Mobquet Chariots started up with a coded ignition, but Luke hadn't tinkered with speeders for twenty-five years to no purpose-Han joked that Luke could hot-wire an Imperial torpedo platform with one of Leia's hairpins.

Then they were running through the night, under the stars.

The Theran riders took refuge in a grotto deep in the hills, an enormous geode of amethyst away from the storm's heart. Two or three Therans illuminated glowrods or torches, and the glare of them twinkled on the rough jewels around them, the shadows moving strangely through the fugitive brightness. There must, thought Leia, be something in what Callista said about the crystals generating a radiance that killed the drochs. There were none in the cave.

After a long time of silence, hearing the boulders crashing like pebbles in the surf against the canyon walls outside, Leia asked softly, "Who is Dzym? What is he? He's keeping Ashgad alive, isn't he?"

Callista nodded. "As he's kept Beldorion alive-and Splendid all these years. I think he had dealings with Taselda, too. The original split between them may have been on his account." Torchlight splintered over the faceted pocket of jewels in which they sat, made strange brightness over her thin face, in her colorless eyes.

"He's the key to Ashgad's deal with Loronar, the key to your kidnapping along with poor old Liegeus's ability to cut a perfect holofake: the one who could set the drochs to drink the life out of the ships' crews at a certain moment and no sooner. He controls them-drinks life through them."

"And he enjoys it," said Leia softly, remembering Dzym's face.

"That's what he wanted me for, wasn't it? Because I'm a Jedi. So he could touch the Force."

"I don't think that was conscious in him," she said. "He couldn't use it, really, or not use it to any degree of skill. He just wants that life, that addition to his own life. He thinks he can control them all, no matter how far they spread. I don't know, but I think he's vrong. I believe it's only a matter of time-and not very much time-before they get far enough from him to slip from his control, before they breed in such numbers that they'll be controlling one another, not obeying him. But he doesn't believe that. And at heart he doesn't really care. All he wants is to get off this planet, into more fertile worlds."

"That doesn't tell me who he is," said Leia. "Or how he can do this."

"He can do this," said Callista, "because Dzym is a hormonally altered, mutated, and vastly overgrown two-hundred-and-fifty-year-old droch."

"Hills," whispered Liegeus. "Up the canyon. Death Seed-takes less than half an hour..."

The cold within Luke was unmistakable, terrifying. He couldn't even touch it with the Force, because its molecular structure was so precisely his own. He was surprised that his voice sounded so calm.

"Can we outrun it? Get clear of his range?"

"Have to... cross the galaxy... to do that. No." Dzym's victim struggled to sit up, long hair moving back with the wind.

"Another way."

Luke's breath was beginning to drag hard by the time he halted the speeder, as far up a jagged crevice of crystalline scree as he could manage to ascend. His companion had fallen silent, and for a heartstopping time Luke feared that the man had died and in so doing condemned him to death as well. But Liegeus raised his head when Luke shook him, regarded him with dark eyes drunk with fatigue.

"Ah. Knew I couldn't... get out of it... this easily. Ground lightning kills them. Rig a jump-circuit field through the crystals... lots of them here..."

Luke was already dismantling the speeder's engine with fumbling hands.

Even a Mobquet Chariot could not generate one-thousandth of the power of the ground-lightning storms, but once a crude circuit had been wired to push electricity through the huge fragments of crystal that littered the talus-slope underfoot, the dim tingling of low-level current was palpable to someone sitting between the points of exchange.

"It won't kill them," whispered Liegeus, as Luke handed him one of the thermal blankets from the Chariot's emergency kit, and sat down beside him. His hands and body itched with a discomfort that never reached the level of pain. "But it weakens them to the point that they can't kill us, can't draw off our energy and transmit it to Dzym.

When the sun rises we'll be well."

Luke shivered and glanced skyward at the huge, cold, unwavering stars, wondering how much was left of the night. The electricity pa.s.sing between the crystals and over the two men was too weak to throw light: Only now and then, a quick spark or a glow, like luminous swamp gas, seemed to wicker in the air. Of greater brightness were the stars themselves, whose pallid bluish gleam seemed to be picked up by the slabs and cl.u.s.ters and formations of shining stone that cl.u.s.tered the canyon walls.

He pulled his own too-thin blanket close around him. His words smoked in the wan electrical glare.

