Part 41 (1/2)

Skynx was quiet, almost reverent. He had made the find of a lifetime, a discovery out of daydreams. Badure and Hasti remained solemn, too, as they considered the size and wealth of the place, the impact it would have on their lives, and the memory of what they had gone through to stand here.

Not so Han and Chewbacca. The pilot jumped through the gap in the door, wounded arm held to him by a traction web. ”We did it! We did it!” he shouted in glee. The Wookiee lurched after him, tossing his long-maned head back with an ecstatic ”Rooo-oo!” They slapped each other, laughter echoing away into the piles of treasure. Chewbacca's huge feet slapped the floors in a thumping victory dance as Han laughed in joy.

Skynx and Badure had gone to open containers with Bollux's help, to examine Xim's spoils. Chewbacca offered to a.s.sist them. ”Spread it out here!” Han enjoined him. ”I want to roll around in it!”

He paused when he noticed Hasti nearby, eyeing him strangely. ”I always wondered what you'd be like,” she told him, ”when you found your big win, you and the Wook. What now?”

Han still rode the wave of elation. ”What now? Why, we'll, we'll-” He stopped, giving the subject some serious thought for the first time. ”We'll pay off our debts, get ourselves a first-cla.s.s s.h.i.+p and crew, uh ...”

Hasti nodded to herself. ”And settle down, Han?” she asked softly. ”Buy a planet, or take over a few conglomerates and live the life of a good man of business?” She shook her head slowly. ”Your problems are just beginning, rich man.”

His joy was receding fast, replaced by a tangled knot of doubts, plans, the need for forethought and mature wisdom. But before he could berate Hasti for being a spoilsport, he heard Chewbacca's angry roar.

The Wookiee held a metallic ingot, frowning at it in disgust. He dumped a handful of them onto the floor in a chiming avalanche and gave the pile a kick that sent ingots skittering every which way. Han forgot Hasti and went to his friend. ”What is it?”

Chewbacca explained with frustrated grunts and moans. Han picked up one of the ingots and saw that his copilot was right. ”This stuff's kiirium! You can get it anywhere; Skynx, what's it doing in with the treasure?”

The small academician had located a vault-directory screen at the end of the nearest shelf stack, an old televiewer mounted on a low stand. He brought it to flickering life, and columns of ciphers and characters raced across the screen as Skynx answered distractedly.

”There would seem to be a great deal of it here, Captain. And a huge quant.i.ty of mytag crystalline vertices and mountains of enriched bordh.e.l.l-type fuel slugs, among other things.”

”Mytag crystals?” Han repeated in puzzlement. ”They run those things off by the carload; what kind of treasure's this? Where's the real treasure?”

A belly laugh distracted him. Badure had found a canister of the mytag crystal and flung a double handful into the air. The crystals rained down around him, catching the light, as he convulsed in laughter. ”This is it! Or was, an age ago. Don't you see, Slick? Kiirium is artificial s.h.i.+elding material, not very good by modern standards but a major breakthrough in its time, and tough to produce to boot. With quant.i.ties of kiirium to s.h.i.+eld heavy guns and engines, Xim could field warcraft that were better armed and faster than anything else in s.p.a.ce at the time.

”And mytag crystals were used in old subs.p.a.ce commo and detection gear; you needed lots and lots of them for any s.p.a.cefleet or planetary defenses. And so forth; all this was critical war materiel. With the stuff in these vaults, Xim could have a.s.sembled a war machine that would have conquered this whole part of s.p.a.ce. But he lost big at the Third Battle of Vontor, first.”

”That's it?” Han bellowed. ”We went through all this for a treasure that's obsolete?”

”Not quite,” Skynx commented mildly, still bent over the screen. ”One whole section is filled with information tapes, art works, and artifacts. There is a hundred times more information contained here than everything we know about the period altogether.”

”I'll bet the Survivors have long since forgotten just what it was they were guarding,” Hasti put in. ”They believed the legends, just like everyone else. I wonder what did happen to the Queen of Ranroon?”

Badure shrugged. ”Perhaps they plunged her into the system's primary after she offloaded the treasure, or sent her off with a skeleton crew to arrange misleading sightings of her and create a false trail. Who knows?”

Skynx had left the viewscreen and started a delirious dance, first on his hind limbs, then on the front ones, hopping and capering much as Han and Chewbacca had a moment before. ”Marvelous! Miraculous! What a find! I'm sure to get my own chair funded-no, my own department!”

Han, leaning against a wall, slowly sank to a squatting position. ”Artworks, hmm? Chewie and I can just stroll into the Imperial Museum with a bunch under our arms and start haggling, right?” He rested his forehead on his good arm. Chewbacca patted his shoulder solicitously, making mournful sounds.

Skynx gradually stopped cavorting, realizing what a disappointment all this was to the two. ”There are some things of intrinsic value, Captain. If you choose carefully, you could fill your s.h.i.+p with items you could dispose of relatively simply. There would be some profit.” He was fighting the urge to h.o.a.rd the entire find, knowing that the Millennium Falcon could bear away no more than an insignificant part of it. ”Enough, I suppose, to get your s.h.i.+p repaired properly and have your wounds looked after in a first-cla.s.s medicenter.”

”What about us?” Hasti interposed. ”Badure and I haven't even got a stars.h.i.+p.”

Skynx pondered for a moment, then brightened. ”I can write my own ticket with the university, an unlimited budget. How would you two like to work with me? Academic pursuits will be dull after this, I suppose, to a pair of humans. But there'd be generous pay and retirement benefits and quick promotions. We'll be years and years working on this find. I'll need someone to look after all the workers, scholars, and automata.” Badure smiled and put an arm around Hasti's shoulders. She nodded.

That made Skynx think of something else. ”Bollux, would you and Blue Max care for positions? You'd be of great help, I'm sure. After all, you two are the only ones who interacted with the war-robots at any length. There's certain to be an effort to study their remains; we have a great deal yet to learn about their thought processes.”

Blue Max answered for them both. ”Skynx, we'd like that a lot.”