Leia went through the second exercise routine of the day, but kept it light. She might need to move in a hurry, and she wanted to be flexible and warmed up but not exhausted.

Things were about to happen.

36.

The sludge was a greenish black, thick, oily, and it stank worse than anything Luke had ever smelled before. Dregs of the dregs, the silty goop was liquid, or at least fluid, and it flowed around their feet, sloshing sometimes deeper than their ankles.

Luke was very glad he had calf-length boots with his new clothes.

The tunnel in which they walked was as big as Vidkun had promised. It was lighted from a row of somewhat dim overhead glowsticks but bright enough to see as much as they wanted.

Something ahead of them chittered, and there came a pair of splashes, as if somebody had dropped a couple of head-size stones into the inky liquid.

Chewie, in the lead, muttered something. He sounded quite agitated. He stopped moving.

Lando, right behind him and just ahead of Luke and Vidkun, said, "I heard it. It's not my fault you didn't want to wear boots. Go on, it's more afraid of you than you are of it."

Behind them, bringing up the rear, Dash said, "Yeah, better watch yourself, Chewbacca! I hear that sewer serpents love Wookiee toes!"

Chewie's reply to that was short, sharp, and probably obscene.

Lando said, "Fine, forget the life debt you owe Han. Let the bad guys keep Leia because you're afraid of a toothless little slitherette."

Chewie growled, but started moving again.

Vidkun said, "What's with the Wook?"

"He doesn't like little swimming or running things," Luke said. "He really doesn't like 'em."

Vidkun shrugged. "A few hundred more meters," he said. He was apparently unaffected by their slog through the foul flow sloshing against their legs.

"Hey!" Dash said. "Look out!"

Luke spun, pulled his lightsaber from his belt, and thumbed the weapon's control on-Just in time to see a large bloodshot eye pop up on a fleshy stalk attached to something slithering through the murky effluvium toward him. He also caught sight of Dash's fast draw. A dianoga!

"Don't shoot!" Luke ordered. With that, he dropped into a crouch and swung the lightsaber.

The dianoga tried to duck, but it was too slow. The shimmering beam of hard light sliced through the stalk, and the eye tumbled into the sludge.

The wounded creature began to thrash wildly, heaving large and muscular coils of its body every which way.

Luke stepped in closer and brought the blade down. Hit the dianoga's body a solid blow and chopped it in half.

The cut pieces continued thrashing, but the spasms quickly subsided. Dash spun his blaster around his finger and dropped it back into his holster.

"Nice move, kid."

"I've seen these things before," Luke said. "Last time I ran into one was in a trash compactor. It nearly got me."

Chewie harned his agreement.

"You spend a lot of time in places like this?" Dash said.

"Not if I can help it."

The five of them continued to wade through the mire.

"Just ahead, there," Vidkun said.

They stopped. There were two large, round holes in the wall, covered with finger-thick metal mesh gates. The holes were angled down slightly. More sludge ran from the smaller tubes in a shallow stream to join the slow-moving slurry in the large pipe.

Lando said, "Okay, Vidkun, let's see if those codes you have work."

The engineer moved forward, did something to the locking mechanisms with a plastic card. The gates swung open. He grinned at them. "See? Just like I told you. We want the one on the right."

Chewie started to climb into the new tunnel. It was a little short for him, but the others should have no trouble walking upright in it.

Chewie slipped, nearly fell, managed to catch himself. He had to put one hand into the goo to do it, and when he pulled that hand out, it was as dark as the stuff that covered it. He shook his hand violently.

Chewie was not happy. "Careful," Vidkun said. "It's a little slippery in places."

Chewie turned slowly to stare at Vidkun. Lucky for the engineer that Wookiee eyes weren't lasers; otherwise, Vidkun would have been burned into a crispy black lump where he stood.

Lando chuckled. "Yeah, be careful, you big clumsy - yow!" Lando skidded and sat down in the sludge. He came up fast, but not fast enough to keep his backside frombeing soaked.

Chewie laughed so hard Luke thought he might fall again.

Luke fought his own grin. It served Lando right, buthe didn't want to be next, so he kept quiet. Things had a way of happening if you tempted fate.

"You should have worn old clothes," Dash put in.

"Hey, Rendar, I don't have any old clothes."

"You do now. I don't think you'll ever get 'em clean enough to wear in public. They'd drum you right out of the Elite Stormtroopers smelling like that."

"Shut up," Lando said.

They moved into the drain and climbed the slight incline very carefully.

