• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

“Don't worry,” Leia said. “This isn't one of the feeding regions. Reduces the odds that we'll run into a spider here.”

“Feeding regions.” The last door slid shut behind them. Now only the speeder's lights kept total darkness at bay. Hair tried to stand up on the back of Han's neck; he smoothed it down.

“To help control the movements of the energy spiders and give the miners some predictable sites to look for spice, Lando and Nien Nunb send processed ryll and incendiary devices into specific shafts in rotation. While the spiders are eating in one area and spinning new webs there, the miners go to areas where they were before and get fresh spice. This”—Leia gestured, indicating their surroundings—“is not one of the tunnels in rotation.”

“All that's on the map?”

“No, the map just says where the feeding zones are right now. I looked up what it meant in the prospectus Tendra gave me.”

“Prospectus.”

“You know, a business plan document. Used, among other things, to persuade people to invest.”

Han looked at her, alarmed. “Did you want to invest in this?”

Leia sighed. “No. It was a convenient source of information, and that's why Tendra gave it to me. But I suppose I could invest in all the businesses that have brought you so much happiness over the years. For instance, Jabba the Hutt's trade empire.”

“He's dead. You killed him.”

“Yes, but his business lives on. Or how about some of the Death Star manufacturing subcontractors.”

“Stop it.”

“Maybe just the folk who make trash compactors. Everyone needs trash compactors. Oh, and frozen-in-carbonite dream vacations.”

Han just gritted his teeth, determined to wait her out.

Ahead, the tunnel forked. Leia consulted her map, tracing the two routes with a fingertip. “This one, the lower one, Lando has marked as one of the places Tendra and Nien planted sensors. This other one, which doesn't go as deep but heads off westward at an odd angle, hasn't been recently explored. Let's try that one.”

“Is that just random interest, or a presentiment in the Force?”

“Random—” She paused, and a look of mild surprise crossed her face. “Both, maybe.”

Han turned left, into the tunnel she indicated.

CITY OF DOR'SHAN, DORIN

Ben did not often feel like a complete outsider, but this world seemed bent on convincing him that he was.

It started with his breath mask, a full-face rig that kept the planetary atmosphere, mostly helium with some other gases in the mix, at bay. It was attached to a backpack rig that included canisters of oxygen-nitrogen mix and a converter that broke a proportion of the carbon dioxide emerging from human lungs back into its component elements, reintroducing the oxygen into the breathing mix. A human could go for most of a day on a planet like this on only one charge, but Ben wasn't impressed with the rig's convenience. It was like being chained to his luggage.

Then there were the people. Luke had decided that he and Ben would walk to the Baran Do Sages' temple, as the map showed it to be not too far for a leg-stretching hike, and so Ben had the opportunity to see hundreds of the Kel Dors in the spaceport terminal building and on the streets.

Like the two who had performed the inspection, most were tall and angular. Unlike the inspectors, they were bare-faced … and what faces they had! Round bald heads, sunken eyes, narrow ridge-like noses that looked to Ben like failed attempts at becoming birds' beaks, and large, toothless mouths that looked like they belonged on very old humans … Ben tried not to stare at every face he passed, but he couldn't help himself, and did not like himself for the conclusion he reached.

When he and his father arrived at the street where the temple was to be found, a street almost free of speeders but still trafficked by pedestrians, and they were no longer near any crowds of natives, he said, “Dad, these are not a pretty people.”

Luke considered. “From a certain point of view, perhaps.”

“It sort of bothers me that