[Black Fleet Crisis] - 02(24)

“Thank you, Master Lobot,” said Threepio. “I, too, am greatly relieved. A protocol droid with a malfunctioning synthesizer is hardly any use at all.”

“Unless you want to do business in one of the nine thousand fifty-seven sign languages,” said Lando.

The droid looked down at his damaged arm. “In my present condition, I would not be able to offer you even that service. If my synthesizer fails, I would be nothing but a burden to you. You might as well cannibalize my power cells and leave me behind. I’ll understand—” “Don’t worry, we’re not going to leave you behind,” said Lobot. “I don’t want to have to depend on me to communicate with Artoo.”

“Why is that?” Lando asked. “You seemed to be doing fine back in the passage.”

Lobot shook his head slowly. “Artoo thinks in that same binary polyglot he speaks, and I can’t understand a byte of it. He can leave short messages in Basic for me in his memory registers, but that limits us to whatever he knows of Basic. And from what I’ve seen so far, he seems to have learned most of his Basic vocabulary from a nerf-herder.”

“Oh, he can be quite rude,” Threepio agreed conspiratorially.

“He constantly says the most outrageous things—you can’t imagine. I don’t dare repeat half of his comments. Sometimes I think that he means to trick me into embarrassing myself.” Threepio looked past Lando to where Artoo was floating at an angle, his STANDBY lamp still glowing, and added worriedly, “He hasn’t been damaged, has he?”

“No—he’s just the last one up this morning,” Lando said. “I’m going to take care of that right now.”

“Perhaps it would be better if I did it,” Lobot said, stopping him with a touch. “Artoo may not have recovered from Threepio’s accident as well as Threepio has.”

“Just how many diplomats are on this mission?”

Lando asked lightly. “No, if Artoo still has a problem with me, he can start getting over it right now. This is my mission, and I’m not handing it over to a petulant droid.

No offense, Threepio.”

“None taken, I’m sure,” said Threepio. “I know exactly what you mean.”

Artoo’s system lights came on all at once, and his sensor dome rotated a half turn in each direction. Rising, he moved away from Lando and jetted toward Threepio, loosing an unusually long chatter of sounds.

“What’s he saying?” Lando asked.

Threepio chattered back at Artoo in the same dialect before answering, and Artoo replied at even greater length.

“Well?”

A crackle of static made it sound as though Threepio had cleared his throat. “Master Lando, Artoo says that he has the greatest enthusiasm and confidence in the mission.”

“Threepio—” “Lando, I suggest you take it at face value,” Lobot said quietly.

Lando looked hard at Lobot for a moment. Then, frowning, he said, “Thank you. I have trouble sometimes hearing clearly over what’s not being said.” He reached for his control pad and brought his helmet lamps up to full brightness.

“Lobot, is there anything going on outside?”

“All of the limpet’s sensors are clear. The vagabond’s forward speed is negligible.”

“Just another oblong asteroid, drifting along a long way from anywhere, eh? All right, then. Artoo, can you help us with some light? Let’s see what we have here.”

What they had was a chamber fifteen meters long and nine meters wide, and as infuriatingly seamless and featureless as the airlock.

“Kind of have the feeling that I’ve been here before,” said Lando, scanning. “And I don’t mean yesterday, when I burned through here on the way to the hull.”

“I understand,” Lobot said. “Perhaps the highest form of art on Qella was the locked-room mystery.”

Lando laughed. “Which would make this ship their hall of fame anthology, I guess. But it wants for variety.”

“The apparent consistency of design principles should

serve

our interests.”

A grin appeared. “You want me to see if I can lose the other glove this time?”

“The Qella esthetic demands that nothing be evident until it is needed,” Lobot said. “But how does the structure know when a concealed feature is needed?

How do the Qella communicate their desires to their creations? We know at least one answer—we know that it responds to touch.”

The grin faded into a frown. “The last time I touched this ship, it tried to leave us out as a meal for space slugs.”

“I am not convinced that this vessel means to do us harm.”