But when they reached the side of the approach opposite from the ap.r.o.n on which the Falcon was parked, Han suddenly yanked Fiolla back behind the shelter of a small orbital skiff and directed her attention to several loiterers in the area. "Recognize any of them?"

She frowned at them in the hazy sun. "Oh, you mean those goldskins? Aren't they the other swoop riders from this afternoon? But what are they doing here?"

He made an elaborate face at her. "They came to ask us to join their aerobatics club, what else?"

"What now?" Fiolla wanted to know.

Han took his macrobinoculars from their case at his side. Through them he could see Chewbacca moving around the c.o.c.kpit of the Millennium Falcon, running a pre-flight check of the ship.

"At least Chewie's...o...b..ard," he told her, lowering the macros. "Spray and Bollux, too, I guess. Our friends are probably waiting for you and me to show up before they spring whatever they've got planned." Shooting their way out wouldn't work, he knew. Even if he and Fiolla could reach the Falcon under cover of her belly guns, their chances of evading the patrol network and picket ships overhead and making hypers.p.a.ce would be almost nonexistent.

Fiolla held her lower lip between her teeth, pondering. "There are regular pa.s.senger connections between here and Ammuud; we could leave now, while they're watching your ship, and meet Chewbacca there. But how to let him know?"

Han looked up and down the rows of s.p.a.cecraft on their side of the approach. "There's what we need," he said and, taking her head, led her back through several rows of grounded vessels.

They came to the one Han had spotted, a large cargo lifter connected to a refueler, its outer access panels open. Han crawled up through an access panel and twenty seconds later threw open the small c.o.c.kpit hatch.

"n.o.body home," he told her as he gave her a hand up. Together they squeezed into the cramped c.o.c.kpit. Han trained the macrobinoculars on his first mate across the way, and when the Wookiee chanced to look in his general direction, flashed the cargo lifter's running lights. Chewbacca took no notice.

It took four more tries to get the Wookiee's attention. Han saw his first mate's long, s.h.a.ggy arm go to the console and the Falcon's running lights blinked twice in acknowledgment.

Fiolla kept an eye on those individuals watching the Falcon to ensure that they hadn't noticed what was going on. In so doing she spotted at least four more idlers mounting an inconspicuous guard on the freighter. Chewbacca pretended to be running a warmup while Han sent him a series of longs and shorts explaining their predicament and what the revised plan was. Throughout the process, Han was very aware of Fiolla pressed up against him in the confining c.o.c.kpit; her perfume, he found, had a tendency to distract him.

When Han was finished, the Falcon's lights blinked twice again. As he helped Fiolla down from the cargo lifter's c.o.c.kpit hatch, a tech came up. "What were you people doing up there?"

Fiolla turned a scathing, imperious glare on the tech. "Is it now required that Port Safety overseers answer to ground crew? Well? Who's your supervisor?"

The tech murmured something apologetic, shuffling her feet and saying that she'd only been asking. Fiolla gave her one more haughty glare and departed with Han at her elbow. "And now we book pa.s.sage out?" she asked once they had pa.s.sed out of the tech's earshot.

"Yeah, I'll teach you all about getting offworld under a phony name. Chewie's going to stay put till we're clear, then lift off. They won't be expecting him to leave without us, so he shouldn't have any trouble. We will meet him on Ammuud."

"We're in luck," Fiolla said as she and Han stood studying the soaring holos that listed departures in the main pa.s.senger terminal. "There's a ship that goes straight to Ammuud, leaving this evening."

Han shook his head. "No, there's the one we want, departure 714, the shuttle."

Her brow furrowed. "But it's not even leaving this solar system."

"Which is why no one will be covering it," he countered. "They're likely to have watchers on the through-ships. We can change ships and book pa.s.sage for Ammuud at the first stop, it says in the index. Besides, the shuttle's leaving now, which appeals to me a whole lot more. We'll have to hurry."

They tried not to appear too anxious as they bought tickets and barely made it to the departure gate in time. Since the ship was only an inter-system shuttle, it offered no sleeping accommodations beyond big, comfortable acceleration chairs. Han buckled himself in and let his chair back, sighing and preparing to drop off to sleep.

Fiolla had grabbed the window seat with no objections from Han. "Why did you make me pay for the tickets in cash?"

He opened one eye and studied her. "You want to go around pa.s.sing out Authority cash vouchers from an open expense account? Good, go ahead; you might as well hang a sign around you neck: AUTHORITY EXEC-WON'T SOMEBODY PLEASE SHOOT ME?"

Her voice suddenly held a tremor. "Do, do you think that's what's happened to Magg?"

