His eyes were alive with terror. "I'm being eaten alive!"

Tash and Zak looked on, frozen with terror. "Blast it!" Smada roared.

"Blast what?" his guards shouted back. "There is nothing!"

They watched helplessly as the Gank's head was drawn in, and then the rest of his body, until all that remained was one hand sticking up out of the dirt. Finally the hand, too, disappeared. The hole closed up as if it had never been, and the victim was gone.

For the rest of the bodyguards, it was the last straw. Smada didn't pay them enough for this. They searched for someplace safe. But what place was safe from the ground itself?

Smada's hoversled.

The five remaining Ganks swarmed the floating platform, trying to escape the creature beneath the ground. There wasn't enough room on the crowded sled, and they began to scratch and claw one another like men fighting over the last life pod in a doomed starship.

"Get back, you spice-grubbing muckworms!" the Hutt commanded. He swung his thick tail, sweeping them off his sled.

All but one of the Ganks were dragged screaming into the ground.

Each time the hole sealed up as if it had never been. In moments, Smada's henchmen had vanished.

Zak, Tash, and Deevee stood on the ground. The monster seemed uninterested in Deevee. Tash was protected, and Zak was too, as long as he held her hand. Atop the hoversled sat the surviving Gank killer and Smada the Hutt. Smada's ma.s.sive frame shook with anger.

"WHAT IS THIS!" The roar exploded out of Smada the Hutt like a thunderclap. The mighty Hutt rose up to his full height, balancing himself on the tip of his thick body. Stretched out, Smada stood three meters above the deck of his hoversled, dwarfing even his Gank guard. It was an awesome sight to behold, and his voice boomed powerfully enough to conjure a demon.

Instead it conjured the Enzeen.

They melted out of the forest, twenty of them, all carrying lamps. They walked calmly across the ground, unafraid of whatever it was that had just swallowed up five Ganks.

Tash recognized the lead Enzeen.

"Chood." Smada's voice was like a dagger. "What is going on here!"

Chood returned Smada's smoldering glare with a look of bored disdain. "Your doom."

"Bah!" Smada curled back to his usual p.r.o.ne position. "This is some trick of yours. There is a beast, a creature that tunnels under the ground and hides. It attacks from below."

Chood smiled. "The beast does not hide."

Next to Smada, the Gank pounded his fist on the hoversled deck.

"Then where is the beast? Where!"

All the Enzeen chuckled. As it had before, Chood's smile became evil. "After all this time you still do not understand! The secret of D'vouran has escaped you." He laughed a low, cruel laugh. "You think you will be eaten by a creature beneath the planet. You do not realize that you will be eaten by the planet itself!"

CHAPTER 16.

Chood roared with laughter.

Tash shuddered. The planet. It was the planet. That was the source of her feeling of dread. That was why she felt like she was being watched. The planet-everything around her-was watching.

She looked down at the ground and wondered what waited beneath: invisible teeth tearing the flesh from their bones. The strength seemed to melt out of her legs, and she clung to Zak for support.

But Zak was just as scared. The ground, the simple, solid ground they walked on every minute of every day, had suddenly become a monster.

And the only thing protecting them was a tiny pendant hanging around Tash's neck.

In the midst of all this terror, Smada the Hutt picked a speck of dirt from his fingernail. He had already forgotten about his henchmen.

They could be replaced. His devious mind had already bent around the terror of his situation, and he moved on in search of ways to exploit it.

He was a Hutt after all.

"Chood," he began carefully. "I'm sure we can come to some sort of arrangement. Perhaps if I were to offer you, say, two million credits to a.s.sure my safe pa.s.sage?"

"I wouldn't offer you safe pa.s.sage even if I could," the Enzeen replied. "We don't control D'vouran. It feeds when it wants to. And it hungers."

Smada didn't miss a beat. "It can have the children."

"Thanks a lot, you ugly slug!" Zak yelled.

"Quiet, boy!" The bark crept back into Smada's voice. "We are bargaining here."

Chood shook his head. "There will be no bargain. D'vouran's hunger will be sated."

"Then why doesn't it eat you?" Tash wondered.

The Enzeen burst into coa.r.s.e laughter. A few of them stomped their feet on the ground. Chood said, "We live in harmony with the planet. We make sure the planet is fed, and in return, the planet feeds us."

"Feeds you?" Zak asked. "How?"

In answer Chood opened his mouth wide. Again the wriggling tongue came out and plunged into the surface of D'vouran. Several of the other Enzeen did the same. The Slurp-Slurp of their feeding filled the air.

"I'm going to be sick," Zak moaned.

Deevee was the first to understand what he saw. "Since this planet is alive, the Enzeen must somehow suck nutrients from the ground."

"They're parasites," Tash whispered.

Chood's tongue detached itself from the ground and disappeared back into his mouth. He licked his lips and smiled. "D'vouran allows us to live on its body because we attract food. As long as it remains fed, we continue to feed off of it."

"You lure people here to be eaten?" Zak repeated incredulously.

Chood smiled. "Our goal is to serve." He laughed.

Tash shivered. But she couldn't help asking, "But why didn't it just swallow us whole when we first arrived?"

Chood looked at her as though she was a fool. "What purpose would that serve? D'vouran eats one meal a day, or two, but any more and it would frighten other victims away. Instead D'vouran takes its meals slowly. It toyed with you, taking a victim here, a morsel there."

