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Han, who’d been gaping from one to the other while Chewbacca made little strangling sounds, finally got out “Odumin? You’re the territorial manager? Why you treacherous, mutinous worm, I ought to—” Words failed him for a fate sufficiently horrible.

“That’s hardly called for, Captain,” Spray chided, sounding wounded. “I did start out as a skip-tracer, you see. But as I advanced myself in the structure of the Corporate Sector Authority, I found it expedient, as a nonhuman, to use others as go-betweens and remain an anonymous figure. In this slavery business, which extends to my own deputies and officials of the Security Police, I found myself obliged to do my own investigating with the help of a few trusted aides like Gallandro here.”

He laced his webbed fingers together and assumed the introspective air of a teacher. Han found himself listening despite his fury.

“It was a very convoluted problem,” Spray/Odumin began. “First, there was the evidence that you had taken off of Zlarb, which, you see, led you to Bonadan and convinced me that you were the slaver. At the spaceport, when you headed for the hangar, I concluded that you were about to depart the planet. There were materials at hand, a pair of work gloves and an industrial solvent that could double as an anesthetic; that prompted an overly hasty decision on my part to attempt to take from you whatever information you possessed in such a manner as to make you suspicious of your, um, confederates. But you turned out to be a resourceful man, Captain.”

Han snorted. “I still can’t believe you worked up the guts to jump me, even with the lights out.”

Spray drew himself up to his full height. “Don’t make the mistake so many others have; I’m more capable than I appear. With your superior eyesight neutralized, you would almost certainly have grown dizzy from the fumes before I; I can, after all, hold my breath for protracted periods. But immediately after our struggle, Gallandro here, who’d been running a check on you, informed me of your true identity. I decided I’d found my solution.”

Han’s brows knit. “Solution?”

Spray turned to Chewbacca. “Remember our board game, and the Eight Ilthmar Gambit, a lone combatant sent in to draw out an opponent? Captain Solo, you were that playing piece, my solution. The slavers knew you were no security operative and that you couldn’t appeal to the legal authorities. You compelled them to acts that made them vulnerable, as you can see, to me.”

That made Han remember something else. He looked to Fiolla. “What about you?”

Spray answered for her. “Oh, she’s precisely what she said she is: an ambitious, aggressive, loyal employee. The house-cleaning required by this whole business will leave some prime job slots in my organization; I plan to see Fiolla amply rewarded. My deputy territorial manager’s position will be vacant quite soon, I should think.”

“A plush job with the Authority,” Han spat, “worst gang of plunderers who ever infested space.”

“Not everyone can outfly them or rob them blind, Han,” Fiolla said. “But somebody inside might bring change, as Spray’s been trying to do. If someone had the right position, she might do a great deal of good.”

“You see?” Spray’s question was filled with approval. “Our attitudes are complementary. For all your daring and ability, Captain, you’ll never do appreciable damage to an organization of the Authority’s size and wealth. I submit to you that beings like Fiolla and myself, working within it, may accomplish what blasters cannot. How can you fault her for that?”

To avoid answering, Han looked to Gallandro. “What was the challenge all about?”

The gunman’s hand moved in an airy dismissal. “The Glayyd clan constituted a particular problem; their records are connected to a destruct switch manned by loyal clan members. We couldn’t risk going in and taking the evidence only to have it destroyed in the process.

“The elder Mor Glayyd mistrusted the slavers and they suspected him of planning to extort more money from them. They aren’t the type for faith in human nature, you see.