Now with Threepio quiet Lando could finally think. He went over to the
room's courtesy terminal and punched in a request for information. The
screen automatically displayed a complete schedule for the next three weeks
of blob racing, but Lando selected another menu.
The Umgullian Racing Commission was fanatical about being forthcoming with
all information relating to the races and the blobs themselves. A sample of
protoplasm was taken from each blob before and after any race, then
subjected to rigorous analysis, the results of which were available to the
public.
With help from the information assistant built into the terminal, Lando was
able to collate the before-and-after tests for all of Tymmo's high-stakes
winners. He didn't know what he was looking for, but he suspected some drug
used to urge the blobs to greater speed, some incentive that would affect
only the winners.
"Run a correlation," Lando said. "Is there anything unusual about these
particular winners? Something found in these blobs, but not in the others?"
Tymmo bet only once in a while, and if his manipulation was subtle enough,
Lando could imagine that the Umgullian racing commission might have missed a
tiny modification. But Lando knew that one variable tied these particular
winners together apart from the other blobs. Since hundreds of people bet
and won on each race, the commission would have no reason to look at only
those particular races where Tymmo had cashed in.
"One minor anomaly found in all cases," the information assistant said.
"What is it?"
"Faint traces of carbon, silicon, and copper in the post-race chemical tests
of each winner in this subset."
"This wasn't noticed before?" Lando asked.
"Dismissed as irrelevant. Probable explanation: minor environmental
contaminants from the blobstacles themselves."
"Hmmm, and these same traces show up on every one of the winners?"
"Yes."
"Do they show up on any of the other blob tests, winners or losers, in any
race?"
"Checking." After a pause the terminal answered, "No, sir."
Lando looked at the test results. The amounts of contaminant were absolutely
trivial, nothing that should have had any effect. "Speculation on what might
have caused this?"
"None," the terminal answered.
"Thanks a lot," Lando said.
"You're welcome."
Threepio sat bolt upright, startled out of his recharging state. "General
Calrissian! Artoo has just contacted me." Threepio bumped the comlink with
his golden finger, and bleeping noises burst through the speaker. "Mr. Tymmo
has appeared at the blob corrals, disguised as a blob wrangler. Artoo has
verified his identification. What could he be doing there?"
"Let's go," Lando said. "I didn't expect him to try again so soon, but now
we've got him, whatever he's doing."
Lando grabbed his cape and slung it over his shoulders before he swept out
of the room. Threepio raised his hands in alarm but shuffled off as fast as
he could, his motivators whirring.
The two ran through the darkened, misty streets of Umgul City. Around them
blockish limestone dwellings rose high, stacked upon each other like cracker
boxes, lacquered to a high gloss with moisture sealants. Streetlights hung
at the street intersections, shedding a pearly halo into the mist. Workers
climbed on scaffolds, tearing down old banners that advertised the visit of
one dignitary and putting up new ones welcoming the Duchess Mistal to Umgul
City.
Lando sprinted up the cobblestoned streets with Threepio scurrying stiffly
behind. Steep thoroughfares climbed the bluffs. Ahead and adjacent to the
sinkhole arena, they could see a large lighted structure where the blobs
were kept and monitored.
Lando ducked through a service entrance to the blob corrals, and Threepio
followed. Strange smells, damp and musty, filled the air. Cleanup droids
chugged through the halls, while others checked temperature controls for the
blob pens. The lights had been dimmed for the evening, encouraging the blobs
to rest.
"Threepio, do you know where we're going?"
"I believe I can locate Artoo, sir," Threepio said, and turned in slow
circles before he pointed the way.
Down another level they reached a shadowy chamber cut into the limestone.
The lights inside had been set to their lowest illumination, and moisture
generators kept the room damp and clammy. "Artoo is in here, General
Calrissian."
"Okay, be quiet. Let's see what's going on."
"Do you really think Mr. Tymmo could be cheating, sir? Even with the threat
of capital punishment?"
Lando frowned at him. "No, I'm sure he has a perfectly legitimate reason to
be wearing a blob wrangler's uniform, slipping into the blob corral late at
night, and skulking around in the darkness."
"What a relief, sir. I'm glad to hear he may yet be a Jedi candidate."
"Shut up, Threepio!"
They crept through the entrance into a room lined with blob pens. Banks of
about twenty small enclosures blocked his line of sight in the shadowy room.
Within each pen a gelatinous blob burbled and vibrated as it rested.
