When he left Tatooine with Ben Ken.o.bi, Luke had joined the Rebel Alliance, spending time as a fighter pilot and in Jedi training with Yoda. He never had time or opportunity to see children--and now he felt as much pleasure playing with them, watching their wide-eyed innocence, as they seemed to enjoy having him around.

"Faster! Faster!" Jacen cried.

Instead, just to tease him, Luke stopped the boy cold in the air, letting him hang motionless as Luke orbited Jaina around him. The little girl squealed and stretched out her hand, trying to grab her brother's ear as she spun.

Tiring of that, Luke let Jaina drift into a cushioned seat while he reached out to catch Jacen as the boy descended, holding him in his arms.

Jaina squirmed and reached her pudgy arms up, wanting to be held too.

Luke made faces at the little boy, puckering his lips and wiggling them back and forth. He spoke in a funny head-cold voice that sounded something like Yoda's. "The Force is strong in this little one, hmmmm?

Yes!" But then Luke wrinkled his nose and noticed something he didn't need Jedi powers to understand. "Or maybe that's not the Force I sense.

Leia, I think you need to perform a motherly duty." He held Jacen in front of him.

Threepio bustled into the room. "Allow me to take care of that, sir. I have been getting a great deal of practice in the past day or two."

Luke smiled at the thought of Threepio trying to manage squirming twins. He noticed the droid looked a bit scuffed and battered. "Was that part of your protocol programming?"

"My manual dexterity is sufficient to the task, Master Luke."

Threepio flexed his golden motorized fingers, then took Jacen from Luke's grasp. "And believe me, I enjoy these duties much more than gallivanting through s.p.a.ce, getting shot at by Imperial fighters, or getting lost in asteroid fields."

Leia came into the room. She forced a smile that Luke could tell was a mask. She looked very tired. It wasn't just the strain of combining her diplomatic duties with being a mother; something else deeply concerned her, but she hadn't said anything. Luke did not pry--he could have reached in and taken the secret from her mind, but he would not do that to his sister. And she might even have figured out how to block him by now. He would let her broach the subject in her own way.

"The prep unit will have the meal ready in just a few minutes,"

Leia said. "I'm very glad you're back, and the twins seem to be pleased too."

Luke realized that he hadn't seen Han since his return; but because of their busy schedules, seeing Han and Leia in the same place at the same time was a rare occurrence anyway. It was a wonder they had somehow managed to have three children! Could Han's absence have something to do with Leia's hidden concern?

Luke picked up Jaina with the Force again, raising her into the air. She giggled and began flailing her arms and legs as if swimming through the open s.p.a.ces of the room.

"Leia, I need your help in a couple of bureaucratic matters," Luke said.

"Sure." She smiled wryly at him. "What can I do?"

"I still need to contact Mara Jade and a handful of other possible Jedi candidates. But now that I have two trainees here and waiting, I've got to find a place where we can begin our Jedi studies. And I have to find it soon.

"I've spoken with Streen and Gantoris, and it's clear to me that Coruscant is not appropriate. Streen doesn't like to be around people, and he's not going to be very comfortable anywhere in Imperial City. All of Coruscant is covered with metropolis, buildings on top of buildings.

"And--" He hesitated, but this was a private conversation with Leia; he could not hide any of his worries from her. "There is some danger about what we might do. Who am I to be teaching all these Jedi potentials? I have no way of knowing what might trigger a disaster like one of the Emperor's Force storms. It would be better if we found someplace isolated, a place of solitude where we can conduct our training without interference."

"And in safety." Leia's dark eyes met his, and he knew that both of them were thinking of Darth Vader. "Yes, I agree. I'll try to find you an appropriate place."

"And while you're looking," Luke continued, "we also need to relocate all of the people on Eol Sha. There's only about fifty of them left on that outpost, but the planet is doomed. When I took Gantoris, I promised we would find a new home for the survivors. See what you can do."

"For a group of people that small, it shouldn't be difficult," Leia answered. "Anyplace sounds better than the planet they're leaving."

Luke laughed. "Or you could always have Han win another planet for them in a card game!"

She looked at him as if stung. Yes indeed, he thought. It was something to do with Han. He bounced Jaina up in the air again, touching her to the ceiling, then letting her fall back down.

Suddenly Lando Calrissian burst into the room unannounced. "Leia!

Winter just told me that Han hasn't come back yet. Why haven't you talked to me about it?"

Startled, Luke let Jaina fall and barely managed to catch her in the air a handbreadth above the hard floor. Jaina giggled deliriously, confident that the whole thing had been planned.

Lando looked upset and angry as he glared at Leia, planting his hands on his hips, pushing back the cape to hang behind him. Then he noticed Luke standing in the room. "Luke, are you going to do anything about this?"

"I don't know what you're talking about--but I think Leia was just about to tell me."

