Something would have to be done, that much was clear-but what?

The Corellian system was sealed off from the outside universe, and there was no fast way in.

Whoever had done this thing would have plenty of time to work whatever mischief they pleased.

But Lando had other, more personal, worries. Tendra. Lady Tendra Risant of the planet Sacorria. Lando had met her for the first and only time just a few days before, but he already knew that she was someone special, someone who could be important in his life.

It was more than a trffie ironic that he had set off across the Galaxy in search of a bride with money, only to meet a woman who made him forget all about money.

Well, at least made him stop thinking about it for a while.

What worried him at the moment was that when he had bid her farewell, he had been bound for Corellia, and she had known it. Sooner or later-probably sooner -Sacorria, along with the rest of the Galasy, would learn that Corellia had cut itself off from the outside universe.

Tendra would hear about it, and have every reason to think he was on Corellia She would worry, and would likely do more than that.

Tendra was not the sort of person to sit idly by. She would act.

She would do something, though s.p.a.ce alone knew what. And knowing that gave Lando plenty to worry about himself.

But even if she did just sit tight, Tendra had said that things were brewing on her home world of Sacorria.

Sacorria was one of the "Outlier" planets, so called because it was on the fringes of the Corellian Sector, in both physical and political terms.

Sacorria was populated by the same

three.

species as Corellia-human, Drall, and Selonian. It was ruled by the Thiad, a mysterious triumvirate made of selfappointed representatives from each of the three species. That right there was enough to give Lando some concern. In his experience, oligarchies were not the most rational or stable forms of governments.

And there had been a very definite clamp-down in progress when Luke and Lando had been on Sacorria; enough of one to get them kicked off the planet.

Lando checked his system displays one more time, then looked over to Luke in the copilot's seat. "Luke," he said, "do you think that the trouble on Sacorria might have something to do with the Corellian interdiction field?"

Luke looked to"'and Lando and frowned. "What makes you think that?"

"Well, one place threw us out, and the other threw up an interdiction field like a wall to keep us out."

"Come on," Luke said. "The whole interdiction field just to keep us out? I knew you had a big ego, Lando, but let's not get carried away.

"I don't mean that the field was meant to keep us out," Lando said.

"Just you. I'm not that important, but you are. You're the Jedi Master.

That's why I brought you along on this triso you could impress everybody.

Well, maybe the Corellians were impressed. There could be plenty of reasons for wanting to keep you out of the way. As a general rule, troublemakers don't want you around. It wouldn't be the first time someone went to extremes just to keep you at arm's length."

"Maybe," Luke said, not entirely convinced. "But it still seems to me like an awful lot of trouble. Besides, not many people knew we were going to Corellia I didn't know I was going until the night before we left Coruscant.

"The folks who kicked us off Sacorria could have guessed that's where we were headed, and they could have found out for sure a half-dozen ways." Lando hooked a thumb toward the wardroom, where R2-D2 and C-3PO were. "All they'd have to do is set Golden Boy back there to talking, and they'd have our life stories in thirty seconds."

"I heard that, and I must deny it," said Threepio, his voice coming from the intercom. "I am always discreet in my dealings with outsiders-"

"Get off this feed and quit snooping, you blabbermouth collection of spare parts," Lando said.

"But I must protest-"

"There's no need for you to be listening in, Threepio," Luke said, cutting him off. "Just tell R2-D2 to get ready for final approach. We'll be home on Coruscant soon."

He reached over and cut the power to the intercom.

Lando glared at the intercom. "I think Threepio just made my point for me," he said. "If the Sacorrians had wanted to find out where we were headed, they could have done it. "No doubt about it," Luke said. "But that interdiction field is immense! Think how much power, how much planning and organization and engineering it must have taken to get it up and running. It's not the sort of thing you casually switch on just to keep out one unwanted visitor. There are easier ways to keep a person out of a star system, even a Jedi Knight.

The Sacorrians could have simply locked us up, or had us shot, or put a bomb on the I'ady Luck"

"I suppose," Lando said. "But even if the Corellian field wasn't activated just to keep us out of the picture, I still think there might be a connection between the clampdown on Sacorria and whatever has happened in the Corellian system."

