Half of them whispered to each other, while the other half shouted loudly around sabacc tables or at the bar.

Once their eyes adjusted to the gloom, Zak and Tash could make out some of the figures in the bar. Most of them were human, but there were a few other species mixed in. They recognized a horn-headed Devaronian, and a wolf-headed Shistavanen, and a gigantic Wookiee towering over a few humans in a corner. Hands, or tentacles, or flippers were wrapped around mugs filled with alien drinks. Every drinker had the hard look of someone who'd been in a lot of fights, and was looking for another one.

The newcomers were about to sit at a small table when a voice boomed, "Hoole!" At the same time, Tash felt a huge hand grab her by the shirt and slam her against a wall.

Someone was pointing a blaster right between her eyes.

CHAPTER 5.

The hand and arm that held the blaster were almost as big as Tash, and the body they were attached to was even bigger. Looking up, Tash recognized the square, ugly face of a Gank.

A Gank killer, as they were usually called. She could see why. Its square yellow face was twisted into a permanent snarl, topped by cruel beady eyes. Its ma.s.sive shoulders looked like small hills, and its arms were as thick as tree trunks. Ganks usually worked as hired guns and bodyguards for rich crime lords. Why had this one decided to pick on her?

Tash got her answer in the next moment. The cantina had fallen silent and still as everyone watched and waited to see what was going to happen next. Out of the corner of her eye, Tash saw that Zak, too, had been grabbed, and there was a blaster pointed at his head as well.

Someone was even pointing a blaster at Deevee. Only Uncle Hoole had not been touched. He stood face-to-face with the most disgusting creature Tash had ever seen. It was a giant slug, with two pudgy arms sticking out of its fat, fleshy body. s...o...b..r trickled from the edges of its wide mouth when it talked. It was this creature that had yelled Hoole's name.

A moment later, Tash learned who the creature was.

Smada the Hutt.

"Hoole!" Smada the Hutt bellowed again. "What a pleasant surprise this is."

"Tell your thugs to let my niece and nephew go, Smada," Hoole said in a low voice.

"No," the slimy Hutt replied. "Not until we've had a chance to talk. And by the way, the minute you use any of your shape-changing powers, my bodyguards will blast your small friends to bantha fodder."

"Leave us alone!" Zak demanded.

"What do you want?" Tash called out.

Smada the Hutt's flesh jiggled as he chuckled and looked at Tash.

"Simple. I want your uncle to work for me. I have need of an a.s.sa.s.sin to eliminate some of my enemies, and Hoole's shape-changing powers will make him the perfect weapon."

"You're crazy!" Tash replied. "Uncle Hoole's a scientist, not a killer!"

Smada the Hutt laughed. "Ho, ho! Is that so? Well, I'd say there's a lot about your uncle that you don't know."

Tash was taken aback. What did he mean by that?

"You are wasting your time, Smada," Hoole said. "What are you doing on this backwater planet anyway?"

Smada wiped a line of drool from his fat face. "Gang wars on my home planet have made it necessary for me to take a short vacation."

"You mean hide, I'll bet," Zak interrupted.

Smada continued. "In fact, those gang wars are the reason I need a new a.s.sa.s.sin. Until I found one, this new planet seemed like the perfect place to lie low for a while." Smada leaned forward until his putrid face was only a few inches from Hoole's. "And I was right. Because a stroke of luck brought you here, too. And now you will work for me."

Hoole shook his head. "I told you no the last time we met, Smada."

The Hutt growled. "And I told you that no one defies Smada the Hutt. I also told you that if we ever met again, I wouldn't ask so nicely. So if you don't agree to work for me right now, I'll have your little brats vaporized."

Suddenly a tall man stepped out of the shadows, pointing a well-worn blaster at Smada. "I don't think so," he said.

"This is none of your concern, stranger," Smada growled.

The tall man answered with a c.o.c.ky grin. "I'm making it my business."

