Sacrifice

credit chip in the slot to one side. The doors parted and Ben got a glimpse of a small, brightly lit room almost filled by a white duraplast table ringed by chairs. There was already someone in there.

The doors closed again. A steady two-way river of passengers, port workers, flight crew, and the general temporary population of a spaceport stood between Ben and the doors.

"You can do this," Lekauf said. "How many in there? I can't place the strip- cam under the doors if someone else is going to come along and open them again. "

Ben closed his eyes and concentrated on the ebb and flow of the Force, the patterns of density that he could both feel at the roof of his mouth and see as speckled color behind his eyelids.

"Six," he said. That made sense: two close protection agents each, even numbers, two statesmen who didn't trust each other. "Yes, six.

They're all inside now."

"Can you see lottery numbers, too?" Lekauf made his way casually through the shoals of people and squatted down to adjust his boot. Ben saw him take out what looked like a small flimsi strip, then slide the thing under the hairline gap with quick ease.

Strip-cams were very small these days, the size of a coat-check stub. They really were flimsi, and just as disposable once they'd finished transmitting.

"Lovely," said Shevu's voice in Ben's ear. "I can see right up Gejjen's nose. Good clear sound. Nice job, Jori."

Eventually, Ben glanced around and spotted Shevu leaning against a drinks dispenser on the other side of the concourse. He was recording the output from the strip-cam and transmitting it back to GAG HQ. As soon as he had confirmation that it had been received and stored, he'd erase his datapad and send a code to the strip-cam to shred its data. It'd be just a scrap of garbage the cleaners would sweep up, if they ever came this way. It looked