Ry raised one eyebrow with what he hoped was an air of mild curiosity. "What happened? It sure seemed odd that he was arrested."

  Governor Etison looked up at the aide. Ry thought his sponsor's face looked grayer, his worry lines deeper than usual. "Tell him, Captain Hall."

  Hall brandished her datapad. "The Thabit people had a number of questions for him. Evidently he'd tried to contact a woman who recently was revealed as a Rebel spy. He tried to talk about your band, instead."

  "Us?" Ry's lip twitched. Was he back in trouble?

  "Under certain persuasions, Rebel agents start talking and keep talking. Standard procedure," she added.

  A chill raced down Ry's spine. If they'd used truth drugs on Beamis, he was cooked. Not even Governor Shran Etison could save him if Beamis had implicated him...but come to think of it, wouldn't he already be under arrest if that happened?

  "We think," Hall continued, "that he wanted to talk about your band to keep his mind on safe subjects."

  "What do you mean?" Calm. Be calm.

  Governor Etison leaned forward. When he clasped his hands on the desktop, he flexed his shoulders. "It's looking as if your friend Keth Beamis was involved in a Rebel spy ring, Ry."

  Ry gaped, exaggerating the expression. That reaction would make him look like a kid, but he'd better appear as innocent as possible.

  "So when he tried to talk about your band instead of Maiferri Tag," continued the aide, "they let him run on for a while. It's best to let the... subject warm up and get used to talking. He was just insisting you were ready for the circuit, and that he would've loved to offer you a contract."

  That was no way to finish an explanation. "And then?"

  Governor Etison sighed. "He pulled a standard Rebel trick. He suicided before he could reveal any real information. We found an affide crystal under his tongue. Very fast poison. Security tells me those can be hidden under a waterproof barrier inside a drilled tooth. He must've been working it out with his tongue while he rattled on about your band. I'm sorry, Ry. He was using you."

  Beamis was dead? Ry shut his mouth. Obviously, Beamis suicided rather than betray Ry and his friends, or any other onsite agents. Rather than tell the Imperials that Ry couldn't be sent offworld because a Rebel cell needed him here, gathering information-especially on the "new warship" Ry had just told him about - he'd taken the Final Jump.

  For a moment, Ry hated himselffor getting involved. Then his need to blame someone slid around and rested on his parents. They'd followed the Empire blindly, and they'd abandoned him. If they'd still been here, this wouldn't have happened.

  Hall leaned heavily on the Governor's desk, hyperextending both elbows. "So we have a chance for you to serve the Empire, Ry."

  Governor Etison waved a hand in the air. "Yes, and still indulge your number-one passion. I have fond memories of my own performing days," he added softly.

  Twenty planetary cycles ago, Etison had a little b'ssa nuuvu band of his own. It was one reason he'd indulged Ryand his friends.

  Ry made an effort to lean back in his chair and cross one ankle over the other knee. Serve the Empire? Not after it broke up his family, however willingly his parents had gone. But he wanted to keep performing. Wanted it worse than anything else in his life.

  "Look, Ry." Etison picked up a writing stylus and twirled it down the fingers of his left hand. "With this development back on Thabit, there's suspicion that Beamis's talent agency on Beltrix is a Rebel intelligence center. But it's only a suspicion. We want you and your friends to set a trap. I'll send ahead word that you could be bringing in illegal information, and we'll see who meets you...and what they do about it. Don't worry," he added quickly. "I'll include orders that you aren't to be harmed, under the strictest penalties."

  "Thanks." Ry hated it when his voice shook this way.

  "No one would suspect you boys of working for me. Do you see that?"

  "Sure."

  "Good. And if you'll help, I'll arrange for Far Cry to take the next year completely off from tech-ed school. You can perform that circuit, with or without the talent agency's contract. Even if they get put out of business, I still have contacts in the officers' clubs. This is your big break."

  Ry swallowed nothing, connecting a dry mouth with a parched throat. "You are so right," he managed. "Thank you!"

  ***

  One day later, Far Cry boarded a transport for Beltrix. Standing inside an echoing hangar, Hannis glared as Onjo Fegel hoisted his kloo horn case onto the boarding conveyor. Until this morning, Ry hadn't known that Onjo Fegel graduated from the Imperial Service Academy...in Intelligence. For the duration of this trip, Far Cry had been burdened with the services of a musically gifted - but completely out of place - kloo horn player.