"Is she all right?" he asked. "Leia?"

The older man nodded. "Ashgad forbade Dzym to go near her. He's almost completely enslaved to Dzym, but at least until the Reliant was ready to take Dzym off-planet, away from all danger of the daytime radiance of the crystals, they couldn't let anyone be sure of her fate.

Dzym couldn't argue with that-and this whole treaty with Getelles to get the mining rights for Loronar Corporation was Dzym's idea, to get himself off the planet-but he doesn't think like human beings. I kept him away from her as well as I could."

He let his head fall back again, on the jacket Luke had wadded up underneath it. "I say' that as if I think it mitigates what I've done.

It doesn't. It's just that I... that Dzym... I could not go against him.

But when she escaped, I couldn't let her go alone.

Unarmed, with nothing. She's.... It's been a long time since I cared for anything or anyone except remaining alive another day. But Leia-Lady Solo, I should say... she was kind. And very brave.

Certainly braver than I, though that could be said of the average lizard.

Luke's head was swimming. With part of his consciousness he was acutely aware of Dzym's malice, of his attempt to draw away the energy that kept Luke's flesh warm and his heart beating. But through his dizziness he heard the voices again, whispering, very close to him now.

They were saying something. Saying something to him. About Leia, he thought, or at least about the image of her. He saw a slim dark-haired woman doing something with what looked like an antigrav unit.

Programming it?

The vision slid away.

Who are they? he wanted to ask. Those invisible beings, the watchers in the hills? Where were their cities, or where had their cities been before the dying of the seas?

Instead he asked, "Who are you?"

In the dark at the bottom of the canyon, Liegeus was only a sense of living, an echo of the Force, but he heard the man's chuckle. "A failure," he replied softly. "The blackest sheep the House Vorn ever produced.

A philosopher, I've styled myself. But my art has always been imitative, mocking up holos, striving for perfection and the belief of others. I was a harmless prankster as a child, and I loved the precision of it. I think that usually reads as 'holo forger' to law enforcement agencies, though men of my talents can make fortunes in the entertainment industry. But for my sins I was that rare treasure for such as Ashgad: a man whose family would not miss him. To them, for years, I have been as one dead."

He sighed, and for a time there was no sound but the faint hissing of the speeder's electrical system, and the occasional pops of the free-flowing circuits jumping.

"Don't be too hard on Ashgad," he whispered. "He's more a slave to Dzym than I am.

"Ironic, isn't it? That Dzym, who started out his life as an appetizer, should..."

"As a what?" asked Luke, startled.

"An appetizer." Liegeus blinked up at him. "I'm sorry. I'm getting ahead of myself. Forgotten..." He shook his head, trying to clear it, but the la.s.situde did not leave his eyes. "It was Beldorion's greed-or I suppose one could say his gourmandism-that was his downfall. That Kubazi chef of his, Zubindi, was always experimenting with enzymati-callv enhancing and gene-splicing new types of insects so they'd be tastier, juicier, more fun for Beldorion to eat. Hutts like to eat sentient things, you know.

They like the game of chasing them around the plate for a bit. Vile things."

He shook his head again, and this time Luke glimpsed the echoes of ugly scenes long ago witnessed in his eyes.

"Well, Zubindi finally got the idea of enzymatically enhancing, feeding, raising a droch, mutating it in the dark, far longer than its normal lifespan. Before anyone realized what was going on, the droch had grown, and achieved intelligence, to the point where it enslaved Zubindi. It drained energy from him, but at the same time gave him back strength and energy-which goodness knows he needed, in dealing with Beldorion-in a sort of double vampirism. And in the end, of course, the droch Dzym enslaved Beldorion as well."

He managed a faint laugh, gazing up at the stars. "It's certainly a lesson to us all, though I'm not sure about what. And, of course, once Dzym began draining his strength, Beldorion was finished as a power in Hweg Shul. It was easy for Ashgad to take over, when he arrived on this planet. He stepped into Beldorion's power, into his household and all his servants.... And, of course, into Dzym, too."

Luke wondered if that was the reason the old Senator had built the house in the desert: to protect his growing son from the influence of the creature that he himself could not be rid of. And of course it hadn't done any good.