"You might have something," Luke said. "But I've got a feeling we're not going to know, one way or the other, for quite a while yet" The Lady Luck flew on.

Luke was more than a little surprised to see the reception committee that was waiting for them on Coruscant as they disembarked from the Lady Luck The usual landing-bay crew was nowhere to be seen, and instead they were greeted by a distinctly closemouthed security team of two men and one woman in New Republic Intelligence uniforms.

"This doesn't exactly feel relaxed," Lando muttered as the senior NRI officer came forward. "Sort of reminds me of the way the customs agents did things the last time I was arrested for smuggling."

"Master Skywalker, Captain CaIrissian, good day to you both," the officer said. He was a young man, a little pale-faced and on the beefy side. He looked as if he hadn't gotten much sleep in a while. "I am Captain Showolter of New Republic Intelligence," he said. "The two of you are wanted rather urgently at an important meeting. Would you be so kind as to come with us?"

"Suppose we wouldn't be so kind?" Lando asked.

Changed circ.u.mstances or not, he still had the smug 24 Reger Macde Anna gler's instinctive distrust of police who told him where to go.

Showolter sighed and gave Lando a look of tired exasperation.

"Then we bundle you up and take you along anyway, to keep you quiet for a while, if nothing else.

We could decide later on if we were arresting you or putting you into protective custody. Now will you come along, or do we have to waste time with more nonsense?"

"What is it about?" Lando asked.

"I can't tell you that," Showolter said. "But I bet you're smart enough to figure it out. "Corellia," Luke said.

Showolter gave them a tired smile. "I have specific orders not to tell you, but I have this feeling you might be good guessers. Now, are you coming or aren't you?"

"We're coming," Luke said. "Mind if we bring the droids? One of them has some important data stored in him."

"The more the merrier," Showolter said in a deadpan voice.

"Great," Lando muttered as they followed Showolter to a waiting hovercar. "I was looking forward to getting away from those two."

Luke laughed and slapped his friend on the back.

"Looks like you're stuck with all of us for a while They got into the hovercar and it took off, Showolter riding in the rear compartment with Luke and Lando and the droids while the other two NRI officers rode up front. The windows of the hovercar instantly went lt;) paque.

Whether this was meant to conceal the pa.s.sengers from pa.s.sersby, or to keep Luke and Lando from knowing where they were going, Luke had no idea. If it was the latter, then the effort was, of course, wasted.

A Jedi Master had no need to look out a window to know where he was going. Luke didn't even have to concentrate in order to know they were headed toward the towers of the palace, albeit by a circuitous route.

Well, that was no surprise.

Luke sat back and took the time to think. It was obvious that at least someone on Coruscant already knew something was up. But Showolter clearly had no intention of telling them what that something was, or where they were being taken. They had not received any sort of invitation to this mysterious meeting until they arrived on planet.

That convinced Luke that the leadership on Coruscant was at least as worried as Luke was that the opposition-whoever the opposition was-was capable of tapping secure communications.

And if they were worried about that back here, then something else must have already have gone wrong.

The car slowed, and there was a change in the sound of the air rushing past the aircar's exterior. Luke's sense of direction told him the same thing that the shift in sound had-the aircar had just flown directly into the palace, through one of the upper-level access ports.

Not unheard of' but not the usual thing, either. Clearly, they were taking security seriously.

The car landed with a gentle b.u.mp. The door opened and Luke and Lando stepped out into a wholly anonymous shipping dock. Showolter was right behind them, and escorted them toward a waiting turbolift.

The other two NRI officers stayed in the aircar, watching Luke, Lando, Showolter, and the droids cross to the lift doors.

The turbolift doors shut as soon as they were in, though none of them had activated any control. Much to Luke's surprise, the car began to descend. He exchanged a glance with Lando and saw that his friend was reading the same thing into the movement downward. Up meant status on Coruscant. Grand ceremonies, important meetings, and opulent receptions could only take place on the upper levels of the great city.