  They were a dusk band, not b'ssa nuuvu! If Governor Etison was still trying to win Ry to his own musical taste, he'd just lost several parsecs of whatever ground he'd gained. They had rehearsed once before riding out to the spaceport. They sounded sick.

  When Ry thought about Keth Beamis, he felt even sicker. And what about his old friend Tet Tramys?

  He had to warn them to dump all suspicious files and send away anyone who might be recognized. But all day, Onjo had stuck to him like a mynock on a power cable, keeping him from talking to Hannis or Erik about sending a coded message ahead. And they would have only one day on board to figure out how to make Far-Cry-with-a-Kloo-Horn sound less like a herd of giddies in heat.

  He strapped down on a frayed, padded seat in the transport's passenger compartment. There were no viewports. Only a series of clangs, then a garbled voice over the cabin speakers, confirmed takeoff was imminent. Shortly, the transport started shaking. It rattled for several minutes, followed by a series of lurches that made Ry glad he'd skipped lunch.

  A flashing light signaled the end of strap-down. Onjo got up, stretched left and right, then straightened his flight suit. Ry had never noticed how subtly comical his slightly rounded cheeks and small nose made his face look. His stubby hands stuck out at the ends of too-short sleeves. "We must have a Chadra-fan pilot," he said dryly. "You kids hungry?"

  Ry wasn't, not at all, but he followed Onjo downship to a mess cabin. Like the passenger compartment, it had no viewports, no external screens - nothing to give him a glimpse of the light years they were crossing. One more dirty trick from the universe.

  Long tables were filling rapidly, and the transport's crew was handing out a one-menu-suits-all tray lunch. Onjo steered them from the pickup line to a spot near one bulkhead. He touched the heat control on his lunch tray, then raised the lid with a dramatic gesture. "Wonderful," he exclaimed. "Mystery meat number twelve."

  Hannis smiled wanly. Ry didn't find Onjo particularly funny either. He picked at the meal.

  After eating silently for ten or twelve minutes, Onjo sliced off a bite of meat and waved it at Erik. "What you need," he pronounced, "is a brighter riff on those crashers. You're putting people to sleep back there."

  "It's dusk, not b'ssa nuuvu." Erik, normally one of the most patient people Ry knew, rolled his eyes. "Look, Onjo, we understand this isn't a real gig, not any more. But don't try to make Far Cry sound like something it isn't."

  "For this market, b'ssa nuuvu is a better groove any day." Onjo waved the bite one final time and then chomped down on it. "Officers. Old people, or getting old fast. Even older than me." He grinned as if he'd made another joke.

  Hannis muttered something into his plate.

  "What was that?" Onjo asked around his mouthful.

  Hannis raised his chin. "Keth Beamis didn't give this audition to your b'ssa nuuvu band."

  Onjo leaned over the table. "There's a lot more to auditioning than standing still with your eyes shut. You aren't ready for the real thing."

  "We are prepared," Ry insisted.

  Onjo raised an eyebrow. "Prepared? This from the boy who assumes that the Holstrum Talent Agency on Beltrix has an amp to loan him for his bass? Think again, why don't you? They can't let every outsystem beginner borrow their equipment."

  Amp? But -

  In that moment, a solution flashed across Ry's mind. He silenced Erik's impending retort with one fast shin-kick. The tall perc player blinked, raised his eyebrows, then leaned back again.

  Ry's thoughts whirled. His bass vye was a recent invention, self-amplified...kind of a return to acoustics, but with the conveniences of artistic distortion. Onjo had confused this instrument with the bass mando, a b'ssa nuuvu axe that was barely audible above a solid set of percs unless you amp-linked it. "Kessel! You're right," he exclaimed. He was getting a lot of practice pretending ignorance these days. "Do you think I made a mistake, counting on them? I didn't really think they wanted me bringing a bass amp on board. We used up our weight allowance on Hannis and Erik's gear." It sounded marginally logical, and apparently Onjo bought it. Ry submitted to ten minutes of stories about musicians who showed up unprepared for gigs, and the dire consequences. Finally, Onjo went for a cleanup droid.

  Ry caught Erik's attention with a drum-roll offingers on the tabletop. "Distract him for a few minutes," he whispered.

