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“I think, perhaps, I have a solution to your problem.”

“I hope so, for your sake.” The small technician sniffed and looked around nervously. “If there is trouble, I will not be found at blame—you and your alien help will be held responsible.”

The loading process had gone almost without a hitch. Each core had been packaged in individual boxes and a diagnostic datacard had been placed in a clear plastic container fastened to the box. The technician had selected forty Palar memory cores from the fifty-five available at the plant. Each datacard was checked and then a quarter of the boxes were opened and probes were run on these randomly selected cores. If the data on them matched the data on the card, the lot was assumed to be good.

The auxiliary cores were slightly different and only ten of them had been produced. Three of them had been formatted with the special codes and had serial numbers where the last two digits added to ten. The Trandoshan doing the loading had been told to drop a core if none of the specially prepared ones had been selected, but one had.

The one he dropped.

The Trandoshan trundled back to the remaining five boxes and picked one of the other two that had the Rebel coding on it. He started to lift it up, but the technician put his hand firmly on the box and pressed it back down to the ground. “No, you clumsy vermin, you will not select the core. My choice.”

Wedge slapped the Trandoshan hard across the arm, stinging his hand on the creature’s leathery hide. “Back away, Portha. Your clumsiness will be reported.”

The big, lizardly Trandoshan hissed and shuffled back away from the boxes to stand over by Pash. The technician nodded slowly. “Thank you. They so seldom understand our problems.”

“Indeed.” Wedge scratched at the beard he had grown to help disguise himself. “You are quite right to make the choice yourself, but there is insufficient time to run the diagnostics yourself. Their cards have already shown you that they are clean, but you want it clear that you were scrupulous in making your random choice. If not, well, I doubt your superiors would be impressed.”

“That would be very bad indeed.”

“And we can’t have that, so choose you shall. Several times, so there can be no doubt of the randomness of the choice. You’ll see.” Wedge smiled and spread his hands out. “There are five here. Pick three.”

The man frowned for a second, then pointed to the first one and the last two.

Wedge motioned Gavin over. “Take the other two away.”

Gavin slid the two designated units away into the depths of the factory’s warehouse floor. Wedge hastily rearranged the remaining trio into a single line. One of these is the unit I want him to take, two are not. “Pick two more.”

The man designated the two on the end. “I choose them.”

“Good.” He pointed to Pash. “Take that one away. Now pick one.” Wedge wanted him to pick the first box, but the technician tapped the second one.

Wedge nodded, smiled, then turned and scowled at Gavin. “What are you waiting for? Get it into the truck with the others.” As he gave Gavin the command, Wedge rested his foot on top of the chosen memory core. “Hurry up, the man’s on a schedule, a tight schedule.”

“Don’t drop it,” the technician snapped.

Wedge sighed. “The exotics here work hard, but you can’t trust them—then I get a man like him who isn’t much better.”

The technician nodded as he watched Gavin carry the box to the repulsorlift truck and slide it into the back. “It’s the fault of the Rebellion, you know.”

“Do you think?”

“Of course. When the Emperor was still ruling there was no doubt about how things were to be done. Now …” The man shrugged his shoulders eloquently and Wedge nodded emphatically. “The people nowadays have stopped thinking because sloppiness no longer earns the sorts of rewards it did before.”

“I think you are quite correct.” Wedge smiled and rubbed his hands together. Had you been thinking at all, my friend, you’d have seen that I forced your choice of box. You made the choice, but I decided what the choice meant. Had you chosen the two