• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Lando strained his eyes, then gave up and punched the electronic telescope into activation. Yes, there it was: the ThonBoka, as its inhabitants called it. It was a sack-shaped cloud of dust and gas, enterable only from one direction, rich with preorganic molecules even up to and including amino acids. Inside that haven, life had evolved without benefit of star or planet, life adapted to living in open empty space. Some of that life had eventually acquired intelligence and called itself the Oswaft. But at the moment, they were under seige.

“What about the blockade, can you locate that?” Lando strapped himself into the right-hand seat, ran a practiced eye over various gauges and screens, relaxed, and plucked a cigar out of the open safe beneath the main control panel.

“Yes, Master, I’m overlaying those data now.”

Vuffi Raa’s tentacles flicked over the panel with a life of their own. He was a Class Two droid, with a level of intelligence and emotional reaction comparable to those of human beings. He had a good many other talents, as well. To Lando’s occasional disgust, however, the robot was deeply programmed never to harm organic or mechanical sapience, and was thus an automatic pacifist. There had been times when that had been inconvenient.

On the main viewscreen, showing the sacklike ThonBoka nebula, a hundred tiny yellow dots sprang to life.

Lando whistled. “That’s quite a fleet for bottling up one undefended dust cloud. What do they think this is, the Clone Wars?” He leaned forward to light his cigar, but was stopped by the offer of a glowing tentacle tip. Yes, Vuffi Raa had a lot of useful talents.

“That isn’t even half of them, Master. Although I can’t understand why, some of the fleet out there have modified their defense shielding into camouflage to conceal themselves. I also believe they’ve mined the mouth of the nebula.”

Puffing on his cigar, Lando forced calm. “And we’re going to run that blockade. Oh, well, it’s been a short life but a brief one. Can you do anything about shield camouflage for us?”

The robot wiped the screen display. “I’m afraid not, Master, it’s very sophisticated technology.”

“Which means that everybody in the universe is using it except civilians. Well, then, what’s our plan?”

There was a startled pause that might have been filled with a blinking red eye had Vuffi Raa been capable of such a thing. “I thought you had the plan, Master.”

Lando sighed resignedly. “I was afraid you’d say that. To tell the truth, I had a plan, but it seems pretty insubstantial, here and now. I shall repair to my free-fall cogitorium once more and reconsider. I’ll get back to you as soon as possible. Don’t hold your breath, it may very well be a century or three.”

He unstrapped himself from his chair, took a final disgusted look through the sectioned canopy, and removed himself from the control area with his cigar. Around the long, heavily padded corridor, out into the cluttered lounge, off with the artificial gravity, and back to the geometric center of the room, where he sat and smoked and tried to think.

It wasn’t one of his better days for that.

“Master?” The voice coming over the intercom was agitated. It startled the gambler out of a dream in which, no matter what sabacc hand he held, his cards kept changing to garbage, while a faceless gray opponent held a newly invented one, the Final Trump, which was an automatic twenty-three.

“Zzzzzz—what?”

Lando blinked, discovered that he was covered with sweat. His velvoid semiformals were soaked through, and he smelled like a bantha someone had ridden half to death. He stretched, trying to remove kinks from his muscles that shouldn’t have been there in zero gee.

“Vuffi Raa, how many times have I told you never to call me—”

“Master,” the robot interrupted, sounding both worried and eager at the same time, “its been nearly three hours. Have you come up with a plan?”

“Uh, not exactly,” the gambler replied, shaking his head in an unsuccessful