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“Very true!” Doole said, opening and closing his mouth like a young rawwk begging for food. “Interesting way of looking at it.”

“I hope the disaster didn’t hurt your spice production too much?” Lando said.

“Oh, we’ll be back up to full output in no time.”

Lando gestured to Luke. “My associate is here to help me check out the details of spice mining and to advise me on its potential as an investment.” He took a deep breath. “I know I must have taken you by surprise. Tell me, is there any part of your operation that I might invest in?”

Doole motioned for them to follow toward his office. His lizard-skin waistcoat rippled in the uncertain light of the corridors. “Come in, and we’ll talk some more.”

Doole waddled ahead, turning his head from side to side as if he had trouble seeing where he was going. Inside the former warden’s office Doole indicated for them to take a seat. Artoo idled beside Luke.

Glancing around the office, Luke noticed the carbon-frozen man hanging on one wall; the life-support indicator lights on the control panel were all dark. “Friend of yours?” he asked.

Doole sputtered a hissing laugh. “A former rival. He used to be warden of the prison here, before our little revolution brought genuine capitalism to the spice-mining industry.” He sat down heavily behind the desk. “May I offer you any refreshment?”

Once seated, Lando folded his hands in his lap. “I’d rather talk business first. If our negotiations look promising, maybe we can celebrate with a drink.”

“Good policy,” Doole said, rubbing his hands again. “Now then, I’ve been thinking ever since your transmission, and I may well have something that could be the perfect investment. It so happens that just before his demise, our shift boss uncovered an exceptionally rich deposit of glitterstim spice. It’ll take a good amount of money and effort to make repairs in the collapsed tunnel and to exploit this resource, but the payoff can be greater than your wildest dreams.”

“I have some pretty wild dreams,” Lando said, flashing his broadest smile.

Luke interrupted with a stern, skeptical voice. “Those are extravagant claims, Mr. Doole. Would you allow our Artoo unit to tap into your network and inspect the profit/loss picture of your operations for, say, the past two years? That will give me hard data on which to make a recommendation to Mr. Tymmo.”

Doole squirmed on being asked to open his records, but Lando pulled his credit-transfer card from his pocket. “I can assure you the droid will do no damage to your data system, and I’d be happy to give you a small deposit, if it would make you feel more comfortable. Say, five thousand?”

Doole was trapped between his own uneasy wish for confidentiality and his need to appear aboveboard in front of a potential big investor—not to mention wanting the five thousand credits for its own sake.

“I suppose that would be all right. But I can give your droid access for only five minutes. It shouldn’t need any more time than that to find the information.”

Luke nodded. “That’ll be fine, thank you.” Artoo wouldn’t waste effort checking out bogus profit/loss reports anyway. He would begin immediately trying to track down any record of Han Solo, Chewbacca, or the Millennium Falcon.

Humming forward, Artoo jacked into the terminal port beside Moruth Doole’s desk. His data-link arm whirred as it accessed the information buried in the prison complex’s computer.

While they waited, Lando continued his discussion with Doole. “I’d like to see all aspects of your spice mining and production. I’m sure you can arrange a tour immediately. Let us observe firsthand how the business works. Including these collapsed tunnels of yours—maybe I’d like to invest in repairs, if a good payoff seems likely.”

“Uh,” Doole said, looking behind him as if to find an excuse. “As I said, now is not a very good time. Perhaps we could arrange a more convenient time for you to come back—” Doole spread his squishy hands.

Lando shrugged eloquently and stood as if to leave. “I understand. If you’re not interested,