Star Wars_ The Han Solo Adventures - Brian Daley [10]
“Is it de-scented?” Han asked.
“Oh, no! And it’s been in rut ever since it was transshipped. But it’s been de-venomed.”
Chewbacca grinned, his black nose wrinkling.
Han asked, “How much?”
Sabodor named an exorbitant sum. Han counted through his sheaf of cash. “I’ll give you exactly one half that, agreed?”
The eyestalks, flopping about in distress, seemed close to tears. The Wookiee, snorting, leaned down at Sabodor, who shrank again behind the dubious safety of Han’s knees. “Admit it, Sabodor,” Han invited cheerfully, “it’s a good deal.”
“You win,” wailed the proprietor. He proffered the case. The Dinko threw itself from side to side of its container, foaming at the chops.
“One more thing,” Han added blithely. “I want you to give it a light sedation dosage so I can handle it for a moment. Then you can give it to me in a different box, something opaque.”
That was really two things, but Sabodor agreed dejectedly, eager to have the Wookiee, the human, and the Dinko all out of his establishment as soon as possible.
Ploovo Two-For-One, loan shark and former robber, smash-and-grab man, and bunko-steerer out of the Cron Drift, looked forward with pleasure to collecting the outstanding debt from Han Solo.
He was elated, not only because the original loan would reap a splendid profit for himself and his backers, but also because he thoroughly hated Solo, and an interesting form of revenge had materialized.
The message from Solo, promising repayment, had stipulated a meeting here on Etti IV, in the spaceport’s most elegant bistro. That had been all right with Ploovo Two-For-One; his creed was that toil and enjoyment should be combined whenever feasible. The Free-Flight Dance Dome was more than satisfactory; it was opulent. Ploovo himself was far from charming, a bad-tempered hulk of a man whose face was subject to a nervous tic; but his income gave him a certain conspicuous social viability.
He sprawled onto a conform-lounger at a corner table, joined by the three retainers he’d brought along. Two of these were humans, hard-bitten men with a number of weapons concealed on and about their persons. The third was a long-snouted, scaly-skinned biped, native of Davnar II, who possessed a true flair for execution.
Ploovo, flashing more than enough currency to create an inspired sense of hospitality in the waitress, primped at his black, oily topknot. While he waited, he gloated over his anticipated revenge on Han Solo. Not that the pilot wouldn’t repay. The loan shark was certain of getting his money. But Solo had long been an irritant, always ready with some dazzling evasion of payment, jeering Ploovo and bewildering him at the same time. On a number of occasions Ploovo had lost face with his backers because of run-ins with Solo, and his backers weren’t the sort to be amused by that. The code of ethics necessary to the conduct of illegal enterprises kept Ploovo from turning in the captain-owner of the Millennium Falcon to the law; nevertheless, a convenient local circumstance would serve the loan shark’s purpose just as well.
* * *
Entering with Chewbacca beside him, a metal case in hand, Han Solo appraised The Free-Flight Dance Dome with a great deal of approval.
As on almost any civilized planet, many species mixed and mingled here in a taxonomic hodgepodge, their appearance familiar or alien by turns. Having seen about as much of the galaxy as a man might reasonably expect to, Han still found he couldn’t identify half the nonhuman types he saw here. That wasn’t unusual. The stars were so many that no one could catalog all the