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“You’re getting the hang of it,” Netbers said.

Kell waved an all-clear signal to the others. The walls and ceiling offered no circuitry suggesting additional security.

Dia and Shalla covered the door with their blasters. The others looked at the equipment in the room.

“I was never in here,” Piggy said. “I don’t know what the chamber was for. The chair wasn’t here. The chair was one floor up, where they did a lot of testing. I solved math problems in that chair while drugged or while being electrocuted.”

“Charming,” Face said.

“There’s something awful about this room,” Tyria said. “Not in the room itself. Nearby.”

“This is a game-table unit,” Kell said. He was on one knee, looking intently at one of the pieces of equipment around the chair. “The table itself has been taken off and the unit repainted.”

“So it broadcasts to the screen on the chair?” Face asked.

“Maybe.” Kell looked over the unit, puzzled. “It doesn’t seem to be fastened down, but it’s powered.”

“This machine washes clothes.” Runt was staring with equal concentration at a silver-gray metal cube two-thirds the height of a human. “They had one like it on the ship Sungrass.”

Kell waved his current detector at Runt’s device, then at the floor around it. “It’s self-powered. Like the game table. It’s battery-powered or something.”

“Why?” Face asked. He looked at Piggy, but the Gamorrean looked blankly back at him.

“Transfer control to my terminal,” Gast said.

Then she caught the hurt look on the face of Drufeys and she relented. “Oh, very well, you do it.”

Drufeys brightened and pressed a button on his console.

Face felt the floor give way beneath him. All around him, Wraiths and equipment dropped. There was blackness and heat beneath him. When his feet hit he tried to roll and absorb some of the shock of impact, but he did a bad job of it and landed on his chest, the wind knocked out of him. He felt something heavy and sharp slam into his back and he grunted from the blow. There were cries and sounds of crashing all around him.

Awkwardly, he rolled to his back. The floor of the room above had split down the middle. Hinges to either side had allowed it to open like a door, dropping them what looked like a fall of six or seven meters.

And now stormtroopers were lining up at the edges of the room above. They aimed their blasters down at the Wraiths. One called out, “Throw up your demolitions gear or we open fire.”

Face looked around. The Wraiths were in no position to resist. Only Kell and Shalla were already on their feet. Beyond Kell, Runt was unmoving, apparently unconscious. Beside him, a piece of machinery on her back, was another fallen Wraith—

“Dia!” Face was suddenly on his feet despite the pain. He knelt beside Dia, saw at once that she was unconscious, that her left arm lay at an angle that was not right. She was still breathing.

“Demolitions bag,” the stormtrooper repeated. “Or you’re all dead.”

Face caught Kell’s attention and nodded.

But Kell turned to Shalla, and said, “Do what they say, Demolitions.”

Shalla didn’t hesitate. She shucked off her own pack, which contained her infra-goggles, spare glow rods, and preserved food. She swung it around at the end of its straps and hurled it up to the stormtroopers above.

The speaker caught the bag. He and the others retreated. The ceiling began to close.

“What are you doing?” Face asked. “In thirty seconds they’ll know we’ve lied. They’ll open it up and start shooting.”

“In thirty seconds we’re supposed to be dead,” Kell said. He pulled off his own pack and rummaged around in its contents. “Take a look around, One. You know what this place is?”

Face forced himself to look away from Dia.

The floor was some sort of grating. It seemed to be continuous, not made up in sections, and was sturdy enough not to flex beneath the weight of the Wraiths and all the equipment from the chamber above. The walls were heavy, dark metal with a tight grid of nozzles protruding from them.

As he looked,