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"Why would he leave you a message if he didn't want to steal the medicines?" Astri asked angrily.
"Because we are better than nothing," Tup said.
"At least he knew we would try to find the lab," Weez said.
"I hate to say it, but they make sense," Obi-Wan murmured to Astri.
"We might as well see," she agreed.
Beckoning to the trio, Obi-Wan and Astri led them inside the cafc.
Obi-Wan gestured at the items on the table.
"This is what was in the bin," he said.
Cholly picked up various items. "Not much here."
"No datapad?" Weez asked.
Obi-Wan shook his head.
"No big sign that says, LOOK HERE?" Tup asked hopefully.
Weez picked up the sabacc cards and rifled through them. "We played many a game with these."
"Until no one would play with us anymore," Cholly said.
Weez sighed. "They thought we cheated. The galaxy is so unfair to beings like us."
"Did you cheat?" Astri asked.
"Well, yes," Weez admitted. "We marked the cards. We had our coded system. But we didn't bet much. Se we didn't cheat them out of very much."
"We were fair cheaters," Tup said.
"We are so misunderstood," Cholly said sadly. "Wait a minute," Astri said. "You marked the cards?"
"It's an honest living!" Tup protested.
Astri took the cards from Tup's hands and spread them on the table.
"Look at them carefully. Is anything different?"
The three stared down at the cards for a long moment. Then, tentatively, Tup reached out one finger and moved a card away from the pack.
"Look," he said, pointing to the design on the back. "See the mark?"
"Of course," Cholly said. He squinted at the cards.
Cholly moved another card. Then Weez moved a third. One by one, they separated cards from the pack. Then Cholly arranged them in a row.
"These are marked," Cholly said.
"But the marks don't make sense for sabacc," Tup said.
"They correspond to numbers and letters," Weez said.
"I put them in order for you," Cholly added.
"But what does it say?" Astri asked urgently. "Do you have a durasheet?" Cholly asked. "I can write it out."
Astri scrambled in a drawer for a durasheet. She handed it to Cholly.
Consulting the cards, he wrote out: L 1 Q2 BU 3 SP 1 2 "What does it mean?" Astri asked, baffled. Cholly, Tup, and Weez exchanged glances. "We have no idea," Cholly said.
"It could be an address," Obi-Wan said. He stared at the sequence of numbers and letters. Different worlds were coded on astrogation maps with abbreviations to identify them. But there were thousands of such abbreviations. He would have to run the sequence through an astrogation computer. The possibilities were almost endless. It would take so much time..
Look for the obvious first. Use what you know. Then move on.
He heard Qui-Gon's words as clearly as if his Master had spoken in his ear. "It could be," he murmured.
Astri only half-heard him. "What did you say?" "S P 1 2," Obi-Wan said. "That's the astrogation abbreviation for Simpla-12."
"So it is," Cholly agreed.
"Could Ren have been held on Simpla-12?" Obi-Wan asked them.
"You could hide anything on Simpla-12," Weez said. "But when he left for the lab, Ren told us he was going off-planet."
"Did you actually see him leave?" Obi-Wan asked urgently.
"No," Tup said. "He said good-bye at a cafc."
"The rest could be an address," Obi-Wan said, staring down at the durasheet. "How is Sim First mapped?"
"By quads and blocks," Weez offered.
"Everything is on level one," Tup said. "There are plans for levels two and three, but no one on Simpla-12 can get organized enough to build."
Obi-Wan pointed to the sequence. "Level One, Quad Two, Block Unit 3,"
he said.
Astri stared at the letters and numbers. "Are you sure?" she asked doubtfully. "This could mean anything."
"I'm not sure of anything," Obi-Wan admitted. "But I say we return to Simpla-12."
Chapter 17
Obi-Wan hailed an air taxi to transport the group to the Temple. As they zoomed through the crowded air lanes, he turned to Cholly, Weez, and Tup.
"I need your help. But we're not going to steal the medicines in order to sell them," he told them. "It would be wrong."
Cholly, Weez, and Tup looked at one another as if this concept was new to them.
"But we helped you," Cholly pointed out, disappointed.
"Why should we keep helping you, if we don't get anything?" Weez asked plaintively.
"This scientist has a bounty hunter working for her named Ona Nobis,"
Obi-Wan said. "There's a reward for her capture."
"Hey, wait a second," Astri said. "That reward is mine!"
Obi-Wan shot her an impatient look. "You can share it. We need their help. And we need it now."
Astri's aggrieved look faded. "You're right."
Obi-Wan scrawled a few items on a durasheet and handed it to Cholly, Weez, and Tup. "Once we get to Simpla-12, we need you to find these items as quickly as you can. Then you'll meet us at the address."
Cholly looked at the list, puzzled. "Obviously, you are crazy, my friend." Then he gri
Obi-Wan had called ahead to alert Tahl that they were coming. He saw her erect figure on the landing platform as they docked. She had agreed to supply him with air transport back to Simpla-12.
Astri leaped from the air taxi as soon as it docked.
"My father?"
"The same," Tahl said. "Obi-Wan, who is with you?"
"Some new friends," Obi-Wan explained. He drew Tahl aside and told her what he'd discovered. "I don't know for sure if Zan Arbor's lab is on Simpla-12," he said. "But there's a chance it could be. And there's a good chance that the antitoxin Didi needs is still stored there — along with Qui-Gon."