Moruth Doole stepped backward, fluttering his long-fingered hands.

"Work it out? What are you going to do, buy me a droid replacement for my eye? I hate droids! Because of you, Jabba tried to have me killed. I had to beg them to take only my eye. I had to beg them to take my eye!" He jabbed at his boiled-egg blind side.

Skynxnex shambled closer to Doole, lowering his voice. "I think you're confusing him, rather than frightening him, Moruth. Maybe he really doesn't know what happened."

Doole sat down at his desk and straightened his lizard-skin waistcoat, regaining his composure. "When you dumped your load of spice, Jabba blamed it on me! He put out a contract on my life. All because of your cowardice."

Chewbacca roared in outrage. Han barely kept his anger in check.

"Jabba put out a contract on me too, Doole. Greedo tried to a.s.sa.s.sinate me on Tatooine. Boba Fett captured me on Bespin and I was trapped in carbonite, just like your friend there"--he gestured to the gruesome trophy on the wall--"and I got sent to Jabba anyway."

Doole waved a hand in dismissal. "Jabba's men had already infiltrated the spice-mining operations, and he wanted to expose me, so his own people could procure the glitterstim directly. One of his. .h.i.t men fried my eye and half blinded the other. He was about to do more, but Skynxnex killed him."

At the doorway the scarecrow smiled with pride.

"Jabba forced my hand, and I had to act. We staged the prison revolt. The warden himself was Jabba's man, but half of the guards were on my side. I paid them well, you see. Luckily, the Empire was thrown into chaos right about the same time. We took Kessel for ourselves. There were a few other upstart slave lords on the other side of the planet, but they didn't last long. I've been stockpiling spice supplies and building up a ma.s.sive defense fleet with everything I can sc.r.a.pe together. n.o.body- -and I mean n.o.body! --is going to come here and take things away from me."

Doole grabbed his head with his long fingers in a gesture of weariness. "Everything was going just fine before you had to get Jabba angry at me! Everything was safe. I knew just how to play the game. Now I'm jumping at shadows, afraid every moment."

Doole stared at Han with his mechanical eye. "But ruining my life once isn't good enough for you, is it? You come back here broadcasting a message from the New Republic. Somehow I thought remnants of the Empire would try to grab the spice mines back first, but big governments are all the same. You are a spy, a particularly inept one. Did you think you could just fly into our s.p.a.ce, look around, and go back to your Republic with all the information they need to come take us over?" He slapped his palm on the desktop with a damp splat. "We'll strike the first blow by killing their spy, and we will be ready to blast them out of the sky the moment your attack ships come out of hypers.p.a.ce!"

"You haven't got a chance!" Skynxnex sneered.

Han allowed himself to smile, then actually chuckled. "You boys have it all wrong. Absolutely wrong." Chewbacca grunted his agreement.

Skynxnex scowled. Doole stared at Han in silence for a moment.

"We'll see about that."

Doole reached into the pocket of his waistcoat and withdrew a small ancient-looking key, which he inserted into one of the drawers of the former warden's desk. He fumbled with the lock, then opened the drawer.

Reaching in, he pulled out an armored strongbox. He hefted the strongbox to the table, then dug in another pocket of his waistcoat to extract a second key.

Han watched, his curiosity piqued, as Doole opened the strongbox and withdrew a smaller sealed container. Doole meticulously slipped both his keys back into his pockets before looking at Han.

"I'd like to spend time interrogating you thoroughly, but I want to know exactly when the New Republic plans to come in and take over, how many ships they are sending, what type of forces they will use. I'll get the information now, but I may have time to enjoy interrogating you later, just on general principle."

Doole placed his webbed Rybet palm on the top of the sealed container. With a slight hum a beam of light curled around his fingers in an ID scan; the small container burped as the airtight seal was broken.

The lid slid away to reveal a padded interior compartment.

The box was filled with slender, black-wrapped cylinders about half as long as a finger. Han recognized them immediately. "Glitterstim," he said.

Doole looked at him. "The most potent form of spice. With it I'll be able to read the truth of what you say. Your errant thoughts will betray you."

Han felt a sudden sense of relief. "But what if I don't have any hidden thoughts to betray?"

Skynxnex struck Han's head with the back of his hand, sending him reeling. Chewbacca tried to stagger forward, but the stun-cuffs silenced his bellows and made him sway dizzily, barely able to keep his balance.

