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Lando nodded, a gesture he wasn’t sure the Oswaft could see or understand. They’d left the Falcon parked outside—although now he wondered why he’d bothered as there was plenty of room for her in the Cave—and jetted in to meet the Elders. “That’s right, sir. Not very much, but it’s only a beginning. And besides, I think I’ve figured out a way to get the Navy off your back.”

“But why should you bother yourself?” Fey asked. “And why should you oppose the actions and interests of your own kind in this matter? I’m afraid we do not understand you, Captainmaster, and until we do, we cannot accept this gift you offer.”

The Elders were at least a kilometer across, Fey being slightly smaller than Sen. Lando felt silly negotiating with them—it was rather like carrying on a conversation with a large apartment building. But from earlier conversations with Lehesu, he was prepared for their attitude and these very questions.

“Well, aside from the fact that Vuffi Raa and I have grown rather fond of young Lehesu, here, we consider it a sort of a game.” Lando wished, as he hung in space beside the huge raylike creature, that there was some provision for smoking a cigar in a spacesuit. He felt better making business talk if he could smoke.

“A game? Please explain what you mean.”

“Sure, Sen. I understand that you folks like mental puzzles. Well, my folks do, too. Only we’ve found a way to make them more interesting and challenging: we turn them into games. That’s where somebody else tries to solve the puzzle first or better, or opposes your solution of it while he tries to work out his own.”

“Fascinating,” Sen mused, almost to himself. He turned to Fey. “Have you ever conceived of such a thing?”

No answer came from the Elder. To a being so ancient, a new concept came as something of a shock.

“Right,” Lando said, jetting closer to the pair of aliens. “And just to make it more fascinating, we try to play for something a little better than the sheer joy of solving the puzzle.”

“Such as what?” both Elders said at once.

“Well, permit me to demonstrate, friends. Now take the game of sabacc …”

“Am I missing something obvious here,” Lando offered conversationally as he took another “card” and the others considered their hands, “or are you people completely resigned to dying?”

A pale pink tinge suffused through Lehesu at Lando’s boldness toward the Elders, but he kept his peace, trusting the gambler. Sen and Fey both performed the equivalent of looking up from their cards. Lando’s helmet indicators said he was being brushed lightly by twin radar beams.

He knew the beings were far from stupid. Their transparent bodies made it easier and more difficult at the same time to figure out their internal arrangements, but from what he’d seen, he guessed that about two-thirds of their mass was brain, and pretty astute brain at that.

“Ah yes,” Sen answered finally, “that was the reason you were demonstrating sabacc to us. I had become so fascinated with the game itself, I had quite forgotten that its purpose was explaining why you wished to help us. So, you play a great sabacc game with your own kind out there, and we are a part of it. No, my friend, we do not wish to die, but there seems little alternative. I’ll take a card, Starshipmillenniumfalcon, if you please.”

The ship, apparently unimpressed that it had been granted status not only as a person but as an Elder among the Oswaft, duly blipped out a signal representing one of the seventy-eight sabacc cards, and fell silent again.

“There are plenty of alternatives, friend, there always are. The first, of course, is that you can give up and die. I’m glad to hear you reject it. That’s a beginning, anyway. Sabacc! That makes twenty-three million you owe me. Can we take a break? I have to visit certain facilities aboard my ship, and we can carry on this conversation from there.”

He jetted across the Cave of the Elders, leaving the Oswaft behind, climbed onto the hull of the Falcon and into