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“That’s why it’s called the Idiot’s Array, old passenger pigeon,” Lando supplied. If things kept going that way, he was going to fly the ship and let Vuffi Raa do the gambling. Lando opened a flap in his tray, took a final bite of whatever it was, and slid the container into the mass recycler. “Why don’t you play with them, Bassi? A three-handed game’s more interesting.”

“Not on your life!” She shook her head ruefully. “I’ve played enough sabacc to last me a lifetime, thank you.”

“Master, would it be presumptuous of me to say that your piloting of the ship earlier today was highly proficient?”

“Only if you don’t call me master when you’re doing it.” Lando could not have been more pleased by this modest praise. He had been a perfectly terrible flyer when Vuffi Raa had taken him in hand—rather, in tentacle. Now, at least sometimes, it was as if he were wearing the Millennium Falcon instead of riding in her. The little droid had been mortified about his own failure to stand up to the sleet of radiation, at his momentary irrational irresponsibility. But Lando had pointed out that even a diamond, subjected to the proper stress at the proper angle, would shatter.

He tightened down another micropole, this time on the upper surface of the Falcon, and went on to the next designated location. No bloody wonder the vessel was so vulnerable; there were a dozen spots where the fields failed to overlap properly.

Carefully he pulled his arm out of the suit sleeve, pulling at the glove with his other hand, snaked his fingers up through the collar into the helmet, and wiped perspiration off his nose. You’d think that after all the centuries people had been wearing pressure suits that someone would have invented—

A red light lit up on the surface just below his chin. Now what the devil did that mean? Great Edge! It meant a heat-sink overload! He was cooking himself to death! He examined the readouts on his left arm; everything looked nominal there. What was the matter, then? He keyed the suit’s transmitter.

“Vuffi Raa, you’d better start the lock going. I’ve got to get out of this suit. There’s something—”

No response.

“Vuffi Raa, do you copy?”

Still no response.

Again he checked the indicators on the panel inset in his sleeve. The communicator pilot was burning steadily. He hoped that his little friend was all right. The difficulty there lay in the fact that the high point of the Falcon’s hull was precisely at the upper airlock. He’d had to crawl out from below, climb around the edge of the ship, to get to where he was. Now, with an apparently malfunctioning suit, he was going to have to repeat the procedure in reverse, with no guarantee he could do it in time to keep from being poached in the shell.

Vuffi Raa could save him a critical few minutes—if only he’d answer!

“Captain to Millennium Falcon, do you read?”

Nothing.

He sat as still as possible, thinking as hard as he could. It seemed to be getting hotter inside the suit by the second.

Suddenly, he glanced at the riveting gun in his hand and at the airlock wheel wedged against the rock that formed a roof over his head. Crawling slowly forward a meter, he rapped against the shank of the wheel. The clank!, transmitted by the hull, reverberated in his suit. He tried it again. And again.

A few moments later, there was another kind of reverberation in his suit.

“Master, is that you making that noise? I can’t raise you on the comlink.”

Uncertain whether Vuffi Raa could hear him, he bashed the riveter against the wheel again, once.

“Are you in some kind of trouble other than communication’s being down?”

Good guess, Vuffi Raa. Clank!

“I’ll come and get you, right—”

Clank! Clank!

“But, Master …!”

Clank! Clank!

A few sweaty minutes later, another suited figure clambered toward Lando over the edge of the ship. Bassi Vobah—her pistol strapped to the outside of her borrowed vacuum-wear—crawled beside him, placed her helmet in contact with his.

“Once a cop, always a cop,” Lando said before she got a chance to open her mouth.

“Don’t be an idiot. What’s wrong with your