Down was the low-status direction, and movers and . wvm shakers of Coruscant quite literally looked down at the lower above-surface levels, while the subterranean levels were beneath their contempt.

But if down was the unfashionable direction, it was also the high-security one. The lower depths were full of forgotten chambers and hidden places. No one outside could throw a grenade or fire a missile or listen in at a window when you were half a kilometer underground.

But Luke knew the rich and powerful of Coruscantand he also knew just how unsavory parts of the lower depths could be. ThIngs were clearly dire if the powersthat-be were willing to go underground.

"Where to?" he asked.

"An NRI safe room," Showolter said. "And we're going in by the back door. Protocol requires that each party come by a separate route if at all possible. Makes it harder for the opposition to realize that people are getting together. But the bad news is that the two direct routes into this safe room have already been used."

"What would you call a direct route?" Lando asked.

"Well, one of them is a turbolift that opens out directly into the safe room. The other is a concealed side tunnel from a maintenance tunnel that's still in active use. But we have to use the back door.

And let's just say this route will never be a tourist attraction."

Lando raised his eyebrows, but said no more.

Luke was trying to judge the descent of the turbolift car. As best he could estimate, they were at least eight hundred meters below their starting point when the turbolift car came to a halt. The door did not open.

Instead, Showolter drew his sidearm, a New Republic standard-issue blaster. For a fleeting moment Luke wondered if they had just walked into a trap. But he sensed no malice or deception on Showolter's part, and the NRI officer's next words set him at ease. "Captain Cairissian, Master Skywalker, I believe you are both armed. Might I suggest you draw your weapons before we open the door?

"Ah, sure," Lando said as he drew his own blaster.

"But mind if I ask why?"

"Local wildlife," Showolter said.

"Oh, my!" Threepio said. "Feral hunters? Here?"

"That's right," Showolter said.

"Ah," Luke said. "I guess I shouldn't be surprised."

The city of Coruscant had been where it was for a long, long time, and any number of strange animals had been brought to the planet for a variety of reasonsome of them meant for pets, some for food, some for exhibition. Over the millennia a certain number of them had escaped, and of those, a fair number had gone feral, even evolved to adapt to their new circ.u.mstances.

The upper city was a source of resourcemosfly in the form of garbage. It was all but inevitable that a warped sort of ecosystem would come into being as the denizens of the depths adapted to their environment.

There were even storieunsubstantiated, so far as Luke knew-that some of the feral species in the lower depths had, over time, devolved from their intelligent ancestors. There were endless urban legends of underlevel zombies, ferocious creatures descended from hapless tourists or office workers who had gotten lost in the subterranean levels thousands of years in the past.

"So what's the local nuisance in this part of the city?"

asked Lando.

"We call them corridor ghouls," Showolter said, "but we're not quite sure what they are. However, they are definitely hungry. Nasty little things, quadrupeds about knee-high. They seem to be more or less mammalian, but they don't have fur, just dead-white skin. They're blind-totally eyeless, in fact. But they have big ear and big teeth.

We think they navigate by echo location.

At least that would explain the high-pitched screams 28 they make. But however they get around, theyare fast and precise when they go for you. So watch it.

"We're doomed!" Threepio moaned, and Artoo let out a dispirited moan.

"Take it easy, you two," Luke said.

"Yeah, relax. Sounds like they'd make perfect pets," Lando muttered. He checked the charge on his blaster.

"Ready," he said.

Luke unclipped his lightsaber from his belt and held it at the ready, but did not switch it on. "Ready," he said.

"Good," Showolter said. "We have the lights on so we can see them.

That evens things up a bit. I wouldn't want to meet them in the dark, that's for sure. Now, we're going to step Out of the turbolift, go straight down the corridor for fifty meters, then take a left and another immediate left. We go another twenty meters, and then we have a steep ramp that leads down to another level about fifteen meters down. Can that droid on rollers handle a steep ramp?"

Artoo let out an indignant blurting noise.

"Sure," Luke said with a smile. "He can handle pretty much anything."

"Well, I hope so," Showolter said, clearly a bit dubious.