Doole selected one of the slim black cylinders and held it in his fingers. With a deft motion he peeled off the opaque outer wrapper and withdrew a thin bundle of transparent gla.s.sy fibers. As Doole held the inert glitterstim up to the light pouring through the broad viewing window, the light-sensitive spice began to scintillate and glow from within, ripening.

Han watched until it was ready for Doole to consume. He swallowed a dry lump in his throat.

Doole opened his mouth when the segment of glitterstim glowed a pearlescent blue. He extended his sharp purplish tongue to wrap around the crystalline fibers, which he drew back into his mouth. The glitterstim crackled and fizzed; as Doole flexed his lips, tiny sparks seeped out the corners.

Han stared as Doole closed his blind eye and breathed deep, watery breaths. The spice would act on Doole's mind, pump up his latent powers.

The automatic focusing gears of Doole's mechanical eye clicked and whirred, spinning around as it tried to make sense of the visions pouring through the Rybet's mind. Then Doole turned to face Han and Chewbacca.

Han winced as he felt tiny fingers clawing around in his brain, picking through the lobes of memory, images he had stored in his thoughts... searching, searching. He tried to shrink away but knew he could keep no secrets from anyone pumped on glitterstim. Skynxnex chuckled, then immediately fell silent, as if afraid of directing Doole's attention to himself, where his own brain could be picked.

Han felt anger growing, outrage that Moruth Doole could dissect the private moments he had with Leia, could observe the births of Han's three children. But the spice effects lasted only a few moments, and Doole would be concerned mainly with learning why Han and Chewbacca had come to Kessel.

"I really was telling you the truth, Doole," Han said quietly. "We are on a peaceful mission to reestablish diplomatic contact with Kessel.

The New Republic is trying to open up trade and welcome you. We came in peace, but you just declared war on yourself by shooting down their first amba.s.sadors."

Chewbacca growled.

Skynxnex stiffened, then took a few awkward steps forward. "What is he talking about?"

Han raised his voice. "Read the truth in my mind, Moruth."

The Rybet's mouth hung slack, and Han could see glitterstim sparks sputtering around his cheeks. He felt the tiny probing fingers crawl deeper and deeper into his mind, scrabbling around. Doole was frantically trying to find some proof of his suspicions as the spice enhancement faded away.

But Doole could find nothing; there was nothing to find. The only thing he did learn was the power of the Alliance forces that would be arrayed against him. A fleet that had succeeded in overthrowing the entire Empire would certainly be sufficient to destroy a ragtag outlaw operation on Kessel.

"No!" Doole wailed. He whirled to glare at Skynxnex. "What are we going to do? He's telling the truth!"

"He can't be!" Skynxnex said. "He's a--he's--"

"The spice doesn't lie. He's here for exactly the reasons he said.

And we shot him down. We took him prisoner. The New Republic is going to come after us, and they'll wipe us out."

"Kill the two of them now," Skynxnex said. "If we work fast, we can cover everything up."

Han felt sudden fear return. "Now, wait a minute! I'm sure we can fix this with a few careful messages. I am the amba.s.sador, after all!

Diplomatic credentials and everything. I wouldn't want a simple misunderstanding--"

"No!" Skynxnex said, keeping his attention fixed on Doole. "We can't risk that. You know what Solo has done before. He knows you tipped off the Imperial tariff ships to go after him."

Actually, Han hadn't been certain until that very moment. "Now, there's no need to panic," he said again. "I can talk to the New Republic Senate. I know Mon Mothma personally, and my wife Leia is a cabinet member, and--" His mind whirled, trying to think of how Leia would handle this. Many times he had watched her smooth diplomatic problems. She had a finesse with words, a way of approaching other people's concerns and stroking them, delicately maneuvering opposing sides into a compromise.

But right now Leia wasn't with him.

"Yes, I think I agree," Doole said, tapping a finger against his swollen lips. Han let out a sigh of relief. "I agree with Skynxnex. I'll review the battle tapes, but I don't believe you transmitted any messages after coming out of hypers.p.a.ce. One of our fighters shot off your subs.p.a.ce antenna dish. The New Republic has no way of knowing you arrived safely. With no evidence they will conclude you got swallowed up by the Maw."

Doole began to pace in front of the large viewing window. "We'll delete any mention of you from our records. Instruct all my mercenaries to forget about the attack. Yes, that'll be the safest alternative!"

