• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

The hatch rolled up and a blast of frigid wind invaded the passageway. Han shouted over the wail of the storm. “Doesn’t look like it’s going to be heat rash salve though, does it?”

He started down the ramp, leaning into the force of the gale. The cold in his lungs was sharp enough to make him think about going back for a respirator, but he judged that he wouldn’t be outside long enough to need one. His facebowl polarized somewhat against the ice glare as snow hissed against it. Specific gravity here on Lur was slightly over Standard, but not enough to cause any inconvenience.

At the foot of the ramp he found that the wind was moving a light dusting of snow across the blue-white glacier. Miniature drifts were already accumulating against the Falcon’s landing gear. He spied the beacon, a cluster of blinking caution lights atop a globular transponder package, anchored to glacial ice by a tripod. There was no one to be seen, but visibility was so low that Han couldn’t have made out much beyond the landing marker.

He walked over to it, inspecting it and finding it to be nothing more than a standard model, designed for use in places lacking sophisticated navigational and tracking equipment.

Suddenly a muffled voice behind him called out. “Solo?” He spun, right hand dropping automatically to the grip of his blaster. A man stepped out of the swirl of the storm. He, too, wore a thermosuit and a facebowl that had muted his voice, but the thermosuit was white and the facebowl reflective, making him nearly invisible there on the glacier.

He moved forward with hands empty and held high. Han, squinting past him, saw the vague outlines of other figures moving just at the edge of his range of vision.

“I’m him,” Han responded, his own words muffled somewhat by his facebowl. “You’re, uh, Zlarb?”

The other nodded. Zlarb was a tall, broadly built man with extremely fair skin, white-blond beard and clear gray eyes with creases at their corners that gave him an intense, threatening look. But he showed his teeth in a wide smile. “That’s right, Captain. And I’m ready to go, too. We can load up right away.”

Han tried to peer through the curtain of snow behind Zlarb. “Are there enough of you to bring up the cargo? I brought along a repulsorlift handtruck in case you need it to haul your load. Want me to run it out for you?”

Zlarb gave him a look Han couldn’t quite read, then smiled again. “No. I think we can get our shipment onboard without any problems.”

Something about the man’s behavior, the hint of a private joke or the sardonic tone to his reply, made Han suspicious. He had long since learned to listen to inner alarms. He looked back at the blurry outline of the Falcon and hoped Chewbacca was alert and that the Wookiee had the starship’s main batteries primed and aimed. The two seldom encountered trouble from their pickup contacts. Usually at the other end, the drop-off and payment end of things, trouble tended to occur. But this just might be the exception.

Han backed away a step, eyes meeting Zlarb’s. “All right then, I’ll go get ready to raise ship.” He had more questions to ask this man, but wanted to move the proceedings to a more auspicious spot, say, next to the freighter’s belly turret. “You drag your shipment to the ramp head and we’ll take it from there.”

Zlarb’s grin was wider now. “No, Solo. I think we’ll both go onboard your ship. Right now.”

Han was about to tell Zlarb that it was against his and Chewbacca’s policy to let smuggling contacts onboard when he noticed that the man had turned his hand over. In it he held a tiny weapon, a short-range palmgun that, like a conjuror, he must have held hidden between gloved fingers. Han thought about going for his blaster but realized that at best he could probably manage no more than a tie, in which case both of them would die.

The blinking lights of the landing beacon, gleaming off Zlarb’s facebowl, gave the man’s smirk an even more sinister look. “Hand the blaster over butt-first, Solo, and keep your back to the ship so your partner can’t see. Carefully now; I