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One more stop. He seized a meter-long breaker bar from a socket-wrench set in the engine area. He’d lost his stingbeams on 5792, kept no other small arms aboard the Falcon. Hefting the length of titanium, he swung it experimentally. Not as good as steel would have been, too light, but it would do to crack a helmet faceplate or a skull.

A muffled clank! reverberated gently through the entire ship. Almost as quickly, the robot’s voice crackled in his earphones. “We’re locked on, Master. I’ll just stabilize our attitude and be right with you.”

Lando didn’t feel the maneuver. When things were working right (and he couldn’t see out a window), he wasn’t supposed to. In any case, he was busy turning a large metal wheel set in the hatch over his head. The seal was supposed to be tight with the escape aperture of the fighter; his suit was only a precaution. But he had closed an airtight door behind him when he entered this area of the ship.

Lando was a man who took precautions.

The wheel hit its stop, the door slumped downward a couple of centimeters, and Lando swung it aside. Pocked and abraded metal greeted him, a circle of it, set in a broader area that matched it in long, hard wear. The circle had an inset ring at its edge. Lando dug a gloved pair of fingers under it, pulled hard, and a strip of sealant followed it down through the Falcon’s hatch.

The circle popped out—slightly higher pressure inside the fighter. Lando tossed the emergency access plate down to the chamber floor, stuck a cautious wrench handle through the port, followed it with his head and shoulders. A booted foot hung on either side of his head. The boots were connected to a pair of legs that rose to a body slumped in an acceleration chair and strapped in. The body didn’t move.

Straining a little, Lando stretched up and hit the harness quick-release. Tugging gently on the figure’s ankles, he got the body started down through the hatch, having to drop his breaker bar to the floor to make room and gain an extra hand. The shoulders jammed momentarily, then slid through.

Lando was glad he’d adjusted the gravity in the room to one-tenth normal. The guy would have squashed him on the way down the hatch ladder. He was huge.

With the rescued pilot lying unconscious on the floor, Lando heaved the hatch back into place, turned the wheel until a green light winked from a small panel beside it, and dropped back to the floor. He read what he could of the pilot’s suit telltales. Appearances could be deceptive; the pilot looked human, but it could be ammonia he was breathing inside his suit.

That wasn’t the case. As he detached his own helmet and began on that of the disabled fighter pilot, he heard another clank as Vuffi Raa cast off the ruined craft. Inside the helmet was an aged rugged face, elaborately scarred, and covered with a grizzled week-old beard. Even in repose the face looked tough and wise and experienced.

An eyelid fluttered.

Lando recovered the wrench handle, just in case, then had a second thought. This fellow looked strong enough to take the handle away from the gambler and shove it right up his—

A hiss sounded across the chamber. Vuffi Raa stepped through the door just as the pilot began to stir. The tough old man shook his gray head slightly, looked up groggily at Lando, blinked, and looked around the room.

His gaze stopped at the droid, froze there. A look of passionate hatred suffused the pilot’s face, and his body tensed for combat.

“You!” the pilot screamed, “Destroyer of my world! Kill me now, or you shall surely escape death no more!”

• XVIII •

WITH A VICIOUS tentacle-slash at the bulkhead behind him, the robot launched himself across the room, straight at the astounded fighter pilot. The pilot leaped up just as four chrome-plated manipulators seized him in their mechanical embrace, joined by a belated fifth.

The pilot heaved his forearms up and outward in a hold-breaking maneuver, fended off a tentacle with a forearm block that would have snapped radius and ulna of a human antagonist, delivered