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“We’ll be safer in the runoff channel, you said. I don’t think so, I said, we should stick to the irrigation ditches. Trust me, you said. Keep above the gates, I said. Where’s the fun in that, you said—”

“Quit your complaining,” Han said. “Or have you gotten so used to manure you can’t handle a little mud?”

Droma helped Han to his feet and took a look around. As if the mud wasn’t enough, the ditch’s smooth, permacrete retaining walls were over four meters tall. “Now what? We can’t even climb out.”

“We’re better off down here. Moving through those grain fields would be slow going.” Han stripped off the pale-green and business jackets and threw them aside. He used his fingers to sluice mud from his forehead and beard. “What did the map show?”

“You mean just before you crashed?”

Han glowered. “That wasn’t a crash. Somebody knew just when to shut that gate.” He glanced at the sky, which seemed darker than it had been a moment earlier. “They’re watching us. Sky or satellite cam.”

Droma cut his eyes from the sky to Han, then pointed in the direction they had been heading before the collision. “The river is a couple of kilometers straight ahead. We should be able to follow it all the way to Facility 17.”

“Perfect. We float down the river and haul ourselves out short of the refugee camp. Then we make our way to the spaceport.”

“Where Salliche will have an army of guards posted and every scanner set to shriek the moment one of us presents an identity card.”

“Don’t worry about that. We’ve got friends who will get us right to the Falcon.”

Droma stopped squeezing water from his mustachios. “Without passing through Ruan control?”

Han smirked. “By passing under it.” His foot made a sucking sound as he lifted it from the mud. “Let’s get a move on.”

They hadn’t gone three hundred meters when a deep bass sound rumbled overhead.

Han stopped. “What the heck was that?”

Droma waved in dismissal. “That’s just the weather control station. Salliche resets it a couple of times a day.”

Han watched gray clouds stream overhead. He pivoted through a circle, gauging the height of the walls. Even with Droma atop his shoulders, Droma wouldn’t be able to reach the top.

“We have to go back to the sluice gate,” he said suddenly.

Droma looked at Han as if he were mad. “What?”

“The gate’s our only chance at climbing out.”

“I thought you said we’re better off down here.”

Fat drops of rain started to fall. “Salliche is cooking up a storm. They’re planning on drowning us.”

Droma gulped. “But those speeders that were chasing us—they’re probably already headed for the gate!”

Han tightened his lips and nodded. “You’re right. But there has to be at least one more gate between here and the river.”

They began to run, helping each other along when one of them slipped or became bogged down. The rain became a downpour, and the muddy water rose quickly from ankle- to knee-deep. Behind them they heard the steady whine of approaching landspeeders. Then the sound was replaced by a roaring turbulence.

Han came to an abrupt halt. “Listen,” he shouted to Droma above the steady pounding of the rain.

Droma stopped a few meters farther on. “I don’t think I’m going to like this.”

Both of them turned to see a three-meter-high wall of water raging toward them. They barely had time to swing back toward the river when the torrent caught up, sweeping them away.

TWENTY-THREE

Larger than the Death Star, Centerpoint Station hung gray-white and ominous between Talus and Tralus, drawing its power from the gravitic output of the so-called Double Worlds. Rotating slowly around an axis defined by two thick polar cylinders, the station had been designed to act as a gravity lens capable of directing amplified bursts of repulsor energy through hyperspace, sufficient for the capturing of distant worlds or the destruction of far-flung stars. Its surface was a mishmash of boxy superstructures as tall as skyscrapers and force-bubble pressurization access ports the size of impact craters. A bewildering tangle of piping, cables, and conduits coursed