"Brian Daley "Han Solo at Stars' End"" - читать интересную книгу автора

As it was, Han ran the place's gee-lead up to three-point-five Standard. Entities of all descriptions sank to the carpets, borne down by the staggering weight of their own bodies, proving there were no heavy-gee natives here today. The Espos flopped with the rest. Ploovo Two-For-One, Han noted in passing, strongly resembled a beached bloatfish.
There was silence except for the grunts of deter-mined breathing and the smothered groans from those who'd suffered some minor mishap in hitting the deck. No one seemed badly hurt, though. Hah put his smoking blaster away, studying the gravity-field's con-trols, telling himself, Yo, now; what we need is a tight corridor out of here. But he was biting his lip, and his fingers poised indecisively over the adjustments.
With an impatient hoot, Chewbacca, who'd put away both bartenders, picked Han up by the shoulders and set him aside. The Weekice stood over the console, his long fingers moving with nimble precision, peering frequently from his work to the door. In moments the bodies of the two or three patrons lying along his cor-ridor of lighter gravity stirred weakly. Everyone else, the Espos and Ploovo's underworld contingent in-cluded, remained pasted to the floor.
Chewbacca eased himself carefully back over the bar and into the normal-gee passageway. He clamored smugly to Hah.
"Well, I was the one who thought of it, wasn't I," the pilot groused, trailing after his friend. Outside the Free-Flight, he discreetly closed the doors behind him and straightened his clothes, while Chewie gave himself a fastidious brushing.
"Hey, Chewie, you were slow with your left just now, weren't you?" Han queried. "Is your speed go. ing, old-timer?" Chewbacca belched savagely; age was a standing joke between them.
Hah stopped a group of laughing revelers who'd been about to enter the Free-Flight. "This establish-ment is officially closed," he proclaimed with weighty importance. "It's quarantined. Fronk's Fever."
The merrymakers, intimidated by the sinister sound of that imaginary malady, didn't even think to question.
They left at once. The two weary partners grabbed the
first robe-hack they saw, and sped off toward their ship.
"Things are getting tough for the independent busi-nessman," Hah Solo lamented.
SEVERAL minutes later, the robo-hack deposited Han and Chewbacca around the comer from their docking bay, Number 45. They'd decided it would be wise to scout the landscape to determine whether the forces of law, order, and corporate dividends had got-ten there first. Peering cautiously around the comer, they saw a lone portmaster's deputy dutifully locking an impoundment-fastener on their bay's blast doom. Han pulled his first mate back into concealment for a conference. "No time to wait until the coast is clear, Chewie; they'll be sorting things out back at the Free-Flight any time now. Besides, that geck is about to lock up the bay, and Espo patrols would get kind of curious if they saw us burning our way through the blast doors."
He peeked out again. The deputy had nearly fin-ished making connections between alarms and the blast-door solenoids. No doubt the bay's other door was fastened as well. Hah looked around and noticed an Authority liquor and drugs outlet to his rear. He took his partner's elbow. "Here's the plan..."
A minute later, the portmaster's deputy had wrestled the massive lock halves into place and finished securing the impoundment-fastener. The blast doors slid shut with a shrinking of diamond-shaped opening that dis-appeared with a dang. The deputy pulled a molecu-larly coded key from its slot in the fastener, and the device was activated. Now if it were disturbed or dam-aged, it would instantly inform Espo monitors.
The deputy tucked the key into his belt pouch and ,prepared to report his errand completed. Just then a Wooldee, a big, leering brute, came wandering past in a drunken stagger, with a sloshing ten-liter crock of some vile-smelling brew cradled in his thick, hairy arm. Just as the Wooldee drew even with the deputy, a man coming from the other direction failed to avoid the shambling creature's dipsomaniacal lurches. There was a rapid, complicated three-way collision, result-ing in the Wookiee's stumbling into, and spilling his liquor all over, the luckless deputy.
The instant pandemonium included accusation and counteraccusation, all in raised voices. The Wooldee gobbled horribly at both men, shaking knotted fists and gesturing to the spilled crock. The portmaster's deputy was brushing uselessly at his soaked tunic. The other participant in the accident did his best to be of help. "Oh, say, that's really a shame," Hah tsked with a sad, solicitous tone. "Hey, that stuff's really in there, huh," he said as he tried to wring some of the brew out of the tunic fabric. The deputy and the Wooldee were swapping inprecations and contradictory claims about whose fault the accident had been. The occasional passerby kept fight on moving, not wishing to become involved.
"Fella, you better get that tunic washed fight away," Han advised, "or that smell'11 never come out."
