Lando Calrissian and the Mindharp of Sharu/Lando Calrissian and the Flamewind of Oseon/Lando Calrissian and the Starcave of ThonBoka [antikvár]

PROLOGUE "Sabacc! " It was unmercifully hot. Tossing his card-chips on the table, the young gambler halfheartedly collected what they'd earned him, an indifferent addition to his already indifferent profits for the evening. Something on the unspectacular order of five hundred credits. Perhaps it was the heat. Or just his imagination. This blasted asteroid, Oseon 2795, while closer to its sun than most, was as carefully life-supported and air-conditioned as any developed rock in the system. Still, one could almost feel the relentless solar flux hammering down upon its sere and withered surface, feel the radiation soaking through its iron-nickel substance, feel the unwanted energy reradiating from the walls in every room. Especially this one. Apparently the locals felt it, too. They'd stripped right down to shorts and shirt-sleeves after the second hand, two hours earlier, and looked fully as fatigued and grimy as the young gambler felt. He took a sip from his glass, the necessity for circumspection regarding what he drank blessedly absent for once. No nonsense here about comradely alcohol consumption. Most of them were having ice water and liking it. Beads of moisture had condensed into a solid sheet on the container's outer surface and trickled down his wrist into his gold-braided uniform sleeve. What a way to live! Oseon 2795 was a pocket of penury in ' if I a plutocrat's paradise. The drab mining asteroid, thrust cruelly near the furnace of furnaces, orbited through a system of pleasure resorts and vacation homes for the galaxy's superweaithy, like an itinerant junkman. 5