"Good morning, Luke," said Gaeriel.

"It's good of you to come. I wanted the two of you to meet."

"I wouldn't have missed it for anything," Luke said.

Gaeriel smiled. "I'm glad," she said, and turned toward her daughter. "Malinza," she said. "I want you to meet a very special friend of mine. He's going with me on my trip."

Malinza stopped singing to herself and looked up at Luke, her face very serious indeed. "h.e.l.lo," she said.

"Are you going along to take care of my mommy?"

Luke knelt down in front of the child. The time he had spent with leia's children had taught him a few things. He knew that some questions needed to be turned on their side if you wanted to understand what the child was really thinking. Maliriza was a little worried about who would take care of her while her mommy was gone. Best to try and direct the conversation to that point and rea.s.sure her as best he could. "I'm not going along to take care of her," Luke said, "but I will watch out for her. And even if your mother has to go away for a while, she'd never do it if she didn't make sure someone was here to take care of you."

"That's right, Malinza," Gaeriel said, kneeling down next to her daughter and giving her a pat on the shoulder. "Madame Boble will stay with you, and Lady Corwell will come by every single day to make sure everything is all right. And all your family will be here, too.

They'll all watch Out for you."

"But I want you, Mommy," said Malinza.

"I know you do, sweetheart. It would break my heart if you didn't.

But sometimes grown-ups have to do things they don't want to do. I don't want to leave, but I have to. Luke's friends helped us an awful lot, a long time ago. Now they need help, and we have to pay them back."

Malinza looked at Luke, her face solemn. "Do you really need my mommy to help you?" she asked.

Luke thought of his own niece and nephews, cut off behind the Corellian interdiction field, missing in action aboard the Millennium Falcon. Without Gaeriel, they would have no Bakuran fleet. And without the Bakuran fleet, there would be no rescue of Corellia "Yes," he said.

"We really do need her help." Malinza thought for a moment, and then nodded.

"All right," she said, her voice very serious. "But you watch out for her, like you promised."

"I will," said Luke. "I will." The Gentleman Caller moved in toward Corellia at a leisurely pace, crawling along at sublight speeds on a course that would get the ship to the planetventu ally.

Tendra Risant checked the radionic transmitter for the hundredth time. It seemed to be working. All the indicator lights were showing green, and it was drawing as much power as it was supposed to, and the message repeater was definitely sending Out her hailing call over and over again. She had checked that enough times. "Tendra to Lando," her voice said from the speaker. "Please respond on prea.s.signed frequency." Pause. "Tendra to Lando. Please respond on prea.s.signed frequency." Pause. "Tendra to Lando. Please respond on prea.s.signed frequency. ." Then a tensecond pause, and then the same message over again, ad infinitum.

But it had been days now, and there had been no response. Lando had told her that the radionic unit aboard the Lady Luck was always on, always scanning for messages. So why hadn't he answered yet? Was he even in-system? Was he away from the Lady Luck? Was he dead? Or was it that some component that cost a tenth of a credit had failed, some gizmo inside her transmitter or his receiver? Maybe Lando was sending a reply back, over and over again, and wondering why she did not respond. But the receiver seemed to be working just fine as well. At least, when she turned the volume gain up all the way, she got a low hissing sound, which had to be static from natural Sources. If the unit could pick up static, surely it could pick up a signal. Or did that necessarily follow? Tendra realized she did not know anywhere near enough about radionics.

But she was getting to be a Galaxy-cla.s.s expert on waiting. And worrying.

She turned up the gain on the transmittermonitor again, just to be sure that it was still working. "Tendra to Lando. Please respond on prea.s.signed frequency.

Tendra to Lando. Please respond on prea.s.signed frequency.

Tendra to Lando. Please respond on prea.s.signed frequency.

- AUU AT aILOMA 207

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

Yggyn's Choice Time's up," Mara said to leia. "It's time to decide."

Mara sat at the pilot's station of the Jade's Fire, looking calmly at leia. leia, seated at the navigator's station, returned her gaze with an expression steadier than her emotional state. "So it is," she agreed.

"Time to decide."

Once she had shaken their initial pursuit, Mara had simply left the Jade's Fire into a random orbit of the star Corell, letting the craft drift where she might, running under minimum power on all systems. The idea was that a random, unpowered flight pattern would give them the best chance of escaping detection from whoever might try and come after them.

Their course was an unstable one; the ship would spiral into Corell in a few months' time if left to her own devices.

Not that any such thing would happen. They could change course at any time. The problem was, they had to decide which course to follow.

They had helped each other escape, but neither had had any clear plan of action beyond that. They had attempted to come up with a plan just after their escape, but neither of them was in any shape to do so.

The discussion had degenerated into pointless bickering. It had become clear in very short order that they were too tired to decide anything.

