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There was a murmuring of remembrance, a stir of suppressed excitement. Change was coming hard and fast to the One, the Other, and the Rest.

“This being was peaceful, unaggressive even by our standards, for we had shaped him in this wise for several reasons that made sense to us and still do. Nonetheless, he has become embroiled in one violent incident after another, brutal, sanguine clashes with primitive cultures. Lives have been lost.

“Yet he has learned much, and the time has arrived for us to learn it from him.”

The rumbling of comment from the Rest grew louder. The One gave them time to contemplate, then said at last, “We go now to gather him in. We do not even know whether he will be happy to see us, to learn that his searches, at least for the time being, are over with. Let us greet him in dignity and love, understand the trials he has been through, and treasure what he has to give us, for it is rich.

“And it will change everything.”

• IX •

TUMBLING PONDEROUSLY BOW over stern, and with the slightest of rolls to starboard, the Millennium Falcon slowed microscopically, her attitude burners sputtering at irregular intervals in the eternal darkness. Her roll corrected, her pitch losing its momentum, she stabilized and came to a full stop. There was a fitful, uncertain fluttering of red at her ports, scattered here and there around her battered hull, then the strong, clear crimson of emergency lighting.

From small jets at the rear, streams of milky liquid struck her after hull plates, boiling off noiselessly in thick, gaseous clouds that mingled with the trailing smoke. A still-molten stub of structural metal projecting to the precise edge of her shield radius cooled and dimmed. The smoke ceased pouring; the interior lights and running markers came on full.

From a pressure valve in the circular hatch atop the Falcons hull, a mast extruded, silvery, slender, obviously being paid out by hand in jerky increments. It stopped with a springy quiver when two meters of it were visible. Lehesu, floating nearby, heard a familiar voice:

“Hello there, old flatfish! Lost the main antenna in all the excitement back there! That is you, isn’t it, Lehesu? Glad to be here. If Vuffi Raa had hesitated by a picosecond, you’d be talking to our radioactive ghosts!”

From a rather different culture—one, for example, whose conception of death did not encompass fancies of an ectoplasmic afterlife—Lehesu failed to comprehend at least two-thirds of the greeting. Nevertheless, he understood that his friends had safely arrived in the ThonBoka, and was overjoyed.

“Landocaptainmaster!” the vacuum-breather exclaimed, unconsciously addressing the human occupant of the starship as an Oswaft Elder, “Yes it is I!” He swam closer to the spacecraft until he could peer into its control room through the canopy. Inside sat Lando Calrissian, con man and sometime gambler (or gambler and sometime con man), and his mechanical would-be servant, Vuffi Raa. Full-time robot.

The two were still busily turning knobs and pushing buttons, attempting to restore the Millennium Falcon to some semblance of operational normality. The captain’s seat harness lay unfastened, floating in the temporarily gravity-free air about his acceleration couch. So it had been he, most probably, who had erected the antenna, aft and upstairs. The young Oswaft was pleased to have deducted the data, insignificant as they might be. It meant he was beginning to have a feel for what had been a totally alien environment and civilization.

“Greetings and salutations, friend Lehesu,” the droid echoed. “Not one of my better entrances, I’m afraid. And we both apologize for the delay in reaching you.” He looked to Lando, who was nodding, although whether in assent to the apology or as a comment on the robot’s flying skills was moot. “We were within hailing distance,” Vuffi Raa continued, “of the StarCave, several days ago, but it was necessary to work our way through the blockading fleet by means of deception.”

There was the slightest hint of distaste in the