"You're making a big mistake!" Han said. He could barely restrain his urge to yank at the stun-cuffs.

"No," Doole replied, tapping his squishy-tipped fingers together.

"I don't think so."

Chewbacca bellowed a loud string of guttural words.

"My best bet would be to kill you right away," Doole answered; then he rubbed his fingers against his blind eye. "But you still owe me for this, Solo. Even if you worked every day for a hundred years, it would never repay me for the loss of my eye. You both are going down into the spice mines, the deepest and most distant tunnels.

They've been needing quite a few replacements lately."

Doole grinned with his wide froglike mouth. A final flicker of blue sparks rippled at the corner of his lips.

"No one will ever find you down there."

The former Imperial Information Center lay buried deep beneath the old palace, covered by layers of shielding walls and guarded by tight security at every entrance. To keep the temperatures within tolerable limits for the great data archive machines, vast heat-exchanger systems and powerful cooling units filled the room with a background roar.

Hunched over fourteen consoles were lumpy dull-gray slicer droids, hardwired into the terminals as they meticulously hacked at the security encryption codes and backup viruses set up in the Emperor's mainframes.

The slicer droids had been working for a full year, ferreting out vital tidbits from the labyrinthine databases. Already they had exposed twenty-three Imperial spies in deep cover trying to sabotage the burgeoning New Republic.

The hum of the cooling units and the motionlessness of the slicer droids blanketed the Center with an echoing emptiness. Lonely and fidgety, the protocol droid See-Threepio paced back and forth, his servomotors whirring, as he viewed the room with his optical sensors for the hundredth time.

"Haven't you found anything yet, Artoo?" he said.

Jacked into one of the information ports, Artoo-Detoo bleeped an impatient negative and continued whirring as he tunneled through the overwhelming amounts of information.

"Don't forget to double-check everything," Threepio said, and began pacing again. "And don't be afraid to follow unlikely leads. Master Luke would call them hunches. This is very important, Artoo."

Artoo hooted indignantly.

"And remember to check every planet from the Old Republic. The Empire didn't necessarily have time to update its information on all of them."

This time Artoo did not bother to reply but continued to work.

A moment later Threepio heard the outer doors open, and a shadowy figure moved toward them with silent grace. As always, Luke Skywalker wore his Jedi cloak, but this time the hood was draped casually over his shoulders. Luke walked with an eagerness in his step.

Threepio was glad to see a resurgence of the excited boyishness that had so characterized young Luke when the droids first met him after they had been purchased from the Jawas on Tatooine. Of late Luke's eyes had not been able to hide the haunted look and the barely contained power of a Jedi Master.

"Master Luke! How good of you to check on us!"

"How's it going, Threepio? Found anything yet?"

Artoo beeped an answer, which Threepio translated. "Artoo says he's going as fast as he can, but he wishes me to remind you of the enormous amount of data he must inspect."

"Well, I'll be leaving in a few hours to follow up on some earlier leads I uncovered by myself. I just wanted to make sure you two have everything you need before I take off."

Threepio straightened in a gesture of surprise. "Might I ask where you are going, Master Luke?"

Artoo chittered and Luke turned to him. "Not this time, Artoo. It's more important that you stay here and continue the search. I can fly by myself."

Luke turned to answer Threepio's question. "I'm going to Bespin to check on somebody there, but first I want to go to an old outpost called Eol Sha. I've got reason to believe that at least one lost Jedi descendant might be there." With a swish of his cloak, Luke turned to depart from the Information Center. "I'll check back with you when I come home." The door slid shut behind him.

Threepio spoke immediately to Artoo. "Punch up the data on Eol Sha- -let's see where Master Luke is going."

Artoo obliged, as if the idea had been in his own circuits. When the planetary statistics came up on the screen accompanied by ancient two-dimensional images, Threepio raised his golden mechanical arms in horror. "Earthquakes! Geysers! Volcanoes and lava! Oh my!"

When Luke emerged from hypers.p.a.ce, the starlines in the viewport funneled into points.

Suddenly brilliant pastel colors splashed across the universe--magentas, oranges, and icicle-blues of ionized gas in a vast galactic ocean known as the Cauldron Nebula. The automatic dimmers in the pilot's compartment muted the glare. Luke looked at the spectacle and smiled.