"In fact, I'm not sure how much of Seti Ashgad is left, in that body and that brain." Liegeus's voice had sunk to a murmur-for a moment Luke could not tell whether he was speaking of the elder Ashgad or the younger.

"Certainly not enough to go against Dzym's will. And as the resident expert on local conditions here, it was his job to a.s.sure Getelles and the CEOs of Loronar that the drochs were in no way connected with the ancient Death Seed plague. It's not that difficult.

They truly don't want to know. As I didn't want to know, and managed not to know, up until seven or eight months ago."

His breath went out in another sigh. By a flicker of the moving current, Luke saw his hand grope feebly at the glittering pebbles beneath his fingers, stir at them aimlessly. "Eventually of course the matter was pushed under my nose in unmistakable terms. I told myself I had to do 'something' about it, get word out 'somehow. But the problem with 'somehow' is that it really means 'later. And there was always Dzym, waiting there for me. Hungering for true life, true energy, not that pitiful low-level field that synthflesh generates, though he absorbs that if he can get nothing else. It wasn't until Leia Lady Solo-came, and fought so hard, worked so hard, risked everything, that I understood how completely contemptible I had become. I did not..." He hesitated. "I did not wish to appear so in her eyes. Does that seem contemptible to you?"

Luke remembered his days of puppy love for her, and the way he and Han had vied with each other as pilots to impress her. Not only they, but every unattached pilot in the Rebel fleet, it seemed, had been in love with her. "It's the destination that matters," he said softly. "Not the road."

"I fear I've left it rather late." The philosopher's voice sank to a whisper again. "I was lying to Dzym. The program that will take the Reliant out past the gun stations is finished. It just needs to be input.

And the first load of Spook crystals is ready to be shipped."

Luke winced, as sudden pain stabbed through his head. At least, he thought, growing up on this world, Ashgad wouldn't have the educa tion that would permit him to input something as complex as a launch-vector.

"And crystals," went on Liegeus, not noticing, "are not the only thing it will carry. It will bear Dzym to some headquarters, where he will not be affected by the sunlight and radiance of this world. Dzym and as many drochs as he cares to take with him, to draw lives from others that he may then drink those lives from them in his turn. And so it will go on, until half the worlds of the galaxy are planets of the dead."

Deep in the dark of the Transit Galactic Shipping Warehouse on Cybloc XII, a flare of white light sparked. There was a hiss, as of an electric welding arm, and the sudden, choking stink of sizzling plastene.

"Artoo-Detoo," complained a voice, close by but somewhat m.u.f.fled, "W ould you please take a few more precautions to ascertain that it is safe before you undertake activities of this nature?"

No reply. Plastene fizzled with heat; then the tenor snarl of popaway fasteners breaking loose. From outside came the dim, swift squeaking of wheels, the fleeing patter of feet.

"Really, if i had known that Master Yarbolk's 'plan' to get us to Cybloc XII consisted of mailing us parcel post..."

The light vanished. Silence returned, a dreadful silence far too deep for the hub of trade between the Meridian sector and the Republic whose gateway this lifeless moon was. Then another creak and pop, and the white plastene side of a particularly large crate fell with a clatter.

Artoo-Detoo set forward his balance wheel and trundled slowly out, raining styrene packing in all directions. The white glow of his visual receptor moved across the contents of the warehouse: crates and boxes stamped with shipping labels and addresses from every corner of the Meridian sector, bales of raw' materials, machinery and computer equipment still m.u.f.fled in goatgra.s.s casings. Apart from the cl.u.s.ter of containers stamped with the name and shipping number of the freighter Impardiac, out of Budpock, every crate, every bale, every casing had been opened and rifled. Machinery lay strewn across the rough gray crete of the floor. Gobbets of packing material surrounded broken boxes like wads of gristle after a butchering. Near the door, two men in the uniforms of the shipping company lay dead, with the blue faces and bloated bellies of those who have ceased to worry about the cares of this world quite some time ago.

The huge chamber stank of death.

Artoo's wheels squeaked softly as he moved around the pile of crates, seeking a particular one. The voice that had spoken before said impatiently, "Over here! Really, this may be the safest way for droids to travel, but it certainly has its drawbacks."

The label on the crate said: CALRISSIAN, CYBLOC XII HOLD FOR PICKtIP The return addressee was one Yarbolk Yemm, of Dimmit station, on Budpock.

