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Another hour, and two more saloons, brought him back to the Spaceman’s Rest, the first such establishment he’d visited in Teguta Lusat, the day before. It seemed like a thousand years ago. The double-moustached alien proprietor was nowhere to be seen so early in the evening, but the droid behind the bar seemed to have had his memory banks attended to. He recognized Lando with a cordial mechanical nod.

By then, the gambler was thoroughly coffeined out. He leaned against the bar, ordered a real drink, then took it back to a table and sat, unobtrusively displaying the weird, eye-straining Key as before, for everyone to see.

One thing was different about the place: its multispecies clientele and robot bartender encouraged Lando not to leave Vuffi Raa outside in the street. After all, the little fellow was an item of valuable property (to somebody, someday, Lando hoped), and probably wouldn’t like being stolen, either.

That small mechanical worthy presently bellied—figuratively speaking—up to the bar, cutting up electronic touches while the ’tender polished glasses. Lando had always wondered what robots talked about among themselves, but never enough to eavesdrop.

Despite the tolerant atmosphere of the Spaceman’s Rest, the usual Toka flunky was there, an elderly wretch distributing synthetic plastic sawdust on the floor from a bucket. Lando grew hopeful as the shavings around his table deepened to two or three times the thickness of those covering the rest of the barroom floor.

The Toka kept circling, reluctant yet fascinated, rather like an insect around a bright light. He stared at the Key, tossed a worried glance toward the bar, then turned back to the Key again, drawn irresistibly. If he was concerned about the bartender’s reaction, he needn’t have bothered; the droid didn’t even seem to notice, wrapped up as he was in his work and in conversation with Vuffi Raa. Maybe native productivity wasn’t his department.

On an odd impulse to see what would happen, Lando tucked the Key back into his pocket.

Abruptly, the Toka dropped his pail with a crash and bolted out through the back of the room, leaving a fabric door-drape swinging behind him and a few gaping mouths among the sparse scattering of customers. Ordinarily nothing would induce the lethargic and prematurely senile natives to do anything in a hurry.

Lando held his breath: could his lucky break have come so soon?

He signaled the ’tender for another drink. Vuffi Raa obliged by bringing it over to the gambler.

“I still think we’d make better progress in the library, Master.” He set the glass on the dark polished wood of the tabletop. Lando was having a talmog that evening, one part spiced ethanol to one part Lyme’s rose juice, popular in a unique sunless, centerless system many hundreds of light-years away. It burned. Lando hated the things, which made them another drink he could nurse and re-ice all night if he had to.

“Listen, little friend, let me do the detecting. For your information, I think I’ve got a bite already.”

“A bite, Master?” The robot reached a free tentacle to the floor, scooped up a pinch of sawdust, and held it closely to his large red eye. “I would have thought the place to be cleaner kept than that. Perhaps the Board of Sanitation—”

“Vuffi Raa, how would you like to be reprocessed into sardine cans?”

For the second time that afternoon, there was mirth in the robot’s eye. “Master—”

“Don’t call me—” Lando stopped. The sawdust-spreader who had observed the gambler so closely was holding back the hanging for a veritable grandfather-of-grandfathers among the grandfatherly natives—a wizened, shriveled super-ancient nearly doubled over with the burden of his long life.

The bartender had stopped his glass cleaning, stood silent as he watched the geriatric native hobble toward the gambler. The old man’s straight white hair hung in matted tangles to his shoulders.

“Lord,” the ancient Toka wheezed almost inaudibly, bowing until his forehead touched the tabletop. “It is as it was told.