Both men looked at her. She sighed and sat down. "Yes, Han is missing. He went off to Kessel about two weeks ago, but now he's four days late coming back. He never contacted me, so yesterday I got in touch with Kessel. I spoke to someone who seems to be in charge, a Rybet named Moruth Doole.

"Doole says that Han and Chewie never arrived. Kessel has no record of the Millennium Falcon. Doole suggested they might have gotten lost in the black hole cl.u.s.ter."

"Not Han!" Lando said. "And not in the Falcon. He knows how to fly that thing almost as well as I do."

Leia nodded. "All through the conversation I sensed something wrong with the way Doole was acting. His answers were too pat, and he seemed nervous. I had the distinct feeling he was expecting my call and had already made up appropriate excuses."

"I don't like that," Lando said.

"Well, if Han is missing and you knew since yesterday, why didn't you send out a fleet of New Republic scouts?" Luke said. "A formal search party? What if he is lost in the Maw somewhere?"

Leia sighed. "Think about it, Luke. If I mobilized an official force, I could create a galactic incident just when we're trying to get Kessel into the New Republic. And besides," she admitted, "you know Han.

There's a very real chance he's just goofing around. He forgot his kids were coming back. Maybe he found a good game of sabacc or started talking old times with some of his spice-smuggler buddies--that's why he wanted to go on the mission in the first place."

"We'll go look for him ourselves," Lando said.

Luke could tell by the way Leia's face brightened that this was what she intended to ask all along. "We'll go snoop around," he said.

"There won't be any official dispatch or record of our mission."

Lando said, "We'd better take the Lady Luck. She's just a privately owned yacht with some pretty good punch in her engines."

Leia stepped forward and plucked Jaina out of Luke's lap and cradled her. "I'll watch over Gantoris and Streen while you're gone."

Luke nodded and spread his hands wide. "You see, that's why you're a diplomat--you think of details like that. Just don't let the two of them get into any trouble."

"We should take Artoo with us," Lando said. "That little droid sure helped me out at the blob races."

Luke had heard of Lando's exploits with the scam artist Tymmo. "You can tell me all about it on our way there. Leia's waited long enough."

"Let's go to Kessel," Lando said.

They managed to steal the second shuttle.

Han and Chewbacca wasted precious time in the first cargo ship on the atmosphere factory's landing pad, trying to cross-circuit the controls as Kyp Durron kept watch in the open hatch. The air was cold on their exposed skin, and they didn't know how much stray radiation from the Maw actually penetrated the atmospheric shield; the sounds of breathing hissed behind their breath masks. No one had seen them. Yet.

After only a few minutes, Han accidentally triggered the shuttle's automatic lockout systems. He slammed his hand on the panel. "Should have known I couldn't beat the high-level security interlocks!"

Chewbacca pulled off an access plate and tossed it into the back compartment with the sound of a crashing landspeeder. Roaring in his Wookiee language, he began yanking wires out of the controls and jamming them into override ports, but the few lights still functioning on the panels continued to burn red.

"Forget it, Chewie. We'll try the other ship," Han said. "I think I know what I did wrong last time."

Kyp kept watch on the tiny doors of the atmosphere factory's ma.s.sive stack. "Still no movement from inside. We're clear."

They raced across the open s.p.a.ces of the landing field to the second cargo shuttle, an old Imperial model with scarred armor and long planar wings that made it look like a mechanical flying fish. Han and Chewbacca had flown a similar Lambda'-cla.s.s shuttle on their guerrilla mission to Endor; but this model looked even older. Prison facilities must have low priority for new equipment acquisitions, he thought.

Chewbacca opened the hatch, and Han ducked inside, moving straight to the controls. The Wookiee clambered after him as four guards marched into view around the perimeter of the atmosphere stack. The squad wore cobbled-together uniforms of old stormtrooper armor and thermal suits from the mines.

Kyp plastered himself to the wall just inside the open hatch.

Looking across the landing field, he saw that they had forgotten to close the doorway on the first shuttle, and now their tampering was painfully obvious. He swallowed. "Better hurry, Han. We've got company, but they haven't seen us yet."

"If this doesn't work, we're in deep bantha dung," Han muttered, punching up the command screens and removing the access plate to the security override.

The squad of guards marched on what was probably a routine patrol.

Han glanced up to see them through the shuttle's windowport, but the reflectorized transparisteel would prevent them from observing the pilot's compartment. He wondered how many times a day the guards walked around the circular perimeter of the atmosphere stack. He hoped they were sleepwalking by now.

He tried to fire up the shuttle's engines. The control panel gave him an ERROR message. "Bantha dung it is, then," he said. But he had one more thing to try.

The lead guard suddenly stopped and gestured toward the open hatch in the first shuttle. He tilted his head to speak into his helmet comlink, then went cautiously forward. He took another guard with him, while the remaining two drew their weapons and spread out, looking from side to side.

"Oh boy," Kyp said.

Han rewired the security circuit, feeding the pa.s.sword-checking mechanisms back into themselves; then he snapped the plate back on.

