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Ottdefa Whett wrinkled his nose, passing the rest of the deck to Lando. “Oh, just a ridiculous native superstition. There is supposed to be a lost magical artifact designed to call the Sharu—with whom the Toka identify in some strange fashion—to call the Sharu back when the Toka need them. Silly, as the Toka could not possibly ever have been contemporary with a civilization millions of years in the past, any more than human beings and dinosaurs—”

“I’ve seen dinosaurs,” Arun Feb interrupted. “On Trammis III.” The gigantic reptiloids of Trammis III were famous the galaxy over, and a chuckle circulated around the table.

“I take it, however,” Lando said as he shuffled and dealt the cards, then watched the bets pile up again, “that you have your own theories.” Somehow the talk of treasure seemed to have loosened up the pursestrings a bit, except perhaps for Vett Fori and her assistant. The gambler took a puff of his cigarillo. “Would you mind talking about them?”

The anthropologist looked as if he wouldn’t mind at all, even if requested to discourse standing barefoot on a large cake of ice while his ample gray hair were set on fire.

“Well, sir, the ruins, for all that they are ubiquitous, are impenetrable, closed completely on all sides without a sign of entryway. I daresay that all the collected treasures of a million years of advanced alien culture await the first adventurer to gain admittance. I don’t mind confessing to you all that I attempted it myself on several occasions. But the ruins are not only impenetrable, they are absolutely obdurate. No known tool or energy yields so much as a smudge upon their surfaces. I’ll see that, and raise five hundred. Constable?”

Grudgingly, the policeman threw in five hundred credits’ worth of tokens. Lando saw the bet with mild amazement and raised it a hundred credits himself.

“Sabacc!”

Hmmm. Things were looking up a little. He was now ahead two thousand credits. He dealt the cards a third time, wondering what prospects for a gambler might be met in the Rafa. The idea was tempting: only a handful of straight-line lightyears to navigate across, and, if he recalled correctly, a major spaceport with good technical facilities—which to him meant landing assistance from Ground Control. The Millennium Falcon was completely new to him. He’d be playing cards in the Dela System this very moment if he weren’t such an abysmally amateurish astrogator and ship-handler. He’d balked at the long, complicated voyage and reputedly tricky approach to a mountaintop landing field, despite well-founded rumors of rich pickings in an atmosphere friendly to his profession.

But the Rafa …

He won the third hand and a fourth, was now ahead some fifty-five hundred credits. The prospects of action seemed to be encouraging him, and he wasn’t noticing the heat as much anymore.

“Oh, I say, Captain Calrissian …” It was Whett again. As the stakes mounted, the anthropologist seemed the only one whose interest in desultory conversation hadn’t lagged.

“Yes?” Lando answered, shuffling and dealing the cards.

“Well, sir, I … that is, I find myself somewhat embarrassed financially at this moment. You see, I have exceeded the amount of cash I allowed myself for the evening’s entertainment, and I—”

Lando sat back disappointed, drew on his cigarillo. It was too much, he reflected, to have expected to get rich off this emaciated college professor. “I move around too much to extend credit, Ottdefa.”

“I appreciate that fully, sir, and wish to … well, how much would you consider allowing on a Class Two multi-phasic robot, if one may ask?”

“Once may indeed ask,” the gambler replied evenly. “Thirty-seven microcredits and a used shuttle pass. I’m not in the hardware business, my dear Ottdefa.” There was an idea, however: he could rent a pilot droid to get the ship from here to the Rafa—or wherever else he decided to go. He reconsidered. A Class Two was worth a good deal, perhaps half again the value of his spaceship. In these