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The moth’s mission had been successful, and now Madine would be able to track Durga’s movements, wherever the Hutt went.

DAGOBAH

CHAPTER 26

Luke woke in the middle of the night to see Callista standing over him, her slender body silhouetted against pale watery light, a backwash of reflections that penetrated the polymerized ice walls in the comet quarry.

He sat up, instantly aware. “Callista, what is it?” Warm mists curled around her like steam, and he had an eerie sense of déjà vu, a flash of memory from when he had seen her spectral image while she was trapped inside the Eye of Palpatine.

“Luke,” she said, her voice quiet and troubled, “we shouldn’t be here.…”

He increased the light from the glowpanels. “Why not?” He slid out of bed and stood to hold her. She felt soft and warm, fitting comfortably into his embrace. “This place is beautiful and peaceful. What better spot could there be for us to spend some time?”

Callista stared deeply at him with her gray eyes. “This is romantic and private, Luke, but … that’s all. The comet quarry has no focus, no connection to anything that matters to us. It’s not personal. I’ve got to work with something personal.” She pressed her lips together, then continued with greater conviction, “Oh, Luke, why not take me to where you learned the Force. I’ll see it through my own eyes, and you can guide me.”

A silvery tinkle of water spattered from the fountains. The solidified ice walls were thick and muffling. He and Callista seemed isolated, frozen away from everyone else—as she had been frozen inside the computer banks for so many decades.

He squeezed her tightly. “Yes,” he said slowly. “I can show you many places—it’ll be like a pilgrimage to the worlds that influenced my life.”

She followed him as he walked out of the sleeping chamber into the common room. He whispered his request to the recessed computer terminal. As the computer search sorted public-access navigation charts, he went over to the food-prep unit and summoned two steaming cups of sweet, soothing jeru tea. He handed one to Callista, and she took it, smiling. This was her favorite beverage, and he had learned to drink it with her.

Luke sat down on the comfortable chair, and Callista took a seat beside him, running her long fingers across his shoulders, drawing a melting line of relaxation. He ran a hand through his ruffled hair to straighten it from the chaos of sleep. He took another sip of the syrupy tea and studied the navigational analysis in an outwardly spiraling list of distances.

He smiled with a wistful sigh as he found his target. “All right,” he said and turned to Callista. “Looks like we’ll go to Dagobah first.”

Clouds formed a thick band across the sky of Dagobah, a belt of storms that Luke Skywalker’s ship plowed through. He increased the shields to prevent the lightning damage that his X-wing had sustained the first time he had come to find the Jedi Master Yoda.

Dagobah had many climatic areas, many places not quite as teeming with life as the magnificent swamps; but Yoda had chosen to hide in the marshy areas where his presence could be masked by so many life forces.

Luke talked of Yoda as he brought their space yacht through a break in the canopy. “The first time I landed here in a bog, and my X-wing sank. I thought I’d never get out until Yoda used the Force to heave my ship out of the water. I thought it was impossible. He told me that’s why I failed.”

Luke risked a glance at Callista, taking his attention from the piloting. “Never believe that yourself. You will get your powers back. Don’t think it’s impossible.”

She nodded. “I know it’s not impossible, and I’m going to do it.”

The ship spotlights extended brilliant cones to the wet ground below. Luke located a clearing that looked like a field of white boulders, but as he shone the light down to cut through the creeping ground fog, he saw that the white rocks were actually spherical fungi. As the beam played across them, their sensitive skins burst, showering fine