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“Pardon me, Master Lando, but have you had that device in your possession all this time?”

“That’s a stupid question, Threepio—even for a protocol droid.”

“I see no reason to respond to simple interrogatives with abuse—”

“Let me save you the trouble of asking any more ‘simple interrogatives,’ ” Lando said. “Yes, I’ve had it all along, and I haven’t used it. The reason I haven’t used it is that we don’t have control of the vagabond. If I call Lady Luck to wherever we stop next, one of two things will happen, neither of which helps us. Either the yacht’ll spook the vagabond into running, or the yacht’ll provoke the vagabond into firing. And if Lady Luck is put out of commission, we’re going to be in real trouble. Is that clear?”

“Perfectly clear, Master Lando.”

“Good,” said Lando. “Then I’m going to get back to what I was doing, and you’re going to avoid distracting me. Because we can’t go home until we do what we came out here to do, and I’m too tired and hungry to have any patience with a fussy droid. I’d rather blast you into components than listen to you for one more minute. Is that clear?”

“As clear as the morning air on Kolos Moon.” Threepio tapped Artoo on the dome with his good hand. “Come, Artoo. I believe we’re in the way here.”

* * *

The bow compartment of the vagabond was at least five times more voluminous than any other that Lando’s party had previously discovered. The chamber took the shape of a fat disc standing on edge, with the inner face convex, the outer face five meters away and concave. Counting the one they had entered through, there were eight portals evenly spaced around the rim of the disc. Each of the new portals seemed to be the gateway to another long series of compartments.

“All star routes lead to Imperial City,” Lando said. “I don’t know if this is the control nexus, but it’s something different, that’s for sure. And it’s pretty clear the Qella didn’t want you to miss coming here.”

While the droids hovered near the center of the compartment, Lando and Lobot began the now familiar drill of searching its surfaces by hand for contact triggers. But for all the surface area of the compartment, it was unusually unreactive. Lobot found no triggers on the outer face, and Lando only a single trigger on the inner.

That contact brought a pattern of curving, evenly spaced projections curling out from the entire inner face of the chamber. Each blunt-ended L-shaped hook was as thick as Threepio’s wrist and as long as Lando’s forearm, and the pattern invited the eye to see trapezoids, pinched rectangles, and overlapping wavy-sided triangles.

“What do you think, Lobot? A bridge control panel, Qella-style? They sure say ‘grab here’ to me,” Lando said, hovering near the droids.

Lobot, drifting just over the inner face, reached out and seized hold of one of the projections. There was no response within the chamber and no detectable response from the ship.

“If these are controllers, perhaps they only operate in combination. It would be useful if we knew what the body plan and limb span of the Qella species was,” said Lobot, turning toward Lando. “Of course, the size of this chamber would readily allow for more than one operator.”

Lando jetted forward. “Isn’t this what kids do when you let them sit in the cockpit for the first time—start pushing buttons at random?” He reached for the nearest projection with his left hand, then drew it back. “Artoo, can you spot any writing anywhere on this wall—like what you saw in the airlock when we boarded?”

The droid’s silver dome swiveled back and forth for a few seconds. Then Artoo emitted a short squeak that needed no translation.

“Just our luck,” said Lando. “We’re dealing with a species that never invented the sign.”

By then, Lobot was moving across the chamber face by using the projections as handholds. “I don’t think these are control devices, Lando,” he said. “Or if they are, the controls are locked out. I’ve touched fourteen different pairs now, and nothing is happening. Even if