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“Don’t have another thought about it. That’s right, I’ll take care of your legs. I’m closing the door now. Have a nice nap. I’ll wake you when it’s over.”

He shut the door, suddenly feeling very lonely, and carefully placed the little robot’s tentacles on the pilot’s seat, strapping them down. He took a look at the instruments, decided there wasn’t very much he could do about them, and sat for a while, wishing he had a cigar.

Waywa Fybot awoke suddenly with the oddest feeling that he was home.

Familiar orange light poured in from somewhere, and suddenly the world felt better, looked better than it had since he’d left his native planet decades ago to join the police.

Why, yes! There was his hometown, a lovely place, not too large yet not so small it didn’t have all the conveniences a being could want. He could see it now, wavering a little on the horizon as the sun beat down upon it. He kept walking …

Egad, it had been a long, lonely time out among all those weird alien races. Everywhere he went, they made bird jokes. Could he help it if his people were evolved—and proudly so—from avians?

He only wished that somewhere along the track of time they hadn’t lost the knack of—

—but what was this? He was flying! A glance to either side assured him that his arms had somehow lengthened, broadened, strengthened. Well, it was all in the genes somewhere, he supposed. Recapitulation, he recalled, recapitulation. He banked steeply, enjoying the sensation, banked the other way to get himself headed right, and passed over the rooftops of the town to the house that he’d been hatched in, a large place of cement and steel beams with a thatched roof. He saw now that the place had been reroofed with genuine straw. His folks were nothing if not stylish. Those checks he was sending home were going to a good cause, then!

He hopped over the fence, stirring the lawn lice with the power of his wings and making them complain in their mewling tones. There were thousands of them, of course. It was a well-kept lawn of a lovely shade of magenta, alive with crawling, rustling legs.

He went inside the house.

The Falcon seemed to be flying in right triangles as the Flamewind shifted from orange to red. Lando caught it in the act that time, blinked as many-branched lightning bolts blasted all around the ship.

He fought the urge to seize the controls as the apparent geometry of the Falcon’s flight path shifted with the colors from triangles to something indescribable that would nauseate a pretzel-bender. Well, I’ll be damned, he thought, we’re traveling on the inside surface of a Klein bottle.

Or so it felt.

Satisfied that the ship was flying true to course (or at least resigned to trusting its computer), he bent down and put his head next to the safe.

“Vuffi Raa?”

“Yes, Master?” the robot answered meekly, its voice severely muffled by the metal door and barely audible over the Flamewind’s titanic howling.

“Are you all right?”

“I’m all right,” the box said. “How are things with you?”

“I’m having a wonderful time, wish you were here. I—by the Galaxy Itself! Hold on, I’ll get back to you if we live!”

Directly ahead of the Millennium Falcon was a vision out of a nightmare. But it was no illusion. Half a kilometer wide, the thing loomed up out of the glowing star-fog and ominous red glow like an impossible spider with too many legs.

It seemed to be a starship engine attached to a great number of obsolete one-man fighters. Even as he watched, the smaller craft detached themselves, leaped toward the freighter, their energy-guns spewing destruction.

These were no remote-control pirate drones. These were the real thing.

And they were ready and eager to kill.

• XI •

STEADILY THE MOTLEY fighter squadron bore down on the Millennium Falcon. Its instruments unreliable, bound to a predetermined course, the converted freighter was a helpless target. Lando reached to the panel without hesitation, flipped a bank of switches, cutting off the artificial gravity and inertial buffers. Loose