"Not who," replied Zuckuss, "but where. And I think you already know that." Sma'Da had based his entire gambling enterprise upon rumors and secrets, the tiny scraps of information that enabled him to calculate odds with such precision. "Don't you?"
"Perhaps so." Sma'Da's golden smile gleamed even more dazzlingly. "But only a fool turns down an oppor-tunity to learn more. Dear things—" He turned to his female companions on either side of him, one after the other. "Amuse yourselves elsewhere for a little while. I need a moment alone with this interesting person." He fluttered his beringed paws at the crowd.
"Make way, make way." Pouting, the females detached themselves and floated away. The sycophants and other assorted hangers-on took the cue as well, dispersing while whis-pering among themselves and keeping watch on the gam-bler from the corners of their eyes. "There," said Sma'Da as Zuckuss sat down beside him. "Much more private now, wouldn't you say?"
"Adequate." Zuckuss still didn't feel entirely at ease in such public surroundings. Proper bounty hunting, he felt, was best done in remote areas or in the depths of interstellar space, where it would have been just him, the target, and a high-powered weapon pointing in the target's direction. That'd wipe the smile from this one's face, Zuckuss thought. He glanced over at the table he'd left; 4-LOM was sitting as placidly as be-fore, not even seeming to be interested at all in the ac-tion that was about to come down. Zuckuss turned back toward Sma'Da. "I was pretty sure that a creature in your line of business would be interested in news from Sullust. You're probably already taking in bets on it."
"Oh, I might." The dangling animal heads bobbed as Sma'Da shrugged his broad shoulders. "It's hard, though, to get any of my regular clientele to put down their cred-its, one way or another. The reports that have circulated, concerning the Imperial buildup near the moon of Endor, have made a great many creatures nervous. It's one thing to bet on a minor battle here or there, a mere skirmish or a Rebel raid on an Imperial armaments depot, that sort of thing; quite another to place a wager on what could very likely be the end of this great game." Sma'Da heaved an immense, fat-quivering sigh. "If that should be the case—if Emperor Palpatine should indeed quash the Re-bellion once and for all—how I shall miss these glorious days!" He shook his head, as though already immured in regret over a vanished past. "The Rebel Alliance has brought the radiant aspect of hope to every corner of the galaxy; and where there's hope, there's risk-taking. And then..." Sma'Da's smile reappeared, even slyer than be-fore. "There's wagering. And that's always profitable, for someone like me."
The gambler's words gave Zuckuss a measure of cold comfort. He's no different than me, thought Zuckuss. Not that he had expected anything different; most of the galaxy's denizens, in Zuckuss's estimation, spent all their time looking out for Number One, namely themselves. If he had ever believed otherwise, he might have been tempted stay with the Rebel Alliance. But he was certain that idealism was a rare trace element in the universe's composition, whereas greed was as ubiquitous as hydro-gen atoms.
"I like profits as well," said Zuckuss. One of the wait-ers had brought another drink, shimmering amethyst in color, and had placed it in front of him; he didn't touch it. "That's why I sought you out."
"Good for you." Sma'Da gave an appreciative nod. "And good for me, if whatever information you've brought with you should turn out useful. The more one knows, the easier it is to make odds. Though mind you"—he peered closer at Zuckuss— "it's hard to take me by surprise on these things, anymore. There's not much I haven't heard about what's been going on near Endor; I have excellent sources for all kinds of gossip and rumor."
"I'm pretty sure this is something you haven't heard before." Zuckuss reached into his tunic.
"Ah." Sma'Da put the tips of his glittering fingers to-gether. "My pulse races with anticipation."
"How's this, then?" Zuckuss pulled out a blaster pis-tol and set its cold, hard muzzle against Drawmas Sma'Da's forehead. "You're coming with me."
He had the satisfaction of seeing the gambler's eyes widen for a moment. Then they all but vanished again, from the upwelling pressure of Sma'Da's expansive grin.
"That's very funny. How amusing!" Sma'Da drew his hands apart, enough to clap them together again in ap-preciation. "Everyone—please observe!" He called out loudly to the crowd in the bar; eager faces swiveled in the direction of the table. "To what lengths creatures go merely to provide me with a few fleeting moments of amusement!" His laughter boomed against the walls, as though to frighten the play of colors against their sur-face. "Bringing in and waving around a blaster, in the one place it's sure to be useless! Not even a power source for it!"
The laughter was contagious; Zuckuss could hear it sweep through the establishment like a wave breaking over and carrying away the staff as well as the patrons. Their bright, barking noise mounted louder, approach-ing some critical mass of hilarity. Zuckuss glanced over at 4-LOM, in the center of the establishment's space; the droid bounty hunter was the only one not laughing. 4-LOM sat and waited with machinelike patience, know-ing what was to come.
"You poor fool." Drawmas Sma'Da hadn't bothered to pull away from the blaster placed at his brow; he obvi-ously wanted all the onlookers to relish the joke to its full. "Did you think I'd be somehow frightened by a lump of dead metal? Or did you not even notice what happened when you came in here, what little piece of that weapon was taken away from you by our good inn-keeper's minions? Really—" With one pudgy hand, he dabbed away the tears that had managed to squeeze past the folds surrounding his eyes. "It's just too good."
"Even better than you think," said Zuckuss. He shifted the blaster slightly away from Sma'Da's head and squeezed the trigger. A coruscating bolt of energy shot out and blew away a section of the bar's ceiling, charred fragments and hot sparks raining down on the upturned faces of the crowd. "This weapon's live."
Sma'Da had instinctively dived when the blaster bolt had scorched past the side of his head. His immense girth had toppled the table, sending a cascade of liquor and the remains of the banquet cascading across the floor. Crockery and crystal decanters shattered, the fragments gleaming like transparent teeth imbedded in the wetly gleaming disorder. A few of the bar's patrons still looked stunned and disbelieving; some of the sharper-witted ones had rushed for the exit and were now scrabbling to get past one another and up the narrow tunnel to the surface.
"Let's go." Zuckuss reached down with his free hand, grabbed Sma'Da's trembling elbow, and pulled the gam-bler to his feet; he had to lean back to counterbalance Sma'Da's greater weight. "There's some creatures who are ready to pay a nice pile of credits for the privilege of having a talk with you. A long talk." And probably not a pleasant one, judging from the panicked look on the other's face and the fear-induced quivering that shook this mass like a small planet's seismic activity.
The bar's proprietor came rushing up, pushing his way past the remaining crowd. "What is the meaning of this?" Salla C'airam was nearly as agitated as the gam-bler caught in Zuckuss's grip."It's an outrage? It's impos-sible! It's—"
"It's business." Zuckuss diverted the blaster's aim for a moment, away from Sma'Da and toward C'airam. That was enough to stop him in his tracks. C'airam's ten-tacles drew short and wrapped themselves tightly around his body. "You've already got a mess here." Zuckuss used the blaster to point to the sodden, trampled-upon— and expensive—garbage on the floor. "You can either start cleaning it up ... or you can join it. Your pick."
C'airam's floppy, seemingly boneless appendages set-tled lower, a sure sign in his species of wanting to avoid a violent confrontation. "I do not know," he spoke with measured sulkiness, "how you managed to get a power source for your weapon into these premises. It's strictly forbidden—"