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Of course they couldn’t really be cones, thought Trevagg the next moment. She was no Gotal, but someone of the dull-minded and insentient lesser races … But the imitation was perfect, and it was enough.

He wanted her.

He wanted her badly.

“Sir …” Her voice was halting, but of a beautiful, even key, modulated like a deep-toned flute through the proboscis. Her three-fingered hands, skin tailored over jewellike knobs, seemed to cling to the edges of the veil she had just laid aside, as if for protection. “Sir, you must help me. They said I should come to you …”

Trevagg found himself saying, “Anything …” Then, quickly correcting himself, for he was, after all, an official of the Empire, he added, “Anything in my power to assist you, miss. What seems to be the trouble?”

“I have been put ashore.” Distress and fear blossomed from her in trembling waves. “They said there was something wrong with my papers; there was a passage tax.”

Trevagg knew all about the passage tax. That was something else he’d come up with.

“I … I had to budget very closely in order to visit my sister on Cona, I … my family is not wealthy. Now I’ve lost my seat on the Tellivar Lady. But if I pay the passage tax I won’t have enough to return to my mother on H’nemthe.” The name of her home world came out like a dainty sneeze, unbelievably entrancing. The vibration of her sorrow was like the taste of blood-honey.

“My dear …” He hesitated.

“M’iiyoom Onith,” she supplied. “The m’iiyoom is the white flower that blossoms in the season of trine, the season when all three moons give their light. The nightlily.”

“And I am Feltipern Trevagg, officer of the Empire. My dear Nightlily, I shall go investigate this matter at once. It grieves me to be unable to offer you better quarters to wait in, but this city is not a savory one. I shall return within moments.”

Balu was in the outer office, boots on desk, drinking a fizzy whose bulb sweated in the stuffy heat. He cocked a dark eye at the Gotal as Trevagg closed his office door. “Give the child back her seat, Trevagg,” he grunted. “You don’t need the seventy-five credits. You run, you can catch the Tellie before she lifts.”

Trevagg leaned across the officer and tapped a key on the board. The screen manifested the schedule. Unlike many Gotal, Trevagg had mastered computers quickly, once those in the prefecture had been properly shielded. The Tellivar Lady lifted at 1400, and he knew Captain Fane was punctual.

But an hour wouldn’t be enough.

“Trevagg …” The officer’s voice halted him as he reached for the door. Trevagg turned, mostly from a desire to legitimately waste time—he’d have to walk very slowly indeed to actually miss the Tellivar Lady’s lift. “You’re a hunter. You ever hear of the Force?”

Trevagg went absolutely cold inside. He only said, “No.”

“It’s supposed to be some kind of magic field …” Balu shook his head. “The old Jedi were supposed to have it.” He lifted a hand to indicate the Imperial communiqué, tacked to the discolored plaster of the wall behind him, offering fifty thousand credits for “any members of the so-called Jedi Knights.” Ten thousand for information leading to the capture of.

Unless, of course, it was the captor’s or informant’s job to capture or inform. Then they just got their salaries. And a nice letter of commendation from the local Moff.

“I heard rumors the Jedi have been seen on Tatooine,” said Balu. “I’ve had a watch on Pylokam’s stand—figuring the one place a Jedi might show up. Someone’s got to drink that herb tea. But I wondered if you’d run across anything—strange.”

“Only what Pylokam serves at that stand of his,” grumbled Trevagg, and made a far more precipitate exit than he’d planned.

It still took him a great deal of dawdling on the way to reach Docking Bay 9 too late to stop the liftoff of the Lady.

Nightlily was dazzled to be taken to luncheon at the Court of the Fountain, the closest thing to a high-class restaurant Mos Eisley boasted. It occupied one of the sprawling stone-and-stucco palaces that dated from Mos Eisley’s long-ago boom days;