A sharp sound in a corner of the warehouse made Artoo swivel his cap, the light following the source of the noise. It was only a small, ranged, insentient scavenger, sniffing for what it could get.

Artoo began to pry open the pop fasteners on Threepio's crate. The silence was dreadful.

"Well, of course, it's quiet," said Threepio, when Artoo remarked on that silence. He carefully unfolded his much-mangled joints, stepping out of the crate and picking goatgra.s.s and styrene beads out of his joints.

"It's quite late at night. I suppose even major ports have to sleep sometime. Oh, all right," he added, "the main port on Coruscant is never quiet. Nor on Carosi. Oh, I suppose the one on Bespin is active even at the bottom of the graveyard watch. But that's no reason to say that it's 'too quiet." What is 'too quiet?"

The door of the warehouse hissed open. Artoo rolled immediately behind a gutted bale of dwimmery and, when Threepio showed no sign of following, reached out with his gripper arm and dragged the taller droid into concealment with him.

The creatures that entered the warehouse were unrecognizable in e-suits.

They could have been anything from Sull.u.s.tans to lshi Tib, though one of them, by the nasal inflection of his voice, Threepio identified as a Rodian. What he said in that nasally voice was, "This must have come off that last ship."

"Good," rasped another voice, tinny through the e-suit's voder circuit.

"They haven't been touched... no, fester it, looks like some of 'em have.

Let's see what we got."

They entered, the tallest hauling an antigrav sledge behind him.

The sodium light on the Rodian's helmet made jarring white slices of glare, huge black rhomboids of shadow. Vermin scampered behind the crates. One of the invaders kicked aside the bodies of the dead, and while he and one comrade began systematically prying open every crate and parcel in the untouched corner, the third knelt by the bodies and checked their pockets.

"What you got there?"

"'Puter system. X-70."

"Piece of garbage." They loaded it onto the sledge nevertheless.

"That silk there?"

"Yeah. What's in the crate?"

"Looks like wafers. Company payroll records."

"Take 'em. We'll sell 'em wiped. What..."

The speaker turned quickly, as the door of the warehouse slid open again.

Two low', blocky forms stood framed in the almost-total darkness outside and whatever hour of the night it might be, Threepio knew that a working s.p.a.ceport was never that dark. Gold rounds of light from their visual receptors identified the newcomers as droids.

Both opened fire without hesitation or parlay on the looters, who fell in their tracks.

The internal weapons had been reset-these droids had not fired to stun.

Threepio was so indignant he would have spoken out in protest, had not Artoo sent a quick subsonic prod with his welding arm into Threepio's exposed wiring.

The two new droids wavered and hissed a report over their remote transmitters, then, receiving an answer, proceeded to take up where the human looters had left off, loading up the sledge with everything of value that had been in the Impardiac's delivery, then stripping the e-suits off the looters before they left, silent as they had come.

"What in the name of the maker," asked Threepio, "is going on?"

The streets of Cybloc XII's main transit base were lightless, save for the occasional flicker of dying emergency circuits. Most of the docking bays were empty and dark, the buildings of its transport facilities a furtive whisper of scavengers, vermin, and occasional looters, the helmets of their e- suits glistening in the dark. The offices of the Port Authority contained horrors, bodies long dead and rotting in the alien bacteria that even the carefully controlled atmosphere of the domed facility could not completely exclude.

The Port Authority, the Republic Consular Offices, the fleet headquarters-all had been looted of their communications equipment.

In the main infirmary of the base, bodies occupied every bed, every centimeter of spare floor s.p.a.ce, every office and closet: bodies unmarked, rotting, curiously peaceful in aspect, as if they had all slipped into sleep and from there to dissolution. Those bodies, that is, that had not been turned over, tossed about, pockets and clothing checked for what they might contain. The medical equipment in every laboratory was gone or partially dismantled for its microprocessors and transistors.

A couple of decapitated Two-Onebees remained in what had been the bacta-tank room-the tank drained of its fluid and bereft of its control panel-silent, their chest cavities open and dangling wires, like corpses themselves in the horrible gloom.

With a slight hiss, the emergency lighting of the medical center browned out and gave up its final, feeble ghost. With darkness came a skittering, brown insects with which Threepio was not familiar scrambling along the walls.