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With one powerful stroke, the Dark Lord's head was severed from his body. Head and helmet crashed to the ground and rolled about the cave floor with a loud metallic bang. As Luke watched in astonishment, Vader's body was completely swallowed up by the darkness. Then Luke looked down at the helmet that had come to rest directly in front of him. For a moment it was completely still. Then the helmet cracked in half and split open.

As Luke watched in shocked disbelief, the broken helmet fell aside to reveal, not the unknown, imagined face of Darth Vader, but Luke's own face, looking up at him.

He gasped, horrified at the sight. And then, as suddenly as it had appeared, the decapitated head faded away as if in a ghostly vision.

Luke stared at the dark space where the head and pieces of helmet had Iain. His mind reeled, the emotions that raged inside of him were almost too much to bear.

The tree! he told himself. It was all some trick of this ugly cave, some charade of Yoda's, arranged because he had come into the tree carrying a weapon.

He wondered if he were really fighting himself, or if he had fallen prey to the temptations of the dark side of the Force. He might himself become a figure as evil as Darth Vader. And he wondered if there might be some even darker meaning behind the unsettling vision.

It was a long while before Luke Skywalker was able to move from that deep, dark cave.

Meanwhile, sitting on the root, the little Jedi Master calmly gnawed his Gimer Stick.

= XI =

IT was dawn on the gaseous Bespin planet.

As the Millennium Falcon began its approach through the planet's atmosphere, it soared past several of Bespin's many moons. The planet itself glowed with the same soft pink hue of dawn that tinted the hull of the powerful pirate starship. As the ship neared, it swerved to avoid a billowing canyon of clouds that swirled up around the planet.

When Han Solo finally lowered his ship through the clouds, he and his crew got their first glimpse of the gaseous world of Bespin. And as they maneuvered through the clouds, they noticed that they were being followed by some kind of flying vehicle. Han recognized the craft as a twin-pod cloud car but was surprised when the car began to bank close to his freighter. The Falcon suddenly lurched as a round of laser fire struck its hull. No one on the Falcon had expected this kind of greeting.

The other craft transmitted a static-obscured message over the Falcon's radio system.

'No,' Han snarled in reply, 'I do not have a landing permit. My registration is-'

But his words were drowned out by a loud crackle of radio static.

The twin-pod car was apparently not willing to accept static for a reply. Again it opened up fire on the Falcon, shaking and rattling the ship with each strike.

A clear warning voice came over the freighter's speakers: 'Stand by. Any aggressive move will bring about your destruction.'

At this point Han had no intention of making any aggressive moves. Bespin was their only hope of sanctuary, and he didn't plan to alienate his prospective hosts.

'Rather touchy, aren't they?' the reactivated See Threepio asked.

'I thought you knew these people,' Leia chided, casting a suspicious look at Han.

'Well,' the Corellian hedged, 'it's been a while.'

Chewbacca growled and barked, shaking his head meaningfully at Han.

'That was a long time ago,' he answered sharply. 'I'm sure he's forgotten all about it.' But he began to wonder if Lando had forgotten the past...

'Permission granted to land on Platform 327. Any deviation of flight pattern will bring about your-Angrily, Han switched off the radio. Why was he being put through this harrassment? He was coming here peacefully; wasn't Lando going to let bygones be bygones? Chewbacca grunted and glanced at Solo, who turned to Leia and her worried robot. 'He'll help us,' he said, trying to reassure them all. 'We go way back ... really. Don't worry.'

'Who's worried?' she lied unconvincingly.

By then they could clearly