From the far side of the room came a rattling noise: a blob pen being eased
open. Lando crept silently down the rows of blob enclosures, letting his
eyes adjust to the dimness. In the shadows of the far row of pens, Lando
spotted a human form. He recognized Tymmo's build, his furtive movements,
his lanky dark hair. Tymmo hunched over a cage, reaching inside, doing
something to the blob in front of him.
Lando leaned close to Threepio and breathed words in the faintest of
whispers, knowing he would not be overheard in the general stirring of the
blobs. "Enhance your optical sensors so you can make out what he's doing,
and record everything for later playback. We may need proof if we're going
to get this guy."
Before the droid could answer, Lando clamped his hand over Threepio's mouth
to keep him silent.
Threepio nodded and turned to stare at the man in the shadows.
With a whirring sound Artoo-Detoo puttered down the walkway between the
pens. Tymmo looked up, startled, but Artoo carried a cleaning attachment and
scrubbed the floor under the pens. He whirred right by Tymmo, ignoring the
man just as a cleaning droid would do. Lando nodded in admiration for the
little astromech.
Tymmo turned back to his work, shaken by Artoo's appearance and apparently
wanting to be out of there as soon as possible.
"Sir!" Threepio cried. "He just implanted a small object in the protoplasm
of that blob!"
Tymmo whirled and grabbed at one of the pockets of his jumpsuit. Lando
didn't need greater illumination to recognize a blaster being drawn.
"Thanks a lot, Threepio!" he said as he tackled the droid. An instant later
a blaster bolt sparked off the wall near where they had been standing a
moment before. "Come on!"
He scrambled to his feet and ran over to where Tymmo had been hiding,
ducking to take advantage of the cover the blob pens offe
red. Another
blaster shot ricocheted through the dimness, missing them by a wide margin.
"Artoo!" Threepio wailed. "Sound the alarms! Call the guards! Alert the
corral owner! Anybody!"
Tymmo shot at them again, and Threepio gasped as sparks erupted close to his
head.
"Oh, dear!"
Inside the corral the blobs awakened and stirred, rearing up against the
bars of their pens.
He heard Tymmo crash into the corner of a cage. They reached the pen where
Tymmo had been meddling. Lando kept his head low. "Threepio, see if you can
tell what he planted in that blob."
"Do you really think that's wise right at the moment, sir?"
"Do it!" Lando had his own blaster drawn, scanning the shadows for Tymmo's
form. Ratcheting alarms rang out. "Good work, Artoo," Lando mumbled.
Seeing a hunched, moving form, Lando risked a shot on stun but missed. An
indignant series of electronic noises told him he had almost deactivated
Artoo. "Sorry about that."
By firing his blaster Lando had given away his position. Tymmo shot back,
but his energy bolt spanged off the wall. Lando fired again, and as the stun
beam expanded outward, he saw several blobs in its path curl up and condense
sideways.
"A shoot-out at the blob corral," Lando said to himself. "Just the way I
wanted to spend my vacation."
Threepio stood next to the pen trying to determine exactly what Tymmo had
been doing. The blob itself, riled by the disturbance, reared up against the
bars, leaning into the cage door. Dim light glinted off Threepio's polished
body, offering a clear target; but this time when Tymmo fired, his blaster
bolt incinerated the lock on the pen. With the pressing weight of the blob,
the door flung open, and the entire gelatinous mass dumped onto Threepio's
head, oozing down his body. The droid's muffled cries of panic came through
the wet protoplasm.
Seeing Tymmo's form move through the shadows, Lando sprinted after him. The
other man made for the archway exit as fast as he could move in the
murkiness. "Tymmo! Hold it right there!"
Tymmo turned to glance in Lando's direction, then put on a burst of reckless
speed. At that moment Artoo scuttled out of the shadows, placing himself
directly in the running man's path. Tymmo crashed into the droid,
somersaulted into the air, and landed on his back.
Lando pounced, grabbing Tymmo's blaster arm and yanking it behind his back
until the weapon dropped free. "Good job, Artoo."
Tymmo thrashed and struggled as the alarms continued to sound. "Get away
from me! I won't let you take me back to her!"
"Help me! Help!" Threepio cried. He waved his arms, frantically trying to
wipe blob material from his outer shell.
Guard droids and human security officers scrambled into the grotto. Lights
flared on as somebody upped the illumination. Tymmo fought more frantically.
"Over here!" Lando called.
The guard droids took possession of Tymmo, clamping their restraining arms
around him. Another reached out to grasp Lando, and he suddenly realized he
had no good reason to be in the blob corral either.