  As Onjo returned, Erik scrambled to his feet. "You know," he said, "I've always wondered what sets the b'ssa nuuvu beat apart from minga. You wouldn't have any recordings along?"

  Onjo squared his shoulders, stretched his neck, and managed to look down his nose at Erik, who was half a head taller. "Of course I do," he said. "You serious?"

  "You've gotta always be learning. Or you're dead on the peres."

  Onjo half smiled. "That's the best sense I've heard out of any of you boys. Erik, you've got potential." He laid an arm on Erik's shoulder. "We'll see you two in a few," he told Ry and Hannis. To Erik's credit, he didn't cringe away from the arm or even wrinkle his nose at Onjo's fresh attempt at humor.

  Ry sat still until Erik and Onjo disappeared out the mess hall's main hatch. Then he bent toward Hannis, speaking softly. He wouldn't have put it past Onjo or Etison to plant other ears among the passengers. "I've thought of a way to warn our people there's a spy on board. But I need to know the ship's comm frequency. Do you have any idea what they send on?"

  "Sure." Hannis shrugged, smiling. "Spotted it pre-boarding."

  "I figured." Ry whacked his friend's shoulder. "Then let's get to the baggage compartment. Fast."

  Ry flashed Governor Etison's permission slip at the primitive security droid who guarded the baggage compartment, and they were admitted. He and Hannis swept inside, puffing. "He's got me pegged for a bass mando," Ry explained as he dug into his vye case. "Give me that frequency. And how fast could you switch a comlink's cover plate with one for a power point?"

  "No time at...oh!" Hannis nodded vigorously. "You're going to plug into the comlink and make that pompous shroob think you're using a power source to amplify! I should've thought of that."

  "You would've. This time I thought of it first." Ry hesitated only a moment before going to work on his beloved instrument. As Hannis popped cover plates off the bulkhead, Ry pulled a multitool out of his pocket and carefully slit into the instrument's black plastene wave box, near the spot where its neck joined the body. Nestled inside was a small, metal-wound internal amplifier. He studied it carefully. He was a player, not a circuit-slicer...

  "There." Hannis sprang away from the bulkhead. "Looks like you're using a simple amp circuit. Perfect for fooling a simple kloo horn player. Having trouble there?"

  "I want to recalibrate this to transmit on your frequency, but -"

  "Easy." Hannis grabbed the instrument and the multitool. "It'll take me two seconds...done." He handed it back just as the hatch slid open. Erik and Onjo joined them.

  "All right," Ry declared, casually snapping his bass back together and holding it to his chest. "We've got less than an hour to try to make this group sound like a band again." Ry helped Erik assemble his peres and crashers around the repulsor-mounted "throne." Hannis dug his touchboard out of a pile of luggage. Onjo assembled the kloo horn.

  Then Ry counted off a slow groove for their audition number.

  There wasn't time to work out a genuinely musical bass line in code. Ry's new line was full of sour notes, but he couldn't help that now. Letter by letter, he coded in a new message, sending it out over the comlink as he played: Beamis dead. Spy aboard. Raid planned. Destroy records.

  When they'd finished, Hannis thrust both hands through his longish hair. "That was awful."

  "Sorry," answered Ry. "Not used to hearing a kloo horn in there." He tossed a shrug at Onjo. "Try again."

  This time, knowing in advance what he needed to say, he did a little better job of picking initial notes that would settle into a sustain that fit the song's chord structure. There was still one note so sour that even Onjo grimaced. Ry answered with a pained expression of his own, but as they finished the number, having sent off the warning twice, he started to feel better.

  Now if only someone had been listening. And hopefully, no one in the cockpit cared if music came off the ship's transmitter. Judging by the condition of its interior, the crew didn't care much about much at all. This was a low-priority supply run.

  "Onjo," Hannis sighed, "couldn't you at least try to make your line fit our style? Come on. I bet you could play dusk in your sleep."

  Onjo's round little eyes narrowed. "As a matter of fact, I could."

  This time through, Ry played his original bass line, the one with the message about the metal going offworld. Why not? If anyone on Beltrix was listening, they might as well get the whole story.

  "Huh," said Onjo as he laid down his horn. "I have to admit, that was a better blend."

