before Han, who tugged the frightened Sonniod along after him. A number of the bolder Kamarians rushed the holoprojector and began beating at it with sticks, stones, and bare pincers. Overhead, the dance number began to dissolve into distortion. Some of the vandals-or outraged zealots, depending on one's orientation-turned from the projector after a moment and advanced in a vengeful throng on Han.

Sensing correctly that by simply refunding the q'mai he stood little chance of mollifying his former audience-c.u.m-congregation, Han fired into the ground before them. Sandy soil exploded, throwing up rocky debris and burning cinders. Whatever flammable material there was in the soil caught fire. Han fired twice more to his right and left, gouging holes in the ground in spectacular bursts.

Badlanders fell back for the moment, their enormous eyes catching the crimson of blaster beams, ducking their small heads and shielding themselves with upraised brachia. Han didn't have to fire at the disgruntled Kamarians between himself and his ship; they were giving way. "Stay up there," he hollered up into the darkness at Chewbacca, "and get the engines started!"

The crowd was doing a pretty fair job of disa.s.sembling the holoprojector. Its sound synthesizer was making simply random noises now, though at high volume. Love is Waiting had devolved to a sluggish flow of multicolored swirls in the air.

As Han watched, walking backward as calmly as he could, Lisstik rushed in from the darkness, wrenched the integrator from his forehead and hurled it to the ground, stamping and grinding it into the dust as he beat at the holoprojector with his pincers.

"It looks like your high priest has split with the church," observed Sonniod. Lisstik succeeded in wrenching loose a piece of the control panel casing and flung it in Han's general direction with a vindictive series of clicks.

Feeling himself more the aggrieved party than the one at fault, Han lost his restraint. "You want a show? Here's a show, you rotten little ingrate!" He fired into the holoprojector. The red whining blaster bolt elicited a brief, bright secondary explosion from somewhere in the projector's internal reaches.

Suddenly the sound synthesizer was producing the most appalling string of loud, piercing, unrecognizable agglutinations of noise Han had ever heard. The projection filled the sky over the amphitheather with nova bursts, solar flares, pinwheels, sky rockets, and strobe flashes. The entire crowd gave a concerted bleat and charged off in all directions up the slopes of the bowl.

Han and Sonniod took considerable advantage of the confusion by sprinting madly toward the Millennium Falcon. They could hear harsh chitters and clacks from both sides as Badlanders, having not yet vented their full outrage, began giving chase. Han pegged unaimed shots into the air and the ground behind him. He still hesitated to fire at his former customers unless it meant life or death.

As they neared the Falcon's gaping ramp, Han and Sonniod were gratified to see the starship's belly turret fire a volley. The quad-guns spat lines of red annihilation, and a rocky upcropping already pa.s.sed by the racing men was transformed into a fountain of sparks, molten rock, and out-lashing energy. The heat scorched Han's back and a stone chip whistled past Sonniod's ear, too close for comfort, but it put a halt to the Badlanders' chase for the moment.

When they reached the ramp, Sonniod dashed up at maximum speed while Han slid to a stop on one knee to gather up what he could from the more valuable q'mai. A hurled stone bounced off the Falcon's landing gear and another ricocheted from the ramp while Han groped.

"Solo, get up here!" Sonniod screamed. Spinning, Han saw Badlanders closing in around the ship. He fired over their heads and they ducked, but kept coming. Backstepping rapidly up the ramp, Han fired twice more and fell when he dodged a thrown rock. He ended up crawling through the hatch.

As the main hatch rolled down, Chewbacca appeared at the pa.s.sageway, leaning out of the c.o.c.kpit with an incensed snarl in this throat.

"How should I know what went wrong?" Han bellowed at the Wookiee. "What am I, a telepath? Get us up and head for Sonniod's ship, now!" Chewbacca disappeared back into the c.o.c.kpit.

As Sonniod helped him up off the deck, Han tried to rea.s.sure him. "Don't worry, we'll get you back to your ship before the grievance committee arrives. You'll have time to lift off."