"Until it took the whole town!" Tash cried.

The Enzeen jabbed a finger at Tash. "And that is your fault!"

Tash cringed. "My fault? How?"

"You and that meddling madman began to discover D'vouran's secret.

The planet could not risk your escape, so it consumed everyone in the town the minute they stepped out of their houses during the groundquake."

"Then why doesn't it eat Hoole's brats?" Smada asked.

Chood blinked. He had only just realized that, while Smada sat atop his hoversled, Zak and Tash were standing with their feet on the ground.

The Enzeen moved in.

"Keep away!" Deevee warned. He grabbed hold of one of the Enzeen, but another reached behind him and found a tiny switch on the droid's back. D-V9 was deactivated and fell to the ground. "Deevee!" Tash cried.

Chood pointed to the skimboard strapped to Zak's back. "You there!"

he said to another Enzeen. "Remove that device."

Tash's heart stopped when Chood's eyes found the pendant around her neck.

To her surprise, he did not pull it off. "Interesting. You have been to the laboratory. I should have known something like this might have been left behind by the creators."

"Creators?" she asked. "Did someone make this planet?"

Chood was just about to pluck the pendant from her neck, sending her into oblivion, but his eye glinted suddenly. "I think I'll answer your question. Take them!"

The Enzeen moved with frightening speed. Zak and Deevee were dragged down beside Tash, and a heavy fiber net was cast over them. They struggled for a moment, but a threatening growl from the Enzeen quieted them down.

The rest of the Enzeen closed in on the hoversled. Smada's Gank guard panicked and jumped from the sled, dashing through the trees. The Enzeen did not bother to chase him. They covered Smada in a net far larger and tougher than the one holding Tash, Zak, and Deevee.

The Gank had hardly run a dozen meters before he cried out and stumbled. His foot had caught on a hole in the ground. But when the killer tried to pull his foot loose, he found that the hole had closed up around his ankle. The Gank tried to kick himself loose of the planet.

Instead some enormous force grabbed hold of his leg and pulled him down.

Chood laughed again. "You see? There is no escape from D'vouran.

There is nowhere to run."

While most of the warriors stood guard over their captives, a few of the Enzeen vanished into the woods. They quickly reappeared, carrying two long, stout poles. Still tangled in their net, Zak, Tash, and Deevee were bundled up and lashed to one of the poles, where they hung like a sack of blumfruit. Smada was similarly lashed to the other, but not without a fight.

"Bloodworms! Bantha fodder! I'll tear your eyes out and eat your brains! Hutts will leave their slime tracks on your forgotten graves!"

He fought against the webbing that bound him, but the Enzeen nimbly avoided his clutching arms and thrashing tail. Two or three Enzeen stationed themselves at the ends of each pole, then lifted the carrying bars onto their shoulders.

Only when the humans were securely bound and their feet no longer touched the planet did Chood grab the pendant. With a yank, he pulled it from around her neck.

"Chood!" Tash pleaded. "What are you going to do?"

Chood hissed with undisguised glee. "I am going to give you the answer to your question. I am going to take you to the Heart of D'vouran.

There you will meet a death that makes these other deaths seem like a gift. In the Heart of D'vouran, every last nutrient from your body can be carefully digested. You will be eaten very slowly. Eaten alive."

CHAPTER 17.

The Enzeen took them to the underground laboratory.

There, in the deep chamber, Zak, Tash, and Smada were brought to the edge of the pit. Tash thought she was as miserable as could be.

Deevee's lifeless droid body was dumped next to her.

Terror seemed to flow from the pit like poisoned water from a fountain. Fear filled Zak and Tash. They were underground-inside a living creature, a terrible creature. And they were about to be fed to it.

"This is where your curiousity has gotten you," Chood declared.

"You are about to enter a whole new world of pain. If you thought your friends and allies on the surface suffered, you were wrong. Their deaths were quick and merciful-most of them suffocated when they were pulled under D'vouran's surface. Here, in the Heart of D'vouran, the agony is a thousand times slower, and a thousand times worse, as the planet's victims are carefully digested week after painful week. Put them in!"

The Enzeen freed Zak and Tash from their net and shoved them onto the waiting platform. "Wait!" Chood ordered. He pointed to one of the Enzeen. "You! I thought I told you to remove that device!"

One of the Enzeen had forgotten to take away Zak's hoverboard.

Under Chood's angry glare, he hurriedly detached the board from Zak's back, then stepped away.

It took four Enzeen to drag Smada onto the platform. They quickly freed him from his net as the platform was quickly shoved out over the pit. The ma.s.sive Hutt thrashed about, roaring, "Bantha fodder! Nerf dung!"

The platform tilted crazily, and Zak and Tash clung to the support cables.

Chood addressed them from the edge of the pit, pointing down into the pit. "You wanted to know the secret of D'vouran. It lies here. From this place, D'vouran was first brought to life by its creators, and first learned to feed from this pit."

"Imperial scientists," Tash breathed. "They're always looking for new ways to hurt people."

Chood continued. "But the planet outgrew its creators and learned new and better ways to feed. The scientists lost control of their creation. They were eaten like all who came after them. Now you will follow them."

"Chood! Chood!" Smada bellowed. "It's not too late! Four million credits! I will buy you a new planet!"

The Enzeen ignored him. Several of the blue-skinned creatures pushed the crane's arm, and the parasites began lowering the rope.