Luke blinked. "You could detect that?"

Gantoris shrugged. "Now that you've taught me how to feel and how to listen, it came through very clearly. What's disturbing you? Are we in danger?"

Luke opened his eyes and looked out at Bespin again. He thought of his friend Han Solo kidnapped and frozen in carbonite for delivery to Jabba the Hutt; he thought of the duel with Darth Vader on the catwalks of Cloud City that had cost Luke his hand. And, worst of all, he recalled Vader's deep voice p.r.o.nouncing his terrible message. "Luke, I am your father!"

Luke shuddered, but he turned to look back into Gantoris's dark eyes. "I have powerful memories of this place."

Gantoris kept his silence, asking no further questions.

Airborne mining installations rode Bespin's wind currents--floating automated refineries, storage tanks bobbing above the clouds, and facilities to scoop valuable gases from the cloud banks.

Not all of these floating installations had proved profitable, though.

The drifting colossus of Tibannopolis hung empty, a creaking ghost town in the sky.

Luke tracked the derelict floating city on his navigation screens.

The construction hovered over the dark clouds as a storm gathered. The city tilted due to malfunctioning repulsorlift generators.

"Is that where we're going?" Gantoris said.

The roof, decks, and sides of Tibannopolis had been picked over by scavengers hauling away sc.r.a.p metal. It looked like a skeleton of its former self, with buckled plates and twisted support girders in a broad hemisphere; dented ballast tanks hung below. Numerous antennae and weather vanes protruded from the joints.

"We're going to wait for someone here," Luke answered.

He brought the shuttle down on a primary landing deck that looked st.u.r.dy enough to support his ship. The crisscrossed structural beams were covered with scaled plating, but in some spots the seams had bent upward, popping their welds.

Luke emerged from the shuttle, and Gantoris joined him. The other man's long dark hair whipped around him like a mane, no longer braided, but he stood proudly in his hand-me-down pilot's outfit. His black eyes glittered with wonder.

The high wind gusting through the carca.s.s of Tibannopolis made a moaning sound. The swaying metal groaned as rusted joints rubbed against each other. The wind had a bitter chemical tang from trace gases wafting to higher alt.i.tudes.

Black birdlike creatures with triangular heads cl.u.s.tered in the open gaps of buildings, nesting on stripped girders. As Luke and Gantoris moved forward, the flying creatures stirred and rustled leathery wings.

Their mouths snapped open and closed with croaking sounds.

Below and around Tibannopolis, the clouds had turned the smoky gray of impending thunderstorms. Flashes of lightning rippled through the cloud bank below.

"What now?" Gantoris asked.

Luke sighed and gathered some inflatable blankets and a sleep roll from the pa.s.senger shuttle's storage compartments. "We've spent two days cooped up in the ship. I have no way of knowing when Streen might come back, and I think we should try to get a good rest."

"Streen?" Gantoris asked.

"The man we're waiting for."

The storm came through that night and rinsed off the exposed surfaces of Tibannopolis, causing fresh blooms of rust and patina on the construction alloys. Luke and Gantoris had found shelter in the decaying buildings of Tibannopolis, resting on the slanted floor because of the derelict city's tilt.

Awash in a Jedi trance more restful than sleep, Luke paid little attention to his surroundings but kept a small window open in his mind, ready to flick him back to wakefulness.

Gantoris surprised him. "Luke, I think someone's coming. I can sense it."

Luke became instantly awake and sat up from under the sheltered metal alcove, looking out at the washed-clean swirls of clouds. It took his mind only a moment to locate the approaching presence of a human--but he was impressed that Gantoris had been able to sense the distant stranger at all.

"I was practicing," Gantoris said, "reaching out and looking with my mind. There isn't much around here to distract me."

"Good work." Luke tried to keep the pleased expression from his face but failed. "This is the man we've been waiting for."