He shut his eye again, lips tightening. "Absolutely not; they'll hang on to him as a bargaining piece. All I meant was that we don't want to leave a trail. Don't pay any attention to me; sometimes I talk too much."

He could hear attempted cheer in her tone. "Or you don't talk enough, Solo. I haven't decided which." She settled herself to watch their liftoff. Han, who had seen more of them than he'd ever be able to count, was asleep before they left the troposphere.

At their destination, Roonadan, fifth planet out from the same sun that warmed Bonadan, they discovered they had missed their starship connection. The shuttle had been slightly delayed en route by injector problems, but of course starships on interstellar jump schedules are never held for mere interplanetary traffic. They run on precise timetables for which hypers.p.a.ce transitions are meticulously calculated in advance by both onboard and ground-based computers. Straying from the strict timing of the jump schedules was something the pa.s.senger lines hated to do.

"But they don't mind leaving people stranded on some rock," fumed Han, who had been known to calculate a hypers.p.a.ce jump with one hand while dodging the law with a hold full of Kessel spice with the other.

"Stop complaining. There's nothing we can do about it," Fiolla reasoned. "There's another ship that can get us to Ammuud, see? Departure 332."

He checked the holo listings. "Are you crazy? That's an M-cla.s.s ship, probably a tour. Look at that, they're going to stop at two, no, three other planets. And they're not exactly going to be burning up hypers.p.a.ce either."

"It's the quickest way to Ammuud," Fiolla said sensibly. "Or would you rather go back and try to make peace with the people who were chasing us all over Bonadan? Or wait for them to trace us here?"

Han was painfully aware that Chewbacca and the Millennium Falcon would be waiting on Ammuud. "Uh, I don't suppose you have enough cash to charter a ship of our own without using a voucher?"

She smiled at him sweetly. "Why, yes, growing right here off my petty-cash vine; I was saving up the harvest until I had enough to buy my own fleet. Try to be rational, will you, Solo?"

"All right, lay off. At least it won't cost us more than a few Standard timeparts."

On the way to the reservations deck they pa.s.sed travelers from dozens of worlds. There were wobbly-fleshed Courataines in their exoskeletal travel suits, breathing the thinnest of atmospheres through their respirators; octopedal Wodes, heavy-stepping and unused to less than two Standard gravities; beautifully plumed Jastaals trilling their phrases to one another as they half-glided along, wings partially extended; and human beings in all their variety.

A hand dropped onto Han's shoulder. He started, pivoting with a blurringly fast motion that freed him of the hand, put distance between himself and the other, and brought his right hand down to where his blaster would ordinarily have been.

"Easy, Han; old reflexes die hard, I see," laughed the man who had stopped him. Braced to confront Zlarb's business a.s.sociates or a flying squad of Espos, Han felt abrupt relief not unmixed with a new worry as he recognized the man.

"Roa! What are you doing here?" Roa had put on weight, too much of it, but it didn't conceal the open, friendly features of one of the best smugglers and blockade-runners Han had ever known.

Roa smiled, looking as pleasantly paternal and trustworthy as ever. "Pa.s.sing through, just like everyone else, son, and I thought I recognized you." Roa was carrying an expensive command case, a compact, self-contained business office. He wore a conservative beige suit with soft white shoes and rainbow girth-sash. "You remember Lwyll, I'm sure."

The woman introduced by Roa had been standing to one side. Now she came forward. "How's it been with you, Han?" she asked in that rich voice he recalled so well. Lwyll hadn't gone as far to flesh as her husband; she was still a striking woman with ma.s.ses of wavy white-blond hair and an elegant face. Han thought that she certainly didn't look-how many Standard years older?

Seeing them brought back a surge of memory of the fast, furious time he had spent working for Roa, when he had tired of trying to be just one more honest, una.s.suming s.p.a.cer a few credits away from poverty, like uncounted others wandering the stars, having abandoned a planet and a life.

It had been Roa who had taken Han on his first exhilarating, harrowing Kessel Run-very nearly his last. In Roa's organization Han had risen quickly with a reputation for taking mad chances, daring any odds, running fearsome risks in the pursuit of illegal profit.

But they had parted company a long time ago, and honor among thieves was a more romantic myth than a dependable inst.i.tution. Han's immediate reaction on seeing Roa was pleasure, but close on its heels was suspicion that this wasn't altogether an accident. Could word be out already, carrying a price on Han's head, through the interstellar underworld?