The deputy, with a last threat of legal action against the Wookiee, stalked off. His pace quickened as he realized with apprehension that a supervisor might happen by at any time and catch sight-or even worse, a whiff-of him. He hurried on, leaving the other two to argue liabilities and culpabilities.
The argument stopped as soon as the deputy was gone. Han held up the key he'd lifted from the depu-ty's belt pouch during the confusion. He handed it to Chewbacca. "Go warm up the ship, but don't call for clearance. The portmaster's most likely got us posted for grounding. If there's a patrol ship, it'd be on our necks in no time." He estimated that eight minutes had passed since they'd fled the Free-Flight; their luck couldn't hold much longer.
Chewbacca ran a hasty prefiight while Han dashed off along the row of docking bays. He passed three be-fore he came to the one he wanted. In it was a stock freighter, not unlike what the Millennium Falcon had once been, but this one was clean, freshly painted, and shipshape. Her name and ID symbols were proudly displayed on her bow, and labor 'droids were busily loading general cargo under the supervision of her crew, who looked nauseatingly honest. Han leaned through the open blast doors, waving a friendly hand. "Hi there. You guys still raising ship tomorrow?"
One of them waved back, but looked confused. "Not tomorrow, bud; tonight, twenty-one hundred planetary time."
Hah reigned surprise. "Oh? Well, clear skies." The crewman returned the traditional spacer's farewell as Han strolled away casually. As soon as he was out of their sight, he took off at a run.
When he got back to Bay 45, he found Chewbacca finishing locking the impoundment-fastener on the in-ner sides of the blast doors, reconnecting them. Hah nodded approvingly. "Bright lad. Are we rewed up?"
The Wookiee yipped an affirmative and slid the blast doors shut. Locking them again, this time from the inside, he threw the molecularly coded key away.
Han had already reached his seat in the cockpit. Taking his headset, he called port control. Using the name and ID code of the freighter down in Docking Bay 41, he requested that liftoff time be moved up from twenty-one hundred planetary time to immedi-ately, not an unusual request for a tramp freighter, whose schedule might change abruptly. Since there wasn't much traffic and clearance for that ship had al-ready been granted, immediate liftoff was approved at once.
Chewbacca was still buckling in when Hah raised ship. Her thrusters flared, and the Falcon made, for her, a moderate and restrained departure from Etti IV. When the Espos showed up at Docking Bay 45 and cut their way in, Han reflected, they'd have one interesting time trying to figure out how somebody had sneaked a starship out from under the portmaster's nose.
The starship parted company with Etti IV's gravi-tational field. Chewbacca, elated over what had been a fairly nifty escape, was in high spirits. The Wooldee's leathery muzzle was peeled back in a nice-hideous smirk, and he was singing-or what passed among his people as singing-at the top of his capacious lungs. The volume of it, in the confides of the cockpit, was incredible.
"C'mon, Chewie," Hah implored, rapping a gauge with his knuckle, "you're making all the instruments 'smp." With a behemothish sort of yodel, the Wooldee ceased. "Besides," Han continued, "we're not out of the heavy weather yet."
Chewbacca lost his placid look and lowed an in-terrogative. Han shook his head. "Naw, Ploovo's got his money; no matter how torqued off he is, his back-ers'll never unpocket for a contract on us now. No, what I meant was, the long-range dish we patched together won't last forever. We need another, a top-of-the-line model. Besides, the Espos and, I guess, most other folks who like to arrest people have some kind of new sensor that evades detection on old equip-ment. We need one of those, too, to get back over with the smart money. One more thing-we need one of those Waivers if we've going to operate around here; we have to wrangle ourselves onto that list somehow. Damreit, the Corporate Sector Authority's wrung out thousands of solar systems; I can almost smell that money! We ain't passing up on fat picldn's just because somebody around here doesn't like our lift/mass ratio."
He finished plotting his hyperdrive jump and turned to his parmer with a sly grin. "Now, since the Author-ity doesn't owe you and me any personal favors, what's that leave?"
The long-pelted first mate growled once. Hah spread a hand on his chest and pretended to be shocked. "Outside the law, did you say? Us?" He chuckled. "Right you are, pal. We'll take so much money off the Authority we'll need a knuckle-boom to haul it all away."
The hyperdrive began to cut in. "But first, it's time to meet and greet old friends. After that, everybody'd best hang on to their cash with both hands!" Hah fin-ished.