He used his sense to focus on a black shape approaching across the skyscape of rising gases. Luke saw an amazing cl.u.s.ter of lashed-together platforms and bulbous tanks held aloft by balloons and maneuvered with propellers that stuck out at all angles. The hodgepodge vehicle drifted toward them, riding the winds.

Luke smiled at the bizarre construction, while Gantoris stared in awe. They could make out the silhouette of a single man standing at the helm as buffeting breezes rippled trim sails at the sides of the main platform. Streen, the gas prospector, was returning home.

Luke and Gantoris made their way down to the landing platform to wait for him. As the collection of gas tanks, balloons, and flat walkways approached, Streen finally noticed them.

At the controls of his contraption he swerved and circled around the ruined city, as if frightened and reluctant to land. But somehow, seeing only the two of them waiting, he regained his nerve and rode the breezes in.

Streen did not land his vehicle, merely bringing it to the edge of the landing platform and lashing it to support posts mounted at the rail.

Luke held on to the fiber-chains and helped Streen secure his vessel.

No one spoke. Streen kept surrept.i.tiously slipping glances in their direction.

Luke sized him up. Streen was approaching old age, bearded, with brown hair so intermingled with strands of gray that it had turned to a creamy color. His skin bore a leathery look, as if the rough winds and harsh open air had sucked something essential out of his flesh. The prospector was clad in a well-worn jumpsuit studded with pockets, many of which bulged with hidden contents.

As Streen stepped onto the landing area, four of the black birdlike creatures fluttered up from roosts among the platforms, venting stacks, and gas tanks of Streen's vessel, returning to the jungle of construction frames in the floating city.

"Tibannopolis hasn't been inhabited for years," Streen said. "Why have you come here?"

Luke stood tall and faced the man. "We came to see you."

Gantoris stood patiently beside Luke Skywalker, feeling odd to be in a different position now. He had joined the Jedi to learn from him, swept up by his visions of a restored order of Jedi Knights and the powers they could tap through the Force.

This time Gantoris listened as Skywalker began to tell Streen of his plans for an academy, of his need for potential candidates who might have a talent for using the Force. He watched the skepticism on Streen's face, similar to what he himself must have shown at first. But unless Streen had suffered the same dark dreams or premonitions, this hermit on Bespin should be a more open-minded listener than Gantoris himself had been.

Streen hunkered on the corroded surface of the landing platform and squinted into the sky before looking back to Skywalker. "But why me? Why did you come here?"

Skywalker turned instead to Gantoris. "There are many valuable substances dissolved in Bespin's atmosphere at various layers. The floating cities are huge mining operations that remain in place as they draw gas from below the cloud layers. But Streen is a cloud prospector.

At certain times some storm or a deep atmospheric upheaval will make a cloud of volatiles belch up, waiting to be siphoned off. Streen goes out on the winds with his tanks, looking for the treasure.

"Bespin has computerized satellites to detect these outbursts and to dispatch company men--but Streen always gets there first. He somehow knows an upheaval is going to happen before it does. He is there waiting with his empty tanks to siphon off whatever comes bubbling up and sell it back to the independent refineries."

Skywalker squatted next to the hermit. "Tell me, Streen--how do you know when a gas layer is going to rise? Where do you get your information?"

Streen blinked and fidgeted. Now he looked even more frightened than when he had first seen the strangers waiting on the landing platform. "I just ... know. I can't explain it."

Skywalker smiled. "Everyone can use the Force to some extent, but a few have a stronger innate talent. When I form my Jedi academy, I want to work most closely with those who already have the talent but don't know how to use it. Gantoris is one of my candidates. I think you should be another one."

"Come with us," Gantoris added. "If Skywalker is right, think of all the things we could accomplish!"

"How can you be sure about me?" Streen asked. "I always thought it was just luck."

"Let me touch your forehead," Skywalker said. When Streen did not move away, Skywalker tentatively reached forward with his fingers, brushing the man's temples. Gantoris couldn't figure out what Skywalker was doing until he remembered the test Luke had performed on him down in the lava chamber.

