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“Lando, you have no basis for concluding that this is a system port,” Lobot pressed. “It is more likely that the function of this mechanism is related to the function of these passages.”

“Which is what?” Lando snapped. “Holding cell? Ventilator? Rodent maze? A fungi farm? Are you saying we’re not supposed to touch this, either? Blast it all, how long are we supposed to wait before we do something?”

“You have not had more than two hours’ sleep in nearly three days,” Lobot said. “Your sense of urgency has been heightened—”

“That’s right,” Lando said. “I haven’t had anything to eat in so long I’d cut a friend dead for a fracking cracker. My water supply tastes like it’s gone around half a dozen times already. Are you more machine than man? Doesn’t any of this affect you?”

“I am as human as you are,” Lobot said. “I doubt that you could be any hungrier than I am. My water supply is as disagreeable to me as yours is to you. But I do not understand the discoveries we have made—”

“Then don’t you want to learn more? I want the droids to try to interface with this port. That’s all. No blasters. No creative structural renovations.”

“Please listen,” Lobot said earnestly. “I do not understand why structures as extensive as these have been inert throughout our tenure on this ship, or why we have been permitted to move about in them unimpeded. These questions trouble me. And I am concerned that the appearance of this artifact may signal the end of either or both of those conditions—”

“All the more reason for us to make the first move,” Lando said. “Artoo, Threepio, come on up here. I want you to try to interface with the vagabond.”

Lobot turned toward the droids. “Threepio—Artoo—I ask you to wait until we know more. None of our supplies are critical yet. We do not know what we are dealing with.”

“I am sorry, sir, but Master Luke placed us in the care of Master Lando,” Threepio said, allowing Artoo to tow him toward the panel. “We are obliged to follow his instructions, no matter what reservations you may have.”

“Thank you, Threepio,” Lando said, fixing Lobot with a baleful gaze touched with a hint of smug triumph. “I’m glad to know that you’re still on the team.”

Whether it was due more to Lobot’s misgivings or to Artoo’s innate sense of self-preservation, the astromech droid proceeded cautiously in carrying out Lando’s instructions, and Lobot was glad to see it.

At first Artoo stopped a safe distance from the panel and began to scan it, his dome rotating back and forth as he brought different sensors to bear—optical, thermal, radionic, electromagnetic. Threepio called out the results of each reading to the two men, who were watching from opposite sides of the passage.

Lobot already knew the results by the time Threepio pronounced them, for the droid—on his own initiative, and without any notice to Lando—had opened another of his data registers to the cyborg’s neural interface. It was a signal of support that Lobot accepted in silence, saying nothing that would betray the small mutiny.

When the initial scans produced no obvious red flags, Artoo moved in closer and extended his sensor probe. The scan head was too large to fit fully into the smaller sockets, but Artoo brought it as close to the first of them as he could without actually touching it.

“Field, zero-point-zero-nine gauss,” said Threepio. “Flux density, one-point-six-zero-two. Alpha rate, zero. Beta rate, one hundred sixteen. Charge polarity, negative—Artoo, I don’t understand a word of this. Will someone please tell me what it means?”

Artoo swiveled his head and emitted a sharp series of whistles, which Threepio did not translate.

“I am trying to hold still,” Threepio said as Artoo moved the probe to the next socket. “It’s not my fault I wasn’t designed for weightlessness. Most sensible beings live on planets, where they belong.”

The response from Artoo sounded churlish even to Lobot’s ears.

“I don’t care what you think,” Threepio said. “Why, you