"And mine," said a young woman, who appeared beside the man.

"And mine," said another man with blond hair. He ignited a strange, glowing weapon that looked like a sword made of. pure energy. Tash gasped. A Jedi lightsaber!

"And his," said the tall man, pointing to the huge Wookiee Tash had seen before. The furry Wookiee let out a threatening roar.

If looks had been lasers, Smada would have incinerated them all.

But he obviously didn't want to fight. "D'vouran is a small planet, Hoole. We'll meet again."

Smada signaled to his thugs, who freed Zak and Tash. Tash saw that Smada had been sitting on a hover-sled, a long platform that floated in the air. With his bodyguards around him, Smada the Hutt floated out of the cantina. Since there was nothing left to watch, the rest of the cantina patrons went back to their business, and the noise resumed.

The tall man and the woman holstered their blasters, while the blond man deactivated his lightsaber. Behind them hovered two droids, a stocky R2 unit and a golden protocol droid.

"Oh, what a relief! I was about to short circuit!" the droid said.

"Shouldn't we notify the authorities?"

"Pipe down, Threepio," the tall man said. "There aren't any authorities on D'vouran. Just the Enzeen, and they're too friendly to do much about Smada. " He looked at Hoole. "Everyone okay?"

"Yes," Hoole said. "Luckily Smada was more interested in making threats than hurting anyone. Thank you for your help."

"What was that all about?" Tash asked her uncle. "He seemed to know you," the young man with the lightsaber observed.

Hoole hesitated. Finally he said cautiously, "Yes. He... offered me a job several years ago. When I refused to accept, he swore that he would have his revenge. It was a coincidence that brought us together on this planet."

"An unhappy one, I'd say," the woman added. "That Smada's pretty foul- tempered, even for a Hutt."

"I've known worse," the tall man said.

The Shi'ido introduced himself. "My name is Hoole."

"I'm Han Solo. Call me Han," said the tall man. He had the casual confidence of a starpilot. "This is my partner, Chewbacca," he added, indicating the Wookiee. Then he pointed at the woman. "And this is-"

"Princess Leia," Tash finished.

The woman blinked. All the newcomers looked around to make sure no one had overheard. Han Solo's hand crept toward the blaster slung low on his hip.

The young man with the lightsaber saw the movement and said, "It's all right, Han."

But Han growled, "I'm not taking any chances."

The woman,. Leia, gently put her hand over Han's. "Let me handle this." To Tash, she said, "What makes you think that's my name?"

Zak shook his head. "It's gotta be. Tash is always right about stuff like that. It's weird."

Tash said, "It's not so weird! Zak and I live on Alderaan, where you're from. I mean, we did... before it... well, you know."

She could see from the woman's face that Leia knew very well what had happened to Alderaan.

Beside her, Zak almost shouted, "Hey, are you guys Rebels?"

"Zak!" Tash hissed.

Han's face turned to a scowl. "We're minding our own business, kid, which is what you should be doing."

"We're... researchers," Leia interrupted gently. "We're looking this planet over for some friends of ours. We were just about to leave, but we couldn't sit back and let that Hutt threaten you."

Tash heard Uncle Hoole reply, "I am a researcher, too." But she remembered the Hutt's words: There's a lot about your uncle that you don't know.

There's a lot about everyone I don't know, Tash thought. Leia had been a princess on Alderaan. Whatever she was doing with these people was a lot more important than "research."

"Maybe," Tash said hesitantly, "we could sit down for a while. You could tell us about your research-"

"Of course we will," Leia interrupted with a quick glance at Han.

"We'll stay at least until we're sure that Hutt doesn't come back around."

The two parties sat down together. Han Solo propped his feet up on an empty chair. "Order anything you want. The food's free you know. These Enzeen will feed you till you're ready to burst."

Uncle Hoole nodded. "We've only met one, but he seems extremely friendly. "

To Zak's delight, they did order food from a pa.s.sing waiter.