Skywalker's face looked blank and lost in concentration for a moment, then suddenly he jerked backward as if his body had been burned.

"Now I'm sure, Streen. You do have the talent. There is nothing to fear."

But Streen still looked nervous. "I came out to this place because I need to be alone. I'm not comfortable around people. I feel them pressing in around me. I like people. I'm lonely, but ... it's very difficult for me. It's all I can do to be around them just while I deliver my cargo. Then I have to run away.

"Seven or eight years ago, when the Empire took over Cloud City, everything got much worse. The people were agitated. Their thoughts were full of chaos." He looked up at Skywalker in dismay. "I haven't spent much time with people for eight years."

Gantoris could sense the man's emotions winding toward panic--and just when Gantoris felt certain Streen would refuse, Skywalker held up a hand. "Wait," he said. "Why not just watch us train for a while? Maybe you'll see what I'm talking about."

As if pleased at having an option that did not require him to make an immediate decision, Streen nodded. He looked toward his floating platforms and gas tanks with a palpable stab of regret, as if wishing he had never come back to Tibannopolis. Gantoris could feel an echo of the other man's emotions, the yearning for freedom that Bespin's clouds offered, the solace of being alone.

"Show me your new Jedi exercises, Master. Teach me other things."

Skywalker seemed to flinch at being called "Master," and Gantoris wondered what he had done wrong--was not Luke Skywalker a Jedi Master?

How else should he be called?

Skywalker brushed aside the comment. He pointed to the thicket of girders and rusted metal bars in which flocks of the leathery black creatures made their homes, chittering and moving about in the afternoon.

Far below, the clouds thickened into what could become another storm.

"Those flying creatures," Skywalker said. "We will use them."

Streen stiffened. His face grew dark and ruddy. "Hey, don't disturb my rawwks." Then he lowered his eyes, turning away as if embarra.s.sed by his outburst. "They've been my only company all these years."

"We won't harm them," Skywalker said. "Just watch." He lowered his voice to speak as an instructor to Gantoris. "This city is a complex mechanism. Every girder, every metal plate, every life-form from those rawwks to the airborne algae sacks and everything around us, each has its own position in the Force. Size matters not. Tiny insects or entire floating cities, each is an integral part of the universe. You must feel it, sense it."

He nodded to the derelict structures around them. "I want you to look at this city, imagine how the pieces fit together, find the girders with your mind, tell me what you can sense and how one thing touches another. When you think you have found the intersection where a rawwk and girder touch, I want you to reach out and push with your mind. Make a little vibration."

Skywalker curled his forefinger around his thumb and stretched forward as he nodded toward a lone rawwk sitting on the end of a weather vane. He flicked out his finger, as if to shoo away a gnat, and Gantoris heard a distant pinnngg. Startled into the air, the rawwk flapped its wings and cried out in alarm.

Gantoris chuckled and, eager to try, flicked his own finger in imitation of what the Jedi had just done. He imagined seeing a whole flock of the rawwks take flight--but nothing happened.

"It is not that easy," Skywalker said. "You aren't concentrating.

Think, feel yourself doing it, envision your success--then reach out with your mind."

More serious this time, Gantoris pursed his lips and squinted, looking for his target. He saw a delicate many-branched antenna on which five rawwks sat. He pictured the antenna, knowing his target, and stared.

He took a deep breath and pushed. He still didn't quite know what he was doing, but he felt something happening in his mind, something working, some outside ... force linking him and the antenna.

He watched as the antenna slowly swayed. The rawwks stirred but remained on their perches. Anyone else watching might have a.s.sumed the wind had shifted at that moment, but Gantoris knew he had done it.

"Good attempt. You have the right idea, but now close your eyes,"

Skywalker said. "You're letting your sight blind you. You know where the antenna is, you know where the rawwks are. You can sense their place in the Force. You don't need to see with your eyes. Tighten your focus. Feel it, know what you want to do."