"Coming on the zap field," Vidkun said. "Lemmerun the deactivator."

Everybody stopped while the engineer fiddled with the controls on a small black box he pulled from his belt.

Just ahead of them the air shimmered. There was a brief flash of purplish light.

"Should be okay now," Vidkun said.

"Fine, you go first," Lando said.

The engineer glared at him but moved to the front. When he'd walked a few more meters without turning into crispy fried Vidkun, they followed him.

You'd think that after a while you'd get used to thesmell, Luke thought.

But it seemed to be constantlyshifting, going from bad to worse, bringing forth stinks he'd never imagined.

It was going to take a real hot and real long showerto wash the stench off.

Where they walked, the sludge reflected the pale glowstick light onto the walls of the tunnel in eerie,rippling waves. The smallest sounds were magnified and echoed, lapping back at them from the hard duracrete walls.

"Not far now," the engineer said.

"Good," Lando, Luke, and Dash all said together. Chewie said something, too, and Luke didn't need a translator to figure out he was in agreement.

Better to face Xizor's guards than endure this guck much longer.

"There," Vidkun whispered. "There is the entranceto the building. It leads into the recycler in the subsubbas.e.m.e.nt. There won't be any guards inside the recycler itself, but there will probably be some in the adjoining flow chamber. Here's the key to the ratgrate." He handed a plastic card to Lando. "See you."

He turned to leave. Dash stepped in front of him. "Where do you think you're going?"

"Hey, I'm done. I got you to the building, I got you the floor plans for the place, that was the deal."

"Well, I guess you have us there," Dash said. "That was the deal, all right. But see, there's been a little change in our itinerary."

Vidkun looked alarmed.

"Easy, we aren't going to blast you or anything. We'd just like you to come along until we get to a place where you can safely... wait for us."

Vidkun wasn't having any of it. "No offense or anything, but what if you get killed? I might be waiting a long time!"

"I guess you'll have to take that chance," Lando said. "It's not that we don't trust you. It's just that we don't trust you. Besides, it'll be a lot nicer inside." He waved at the gurgling black flow.

"I don't mind the runoff," Vidkun said. "I'm in it all the time."

"Nevertheless, we insist," Lando said. He patted his blaster. Vidkun shrugged. "Well. Okay. Since you put it that way..." And before anybody could react, he pulled a small blaster of his own from his coverall and started shooting wildly.

Luke hadn't seen it coming. The guy didn't seem to be the type. As a result, Luke was slow to clear his lightsaber.

The first shot seared past, a clean miss.

The second shot hit Dash; Luke heard him grunt. Move, Luke!

The engineer didn't get off a third shot because Dash snapped his blaster up and put a bolt right between theman's eyes.

Vidkun went down with a gooey splash that sprayed black onto the tunnel walls. He slid a little way down the gentle slope on his back, turned slightly, then stopped.

A wisp of smoke rose from the ragged hole in his forehead.

"Dash?"

"I'm okay. Just scorched me a little."

He turned and showed the burn along his left hip.The bolt had sliced a clean line of Dash's coverall away and raised a large blister. It wasn't even bleeding.

"Don't get any of this crud on you," Lando said, waving at the sewage.

"Probably wouldn't do you anygood."

"Where'd he get the blaster?" Luke said, replacing his lightsaber.

"Must have had it all along," Lando said. "WhatI'm wondering is, why'd he do it? We weren't going to hurt him."

"Guy like that, he figures he sold out, why shouldn't we?" Dash said.

Luke opened the first aid kit he'd brought and offered Dash a surgical dressing. Dash slapped the patchon over his hip, pressed the seal, and relaxed a little as the topical painkiller in the bandage coated the wound.He moved to look down at Vidkun. "I stand corrected," he said. "I guess we were going to blast you. But it wasn't our idea."

"Let's hope the guards didn't hear the shooting," Lando said. "Yeah."

Luke looked around, took a deep breath. "Ready? " They were.

37.

"Uh-oh," Luke whispered.

Crouched behind him in the recycler, Lando also whispered, "I do not need to hear that." A beat. "What?"

Even a whisper seemed loud in the chamber. More of the foul, murky fluid pooled around their ankles. A converter inset into the circular walls hummed and made yet more of the sewage, trickling it down an open drain.

"Guards," Luke said.

"So?"

"There are six of them."

"Six? To guard a sewage plant?"

Dash added his whisper: "So what? That's only one and a half each. How long does it take for you to pull a trigger, Calrissian?"