Both women had needed at least a little time to recover from their injuries and rest up, and it seemed as if there was no burning need for an immediate choice in any event.

They had agreed on thirty hours' rest and recuperation before coming to a final decision.

The time to choose a destination and a plan had come, but leia had a very strong hunch doing so was not going to be easy. "I take it," said leia "that you still want to head back to Corellia."

"Yes, I do," said Mara. "That's where it's all going on.

Whatever happens in this system is going to be decided there."

"Why should that be of any importance to you?" leia asked. "Why should you care who's up and who's down in this planetary system?

You're not a Corellian, and if you have no love for the Human League, you certainly have no more for the New Republic. Why do you want to be where things are going on? Why don't you just get out?"

"I do care what happens," Mara said. "I luna trading business, and we've made a large investment in Corellia We've put in time and money and energy here, and it was just starting to pay off. We were just beginning to do some very promising routing through this sector.

My costs went through the roof when the revolts started. I want stability so I can make a reliable profit. Stability doesn't have much to do with tinpot dictators. And even if I don't much care for your New Republic, maybe the idea of someone wiping out whole star systems full of people bothers me." Mara paused for a moment, and looked straight at leia "But that's not the real point of your question, is it?"

leia rejected the impulse to deny what Mara was implying. No sense pretending when both sides could see the truth. "No," she said.

"It wasn't."

"You wanted to know if I could offer up a plausible -'qas's -.

uuwrjuugrave; As-n explanation for my still being here, a motive for my behavior that wasn't suspicious. After all, the message about the starbuster came through me. You have to wonder if I'm part of the plot.

Might I remind you of the reasons I have for suspecting you in the plot?

The message itself was keyed to your personal characteristics, and the senders went out of their way to demonstrate that they could read your private cipher. Plus, that message contained data that could , 9nly have come from cla.s.sified New Republic sources.

"What possible motive would I have for overthrowing the New Republic's government in the Corellian Sector?" leia demanded.

"I have no idea," Mara replied. "On the other hand, what motive would 1 have for disrupting this system?

You seem to have no trouble at all suspecting me of things without quibbling over motive. Why shouldn't I have the same luxury? Besides, I could spin a perfectly feasible scenario, where you set up some sort of plan to flush out the Human League and the other rebels, and trick them into showing themselves, with the intent of smashing them once you knew where they were. That would be a dangerous game, to say the least, and if it 5 what you're playing at, it has clearly gone wrong. But it's possible."

leia smiled thinly. "Why stop there? Why not let the imagination run wild? Maybe both of us are involved in the plot, but the plot's so compartmented neither of us knows the other's in it. Maybe one of us, or both of us, are dupes, unknowing p.a.w.ns in someone else's game.

You know as well as I do that once you start playing the game of wheels within wheels and hidden plots, it's very hard to stop."

"mie enough," said Mara. "Nonetheless, the point is, I can't entirely trust you or your motives any more than you can trust me or mine."

"Well, that much at least we can agree on," leia said.

"But let's pretend we can trust each other. What do you want to do?"

Mara leaned back in her pilot's chair and stared out at the stars.

"The absolutely logical thing would be to say this is not my fight and I don't wish to get killed in someone else's cross-fire. The sensible move would be to point this ship's nose straight out of the Corellian system and power up the sublight engines. It might take us a good long while to get out of here, but we would get out. And I doubt it would take as long as one might think.

"Agreed," said leia "They can't keep that interdiction field on forever. It's got to draw huge amounts of power, and it can't be easy to maintain. Even if maintaining it is no technical problem, sooner or later being isolated is going to do them more harm than good.

Politically, economically, and so on."

"Right," said Mara. "That's the way I see it. Even so, I don't want to leave, no matter how sensible it might be. Someone has caused me a lot of trouble, and I want to return the favor. Besides, we also have to bear in mind that the moment we relight the sublight engines, and the longer we have them on, the higher the odds we will be detected and shot down."

"You know this ship and how detectable she is," leia said. "Can that help us decide? Is there one destination that we can get to with the lowest odds of being spotted?"

"Nice thought," Mara said, "but it doesn't get anywhere. We're still close enough to Corellia that we'd barely have to light our engines to get there. If we did a night-side approach over the oceans, and treetop flying to get to where we wanted to be, the odds on spotting us would be very low. Selonia and the Double Worlds, Talus and Thalus, are just about at their point of closest approach to each other. They're furthest from here, on the opposite side of the sun.

On the other hand, we LlU -all-flaw I-WaS would have the sun behind us' making it harder for anyone watching from Corellia or Selonia or the Doubles to detect us. Drall is closer, making for a shorter flight, but we wouldn't have the sun's glare to hide in. However, my best information is that Drall has the least advanced s.p.a.cecraft detection net of any of the planets. It all comes out about even."