  Hannis cracked his knuckles over the touch board. "I thought so, too." He glanced sidelong at Ry, and Ry gave them all a thumbs-up salute.

  A horn blared from the comlink panel, and for a mercy, Onjo didn't seem to notice that the comlink had a power-point cover. "Time to strap down," he announced. They secured their instruments, then hustled back into the seating area. Ry harnessed in, then settled back to wonder what really waited on Beltrix III...whether the "talent agency" was destroying records, or if a squad of Imperials was headed for the loading dock.

  The transport lurched and shook. Overheads rattled. Ry clutched the arms of his seat and wished he were somewhere else. "Hannis," he muttered, "you'd better switch those panels back on the ride home."

  "Right," mumbled Hannis.

  After the shaking stopped, the strap-down light kept flashing. The passenger compartment grew quiet, then slowly filled with suspicious murmurs. Ry heard, "...lost baggage? ..." and "...wrong terminal?"

  Erik craned his neck, then murmured, "Onjo isn't here."

  Ry gritted his teeth. "Then we'd better hope they heard the music."

  ***

  Onjo Fegel quickstepped down the boarding ramp toward three spaceport enforcers. He didn't care that the kids knew he was only along to keep them from spoiling Etison's trap. But en route, he'd changed his mind. Instead of going through with a painful, humiliating performance, he could hit the so-called talent agency now. "The kids are strapped down," he announced as they boarded a speeder. "They can't warn anybody, even if they are involved."

  "We'll soon know, sir," said the enforcer sharing his seat.

  It was a fast cross-town hop to the talent agency. A young man sat at the reception desk, his dark blond hair just longer than Onjo could approve. "Welcome," he said, sweeping out both hands. "Gentlemen, what can the Holstrum Agency do for you? Combo? Duo? Perhaps a pair of battle droids to liven a convention?"

  Onjo flashed his ID and walked around the counter toward the data terminal. "Step back," he ordered.

  "Of course. "The man swept out his hands and got up. "Perhaps you'd like to check our talent listings yourself."

  Onjo waved one of the local enforcers forward. The man keyed rapidly, inserting a ferret into the system that would sniff out arcane activities. Onjo glanced around the reception room. Blue walls displayed a constantly changing array of billing posters. Acoustic panels floated beneath a sloped ceiling.

  And it was all just a front. He could almost taste his next promotion...hopefully to a Core world, where b'ssa nuuvu was appreciated.

  The enforcer looked up from the data terminal, compressing his lips in a straight line. He eyed Onjo. "Sorry, sir. It looks like you made this trip for nothing, unless you wanted to hire a juggler."

  "What do you mean?"

  "They're clean, sir."

  Onjo pushed the enforcer aside. "I think not."

  Five minutes later, he slumped over the terminal. He'd failed. The Rebels had to be elsewhere, but his only potential informer...Beamis...was dead. It was back to square one. Once more from the top. First measure, and what key were they playing in this time?

  For this, he'd spent two days with three kids who didn't know b'ssa nuuvu from minga?

  ***

  A pair of brilliant overhead lights separated Far Cry from the rest of the galaxy. Facing three murky silhouettes seated behind a long table, Ry counted off the intro to "Dark Eyes, Warm Thoughts." To everyone's relief, Onjo had announced he would skip the actual audition, and he was nowhere in this dark, cramped room. Ry suspected he was somewhere else in the building, checking out b'ssa nuuvu groups, and so Hannis hadn't even bothered to set up a fake amp for Ry's "bass mando." One uniformed enforcer did sit staring over the talent scouts' shoulders, but Ry could ignore him. If anyone had intended to arrest him and Erik and Hannis, they would've already done it. So for the next five minutes, there would be only music.

  And after two interminable rehearsals with Onjo Fegel, this was music. Hannis's touchboard glisses fell slowly to settle each cadence, eking every shred of emotion from each line. Erik drummed a slow, steady beat on the tenor array, riding one crasher for the choruses. Beneath them all, Ry's bass line sang out a solid bottom...the original bass line, naturally. To Ry, "Dark Eyes"would always be about metals going offworld.

  Hannis held the final chord infinitesimally longer than usual, and Ry let the bass ring out before elbowing the FX spot. They'd turned up nothing for Governor Etison; their chance for fame had evaporated, but for this moment, they stood as professionals among professionals. Nothing ever felt so good.