Still, Roa showed no sign of hailing the Espos. Fiolla cleared her throat, and Han made introductions. Roa waved at Han's lack of gunbelt. "So you're out of the game, too, eh? Well, I don't blame you, Han. Bowed out myself, just after we parted company. Lwyll and I had one close call too many. And, after all, doing business isn't too unlike our old line of work. A background in felony can be a real plus. What's your new line of endeavor?"

"A collections agency. Han Solo a.s.sociates, Limited."

"Ah? Sounds like your ideal; you always fought for what you had coming. How's your old sidekick, the Wook? Do you ever see any of the others? Tregga maybe, or even Vonzel?"

"Tregga's doing life at hard labor on Akrit'tar; they caught him before he could dump a load of chak-root Sonniod's running a delivery service, living hand to mouth. The Briil twins are dead; they shot it out with a patrol cruiser out in the Tion Hegemony. And Vonzel messed up an emergency landing; most of what's left of him will be in a life-support clinic for good. He started a regular one-man run on the organ banks."

Roa shook his head sadly. "Yes, I'd forgotten how the deck is stacked. Few make it, Han."

He came back to the present. Squaring his shoulders, he dipped two fingers into his gaudy sash and drew out a business card. "Fifth largest import-export firm in this part of s.p.a.ce," he boasted. "We've got some of the best tax-and-tariff men in the business. Drop around one of these days, and we'll talk over old times."

Han tucked away the card. Roa had turned to his wife. "I'll see that our baggage is transferred. You make sure our shuttle reservation's confirmed, my dear." He looked wistful for a moment. "We're lucky to be out of it, aren't we, Han?"

"Yeah, Roa, we sure are." The older man clapped him on the shoulder, made a polite leave-taking to Fiolla, and marched away.

Lwyll, waiting until her husband was gone, gave Han a knowing, amused look. "You're not out of it at all, are you, Han? No, I can tell; not Han Solo. Thanks for not telling him." Lwyll touched his cheek once and left.

"You've got interesting friends" was Fiolla's only comment, but her perspective on him had changed. Youthful looks belied the fact that he was a survivor in a calling with a very high rate of attrition.

Watching Roa's retreating back, Han thought about tax-and-tariff men and fingered the business card. "Solo, hey, wake up!" Fiolla a.s.sailed him. "It's our necks we're supposed to be preoccupied with here."

He sauntered off toward the interstellar reservations desks. Things could be worse, Han reflected.

"Bugging your eyes out at them won't help," said Fiolla, referring to the gambling tables and other games of chance in the sw.a.n.k wagering compartment just off the pa.s.senger liner's main salon.

She was wearing a sheer, clinging gown and soft evening slippers of polychromatic shimmersilk. She had brought the outfit with her, packed away in her upper-right thigh pouch and lower-left calf stuffpocket, on the a.s.sumption that her coveralls would do for all but the most formal places. She wore it now for a change of pace and a morale booster. Han still wore his ship clothes, but had closed his collar.

"We could go over what we know so far," she proposed.

"That's all we've been doing since we came onboard," he grimaced.

That wasn't entirely true. They had spoken of any number of things during the trip; he found her a spirited and amusing companion, much more so than any of the other pa.s.sengers, aside from a frustrating tendency to keep her stateroom door locked during the liner's "night." But they had exchanged stories.

For instance, Fiolla had explained to him how she and her a.s.sistant, Magg, had been doing an audit on Bonadan when her portable command-retrieval computer terminal malfunctioned. She had turned to Magg's, which, having a more comprehensive cybernetic background, was a more complicated instrument with a number of keyboard differences. Some miskeying or accident had opened up a restricted informational pocket in Bonadan's system. There she had found records of the slavery ring's activities and the notation of Zlarb's impending payoff.

Han's eyes were still riveted to players trying their luck or skill at Point Five, Bounce, Liar's Cut, Vector, and a half-dozen other games. For two Standard timeparts, ever since coming aboard the pa.s.senger liner Lady of Mindor, he had been trying to come up with a way to get into a game. Now that he was completely rested, inactivity was nearly intolerable.

Fiolla had absolutely refused to back him, though Han had promised bountiful returns on her investment. He then pointed out that if she hadn't squandered money on separate accommodations, she would have had plenty to loan him.

"I didn't have time to brush up on my hand-to-hand" had been her retort. "And besides, if you're such a good gambler, how come you're flying around in that cookie-box freighter instead of a star yacht?"

He changed the subject. "We've been on this mud cart for two Standard timeparts. To get to Ammuud! No wonder I'm going crazy; the Falcon could've gotten us there in the time it took these idiots to clear port."

He rose from the little table where they had eaten an indifferent meal. "At least we'll make planetfall soon. Maybe I'll go run my clothes through the robo-valet one more time for fun."

