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Lando turned the knob a little more, a little more.

A brilliant beam of energy cascaded across the forward shields. By accident or design, the enemy had found its prey. The power needle jumped. Lando slammed the knob to the right as far as it would go.

There was a deafening exploding sound. Multicolored light showered in on Lando and the robot as the asteroid burst under the stresses of the shields and the Flamewind swept around them again.

Secondary explosions punctuated the space around them: one, three, five—Lando lost count as the hurtling rock fragments smashed and scattered the fighter squadron—seven, eight. Perhaps more, he wasn’t sure. No one turned to fight. He diverted a little power to the inertial dampers, cut the shields back to normal, fired up the drives and kicked in the deadreckoner.

They were on their way again.

He turned up the gravity in the lounge. Even he could hear the thump and a curse from Bassi Vobah. He grinned and shook his head.

The improved shields seemed to help considerably. Vuffi Raa retained his reason, Bassi Vobah was as rational as she ever was. Waywa Fybot dozed in his rack, recovering from his injuries with the aid of an electronic bone-knitter from the Falcon’s medical bag of tricks. He ought to be completely well in a few more hours, just in time to arrest the trillionaire addict.

Swell.

Lando, for the most part, stayed up in the cockpit. He was tired of having police for company, preferred the company of Vuffi Raa. The little robot scurried around, tidying up and doing minor repairs. He reported that the hull was perfectly sound, despite the torture inflicted on it, and, in a spare hour, checked the mountings of the shield generator for stress crystallization.

There wasn’t any.

Now that he had time to think about it again, Lando realized that his life had become very complicated.

He’d had many of the same thoughts in jail back on Oseon 6845, but things had been simpler, even as recently as then.

He was a simple man, he told himself, a relatively honest gambler who usually only cheated to avoid winning too conspicuously. Yet someone—several someones, it would appear—kept trying pretty hard to kill him. First with a bomb. Then with another bomb. Then, just to show a little versatility, with a big piece of titanium pipe. Finally, most recently, with a cleverly jimmied spacesuit. He didn’t even count the pirate attack or the two encounters with the fighter squadron, although the latter seemed at least tangentially connected. He simply didn’t know where it all fit in.

Everybody has enemies, especially a gambler who makes a habit of winning. But the vendetta was ridiculous. For the hundredth time, he reviewed his life over the past few years, trying to discover some person he’d known and hurt badly enough to merit such attention.

He was a skillful and fortunate man with the cards, and, despite his failings as a merchant captain, he was becoming a pretty good ship-handler, as well. If he did say so himself. Vuffi Raa said so, himself.

Unfortunately, when closely examined, his proficiency was a talent of no practical value. All it seemed to do was get him into trouble. He belonged on a luxury interstellar liner as a passenger, educating other passengers about the follies of trying to fill an inside straight. The soldier-of-fortune routine was beginning to pall.

Well, if by some slim chance he got out of this mess, he’d see about rearranging his life. He had come to love the Falcon, but it was a dangerous affair, one that threatened to get him killed at just about any moment. Vuffi Raa was quite another matter, a good friend and partner, an astute adviser. But this captain business …

With a sinking heart, Klyn Shanga inspected the remnants of his command. One lost at Oseon 6845. Two lost in the first engagement with that tramp freighter. And now, between the Flamewind and that exploding asteroid, a mere five fighters left. It was possible that more had survived, were even now trying to find their way back to the squadron through storm