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Then a sensation brushed past him. Somehow he knew that only he could hear the tightly beamed message that issued from his helmet phones.

“You are Captain Calrissian, are you not? You have fought valiantly, and not in vain. You grieve for your little friend. I grieve, too, for he was my only son.”

• XVIII •

“SABACC!” SAID THE One. “By the Center of Everything, Lando, I knew we would learn new and valuable things if only we dared to.”

“Yeah, well, you’ve still got to learn the difference between luck and skill. That’s eighteen trillion I’m ahead of you already, counting that last hand, and I don’t even know yet what we’re using for currency!”

The gambler took a deep drag on his cigar and watched as the One gathered in the seventy-eight-card deck with a sweep of a jointed metallic tentacle. His eye glowed a deep scarlet with delight and anticipation as he dealt them out again, two to Lando, two more to Klyn Shanga, two to the extensor manifesting itself as the Other.

“Too bad,” he continued. “This game is a whole lot faster and more interesting five-handed. If only Vuffi Raa …”

“Each of us,” observed the Other, “sets his own course through the universe and must follow it where it takes us. This is called integrity, and to deviate—”

“Come on, you five-legged clowns, cut the pop philosophy and play cards! You know how long it’s been since I sat down at a real table and—”

Lando grinned. “And tried filling inside straights all night long, Admiral? At that, it beats dodging bullets and destructor beams. I’m glad you decided to be on our side, and I’m especially glad you’re a better fighter pilot than you are a sabacc player.”

“I’m only warming up. Give me a chance, and I’ll have your hide the easy way: payable in cash!”

Laughter around the table. It was good to have the lounge full of visitors, the gambler thought; a real passenger lounge for a change. But some folks seemed to be missing from his life, missing from places they’d carved for themselves only recently. Or relatively recently.

“Heard from Lehesu yet?” he asked, watching a Commander of Flasks change itself into a Three of Staves. He knew it was an electronic trick, but it never failed to give him goosebumps. Shanga was frowning, a sure sign he had a good hand, Lando had learned quickly. He kept his betting light.

The fighter pilot shook his head, still frowning. “One of the boys said something about seeing a middle-sized Oswaft zooming off during the battle. Said something about a courier he wanted to catch up with. Is it true the spacepeople want to make him High Supreme Galootie or something?”

A mechanical chuckle issued from the extensor representing the One. “It would seem they have decided that leadership—or at least wisdom—do not necessarily correlate positively with age. This is gratifying to me, as I am the youngest of my people … that is, I was before Vuffi Raa … er, I believe I shall take another card, gentle-beings.”

Outside, far away across the StarCave, the actual repositories of the intelligence of the One, the Other, and the Rest lay, as it were, at anchor. They were gigantic fifty-kilometer starships, intergalactically self-propelled droids of ancient origin.

Shanga changed the subject. “I never quite got who it was who built you folks originally—that is, if you don’t mind me asking a religious question.”

“Not at all,” the One replied. “They were a race of individuals who looked rather like these extensors. There are some among us who recall them, although I do not, except through cybernetically handed-down memories. They were not spacefarers; the idea simply didn’t appeal to them. They were wiped out in a radiation storm when a nearby star went supernova. Only a few intelligent machines were left, and they were my ancestors. We did explore the stars, at least in our arm. There is a high incidence of unstable stars there, so that organic life is rare.”

“Yes,” the Other concurred, “it was his idea to seek out organic life to liven up our own culture, and