Moments later the Enzeen reappeared with plates piled high with all sorts of exotic meats, pastries, and fruits. Zak wrinkled his nose at a dish full of eight- legged insects covered in a pink sauce. But when he dipped a finger into the sauce and tasted it, his eyes lit up and he began shoveling it in. The only one at the table who kept up with him was the Wookiee.

Tash had no appet.i.te. Her stomach was in a knot-the feeling of fear had not gone away. She was trying to ignore it. It was probably just her imagination anyway, and she refused to make a fool of herself the way she'd done when the Enzeen put the flowers around her neck.

As they began to eat, everyone relaxed. Even Han Solo seemed to be interested as Uncle Hoole and Zak described their journey. But Tash drifted from one conversation to another, unable to concentrate. Deevee had been cornered by C-3P0 and his companion, R2-D2.

"... and then I found myself alone on the planet Tatooine, wandering through that terrible desert!" Threepio was saying. "It was perfectly dreadful."

"Fascinating, I'm sure," Deevee replied. He looked as bored as a droid could look.

"Wait until you hear what happened next!" Threepio trilled.

"I don't suppose you were deactivated or anything convenient like that?" Deevee asked.

"Well, no."

"Too bad," the unhappy droid muttered. "Well, you might as well go on, then,..."

Tash could barely pay attention. Maybe it was the exotic food, or maybe the feeling of being watched was growing stronger, but she thought she might be sick. The sensation was so strong that she had actually forgotten about the blond man with the Jedi lightsaber, until he leaned across the table to speak to her. "Is everything all right?" he asked.

"Um, yeah. Fine," she said.

The young man smiled. "Your name's Tash, right? I'm Luke. Luke Skywalker. "

Something about him made her feel strange. Not "strange" like the crushes she'd had on boys back on Alderaan-she had outgrown crushes anyway. This was a sense of... relief. Tash felt as if she'd been waiting to meet someone like Luke Skywalker all her life.

His blue eyes stared at her like a scanner reaching into her deepest thoughts. "Something's troubling you."

"I guess," Tash began. She never liked telling people about the feelings she sometimes got. But she found herself confiding in him easily. "I guess I feel a little uneasy here. I don't know what exactly, but something's bothering me. It's probably just my imagination." She didn't expect him to understand, since no one ever understood.

To her surprise, Luke said, "Not too long ago, a good friend taught me a very important lesson: trust your feelings."

From the next chair, Chewbacca barked a question at Hoole, and Han translated. "So you say you dropped out of hypers.p.a.ce fifteen minutes too early?"

"Uncle Hoole nodded. "It caused a great deal of damage to our ship."

"The same thing happened to us. My ship, the Millennium Falcon, got shaken up pretty good." The starpilot shook his head. "I don't know, maybe it's just an error in the star charts."

"Perhaps," Uncle Hoole agreed. "But in our case, I think it was some problems we had on board." He glared at Tash.

Zak laughed. "He means Tash. She was playing Jedi Knight in the c.o.c.kpit."

Tash felt her face grow red. Luke Skywalker raised an eyebrow and gave her a knowing smile. "So you want to be a Jedi, do you?"

"I've read about them," she confessed. "My parents were on Alderaan when it... you know. I always thought that if there were more Jedi, they wouldn't have let it happen."

"They do their best, Tash," Luke said. "That's all any of us can do."

"Are-are you a Jedi?" she asked almost in a whisper, pointing at his lightsaber.

Luke shook his head. "I wish I could say yes. But no, I'm not. This lightsaber belonged to my father."

Tash nodded sadly. "They say all the Jedi are gone now. So I don't know how I'd ever find one to teach me."

Luke put his hand on her shoulder. He whispered, "Don't give up hope yet. You might be surprised. A Jedi might come looking for you someday."

Tash wanted to know what he meant by that. But she didn't get a chance to ask. Because at that moment, someone screamed.