She caught his wrist. "Don't be so depressed. And please don't leave me here alone; I'm afraid that priest of Ninn will corner me for another lecture on the virtues of formalistic abstinence. And no comments! Come on, I'll play you a game of Starfight. That we can afford."

Not many pa.s.sengers remained in the lounge, for the Lady of Mindor was due to reenter normal s.p.a.ce shortly; most of them were packing or making other last-minute preparations. He gave in and they crossed to the bank of coin games.

She mimicked his rangy walk, swaggering along next to him, arms dangling a bit and shoulders slumped back. There was an exaggerated sway to her hips as she swept the room arrogantly with narrowed eyes and an invisible blaster weighting her side, right in step with him.

When he noticed, he recognized himself at once. He glared around the salon in case anyone was inclined to laugh. "Will you quit that?" he said out of the side of his mouth. "Somebody's liable to call you out."

She chuckled. "Then they'll stop a blaster bolt, handsome; I've been studying with the master." He found himself laughing, as she'd intended.

The Starfight game consisted of two curved banks of monitors and controls, almost surrounding each of the two playing stations. Between them was a large holotank with detailed star charts. With the stacks and stacks of controls, each player sent his myriad ships out to do battle in computer modeled deeps.p.a.ce.

He stopped her as she was about to drop a coin into the game. "I've never been too partial to Starfight," he explained. "It's too much like work."

"What about a last stroll through the promenade?"

It was as good a diversion as any. They ascended the curved staircase to find they had the promenade to themselves. The novelty of the place must have worn off for the other pa.s.sengers. A single pane of transparisteel ten meters long and five high curved to follow the ship's hull, showing them the tangled luminosity of hypers.p.a.ce. They stared with the age-old fascination, their human minds and eyes trying to impose order on the chaos beyond the transparisteel so that, at times, they believed they saw shapes, surfaces, or fluxes.

She noticed he was still distracted. "You're thinking about Chewie, aren't you?"

A shrug. "He'll be all right. I just hope the big lug didn't worry himself sick when we were overdue and start shedding or something."

The ship's public-address system announced final warning of transition, though it was for crew members rather than pa.s.sengers. Shortly thereafter Fiolla pointed and breathed a soft exclamation as the distortions and discord of hypers.p.a.ce melted away and they gazed out at a field of stars. Due to the liner's position they could see neither Ammuud nor its primary.

"How long to-" Fiolla was saying, when emergency klaxons began hooting all through the ship. The lighting flickered and died and was replaced by far dimmer emergency illumination. The outcries of frightened pa.s.sengers could be heard as distant echoes in the pa.s.sageways.

"What's happening?" Fiolla yelled over the din. "A drill?"

"It's no drill," he said. "They've shut down everything but emergency systems; they must be channeling power into their shields."

He grabbed her hand and started back for the staircase. "Where are we going?" she hollered.

"The nearest escape-pod station or lifeboat bay" was his shouted answer.

The salon was deserted. As they got into the pa.s.sageway the entire liner rocked under them. Han recovered with the agility of a seasoned s.p.a.cer, keeping his balance and stopping Fiolla just before she collided with a bulkhead.

"We've been hit!" he called. As if to underscore what he said, they heard ma.s.sive airtight doors sliding into place automatically throughout the ship. The Lady of Mindor had taken hull damage of some sort and been breached.

A steward came running down the pa.s.sageway with a medipack under one arm. When Han saw he wasn't about to stop, he grabbed a double handful of the man's heavily braided jacket.

"Let go," the steward said, trying to twist free. "You're supposed to proceed to your quarters. All pa.s.sengers proceed to quarters."

Han shook him. "First tell me what's going on!"

"Pirates! They shot out the main drive as soon as we made transition from hypers.p.a.ce!" The news shocked Han so much that he released his grip.

As he ran off on his way, the steward shouted back at them. "Return to your quarters, you fools! We're being boarded!"

VII.

"THIS vessel is a fraud," Spray announced, keying his next move into the gameboard in the Millennium Falcon's forward compartment.

Chewbacca took just enough time from what he was doing-a.n.a.lyzing Spray's unorthodox stratagem-to snarl threateningly.

Spray, who had grown more used to the Wookiee's outbursts, didn't flinch much at all. He was dividing his time between the compartment's technical station and the gameboard, giving the Falcon's first mate a very difficult match while running a combination inventory and inspection of the ship out of a sense of duty to Interstellar Collections Limited. Chewbacca permitted it more to keep the skip-tracer busy than anything else, but this slandering of the Falcon, if unchecked, could only lead to retribution.