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Chewie maneuvered his way through the second crevice without leaving much fur behind. Han followed. The hall that the man had run down was wide and tall. Chewie could stand upright.

The heat had lessened in the wider space. Han wiped off his face. He was a mess. The man was gone, but his footsteps led down the hall.

As if they had a choice. There were no other openings.

They followed the footsteps, weapons out. Cool air was flowing in from another passage. The man was waiting for them. He was sitting on a pile of unused coolant covers, his blaster on his knee.

“Thought you weren’t going to make it,” he said.

“Sometimes the enemy we know is less dangerous than the one we don’t,” Han said.

“So you think you know me.” The man smiled.

Han shook his head. “We almost stayed back there to wait until the coolant cover cooled.”

“You’d face Nandreeson’s boys over me?”

“I don’t know what you want,” Han said. “Or who you are.”

The man held out his hand. “My name’s Davis.”

“Names mean nothing,” Han said. “I don’t know you.”

“I don’t know you either, General. Not really. But I know of you.”

“That gives you a distinct advantage.”

“You don’t trust people, do you? I’m trying to help you.”

“That remains to be seen. Where’re we going?”

“These passages will take us to a side entrance on the landing pad where your ship is.”

“And where Nandreeson’s men wait,” Han said. “They know I’ll be back for the Falcon.”

“You propose to leave it?”

“I just don’t plan on being predictable.” Han let his blaster drop to his side. “Tell me what the Jawas are doing here.”

“Now?” Davis asked.

“Now,” Han said.

The blond man sighed. Then he holstered his blaster as well. “A bunch of the smugglers brought the Jawas in to clean and repair equipment.”

“For free?”

The blond man shook his head. “Jawas never work free. But they do work cheap. It’s a lot easier for the smugglers to do it this way than to do the work themselves. Or to hire it out.”

“So they leave their equipment in the sand and let the Jawas pick it up, fix it, and sell it back to them?”

“It works,” Davis said.

“Depends on your definition of what works,” Han said. “Jawas never repair things very well.”

“But they do sort the working equipment from the useless stuff, and even that is valuable to the folks around here.”

“So who’s buying this junk?” Han asked.

“Don’t know,” Davis said. “And it doesn’t pay to ask.” He glanced over his shoulder. “I really don’t think we should stay here much longer. They’ve probably killed your Sullustan friend by now, and are searching the corridors for you.”

“Seluss can take care of himself,” Han said. “And I thought they’d be waiting by my ship.”

“There were a lot of them. They might be spreading out.”

“How’d you know how many there were?”

“I watched them go in, Solo. I knew they were after something.”

“They didn’t come down the corridor.”

“No, they didn’t.”

“Then they know the tunnels.”

“There are other ways to the sand, Solo, beside one corridor and a warren of tunnels.”

Chewie growled agreement.

Han took a deep breath. He hated Skip 5. The heat was unbearable, even in the tunnels. “There’s only six of them,” he said. “And three of us. I think we can get past them and onto the Falcon.”

Davis shook his head. “They’re Nandreeson’s boys. You start firing on them in the loading area, and most of the smugglers nearby are going to shoot you.”

Chewie yarled.

“You have a better idea, fuzzball?”

Chewie growled and gestured for a moment.

“Might work,” Han said. “It might work.”

“What?” Davis asked. He clearly didn’t understand Wookiee. For some reason, that relieved Han.

“These tunnels open onto the sand, don’t they?”

Davis nodded. He was frowning.

Han smiled. “Great,” he said. “It’s been a long time since I’ve done business with a Jawa.”

Twenty

At first, Luke didn’t see the droid approaching him. The droid’s golden form blended into all the gold in the room. The hands reaching down, the unattached fingers, the bent arms scattered everywhere. He