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He felt a touch on his hand, and turned it so that his father and he were clasping hands. Luke needed physical contact if he was to extend the hassat-durr technique to protect both himself and Ben. Ben wasn’t accustomed to holding hands with his dad, but he felt a slight tingling and was grateful for the shielding Luke was offering.

He sensed his father in the Force immediately, of course. Luke Sky-walker was a bright, shining presence to anyone who was Force-sensitive, and his bond with Ben enabled the youth to connect with him at once.

Ben did not sense the being before him, and wondered if the Aing-Tii knew the same technique for masking his presence in the Force as he, Ben, knew. He felt a little puzzled. He was certain his father had gotten it right. But if this being truly wanted to communicate with them in the Force, then why the—

And then suddenly he was there, shining as bright as Luke Sky-walker but in an entirely different way. Tadar’Ro, for suddenly Ben knew his name, was a completely different type of Force-user than any Ben had ever encountered. His presence felt—splintered somehow, but not in a negative way. This was not a splintering caused by being broken, but by choice, by design. It was as if Tadar’Ro’s Force self was a sort of fabric, woven of many threads, and he was now permitting the Skywalkers to see and comprehend this.

Ben had felt it when people’s life essences had winked out of the Force. He was accustomed to the sickening sensation. He had been told that his namesake, Obi-Wan “Ben” Kenobi, had staggered and appeared faint when Alderaan had been blown to bits by the Death Star. So many deaths all at once had to have been traumatic.

What Ben experienced now, though, while overwhelmingly intense, was not horrifying, not at all. He realized his breathing had speeded up, and that the air that he was sucking into his lungs wasn’t quite doing the trick, and the shimmering, many-stranded being that was Tadar’Ro had somehow gotten hold of him in the Force and—

He had no option. Ben abruptly withdrew from the Force and slammed the door shut.

He realized he was sweating heavily and shaking. He turned to look at his father, who had lifted a hand in a dismissive yet gentle gesture.

“Go back to the Shadow, Ben,” Luke said. He was still gazing raptly at Tadar’Ro. “I’ll be there soon.”

Ben felt his face flush a second time. He hadn’t been able to handle it—whatever it was.

He rose and walked back to the ship. As he started to ascend the ramp, he turned and looked back to see Tadar’Ro’s long, thin green tongues flickering and caressing his father’s upturned face.

BEN WAS GLAD TO RETURN TO THE MORE FAMILIAR, COMFORTABLE ARTIFICIAL atmosphere of his mother’s ship. Once back on board, though, he threw himself into his studies of the Aing-Tii as a sort of penance for what he perceived as a failure, only to realize how very little specific information there actually was. He therefore amused himself with a holodrama, embarrassed that he was doing such a thing but too agitated to bestir himself to do anything else.

He was lying back in the flowform chair, going over what he had experienced with one part of his mind and observing the acting with the other, when he heard the door slide open and Luke’s voice calling him.

“Ben?”

Ben turned off the holodrama quickly. “Dad … How did it go? What was he doing? I’m sorry I couldn’t—”

“You did just fine,” Luke said reassuringly. “Even I’ve never experienced anything like what Tadar’Ro tried to share with me.”

He did look a bit drained, Ben thought. The knowledge mitigated his own feeling of falling short.

“Did you communicate with him in an acceptable way?”

Luke got a glass of water, gulped it down, refilled it, and dropped into the chair beside Ben. Ben seemed to notice, really notice, the creases in his father’s face and the gray in his blond hair. The fingers that curled around the glass were strong and calloused and nicked. Luke Skywalker looked quite mortal at the moment, and Ben realized that the revelation made him uneasy. Then he thought