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The troopers and freight-handlers had departed sometime the previous evening under the cover of the moonless sky, sealing the Falcon’s hatches tightly behind them until the control boards displayed a solid, unbroken tapestry of green pilot lamps. Mohs had curled up on a lounger, snoring like some impossible archaic internal combustion engine. Vuffi Raa had tidied up and tinkered through the night.

Sapient robots do need sleep—the brighter they are the greater the need—but Lando never had been able to discern a pattern in their nightly habits. He himself had tossed and turned, sweating into the fancy and expensive synsilk bedroll he’d spread under the common-room gaming table, and finally achieving an unrestful semiconsciousness from which the robot had awakened him, stiff and groggy. Several large containers of hot, black coffeine had only deepened his already gruesome mood.

“All right,” he snarled unnecessarily at the old Toka shaman. They were forward in the cockpit once again, Mohs perched on the jumpseat, Vuffi Raa occupying the right-hand copilot’s couch as a token concession to the human captain, but very much in control of the ship. Someday, thought Lando, when it all was over, he’d sell both blasted machines, Vuffi Raa and the Millennium Falcon, to someone fully capable of appreciating them.

“So where do we go from here?”

They were lying in a close orbit around Rafa IV. From there they could reach any point on the planet’s surface within minutes or strike out freely across space for any other body in the system. Mohs closed his eyes, mouthed the rote-memorized words of an ancient ritual to himself, and finally pointed a dessicated finger out the viewport.

“Lord, the Mindharp lieth in that direction.”

Perfect, Lando thought sourly to himself, I’ve got a mechanical kid’s toy for a pilot, and an elderly witch doctor for a navigator! A sadistic little voice inside him insisted on adding that he also had a sabacc-playing conman for a captain. Even all around, then. He gave it up and peered through the faceted transparency.

How in the devil do you discuss the details of navigational astronomy with an utter savage? “You mean that bright light in the heavens, there, Mohs?”

“Of a certainty, Lord: the fifth planet of the Rafa System; it possesseth two natural satellites, a breathable atmosphere, and approximately nine-tenths of a standard gravity, not unlike Rafa IV beneath us, whence we came—except in the matter of the moons. Is it not pleasing in thy—”

“Forget it!” The gambler peered suspiciously at the old man. “How is it that you know so blasted much about astronomy, all of a sudden?” And who’s really the utter savage here, he asked himself quietly; he’d never have been able to pick out the next planet from the local sun against the starry sky, not without the ship’s computer as a crutch.

The ancient Singer shrugged, gave Lando a saggy, toothless grin. “It is all there, Lord, in the Song of the Reflective Telescope, which detaileth all things in this system. Should it not be so?”

There was a long, long silence, during which the only thing accomplished was Vuffi Raa’s computer-guided confirmation that Lando’s “bright light in the heavens” was, indeed, Rafa V. “How many of these bloody chants do you know, anyway?”

The savage considered: “Many beyond counting, Lord. More than the fingers and toes of all my great-great ancestors and children. I would say approximately seven point six two three times ten to the fourth. Does this please thee, Lord?”

For a humble worshiper, the old boy was getting pretty sarcastic, Lando thought. “I suppose that last comes from the Song of Scientific Notation.” He shook his head. He understood fully now why Gepta and Mer hadn’t gone on this wild falumba chase themselves. It had nothing to do with conforming to ancient Toka legends. They simply wanted to stay sane.

The question now was, why did Vuffi Raa and Mohs need him?

“What now, Master? Do you want to go to Rafa V?”

“DON’T CALL ME MASTER!”

The relatively short jump of a few dozen