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Chewie nodded. Han slipped his left hand under the pilot’s chair and pulled out the small holdout blaster that he kept there. It wasn’t the most powerful bit of armament, but it was small enough to hide in the palm of his hand.

Han got up and headed toward the hatch. He made his way toward the open gangway, moving at what he hoped was a nice, casual pace. If he and Chewie were better actors than he thought they were, or if their snooper was a bit more gullible than average, they would still have company.

He walked down the gangway, whistling tunelessly to himself, and paused at the bottom. He yawned and stretched in what he hoped was a convincing sort of way. He wandered over toward the port side of the ship, as if he was about to head around and look at the aft landing pad.

By doing so, he came around the side of the heap of packing cases. Anything or anyone hiding behind them would have to drift back a bit, back into the corner, in order to stay out of sight. Han swung his left hand around so his body hid it from view, and got the holdout blaster into position. He continued his leisurely walk toward the rear of the ship—and then suddenly shifted direction, started running straight toward the packing cases, moving as fast as he could, blaster at the ready.

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the ventral laser cannon pop out of its recess and blaze away. The cannon swept along the cases from starboard to port, herding their visitor toward Han. The cases blew apart under the withering fire, lighting up the hard stand.

And suddenly, in the flashing strobelike bursts of the laser cannon, it was bright enough for Han to see the thing he was chasing.

A probe droid, an old-style Imperial probot, floated in midair not ten meters from him, its eight cruel-looking sensor arms hanging down from its rounded central body. The laser cannon stopped firing and darkness returned. No doubt Chewie didn’t want to risk shooting Han. Thoughtful of him.

Even without the laser fire, the packing cases were burning bright enough for Han to see his adversary. But if Han could see the probe droid, the probe droid could see him. One of its arms swung around, aiming a built-in blaster dead at him.

Han fired without taking the time for conscious thought, and thanks either to luck or marksmanship he shot the blaster off the droid.

But the loss of its blaster didn’t even slow the droid down. It brought another arm to bear, one with a cruel, needle-sharp end, and moved toward Han at speed. Han dove for the ground and rolled over on his back as it bore down on him, that needle arm reaching to skewer him through the chest. The arm jabbed down, and Han rolled out of the way just barely in time. The needle arm spiked into the permacrete and jammed there for a moment.

Han fired up at the droid, but it must have been luck on the first shot, because this time he missed completely. He squeezed the trigger again and nothing happened. The holdout blaster’s tiny energy cell had been depleted with only two shots. Han scrambled to his feet and realized he was boxed in by the sound barrier wall of the hard stand. The droid pulled its needle arm up out of the permacrete, and then turned back toward Han, ready to move in for the kill.

A single shot from the Falcon’s laser cannon flared out, and caught the droid square in the body. The ghastly thing crashed to the ground, and Han started breathing again.

Chewie came running up a moment later, carrying a glow rod. He pointed it at the droid as he looked at Han and let out a complicated series of snarls and burbling roars.

“I can see that,” Han said. “Imperial probe droid. Twenty years old at least. Someone dug it up from somewhere and reprogrammed it.”

Chewie knelt down by the droid and shone the light on it. He glanced up toward Han and yelped a question.

“Because that’s not the way the Imperials programmed the things. They weren’t supposed to fight, they were supposed to spy. If they got caught and couldn’t run, they transmitted