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“Well, Lady V,” I greeted. “How’s it going?”

“Lousy, as usual,” she said in a deep growl of a voice. “Look, let’s neither of us waste time in pleasantries. Have you thought any more?”

“There wasn’t a need to,” I said flatly. “You know what I think.”

“I can’t believe you can stay loyal to that rotting pile of fodder after what I’ve offered you!”

“Sorry. That’s how it is.”

“I’ll tell you how it is!” she snarled, rising. She moved out toward me, body taut with anger. “The Hutt blocks me at every move. He wrecks my operation with sabotage, sics the law hounds on me, steals my business, sucks me dry with payoffs.” She came up almost toe to toe with me, meeting my eye threateningly. Since she’s as tall as me and a lot bigger built, she made a pretty good threat. “So here I’ve got a chance at getting someone on my side, and he turns me down. I don’t like that, Mon!”

I stood my ground and answered coolly: “I was hoping not to fight you, Valarian. I thought we were friends.”

Seeing I couldn’t be intimidated, she sighed and stepped back, dropping the tough act.

“Okay, you’re right,” she said resignedly. “I won’t try muscling you. But look,” she tried more reasonably, “he will fall soon. You can’t deny that. If not from my pushing, then from someone else’s.”

“Don’t you think I know?” I told her. “I’ve already got an idea Tessek’s up to something, with Ree-Yees and a few others helping, too. And I’m pretty sure Talmont’s been cut in on the deal. I try to warn Jabba of plots when I find ’em, but I can’t find them all.”

“Then why not leave him?” she cajoled, putting a hand on my shoulder. “We could have a beautiful deal together, you and I. We’re alike, aren’t we? Both fighting our way up from nothing.”

“Maybe for you it was nothing,” I answered. “For me it was different.” Somehow her words had pulled up a memory again and I was seeing the sunlit, wide grasslands of a planet far away. “It was something all right. I had something. Simple maybe, but clean, open, and honest. Funny, but I haven’t thought about it for a lot of years. But, twice today—”

“What?” she asked, dropping her hand and stepping back to eye me questioningly.

Realizing I’d slipped off into a weird reverie, I jerked myself back. “Oh … nothing,” I said sharply. “But look, please just believe me, Valarian. There’s a knot tying me to Jabba that no money or promises are gonna cut.”

She looked hard into my eyes and nodded acceptance. “Okay.” She smiled. “I should call you my enemy, but I can’t. No hard feelings.”

I smiled, too. “None. Well, I’d better get back now. Been gone an hour already.” I turned to the door.

“Just remember,” she called to me as I went out, “if you do survive the fall, you can still come work for me.”

When I went back through the lobby, the dead-meat squad was coming in to scrape up the stiffs. Talmont was there, and his squinty gaze followed me out. He was worried now.

Both suns were high in the sky when I got back to the palace. I came into the throne room to find the place in an uproar. Seemed I’d missed quite a party!

I’d already gotten part of the story from Barada in the garage. All about how that guy in black had been in cahoots with that other bunch out to rescue Han Solo. How he’d claimed to be a Jedi named Skywalker and had threatened the Hutt with being destroyed. How he’d killed Malakili’s pet rancor in the pit. And how he was now cooling his heels in the dungeon along with Solo and that Wookiee we’d caught before. Soon they would all climb aboard the sail barge and head out for the Great Pit of Carkoon.

I moved through a bustling throng headed for Jabba’s throne. He was blithely pulling away at his hookah, giving proprietary tugs at the chain of that captured woman who’d replaced poor Oola. But I was hijacked halfway there by Tessek, one of Jabba’s least trustworthy lieutenants.

The Quarren was nervous. Every appendage on his head was twitching. He pulled me aside and talked in low, quick tones: “Have you heard what happened?”

“I heard