"All right, then," leia said. "You don't want to leave the system, and the odds of reaching any one of the plausible destinations are about the same as any of the others, but you want to go to Corellia, on the grounds of it being the center of the crisis. I think returning would be suicidal. They'll be hunting for us, and they'll be mad at us. It's the one place where we're certain to get a hostile reception by the folks in charge."

"And you want to go to Drall, because that is most likely where your children are, right?" Mara asked.

"Yes I do. The only native Corellian onboard the Millennium Falcon wasa Drall. He'd direct the ship to the place he knew best, where he could keep the children safest."

"And I say that's pointless," Mara said. "We don't know anything about what's happening on the other planets, but we have to a.s.sume things are pretty bad. if Ebrihim does have your children there, he has them in hiding, for their own safety as well as his own. And we'd have to go into hiding as well-not easy when there are only a few hundred humans on the planet. How are we supposed to stay hidden, find another group who is hidden, and meet up with them?"

"Through the Force," leia said. "Get me anywhere near that planet, and I'd be able to sense their location.

I know it."

"Which would do us a lot of good if they are under lock and key.

Even if we do manage to find them, what do you do then? Pat your children on the head and hide with them? Would a human ship coming in make them safer or put them in more danger? I'd guess danger, if things are as unsettled there as on Corellia And what do 1 do? Drall is a sleepy backwater. For that matter, what would you do there?

We're not going to be able to accomplish anything on Drall." leia said nothing at first. Mara's arguments made a little too much sense.

Finding her children would make her feel better, but it would not improve the situation.

She could only truly make them safe by putting an end to this crisis. "I can't abandon my children," she said to Mara.

"No one's asking you to. Look, think it through. If they are alive and well and on Drall, they have Chewbacca and the Millennium Falcon and their Drallish tutor and all of his contacts. All that's working to protect them. Would getting to them make them saferor just make you feel better?"

leia frowned. "All right," she admitted. "Maybe I shouldn't go to them-yet. But I am not going to stay away from them one minute longer than I have to." She paused for a moment. "It's obvious," she said, "that we have reached a stalemate. It seems to me that we could come up with good arguments against every single possible course of action."

"And how can one o, f us persuade the other when neither trusts the other 5 arguments?" Mara asked. "I could be trying to talk you into a trap, or vice versa."

Mara was silent for a moment. Then her eyes seemed to light up, ; md she turned toward leia. "I just thought of something," she said.

"Are you familiar with the concept of a Yggyn compromise? It's broken the logjam in more than one trade negotiation."

leia smiled. "I know it well. If neither party can accept the other's proposal, both agree to a third alternative. I want Drall.

You want Corellia Under Yggyn rules, we'd head to Selonia."

Mara shrugged. "I was thinking of Talus and Tralus, but Selonia will do. We need someplace to go, and at least on Selonia there's some chance of a friendly reception. An beats sitting here arguing until we crash into the bin, sun.

"Very well, then," leia said, taking a deep breath and looking out into th to Selonia." e starry darkness. "Very well. We go "I still wish we had brought the Millennium said. "This hovercar cannot defend itself."

Falcon," Q9 "And it's awfully crowded in here," Anakin complained from the rear seat. "When are we going to get there?"

"Uh-oh," said Jaina, sitting in the front. "Jacen, get his mind on something else quick, or you're , going to hear that question about a zillion more times.

The d.u.c.h.ess Marcha was sitting in the hoverca front seat, wedged in between Jaina and r's who was doing the flying. She had never been quite so close to a Wookiee before, and she was not finding it to be the most relaxing of experiences. But she couldn't understand why Jaina was so agitated by her little and then ask him to be quiet?"

she asked Jaina in a lo brother's question. "Can't you just tell him the answer voice. She was quite baffled by the skills required t manage a small human child. Besides which, sh wouldn't mind knowing how long it would be herself. It was not easy getting information out of Chewbacca.

"Doesn't work that way," Jaina whispered back. "Answering would just get him focused on the question, and he'd ask, 'When are we going to get there now?" two minutes from now. And two minutes after that, and after that."

"I see," said Aunt Marcha, though that was a baldfaced lie. Such strange creatures, these humans, the children far more so than the adults. How they had ever risen to a position of prominenc in Galactic affairs was quite beyond her.

But at least the older ones knew how to manage the younger one.

"Anakin!" Jacen said, having found a suitable distraction. "Look down there! See? That's the Boiling Sea.

Anakin, sitting in the seat behind Jacen, next to Q9, looked down at the dark water below. "I don't see it boiling," he objected.

"It doesn't always boil," Jacen said. "Only sometimes.

In the summer. But Q9 will tell you all about it.

"I will?" the droid asked.

"Yes, Q9," Ebrihim said, from his seat next to Jacen.