"Let's try it. Kyp, get ready to close the hatch. If this works, those guards are going to be upset. If it doesn't work, I'm going to be upset."

The two guards poked their heads out of the first shuttle, gesturing wildly. They had seen the sabotage. The other two jabbered into their helmet radios, then sprinted toward the second shuttle, drawing their weapons.

Kyp slapped the b.u.t.ton that slammed the hatch shut. All the guards began running, pointing their blasters at the shuttle.

Han punched the start controls. With a merciful whine and hum, the engines ignited. Power surged through the shuttle. Han gave a whoop of triumph, but Chewbacca knocked him back into the pilot's seat as he furiously worked the controls with his big hairy hands to lift them off the pad.

The guards fired blasters at the shuttle. Han heard the sizzling thumps as the beams struck, but the ship's armor could withstand attack from minor hand weapons.

At the base of the atmosphere stack, doors opened and an entire squad of guards boiled out like Anoat lizard-ants in mating season. One bright laser bolt splashed across the transparisteel directly in front of Han's eyes, dazzling him. "Time to leave this party," he said.

Chewbacca raised them off the ground, maneuvering the shuttle away from the other vehicles on the landing pad.

Two guards wrestled a blaster cannon into place, erecting it on its tripod and cranking up the aim point. Chewbacca growled, and Han took over the controls. "I know. That thing could be real trouble if we don't get some alt.i.tude fast."

A flurry of hand-blaster bolts pinged against the lower hull. Han flew the ship higher, adjacent to the gigantic stack, spiraling upward and using the curving walls as a shield. The guards managed to fire only one shot from the blaster-cannon, but the beam scattered wide as Han corkscrewed up, keeping the stack between him and the troops. Below, the guards ran around the perimeter to keep within firing range, but Han flew the shuttle beyond the reach of small weapons fire.

"We're out of here!" Han said. "Punch it, Chewie!"

Then the ma.s.sive laser turrets mounted on the atmosphere tower began firing at them.

"What!" Han cried. "What are they doing with weapons on an atmosphere stack? It's a factory, not a garrison!"

One brilliant green bolt struck the starboard planar wing of the shuttle, sending the vessel into a roll. Han and Chewbacca grappled with the controls as they spun, and Kyp clung to the supports of the pilot's chair.

They careened into the gushing white updraft from the stack, knocked from side to side by manufactured air dumping into Kessel's atmosphere. "Hang on!" Han yelled. He did not want to crash on the planet again.

At the shuttle's top acceleration, he took them along the stream of air, roaring upward like a boat riding the rapids. Green blasts from the turret lasers continued to streak up, but by riding the center stream, Han kept the shuttle in the blind spot of their targeting mechanisms.

They zoomed toward the fringes of the atmosphere. Han looked at both Kyp and Chewbacca.

"Well, so much for sneaking out of here. Now Moruth Doole is going to know we escaped."

As if on cue the shuttle's comm crackled, and they could hear Doole's croaking voice in the background. "Is this it? Did you get the right override channel this time?"

"Yes, Commissioner."

"Solo! Han Solo, can you hear me?"

"Why, it sounds like my old friend Moruth Doole!" Han said. "How are you doing, buddy? I hope you feel better than your a.s.sistant Skynxnex."

"Solo, you have caused me more grief than any other life-form in the galaxy--including Jabba the Hutt! I should have squashed you when I had you in my office."

Han rolled his eyes. "Well, you missed your chance, and I don't plan on giving you another one."

Doole chuckled, a hissing heh-heh-heh laugh like a fat man choking on sand. "You won't get away. I'll mobilize everything against you.

Better start thinking about the afterlife now."

Kyp squinted out the port, as if deep in concentration. The atmosphere thinned around the fleeing ship at the far limit of where Kessel's gravity could keep hold. He saw Kessel's moon and suddenly shivered uncontrollably. He blinked in confusion.

Chewbacca bellowed into the speaker mesh. "You tell him, Chewie,"

Han said, then switched off the radio.

Kyp scrambled forward and grabbed the controls, activating the maneuvering rockets and making the shuttle lurch forward with enough force to slam Han and Chewbacca against their seats. Kyp tumbled backward, unable to keep his balance in the acceleration.

"What did you do that for?" Han demanded, glaring at Kyp.

But Chewbacca made an alarmed noise and dragged Han back to the console. Just below them the atmosphere shimmered and crinkled as an impenetrable ionized screen appeared, blanketing the planet.

"They've got their energy shield operational!" Han said. The workers on Kessel's moonbase had repaired the protective screen that blocked off the prison planet. If Kyp hadn't punched their acceleration exactly when he did, they would have been sizzled in the bath of power or trapped beneath the shield, unable to escape.

"How did you know?" Han said, looking over his shoulder at Kyp. Kyp picked himself up off the floor, shaking his head to clear his thoughts.

"Never mind. Are you okay?"