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Wonderful, thought Lando, keying open his hotel room. A ship he couldn’t fly, and now a robot with amnesia. What had he done to deserve this kind of—never mind, he didn’t want to know!

The Hotel Sharu wasn’t much, but it was regarded locally as the best, and he had certain standards to uphold with what he thought of as his public. He mused: in this age of wide-ranging exploration, it was entirely possible for a commodity such as Vuffi Raa to change hands many times, be bought, sold, resold, won, or lost, winding up half a galaxy away in a culture totally unknown where the product had originated.

Or vice versa, as seemed to be the case here. He couldn’t recall any sapient species shaped even remotely like Vuffi Raa. Somehow, he hoped he’d never run across them. In any event, he thought, that’ll make two white elephants for sale in the morning.

He’d already come to a decision about the Millennium Falcon.

Table talk during the sabacc game had been understandably sparse, but one thing was obvious even before he’d accepted those crystals for cash. The life-orchards operated on a combination of unskilled labor supplied mostly by the near-mindless natives of the Rafa—he wondered if he’d see any of the creatures while he was there, but came to the same decision about that that he had concerning Vuffi Raa’s manufacturers—and supervision by offworld prisoners. The whole enterprise was a monopoly of the colonial government.

As nearly as Lando could determine, consignments of life-crystals traveled only via the Brother-In-Law Shipping Company (whatever its local equivalent was actually called), and free-lance haulers were simply out of luck. There would be no cargo for the dashing Captain Lando to write manifests on.

Well, that suited him. He’d trade off the cargo tomorrow.

Door-field humming securely, and the bed turning itself down with cybernetic hospitality, Lando undressed, carefully supervising the closet’s handling of his clothing. Vuffi Raa offered its services as a valet, the appropriate skills being well within the capacities of its Class Two architecture, which supposedly approached human levels of intellectual and emotional response.

But Lando declined.

“I haven’t had servants for a very, very long time indeed, my fine feathered droid, and I don’t intend starting again with you. I’m afraid you’re to change hands once more, first thing in the morning. Nothing personal, but get used to it.”

The robot bobbed silent acknowledgment, found an unoccupied corner of the room, and lapsed into the semiactivation that in automata simulates sleep, its scarlet eye-glow growing fainter but not altogether dimming out.

Lando stretched on the bed, thoughts of ancient treasure dancing through his head. Of course, he considered, life-crystals weren’t the only possible cargo he could take away from this place. The ancient ruins were supposedly impenetrable, but whatever race had built them, it hadn’t stinted on strewing the system with more portable artifacts. Museums might be interested—and possibly in the crude statuettes and hand-tools fashioned by the savage natives, as well. High technology past and primitive present: quite a fascinating contrast.

But the treasure …

Come to think of it, there were also a few colonial manufactured goods. But that meant he’d have to chase all over the Rafa just to line up a single decent holdful—with a messy, embarrassing, and possibly dangerous takeoff and landing at each stop along the way, he reminded himself.

Of course, there was always the treasure …

No. Better stick to the original plan: find a buyer for the Falcon. It had been fun for a short while, but he was no real space captain, and she was far too expensive to maintain as a private yacht, even if he’d wanted one. Find somebody to give him a fair price for Vuffi Raa, as well. Perhaps the same suck—customer. Then ship out, tens of thousands of credits richer, on the very next commercial starliner.

He whistled the lights out, then had an afterthought. “Vuffi Raa?”

The