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“On one condition.”

Leia snuggled closer. “What’s that?”

“No tauntauns. Those things stink.”

ABOARD THE JADE SHADOW

THEY DROPPED OUT OF HYPERSPACE, THE STARS ONCE AGAIN BECOMING white, glowing, stationary dots in the blackness of space instead of streaking white lights. But Ben had no interest in white dots. Who would, when one of the most beautiful spatial phenomena he’d ever seen was suddenly right before his eyes?

Ben literally felt his breath being taken away for an instant before he recovered himself. The tiny hologram of the area that Luke had displayed did not do the Kathol Rift any kind of justice and had done little to prepare him for the spectacle he now saw. He’d seen nebulae before and, like most humans, found them pretty. But this—

It was every color he’d ever seen and some he hadn’t, this glowing, swirling cloud that filled most of the screen. It seemed to shift and pulse like a living thing, its colors constantly changing. He wanted to sit and watch it for a long time, mesmerized by its dance.

“That really is beautiful,” said Luke, his voice holding just a hint of awe. Ben felt a little better about his own reaction if his dad, too, was similarly impressed. “But I’m sure it won’t be so beautiful once we get inside it.”

Ben nodded. He thought about the journals Luke had had him read, of those who had hallucinations in the Rift, and wondered if part of the reason was that the mind had difficulty transitioning from beauty to danger so quickly. With a final admiring glance at the spectacle, he let his gaze fall to his copilot’s console.

Luke thumbed a button that would send a signal to Cilghal’s com-link. When the Mon Calamari did not respond, he caught Ben’s eye, shrugged, and began to record a message.

“Cilghal, this is Luke. Ben and I are preparing to enter the Kathol Rift. Considering the nature of the Rift and the amount of electromagnetic radiation we’re looking at, I expect that any communication attempts are going to be spotty at best, and more likely simply nonexistent. Please attempt to continue to contact us with any updates on the situation with the Jedi. We’ll do the same with anything we learn, on the off chance that something might get through. Otherwise, we’ll contact you when our mission here is accomplished.”

He hesitated, then added, “May the Force be with us all.”

That more than anything Ben had yet learned sobered him like a bucket of cold water. The gravitas of the situation finally settled on his shoulders. It told him that his father wasn’t at all certain they’d come back from this mission.

That was all right. Ben was sixteen, but he’d endured more than most people three times his age. He’d been on missions where he was very unsure as to whether he’d survive—some where he was pretty darn sure he wouldn’t. Returning from the mission was never the point. Succeeding at it was.

Luke turned to see his son looking at him and gave a little smile. “How was lunch?”

Ben was puzzled. They’d eaten an hour ago. “Uh—fine. Why?”

“Because it just might come back up again.”

Ben snorted, offended. “Not likely.”

Luke chuckled. His hands flew over the controls, and Ben’s eyes were drawn inexorably back to the Rift.

Somewhere in there was the homeworld of the Aing-Tii. It was not impossible to find—Jacen had done so. Ben wished his cousin had been a little more forthcoming in the notes he had left in the Archives about his time there. All Jacen had contributed to Jedi knowledge about the Aing-Tii amounted to little more than a few pages, and even that shed no new light on them, their abilities, their world, or how to find it.

But even with the sketchy knowledge they had, he and Luke had been able to narrow their search, at least a bit. First, and most important, the world had to have an environment that would support humans, because Jacen had made no mention of needing special equipment in order to survive. Nor had Jorj Car’das. Ben was glad of that; he’d gotten awfully tired of constantly having to wear the breath mask—and its accompanying backpack rig laden with canisters