Skeptical, Gantoris closed his eyes; but as he concentrated, he could indeed see vague outlines of what he had just looked at, tiny afterimages imprinted on the Force with tendrils reaching out and connecting them to everything else.

He reached out with his fingers to make the flicking gesture again but hesitated. He realized he did not need that either. Flicking the fingers was simply an example for Skywalker to make his point. Whatever actions he made, waving his hands or muttering spells were just so much mumbo jumbo. Understanding the Force was what allowed him to do what he needed.

Pleased with this sudden insight, Gantoris kept his eyes closed and folded his arms. He flicked out an imaginary finger, feeling the metal, picturing his fingernail striking the hard surface. In his head he heard the hollow bong as it struck, then opened his eyes to watch the five rawwks burst into flight, cawing at each other as if casting blame.

"Good!" Skywalker said. "I'm impressed. I thought this was going to be much more difficult." Still grinning, he looked at Streen, who had been watching them in silence. "Would you like to try it? You have the potential. I could show you how."

Streen balked. "No, I ... I don't think I could do that."

"It isn't as difficult as it looks," Gantoris said. "You'll feel a different strength come into you."

"I don't want to," Streen said again, defensively. Then he lowered his eyes and patted his pockets, as if looking for something he didn't expect to find. Gantoris thought he was just making distracted movements.

The old man swallowed, then looked back at Skywalker. "If you teach me how to use this... sense I have--can you also teach me how to switch it off? I want to learn how not to feel the people around me, not to be bombarded by their moods and prying thoughts and sour ideas. I'm tired of having only rawwks for company. I'd very much like to be part of the human race again."

Skywalker clapped him on the shoulder. In his dark jumpsuit he looked like a benevolent G.o.d. "That much I can show you."

Luke watched as Streen cut loose the fiber-chains holding his floating hodgepodge ship to the Tibannopolis docking area. Standing on the docking platform, he gave his ship an unnecessary shove out into the breezes. The empty barge of platforms and balloons, propellers and gas storage tanks, drifted out to be caught up by swirling air currents.

Streen had emptied the pockets in his jumpsuit and now looked at Luke. "I know I'm not coming back. That old life is over."

The three of them climbed aboard Luke's pa.s.senger shuttle and made ready to depart Bespin. Luke felt a glowing satisfaction, not just to be leaving the gas planet that held so many dark memories, but to have both pa.s.senger seats filled, to have two new candidates for his Jedi academy.

He raised the shuttle off the landing platform, then began a steep climb toward orbit. Below them, in the opposite direction, Streen's abandoned platform continued drifting on its own, widening the gap between it and the derelict city.

Streen looked out the pa.s.senger window, staring with a bleak sadness that struck Luke's heart with pity. Below, the ghost town of Tibannopolis was truly empty again.

Then Luke watched something amazing happen. The city came alive with movement, swarming as tiny black figures took to the air. Thousands and thousands of rawwks that had made their home with Streen suddenly took flight, departing the abandoned metropolis in a huge flock that kept coming and coming and coming, spreading out among the clouds in a farewell salute to Streen.

Looking out the window and watching this, Streen smiled.

Skynxnex inserted a new charge pack into his double-blaster, smiled at the weapon, then thrust it into the holster. "Thank you, Moruth," he said. "You won't regret this."

Doole tapped his spongy fingers on the former warden's desk. One of the loose iridescent insects fluttered around the room, battering itself again and again on the wide landscape window.

"Just try not to make a mess of it," Doole said. "I want Solo gone and all traces removed. Nothing left. It's only a matter of time before the New Republic comes nosing around. We've got to be absolutely clean.

Is the energy shield functional yet?"

"We're testing it this morning, and our engineers are confident it'll work. Solo and the Wookiee will be dead by then," Skynxnex said.

"My personal guarantee."

Doole's lips curled like a rubbery gasket stretched out of shape.

"Don't enjoy yourself too much."