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“Courteous, this is Millennium Falcon if you’re reading. As per previous permission, we’re on our way over. I’ve got a hundred gallons of beebleberry ice cream I’ve been saving especially for you. Over.”

“But Master, we don’t have any—”

“Em Falcon, this is Courteous. We haven’t had any kind of ice cream aboard for weeks. You’re highly welcome, and we hear you have an interest in statistics.”

Lando laughed at the universal gambler’s code. “Permutations and combinations of the number seventy-eight, Courteous—fives are wild. Watch for us at your airlock any minute now. Out.”

The Falcon soared under reaction drive across the distance between the two warships, Lando worrying every moment that his idea and the device he’d had Vuffi Raa construct would actually work. It was the most terrible risk he’d ever taken, with no time to experiment, and technologies were not exactly his bailiwick. If it failed, then they’d be little metal splinters scattered from there to the Rafa System.

“Millennium Falcon, you’re off the beacon! Where’d you learn to fly that overstuffed horseshoe, you confounded feather merchant, some charm school somewhere?”

Critical moments ticked by, during which the Falcon refrained from replying to the innuendo—and precious kilometers toward her goal racked themselves up on the boards.

“Em Falcon, now hear this! Correct course immediately! Our guns are bearing on you, do you copy?”

Gritting his teeth and clamping nervous hands securely over the arms of his chair, Lando sat motionless, watching the dials. A trickle of sweat ran down the side of his neck into his collar, but he said nothing.

Once more: “Millennium Eff, you’ve got five seconds from the mark, and then you’ll be nothing but incandescent atoms! Mark: five, four, three …”

“Okay, Vuffi, this is it! As soon as the drives are hot, punch everything she’s got!”

“Very well, Master.”

The robot’s tentacles were a confusing blur over the ship’s control console as he diverted power to the after shields until the gauges screamed at the incipient overload. Lights began twinkling cheeringly across the section of the panels labeled FTL; the powerful interstellar drives awoke from several days’ unwilling somnolence. Finally, all boards were green. Drives and shields were ready as the Navy voice in the com reached zero.

Lando hoped his invention was ready, too.

“Millennium Falcon,” the communicator warned a final, unnecessary time—giving the gambler and the droid an extra few seconds—“you’re a dead—”

“Now!” Lando and Vuffi Raa screamed at the same time.

The voice chopped off. The after shields blossomed into an invisible protective canopy while the ultralight-speed genera tors began to throb—just as the leading wave front of the first meter-thick destructor beam from the cruiser struck the Falcon squarely in the center of her stern.

Her shields held … and held … and—

Suddenly the Millennium Falcon burst into an enormous blinding cloud of rapidly dispersing gases; a rain of metallic particles glittered, occupying the space where she had been.

• VI •

THE ONE ADDRESSED the Other: “At long last, it is nearly time.”

Like Lehesu of the Oswaft, he swam comfortably in emptiness absently contemplating the surrounding stars. Unlike Lehesu, he knew everything about them, had been to visit many of them himself. Nor was that the only way that he was not like the ThonBoka vacuum-breather. Even Lando Calrissian, accustomed to many strange and wonderful sights, would have had trouble recognizing the entity as a living being.

“Yes,” the Other replied, although his companion’s statement had been rhetorical. “All things are now as they have been planned. I shall gather the Rest, and they shall accompany us.”

He took action to accomplish just that. Such were the distances involved that, even at communications speeds exponential to that of light, it would require several days to achieve the desired transfer of information.

“Indeed,” the One agreed. “That, too, is as it has been planned. It is very