They had to do it in steps, of course. A hyperspace jump took them to an all-but-deserted, played-out mining world where the Authorin didn't even bother to maintain offices. A lead there, from an old man who had once seen better days, put them in touch with the captain of a long-orbit ore barge. After some fina-gling, during which their bona [ides were checked, with their lives forfeit ff that check had turned up the wrong answers, they were given a rendezvous.
At that rendezvous they were met, in deep space, by a small ship's gig. When an inboard search by armed, wary men revealed that the Falcon carried no one but her pilot and copilot, the two were led to the second planet of a nearby star system. The gig parted company with them, and they came in for a landing, tracked by the upraised snouts of turbo-laser cannons. The site was a huddle of quickly assembled hanger domes and habitation bubbles. Parked here and there was a wide assortment of ships and other equipment, much of it gutted and decaying, cannibaiized for spare parts.
When Hah stepped down the starship's ramp, his face lit with that intense smile that had been known to make men check up and see what their wives were doing. "Hello, lessa. It's been too long, doll."
The woman waiting at the foot of the ramp looked back at him scornfully. She was tall, her hair a mass of heavy blond ringlets, and her shape did extremely pleasant things to the tech's coverails she wore. Her upturned nose held a collection of freckles acquired under a variety of suns; Jessa had been on almost as many planets as Han. Just now, her large brown eyes showed him nothing but derision.
"Too long, Solo? No doubt you've been busy with religious retreats? Mercantile conferences? Mild de-liveries for the Interstellar Childrens' Aid Fund? Well, it's no wonder I haven't heard from you. After all, what's a Standard Year, more or less, hey?"
"A lifetime, kid," he answered smoothly. "I missed you." Coming down to her, he reached for her hand.
Jessa eluded him, and men with drawn guns came into view. They wore coverails, fusion-welders' masks, tool belts, and greasy headbands, but they were plainly comfortable with their weapons.
Hah shook his head mournfully. "less, you've really got me wrong, you'll see." But he knew he had just received an explicit warning, and decided he'd better turn the conversation to the matter at hand. "Where's Doe?"
The scom left Jessa's features, but she ignored his question. "Come with me, Solo."
Leaving Chewbacca to watch the Falcon, Man ac-companied her across the temporary base. The land-ing field was a fiat expanse of fusion-formed soil (al-most any sort of solid material would do for fusion's forming, Han knew; minerals, vegetable matter, or any old enemies for whom you had no further use). Male, female, human, and nonhuman techs scrambled over vehicles and machinery of every category, aided by a wild assortment of 'droids and other automata, engaged in repair, salvage, and modification.
Han admired the operation as he walked. A tech who'd do illegal work could be found almost any-where, but Dec, lessa's father, had an operation that was famous among lawbreakers everywhere. If you wanted your ship repaired without questions as to why you'd been through a firefight, if you needed a vessel's ID profile and appearance changed for reasons best left unmentioned, or if you had a hot piece of major hardware to buy or sell-the person to contact, if you met his rigorous background cheek, was Doe. H some-thing could be done with machinery, he and his outlaw-techs could do it.
Several of the modifcafious clone on the Millennium Falcon had been performed through the oufiaw-tech's good offices; he and Hah had dealt with each other on a number of occasions. Hah admired the shifty old man because he'd been sought by Authority and other official forces for years but never apprehended. Doe had kept himself well buffered, and piped into as many crooked bureaucrats and scuttlebutt sources as anyone Han knew. More than one strike unit had moved against the outlaw-techs only to capture a tar-get area empty of everything but abandoned buildings and useless inmk. Dec had joked that he was the only felon in the galaxy who'd have to set up an employee pension plan.
Threading among disassembled hulks and humming repair docks, lessa led Han through the largest hangar on the base. At one end, slabs of Permex had been joined into a stark cube of an office. But when its door slid up at her command, Han could see that Dee's taste hadn't coarsened. The office featured carpets of Wrod'lan weave, glittering in rich colors, each one rep-resenting generations' work. There were shelves of rare books, lavish hangings, and paintings and sculp-ture, some by history's greatest artists and others by unknowns who'd simply struck Doc's fancy. There was a monolithic, hand-carved scentwood desk with only one item on it, a holecube of Jessa. In it she was wearing a stylish evening gown, smiling, much more like a pretty girl at her first formal reception than a top-flight oufiaw-tech genius.
"Where's the old man?" Han asked, seeing the room was empty. Jessa slid into the conform-lounger behind the desk. She clenched her hands on the lounger's thick, luxurious arms until her fingers made deep in-dentations.
"He's not here, Solo. Dee's gone."
"How informative; I'd never have guessed it just
from seeing the room's empty. Look, Jess, I have no
time for games, no matter how much you'd like to