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“Right.” Ben returned to the cockpit, wondering if, in deciding to accompany his father, he had somehow consigned himself to ten years of dullness.

No, that was a child's perspective. He had to continue thinking like an adult. Like a Jedi.

Even a Jedi in exile.

CALRISSIAN-NUNB MINES, KESSEL

“THE PIT”, HAN SAID, “IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN AN ATMOSPHERE PLANT SITS on one spot for a few years. It digs up stones that have oxygen and nitrogen in them. It cracks the stone, spitting the dust out through the hole onto an ever-growing sand hill and spewing the gases up into the sky. Meanwhile, the hole underneath gets bigger and bigger until they have to dismantle the facility and move it. On Kessel, sometimes those pits punch their way into cavern systems.”

“And if explorers find spice, a mine is born,” Leia said.

Han nodded, gloomy.

Below, the shaft was ringed by a set of lights indicating a specific mine level. Descending past it, their vehicle lights revealed a large metal door in the side of the shaft just above the illuminating ring, suggesting that a side tunnel continued beyond the door. Many meters farther down, they could see another such ring.

On the passenger-side monitor, Leia brought up a schematic map of the mine complex. “So let me get this straight. The energy spiders feed on energy. Drain it right out of living things.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And they also spin webs to trap their prey.”

“Well, mostly they sort of spit the webs up on rock surfaces. They don't usually spin them in the open air. Though they sometimes spin lines to climb.”

“Where does the mass for the webs come from? And the mass to let the spiders grow? Not from matter-energy conversion. They couldn't be absorbing that much energy.”

Han shook his head. “They eat a certain amount of stone. Kessel is laced with veins of ryll, and ryll is one of the major components of glitterstim.” Neither as effective nor as rare a spice as glitterstim, ryll was a mineral found on several worlds, notably Ryloth, home planet of the Twi'leks. As information about the energy spiders had been released over the years by Lando's mining company, Han had kept up with it, out of a sense of horrified fascination.

They passed another two light rings during that exchange. Leia tracked their progress on her diagram. “How low are we going to go?”

“All the way to the bottom, or until you feel something.”

“Nothing yet.”

“We could just go back up again, grab Allana, and go home.”

“I feel something!”

“What?”

“Irritation. Stop trying to slither out of this mission.”

Han sighed.

They descended in silence for a while. Eventually the speeder's lights illuminated rough stone all around and below: the end of the shaft, and there were no tunnels, artificial or natural, branching from it. Han increased power to the repulsors and they rose toward the next light ring up, the lowest tunnel entrance.

As they hovered outside the metal door, Leia touched a control on the board before her. The door slid open, revealing a dark tile-floored chamber beyond.

“Still,” Han said, “it's much better than the first time I was down here. Doors open when you want them to, and the mine manager gives you drinks and weapons instead of sending someone to kill you.”

“That's progress.”

The tile-floored chamber was a ready room. Banks of lockers held equipment the miners would use in their work. There was no one present—Lando had said he was keeping all personnel out of the mine until the situation was resolved—and for some reason Han found the lack of people additionally unsettling. If he and Leia had to run from a monster they couldn't kill, there would be no nasty guards to distract the beasts. Han preferred to have slower-moving people behind him in situations like that.

They moved out of the ready room into a chamber where mine cars waited. The little train of six open-top cars sat on the dusty stone floor but if activated, they would rise on repulsorlifts, resembling a flying centipede. The cars looked like original equipment from Han's first visit to Kessel.

Another large metal door at