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“I’m almost certain I haven’t.”

“Almost,” Han snorted. “For a labor droid, you’re pretty good at data retrieval.”

“Ah, but that’s easily explained,” Baffle said. “Before I was delegated to drive, I worked at district headquarters, overseeing the reassignment of droids retired from agricultural field work.”

“Desk job.”

“Not really, since I performed most of my tasks standing up.” Baffle paused briefly, then said, “Sir, if you wish, I could be of some assistance in freeing your partner from captivity.”

“He’s not my partner,” Han snapped.

“Your travel companion, then.”

Han stared at the droid for a moment, then exhaled forcefully. “Okay, let’s hear it.”

Baffle didn’t respond immediately, and when he did there was a note of gravity in his tone of voice that hadn’t been evident earlier. “Sir, can I trust that you will refrain from disclosing any of what I’m about to tell or show you, no matter what decision you reach regarding the Ryn?”

Han laughed through his nose. “Labor droid, my eye.”

“Do I have your word, sir?”

“Sure,” Han said. “I’m terrific at keeping secrets.” He watched Baffle make another adjustment to the hardwire regulator. “Now what are you up to?”

“I’m simply alerting some of my comrades that we’ll be joining them.” Baffle unplugged from the data column and began to move off, then stopped. “If you’ll follow me, sir.”

As surreptitiously as possible, they slipped through an innocuous-looking doorway in the terminal’s east wall and rode an ancient cable-operated car down through several basement and subbasement levels. Exiting the lift, Baffle led Han past banks of deafening turbine power plants, then into a maze of service corridors that coursed beneath the spaceport’s landing platforms and docking bays. Along the way, two other droids joined them, a lanky, vaguely humaniform 8D8 blast-furnace operator and an arachnidlike systems control droid propelled by a set of telescoping legs. Ultimately, they entered a heavy-doored and dimly lighted storage room, in which no fewer than thirty droids of various types were already gathered.

Scanning the machines, Han spotted an old P2 unit, with mangled grasper arms emerging from its domed head; a helmet-headed military protocol droid; a U2C1 housekeeping droid, with long pleated hoses for arms; an asp, whose head resembled a welder’s mask; an insectile-eyed J9 worker; two tank-treaded, trash-barrel-bodied C2-R4s; even a skeletal and long-obsolete Cybot LE repair droid.

Han felt as if he’d been swallowed by a Jawa sand-crawler, but he kept the thought to himself.

A few moments of lightning-fast machine code was all it took for Baffle to bring the others up to speed on Han’s predicament. Sprinkled among the subsequent chatterings, Han heard what sounded like the word Ryn—at least the way machines might articulate it. Eventually, heads and sensor appendages of wide assortment swung to observe him.

Slightly unnerved, Han uttered a short laugh. “Hey, it’s been a while since I’ve spoken droid, fellas.”

Baffle apologized for the lot of them. “We sometimes forget that the speed of the flesh-and-blood brain lags far behind that of our processors.”

Han scowled. “Skip the sales pitch, Long Reach, and tell me what I’ve gotten myself into.”

Baffle gestured toward the globe-headed systems control droid who had rendezvoused with them in the maintenance tunnels. “Pip here has succeeded in locating Droma. As I might have surmised, he is not being held at Facility 17, but at Salliche Ag’s district headquarters, where he is to be arraigned on charges and sentenced.” The droid paused to attend to chirps from the P2 unit. “If convicted of conspiracy, the minimum sentence is five years of hard labor.”

Squatting on its several legs, the systems control droid projected a faintly blue hologram of a sprawling complex, built into a hillside that overlooked a far-reaching quilt of cultivated fields.

“The area where Droma is currently being held is denied to droids,” Baffle went on, “but a human—such