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“Maybe it was deliberate—the Ryn showing up there—just to get himself arrested.”

“Doesn’t calculate. The Ryn couldn’t have known he’d be brought here. And besides, he couldn’t have added anything to what his partner obviously knew before he even showed up at the front gate. We’ve got people checking with spaceport control to determine how and when the two of them arrived onworld, but something’s interfering with our accessing the immigration data banks.”

“Something or someone?” the chief said. “Coconspirators is my guess.”

Bow compressed his lips but said nothing.

The chief retrieved holograms of the human lifted from the front gate and product enhancement security scanners, along with the level-five control room identifier. “The beard and facial features look real enough,” he said after appraising the holos for a moment.

Bow rubbed his chin. “Remove the beard and the cap.”

Both men studied the revised holos for a moment more. “He looks familiar,” the chief said, “but I can’t place the face.”

“Well, he’s an agent for someone.”

“A Salliche rival? Nebula Consumables maybe?”

Bow shrugged.

“Course change,” the chief said suddenly, swinging back to the satellite-feed display. “They’re angling east.”

The two men watched the stolen landspeeder tear into another grain field; then, without warning, it revectored, leaving the field for what Bow initially took to be a service road. But not one member of the pursuit team followed.

“What’s going on?” he barked.

“Son of a blaster,” the chief said. “That’s no road. They’ve dropped into one of the irrigation channels—right off the speeders’ surface-scan displays. Our guys have no idea where they went.”

“Patch into the sluice system and shut all the gates along that stretch!”

“I’m on it,” the chief said.

Bow turned to the satellite-feed screen in time to see the saboteurs’ landspeeder whiz through the closing sluice gate, hop the next in line, then power through a reckless turn into a much broader channel.

“It’s a runoff channel,” the chief explained. “Ends at the river that runs past Facility 17. If they make it that far, we could lose them.” He was reaching for the sluicegate control buttons when Bow restrained him.

“No, don’t shut them down just yet. Make him think he’s got time.” He glanced at the satellite-feed display. “Bring us close in on him.” When the chief had complied, they could see that the stolen speeder had lost its retractable windscreen. Broken stalks of burrmillet poked from creases in the rounded nose and from between the seats, and the cab was half filled with threshed grain.

“What would you estimate his speed?”

The chief considered it. “The channel’s not only broader but twice as deep, so I’d say he’s running those turbines close to flat out. Say, two hundred.”

“How far to the nearest gate?”

“Maybe one kilometer away.”

“How quickly do they shut?”

“In a heartbeat.”

Bow grinned. “Keep your finger on the switch. I’ll tell you when.”

The chief grinned back at him. “It’s like playing a game of Death Hurdles.”

Bow watched the screen for a moment, then shouted, “Now!”

Swerving as it tried desperately to shed velocity, the landspeeder careened straight into the gate. The force of the impact hurled the human and the Ryn clear out of the cab, over the top of the gate, and into the ditch beyond.

“Got ’em,” the chief said excitedly.

“Patch me through to the pursuit team.”

Even as he was raising the pursuit team, the chief said, “I’ve got a better way of flushing them out.” He activated his comlink. “Give me weather control.”

Bow frowned, then smiled in revelation. “Nice touch.”

The chief shrugged. “We need the rain anyway.”

It was the mud that saved them—only a foot deep, but soft as pudding. Han, after ten meters of end-over-end flight, landed facefirst, plowing a deep furrow down the center of the ditch. Better equipped for acrobatics, Droma executed a flawless triple front flip and came down on his feet, skidding across the slick surface like a competitive aquaplaner.

Han surfaced spewing brown water, but it was