"What in the bleeping miasma is going on here!" a deep voice roared. A
hirsute man who looked as if he had dressed hurriedly strode into the corral
area. "And shut off those blasted alarms! They're upsetting my blobs, and
they're giving me a headache."
"Over here, Mr. Fondine," one of the human guards answered.
The man came over to see Tymmo struggling in the guard droid's straitjacket
grasp. Lando caught his attention. "I've uncovered a possible sabotage of
the races, sir. This man here has been tinkering with the blobs."
The man gave Tymmo an acid glance, then turned back to Lando. "I'm Slish
Fondine, owner of these stables. You'd better tell me who you are and why
you're here."
Lando realized, with some surprise, that he had nothing to hide. "I'm
General Calrissian, a representative of the New Republic. I have been
investigating this man, Tymmo, as part of an entirely different mission, but
I believe you will be very interested to study his track record of wins."
Tymmo glared at Lando. "You'll never take me back to her! I couldn't stand
that--you don't know how she is. I'll die first."
Slish Fondine shushed him with a wave of his hand. "That can be arranged, if
what the general says is true. On Umgul cheaters are executed." The alarm
sirens finally fell silent.
Fondine saw the droid struggling with the dripping greenish mass and rushed
over to assist him. Brushing the protoplasm back up into the main mass,
Fondine shushed and cooed the blob. "Easy now." He spoke to Threepio as
well. "Stop struggling! The blob is as afraid of you as you are of it. Just
be calm." He lowered his voice. "They can sense fear, you know."
Threepio tried to remain still as Fondine gently coerced the blob to
reincorporate back toward its pen. Threepio suddenly grew excited again.
"Sir! I've just found a near-microscopic electronic object inside this
blob's protoplasm. Magnifying ... it appears to be a micro-motivator!"
Lando suddenly understood what Tymmo had been doing. A micro-motivator
implanted in the blob could send out a powerful internal stimulus, provoke a
frantic flight response in any creature. If tuned properly, the
micro-motivator could give a blob the speed born of absolute terror. The
gadget was so tiny that Tymmo could self-destruct it after the blob had
successfully won a race, leaving only minuscule traces of a few component
elements in the blob tissue. And no one would ever know.
Slish Fondine glared daggers at Tymmo.
"That is vile blasphemy against the whole spirit of blob racing."
Tymmo squirmed. "I had to have the money! I had to get off planet before she
gets here."
In exasperation Lando said, "Who are you talking about? Who is she?" He
freed himself from the guard droid's grip.
Tymmo's eyes goggled at Lando's question. "Didn't she send you to get me? I
saw you spying on me at the races. You tried to catch me, but I escaped.
I'll never go back to her."
"Who?!" both Lando and Slish Fondine bellowed in unison.
"The Duchess Mistal, of course. She clings to me every second, she blows in
my ear, she won't let me out of her sight--and I couldn't stand it anymore.
I had to get away."
Lando and Fondine looked at each other without comprehension, but Artoo
trundled up, chittering an explanation. Threepio, extricated from the blob
mass, stepped forward to translate.
"Artoo has run a check. The Duchess Mistal of Dargul has posted a
million-credit reward for the safe return of her lost consort--apparently,
he ran away from her. The man's official name is Dack, but his description
precisely matches that of Mr. Tymmo here."
Tymmo hung his head in misery. Fondine crossed his arms over his chest.
"Well? What have you got to say for yourself?"
"Yes, I'm Dack." He heaved a huge sigh. "The Duchess Mistal reached her age
of marriage two years ago and decided to find the p
erfect consort. She
advertised across the galaxy for likely candidates, and she received
millions of applicants. I was one of them. Who wouldn't want the job? She
was rich and young and beautiful. All the consort would have to do is live
in total opulence and be doted upon by the duchess."
Tears sprang to Tymmo's eyes. "My particular talent was electronic wizardry.
I built those micro-motivators from scratch. When I applied for the consort
position, I knew my odds were small. But I succeeded in hacking into the
central computer in Palace Dargul, sabotaging the other applicants, planting
an algorithm so that the computer would spit out my name as the perfect
choice."
Slish Fondine looked nauseated at the mere concept of cheating in such a
heinous manner.
"The duchess and I were married, and everything seemed exactly as I had
expected--at first. But the duchess was convinced I was her perfect match,
fated to be with her forever. Every waking moment of the day she refused to
let me move more than arm's length away from her. She would wake me up at
all hours of the night, find me during her meal breaks. She would trap me in
the gardens, in the libraries."
Tymmo's eyes grew wild, shining with panic. "I thought she would get tired