Leaving the hypers.p.a.ce node, he punched in the coordinates for Eol Sha. His modified pa.s.senger shuttle arced through the wispy gas, leaving the nebula above him as the engines kicked in. The double wedge-shaped craft descended toward Eol Sha.

He had wanted to take his trusty old X-wing, but that ship was a single-person craft, with room for only an astromech droid in the back.

If Luke's hunches about Jedi descendants proved correct, he would be bringing two candidates back to Coruscant with him....

According to outdated records, the settlement on Eol Sha was established a century before by entrepreneurs who intended to use ramjet mining ships to plow through the Cauldron Nebula and scoop up valuable gases. The mineship pilots would distill the gaseous harvest into pure, rare elements for sale to other outposts.

Eol Sha was the only habitable world close enough to support the commercial venture, but its days were numbered. A tandem moon orbited very close to the planet, spiraling in on a death plunge as gravity dragged it down. Within another hundred years the moon would crash into the planet, smashing both into rubble.

The nebula mining scheme had never paid off. The incompetent entrepreneurs had not counted on the true costs of ramjet ships and the unremarkable composition of the Cauldron's gases. The outpost on Eol Sha had been left to fend for itself. At about that time the Emperor's New Order had begun, and the Old Republic had crumbled to pieces. The few survivors on Eol Sha had been forgotten in the chaos.

The outpost had been rediscovered two years ago by a New Republic sociologist who had visited them briefly, recorded his insights, and filed a report recommending immediate evacuation of the doomed colony--all of which was promptly forgotten in the already blossoming bureaucracy of the New Republic and the depredations of Grand Admiral Thrawn.

The item that had attracted Luke's attention, though, was that a woman named Ta'ania --an illegitimate descendant of a Jedi--had been one of the original colonists on Eol Sha. Luke would have suspected the Jedi's bloodline had ended there, except for one small detail.

According to the sociologist's report, the leader of the ragtag colonists, a man named Gantoris, was said to be able to sense impending earthquakes, and he had miraculously survived as a child when his playmates were killed in an avalanche. Somehow Gantoris escaped injury while the others, a mere arm's length away on either side of him, had been crushed.

Luke attributed many of these stories to exaggeration in retelling, for even someone with a great deal of Jedi potential could not control such things without training--as he himself knew. But still the clues and the circ.u.mstantial evidence led him to Eol Sha. He had to follow every lead if he was to find enough candidates for his Jedi training center.

Luke took the modified shuttle on a figure-eight trajectory around the looming moon and vectored in on the remnants of the outpost on Eol Sha. After crossing the terminator where the planet's night fell into day, Luke looked out the viewport at the scabbed and uninviting surface of the planet.

His hands worked the controls automatically. As he swooped low, he could see the decrepit and sh.o.r.ed-up habitation modules that had been battered by natural disasters for decades. In the near distance hardened mounds of lava sprawled around a volcanic cone from old eruptions.

Curling smoke rose from the heart of the volcano, and glowing orange smudges showed where fresh lava seeped through cracks in its side.

Luke took the shuttle past the battered settlement and beyond a stretch of cratered, jumbled terrain. The shuttle settled onto the rocky hardpan, and Luke exited through flip-up doors behind the pa.s.senger seats.

The air of Eol Sha smoldered in his nostrils, filled with acrid sulfurous smoke and chemical vapors. The gigantic moon hulked on the horizon like a platter of beaten bra.s.s, casting its own shadows even in daylight. Murky clouds and volcanic ash hovered in the air like a hazy blanket.

When Luke stepped away from the pa.s.senger shuttle, he could feel the ground hum beneath his boots. With senses heightened from the Force, he could touch the incredible strain the close moon placed on Eol Sha, squeezing and tearing it with tidal forces that grew worse each pa.s.sing year as the moon spiraled closer. A hissing white noise permeated the air, as if the innumerable steam vents and fumaroles breathed out gasps of pain from the world.

Pulling the dark cloak about him and securing the lightsaber at his belt, Luke strode across the rough terrain toward the settlement. Around him small craters and deep pits dotted the ground, encircled by white and tan mineral deposits. Sounds of gurgling steam came from deep beneath them.

Halfway to the settlement Luke fell to his knees when a jolt went through the ground. The rocks bounced and the earth rumbled. Luke spread his arms to keep his balance. The tremors rose, then fell, then increased again before stopping abruptly.