The cargo ship slammed into the dense forest of Ithor.

CHAPTER 12.

Tash felt something soft and warm beneath her. It felt like a mattress.

I'm lying on a bed, she thought. I must be in my cabin. This has all been a dream.

She rolled over onto her other side and felt her face b.u.mp against a piece of sharp metal. "Ow!" she muttered drowsily. She opened her eyes.

The sharp metal object was the comlink microphone in her s.p.a.ce helmet. A long, jagged crack ran from the top of the helmet's faceplate to the bottom.

Tash sat up with a start, then lay back down with a moan. Her head was ringing. She'd gotten up too fast and made herself dizzy. She waited for the forest around her to stop spinning, then sat up slowly.

The mattress she'd been lying on was a thick bed of moss at the foot of an enormous Bafforr tree. As she rose to her knees, Tash felt bruises forming all over her body. The dizziness had stopped, but her head still ached. She must have taken a blow to the head during the crash. Where her visor was not cracked, it was covered in smears of mossy slime. Unclipping the helmet's seals, she popped it off and tossed the headgear into the brush.

The ship was nowhere in sight, but Tash sniffed the scent of burning ozone and engine exhaust, so she knew it was close by. The speed globe she'd been holding lay a couple of meters away.

"I must have been thrown clear when we hit," she said, mostly to make sure her sore jaw still worked. "If I hadn't landed on this moss, I would have broken my neck."

Sitting back down, Tash kicked off her gray-boots, then unsealed her s.p.a.cesuit and shook it off. In zero gravity, the suit was weightless, but planetside it was almost too heavy to lift.

Tash tried to stand up, using the Bafforr tree for support.

The minute her hand touched the dark, smooth bark of the tree, an electric tingle shot up her arm and into her brain. A single word echoed loudly in her mind.

Danger!

Instinctively, Tash ducked back down.

At the same moment, she heard a loud rustling in the bushes nearby.

Crouched down in the underbrush, she couldn't see a thing, but she heard heavy footsteps clomp past only a few meters from her hiding spot. The warning message had been so clear that she didn't dare look up until the sound of movement faded among the trees.

When the forest had been silent a long time, Tash stood up again.

Cautiously, she touched the tree. Nothing happened.

Had the warning been a message from the Bafforr tree? Or the Force?

Or both?

Another possibility occurred to Tash. She could still hear a soft ringing in her ears, and she had to admit that the danger signal might have been a trick of her rattled brain. She might have just hidden from a chance at being rescued.

Tash thought about shouting for help. She opened her mouth and filled her lungs with air, but something held her back. Instead she let out a long sigh.

Her sigh was answered by a pain-filled moan from beneath the vines of a nearby blue-flowered shrub.

Tash approached the shrub cautiously. The last thing she needed was to be snared by another of Ithor's hungry plants. But this one seemed harmless enough. She could see a figure lying motionless at its roots.

Drawing, nearer, Tash saw that it was Fandomar.

Tash staggered to the Ithorian's side and carefully turned her over. Fandomar's s.p.a.cesuit was torn, probably by a tree branch as she was thrown clear of the wreck. A nasty cut ran the length of her leg. Her helmet had been cracked in two and nearly torn from her neck. Tash popped it off and threw it aside.

"Fandomar?" she whispered gently. "Fandomar, can you hear me?"

The Ithorian's eyes fluttered open, then closed again. "T-Tash. Is that you? I can't seem to focus my eyes." She tried to move. "I can't feel my legs, either."

"It's me," Tash replied. "Lie still. We were both thrown clear of the wreckage. You're probably pretty banged up."

A look of panic suddenly crossed Fandomar's face, and her hands clutched blindly at Tash. "Tash, your voice. It doesn't sound like it's coming through the comlink. You're not wearing your helmet?"

"No. Neither are you. We're on Ithor."

"Oh, no, no, no, no," Fandomar moaned. "This is terrible."

Tash blinked. Her head hurt too much to deal with this confusion.

"What are you talking about?"

"Spore," Fandomar hissed. She said the word as if it were the most terrible thing in the galaxy. "Spore! Spore is free!"

"What do you mean?" Tash asked.

Fandomar started to cry. "It means," she wept, "we're all doomed!"

CHAPTER 13.

"Doomed!" Fandomar whispered again. Her voice was fading.

"What is this Spore?" Tash asked. "Fandomar, you have to tell me!"

But the Ithorian had fainted.

Tash wanted to shake her awake, but she dared not. Fandomar had said she couldn't feel her legs. Her spine might be broken. If Tash moved her, she could make the damage worse.

I'll have to leave her here, Tash decided. Maybe I can get help.

Tash used a jagged piece of metal from Fandomar's helmet to tear strips of cloth from the Ithorian's s.p.a.cesuit. She used these to bandage Fandomar's leg wound. Then she used the rest of the suit as a blanket to cover the Hammerhead's body. That was the best she could do.

She needed to find Hoole and Zak and make sure they were all right.

Then maybe they could find a way to contact the Tafanda Bay.

Tash staggered through the forest of Bafforr trees. She had to stop every ten meters or so to catch her breath and let the ringing in her ears quiet down. Every time she rested against a Bafforr's trunk, she waited for that same tingle of energy. But it never came, even when Tash heard loud rustling in the bushes nearby.

Tash braced herself and waited. Something big and heavy-footed pushed its way through the bushes before her.

A tall gray figure stepped into view.

