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Tymmo looked up, saw Lando holding something that might have been a weapon, saw the two droids that might have been armed mechanical bodyguards, and panicked just as the terminal ejected his account card and called for the next customer. Tymmo snatched his card and fled, scattering a pack of Ugnaughts as he ran into the crowded stands.

“Hey, Tymmo, stop!” yelled Lando. The man was swallowed up in the surge of spectators exiting the stands after the race.

“Sir, aren’t we going to follow him?” Threepio asked.

Other spectators had turned to stare. The next winner, grinning and oblivious, stepped up to the cashiering station.

“No.” Lando shook his head. “We’ve got a reading for now. Let’s check it out.”

In a shadowed corner, not caring if anyone saw what they were doing since nobody would understand it anyway, Lando watched the power pack of the Imperial detector reconstruct a holographic aura mapping of Tymmo.

As Lando had unfortunately expected, Tymmo’s reading showed a perfectly normal outline: no bluish haze of Jedi potential, nothing at all out of the ordinary. “He’s a fraud.”

Threepio seemed disappointed. “Can you be certain, sir? I should point out that many people were standing around, and they could have disturbed the readings. You also scanned him very quickly, and none too closely. Remember, too, that the detector itself is extremely old and may not be completely reliable.”

Lando gave the protocol droid a skeptical frown, but Threepio’s arguments did have some merit. He should take the trouble to be sure. Besides, Lando was enjoying himself on Umgul so far. “All right, we’ll check him out a little further.”

Relieved that the New Republic would pick up the tab, Lando relaxed in his spacious hotel accommodations. From the dispenser he ordered a cold punchlike drink popular on Umgul and went to the balcony to watch thick evening mists curl along the streets. He sipped the drink, unable to remove his perplexed frown or smooth his creased forehead.

“Could I get you anything else, sir, of shall I power down for the time being?” Threepio asked.

“Please do!” he said, realizing how nice it would be to keep the protocol droid quiet for a while. “But leave the circuit open in case Artoo tries to get back in touch.”

“Certainly, sir.”

Posing as a maintenance droid, Artoo had gone poking around the blob stables to see if he could uncover anything out of the ordinary. The little astromech droid had tuned his communication frequency to Lando’s comlink so he could send a message.

Now with Threepio quiet Lando could finally think. He went over to the room’s courtesy terminal and punched in a request for information. The screen automatically displayed a complete schedule for the next three weeks of blob racing, but Lando selected another menu.

The Umgullian Racing Commission was fanatical about being forthcoming with all information relating to the races and the blobs themselves. A sample of protoplasm was taken from each blob before and after any race, then subjected to rigorous analysis, the results of which were available to the public.

With help from the information assistant built into the terminal, Lando was able to collate the before-and-after tests for all of Tymmo’s high-stakes winners. He didn’t know what he was looking for, but he suspected some drug used to urge the blobs to greater speed, some incentive that would affect only the winners.

“Run a correlation,” Lando said. “Is there anything unusual about these particular winners? Something found in these blobs, but not in the others?”

Tymmo bet only once in a while, and if his manipulation was subtle enough, Lando could imagine that the Umgullian racing commission might have missed a tiny modification. But Lando knew that one variable tied these particular winners together apart from the other blobs. Since hundreds of people bet and won on each race, the commission would have no reason to look at only those particular races where Tymmo had