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“They're on Kessel. I'll get you the direct holocomm data you need to contact the Falcon.”

Cilghal gestured toward the monitor. “Already we have interesting results. Seff does not possess Valin's trick of blanking the electroencephaloscan. The portions of Seff's brain that are active when he dreams have been seeing activity during his waking hours as well, for some considerable time—these stress patterns here so indicate.”

“Meaning that he's, what, sleepwalking?”

Cilghal shook her head. “But he is in some small way in a dreamlike state. Which may be the first clue toward determining how to restore him and Valin to normal. So … well done.”

“Thank you, Master Cilghal.”

CAVERNS OF THE HIDDEN ONE, DORIN

It had been days now since their audience with the Hidden One, and that audience had not been repeated. Luke and Ben had divided their time among numerous tasks: digging out the chamber the Baran Do intended to be their permanent quarters, exploring the caverns, and talking to the other dwellers in this lonely environment.

Ben grew impatient. Swinging his pickax at a particularly stubborn outcropping of stone, he imagined it was the Hidden One's face, a fantasy that gave him some satisfaction as he worked. “Dad, we need to get out of here.”

Luke, shoveling stony debris into a small rolling cart, smiled—the enigmatic, you're-so-young expression that Ben found so annoying. “Is that our objective?”

“Of course it is! We have to get out of here to continue our mission.”

“But is it our most immediate goal?”

“Sure, why not?”

“Ben, what is our purpose as Jedi?”

Ben sighed and lowered his pickax. This was going to be one of those conversations. “Well … to keep the Force in balance and to help people stay in balance with the Force. To detect wrongs and make them right. To serve as models for very attractive lines of boots.”

“Let's go back one. Detecting wrongs and righting them. Is there a wrongness going on here?”

“Absolutely. They've kidnapped people. Which we can right by escaping.”

“Is that the only wrong?”

Ben lifted his breath mask for a moment, wiped his sweating face with the sleeve of his overlong Kel Dor robe, and lowered the mask into place again. He exhaled, forcing the helium-rich Dorin atmosphere out of the mask, then took a new breath before answering. “I guess not. These Baran Do are wronging themselves, too. Following a paranoid down into this hole, pretending to be dead—”

“There you go. The Force is an energy of life. These Kel Dors, in pretending to be dead, are rejecting life. They're unwittingly becoming dead. How much happiness have you seen down here? How much enthusiasm?”

“I'd say it reaches pretty far into the negative numbers. They're all about duty, but not about happiness.”

Luke shoveled the last of the larger rocks into his cart. “So if we escape now, what happens to them?”

Ben slumped, defeated. “They continue to live their nasty little lives and nothing gets better.”

“Correct.”

“They brought it on themselves.”

“Spoken with all the sympathy and altruism of a teenager who'd rather be doing something else.”

Ben grinned, unabashed. “You've got that right.”

* * *

In his free time, Ben set out to uncover the cavern's secrets.

First there was the question of the trigger the Hidden One was supposed to have that would collapse the tunnel leading to the surface. It had been said that the Hidden One could activate it through the Force or by physical action. Ben set out to find out where that trigger was.

When the largest hall was empty, he searched the Hidden One's throne and the platform it rested on. It took him mere moments to find what he was looking for. The throne, though seemingly cut from a single block of white stone, was not; close examination showed that it was assembled from several pieces, their seams so fine and patterns so well matched that the deception was undetectable by anyone more than a few centimeters away. The right armrest lifted outward on hinges, and beneath it was a single button—round, black, inset in a red