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The secretary bent low over the device. “Will I die?” he asked quietly.

“Without a doubt,” the quay responded instantly.

“Weequay,” said the president, “you waste time. Of course you will die. All who live will die someday. Be silent, and I will gather the information. O Great God Quay, what weapon are we looking for? Is it a blaster?”

“Don’t count on it,” said the white ball.

“A rifle of some sort, then?”

“My reply is no.”

The Weequay president tossed his braided topknot over his left shoulder. “Is it any sort of projectile weapon?”

“My reply is no.”

“A knife, then? Is the murderer’s weapon a knife?”

The secretary pounded the table with a fist. “There were no knife wounds on Ak-Buz,” he said.

“A rope or silken cord?” asked the president.

The secretary looked even more impatient. “No signs of strangulation. We would have seen them.”

The mystery was too complex for the limited Weequay minds. “All these deaths,” said the president.

The secretary’s eyes opened wider. “Different methods. Why?”

“And who?” said the president. He rubbed his chin for a few seconds, then put his hands flat on the table, on either side of the sacred quay. “O Great God Quay, you have told us there will be at least another death. Will it too happen by a different method?”

“Outlook good” was all the device had to say.

“Not blaster,” said the secretary thoughtfully. “Not rifle. Not knife. Not rope. Is it a poison gas?”

“My reply is no,” said the Great God Quay.

“Is it an injection of deadly drugs?”

The quay made a sound like the grinding of teeth. “Very doubtful.”

“Is it tiny little off-world creatures that infest the body and kill the host horribly at a later date, giving the killer time to establish an alibi elsewhere?”

There was a long pause from the quay, as if it were digesting this strange possibility. “My sources say no.”

Outside, the hot sun of Tatooine climbed higher in the sky. It was approaching noon. Barada was at work in his shop, overseeing the construction and installation of six new rocker-panel cotter pins for the AE-35 unit. Word had come down from the Hutt himself that the sail barge would be setting forth later that day. With Ak-Buz now greeting his ancestors in his race’s version of heaven, Barada assumed he himself would have to captain the huge craft. He’d done it before, when Ak-Buz had shown up for duty less than sober.

• • •

Meanwhile, the Weequays labored mightily to get some useful information from the quay. It was simply a matter of asking the right questions. If the Weequays stumbled on the correct weapon and then the true identity of the murderer, the Great God Quay would let them know they’d succeeded at last. However, time slipped by as they guessed one thing after another, from every kind of blunt object to a pile of straw near the scrap heap. “Ak-Buz could have been smothered in the straw,” the president insisted. “It’s possible.”

“And you accuse me of wasting time,” said the secretary scornfully. “O Great God Quay, was the barge captain drowned in a bucket of water?”

“Don’t count on it.” If nothing else, Quay had more patience than the average primitive deity.

“Does the weapon begin with the letter A?” asked the president.

The other Weequay glared furiously. “Now we’ll be here all afternoon. What a foolish way to—”

“My reply is no,” said the god-ball.

“The letter B?” asked the president.

“You’re never going to learn anything that way,” said the secretary. “I call for new elections—”

“It is decidedly so.” Both Weequays stared at the white plastic sphere.

“The letter B?” said the secretary.

“B for … what?” said the president. “Blaster? No, we asked that. Bantha? Will the murderer kill the next victim with a bantha?”

There was tense silence in the barracks. Then the quay replied, “Cannot predict now.”

The president took a deep breath and let it out again. “Will the murderer kill the next victim with a bantha?”

This time the quay didn’t hesitate. “My reply is no.”

The Weequays went on through the alphabet, trying