"Uncle Hoole!" Tash shouted in pure joy. She threw herself at the Shi'ido, who almost lost his footing. Tash saw a deep cut on his forehead.

"Are you injured?" he asked.

She wasn't sure. "I'm one big bruise and my ears are ringing, but I'm okay. Is your cut bad?"

Hoole touched the gash delicately. "I will live." The stern Shi'ido tried to look as light hearted as his stony face could manage. "It was not my best landing, but all things considered, I would say it wasn't my worst."

Tash grimaced. Hoole never joked. The fact that he was trying to probably meant he felt worse than he looked. "Fandomar is back there in the forest. She's hurt. Do you think the Ithorians saw the crash on their scanners? Will they send a rescue party?"

"I think the answer is yes," said Zak as he slipped between the branches of a sapling tree. Tash couldn't see any cuts or bruises, but her brother's knees were wobbly. He hugged Tash and Hoole as he said, "I saw a ship fly overhead. The crash site's just on the other side of these trees. They'll probably land there."

Zak was right. The three survivors helped each other through the trees and into a clearing. The twisted wreckage of the cargo ship lay piled at the end of a long gouged-out trail it had dug into the ground.

Tash looked back, trying to guess how far she'd walked, and silently thanked the Force. She'd been thrown an incredible distance from the ship. Flow had she survived? That moss had been soft, but not soft enough to save her from cracking her skull after being launched a hundred meters.

A look of wonder and suspicion crossed her face. She'd been thrown through a grove of Bafforr trees. Had the trees somehow-?

Tash shook her head. Force or no Force, she couldn't believe that the trees had saved her.

Thoughts of a miraculous rescue were driven out as real rescuers appeared. A small medical shuttle dropped down almost at their feet, and four Ithorians carrying medipacs jumped out of the hatch. In seconds they were examining all three survivors, treating Hoole's head wound, and testing Tash to make sure she didn't have a concussion from her fall.

"You've got to help Fandomar," Tash insisted. "She's back there, through the trees."

One of the medics nodded. "Let us make sure you are well first, then you can lead us to her."

"I'm fine!" Tash insisted. But she didn't feel fine. Her ears had stopped ringing, but that sensation had been replaced by another. It was as if a long- range sensor had triggered a warning inside her head.

Something was wrong.

"Hey, I could use some help, too!" said a gruff voice.

Hodge stepped out of the shade of a Bafforr tree. He had shed his s.p.a.cesuit and helmet and walked forward wearing only a miner's jumpsuit and a wide grin. There wasn't a scratch on him.

"Fandomar needs help badly," Tash said. "I left her back there. Her back may be injured, and I think she's delirious. She kept saying something about everyone being doomed. And she mentioned Spore."

All four Ithorians froze. In a frightened whisper, one of them said, "What?"

The fear in their eyes made Tash shiver. "I said she talked about Spore. What does that mean?"

None of the lthorians answered. Hodge laughed coldly. "I'm afraid that what she means," he said, "is me!"

In the next instant, Hodge turned on the closest person-an Ithorian doctor who had started to examine him. What happened then was beyond Tash's imagination.

Hodge's eyes seemed to explode with thin, dark, vinelike tentacles.

More dark vines burst from his open mouth. They lashed out violently, wrapping themselves around the doctor and sinking right into the Ithorian's skin!

CHAPTER 14.

The dark tentacles sank into the Ithorian's skin, burying themselves inside the victim's body. Tash blinked. The tentacles vanished from sight except for a dark tracing of lines, like veins, that showed beneath the skin.

But the Ithorian himself had changed. His body stiffened and he seemed to be waiting for something. "What was that?" Zak asked.

"Spore!" one of the Ithorians gasped in a voice filled with terror.

"I am Spore," said Hodge and the Hammerhead together. Hodge grinned, and he and the Ithorian spoke again. "For years, for centuries, I have been trapped on that lifeless rock. In that airless tomb! At last I have lives to feed on again!"

As one being, Hodge and the Ithorian turned on the other three Hammerheads and opened their mouths. More black tendrils erupted from their mouths and eyes, snaring the three Ithorian doctors. In the midst of her horror, Tash thought the black strings looked like the roots of a fast-growing weed.

Spore had now captured all the Ithorians.

Spore and his victims turned on Hoole. "You are next to join me,"

Spore said.

A whole forest of tentacles leaped out to capture Hoole. But Hoole had vanished. In the Shi'ido's place appeared a crystal snake. The slithering creature twisted and squirmed, slipping out of the tangle of black tentacles. Quick as a light beam, the crystal snake dodged to one side. Its skin crawled quickly across its body, and Hoole appeared again.

His dodge had carried him to the other side of the clearing. Spore stood between the Arrandas and the Shi'ido.

"Run!" Hoole ordered; then he plunged into the forest.

With no other choice, Zak and Tash fled in the opposite direction.

They ran blindly, jumping over tree roots, ducking under branches, scrambling up small hillocks. The horrible vision of those black vines bursting out of Hodge's mouth made their feet move long after they were exhausted.

Finally, Tash's tired feet tripped her up and she toppled down a gentle, gra.s.s-covered slope. Zak fell right behind her, and they came to a stop at the feet of another grove of trees. They rested against the dark trunk of a Bafforr tree.

"Wh-Wh-What...?" Zak panted. He didn't need to finish his sentence.

"Spore," Tash answered. "That's what was trapped on the asteroid."