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He went up two levels without mishap. Three Espos lounging in the guard booth near the elevator bank waved him on, seeing he was badged. He fought the impulse to smile. Stars’ End was probably an uneventful tour of duty; no wonder the guards had gotten lax. After all, what could possibly happen here?

At the amphitheater, Pakka’s amazing deftness hadn’t even drawn an approving look from Viceprex Hirken. The cub had been using a hoop while rolling a balance-ball with his feet, doing flips.

“Enough of this,” Hirken proclaimed, his well-tended hand flying up. Pakka stopped, glaring at the Viceprex. “Isn’t that incompetent Marksman back yet?” The other execs, conferring among themselves, managed to reach a group decision that Han was still gone. Hirken’s breath rasped.

He pointed to Atuarre. “Very well, Madam, you may dance. But be brief, and if your sharpshooting gaffer isn’t back soon, I may dispense with him altogether.”

Pakka had removed his props from the arena floor. Now Atuarre handed him the small whistle-flute Han had machined up for him. While the cub blew a few practice runs on it, Atuarre slipped on the finger-cymbals Han had fashioned for her and clinked them experimentally. The improvised instruments, even her anklet-chimes, all lacked the musical quality of Trianii authentics, she decided. But they would suffice, and might even convince the onlookers that they were seeing the real thing.

Pakka began playing a traditional air. Atuarre moved out onto the arena floor, following the music with a sinuous ease no human performer could quite match. Her streamers blew behind her, many-colored fans flickering from arms and legs, forehead and throat, as her finger-cymbals sounded and her anklets rang, precisely as they should.

Some of the preoccupation left Hirken’s face and the faces of the other onlookers. Trianni ritual dancing had often been touted as a primitive, uninhibited art, but the truth was that it was high artistry. Its forms were ancient, exacting, demanding all a dancer’s concentration. It required perfectionism, and a deep love of the dance itself. In spite of themselves, Hirken, his subordinates, and his wife were drawn into Atuarre’s spinning, stalking, pouncing dance. And as she performed, she wondered how long she could hold her audience, and what would happen if she couldn’t hold-them long enough.

Han, having found a computer terminal in an unoccupied room, set Max down next to it. While Max extended his adapter and entered the system, Han took a cautious look in the hall and closed the door.

He drew up a workstool by a readout screen. “You in, kid?”

“Just about, Captain. The techniques Rekkon taught me work here, too. There!” The screen lit up, flooded with symbols, diagrams, computer models, and columns of data.

“Way to go, Max. Now spot up the holding pens, or cells, or detention levels or whatever.”

Blue Max flashed layout after layout on the screen, while his search moved many times faster, skimming huge amounts of data; this was the sort of thing he’d been built for. But at last he admitted, “I can’t, Captain.”

“What d’you mean, can’t? They’re here, they’ve gotta be. Look again, you little moron!”

“There’re no cells,” Max answered indignantly. “If there were, I’d have seen them. The only living arrangements in the whole base are the employees’ housing, the Espo barracks, and the exec suites, all on the other side of the complex—and Hirken’s apartments here in the tower.”

“All right,” Han ordered, “put a floor plan of this joint up, level by level, on the screen, starting with Hirken’s amusement park.”

A floor plan of the dome, complete with the garden and amphitheater, lit the readout. The next two levels below it proved to be filled with the Viceprex’s ostentatious personal quarters. The one after that confused Han. “Max, what’re those subdivisions? Offices?”

“It doesn’t say here,” the computer answered. “The property books list medical equipment, holo-recording gear, surgical servos, operating tables, things like that.”