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He nodded. That made sense. The sensor had to detect density or mass. If something dropped by that was too dense—boys and girls being made of denser materials than bags full of laundry—then the repulsor would kick on, shoving the child into a side chute, probably sending him or her to a holding cell and notifying the appropriate Masters in charge of punishment, lectures, and chores.

Ben slid on past and picked up the pace.

Below was a small square of light, and it was getting larger. The end of the chute. Ben skidded to a silent stop when he was still two meters above it.

Warm air rose past him, and he heard the hum and clank of machinery. Three meters below the end of the chute was a smooth, wear-darkened permacrete floor with several gray laundry bags lying in a pile.

As Ben watched, a wheeled wagon rolled into view, pushed by a nondescript silver-white droid. The droid picked up the bags, tossed them in the wagon, and then pushed the conveyance out of sight.

Extending his senses through the Force, Ben could detect the droid’s movement, but he could feel nothing else moving in the immediate vicinity. He dropped the remaining five meters, rolled as he hit the permacrete, and came silently up on his feet.

In one direction, the droid’s retreating back; in the other, no observers. Either way, he was looking at an undecorated access corridor, machinery or storage crates piled here and there against a wall; often there was nothing concealing the drab grayness of the surfaces. The glow rods mounted in the ceiling, widely separated and offering only low light, created an even more dismal appearance.

Per Jacen’s instructions, Ben turned right and dashed silently in that direction. Soon enough, the main corridor made a ninety-degree turn to the left, but there was a door in the wall there; heavy metal with an imposing-looking durasteel rim, it was labeled EMERGENCY EVACUATION ACCESS. USE ONLY IN TIMES OF EMERGENCY. TEMPLE SECURITY WILL BE ALERTED.

Only in times of emergency. Well, the whole galaxy was facing a time of emergency. Ben shoved at the metal panel that constituted the mechanical opener, to be used in times of power failure, and he felt his shoulders hunch up again as he unconsciously anticipated an activated alarm.

But none came. Seha had done her job well. The door swung smoothly into a very short permacrete corridor, unlit, and there was an identical door at the far end, five meters away.

Ben responsibly shut the first door behind him, making sure that it latched into place. He might be disobeying the wishes of his father, but that was no excuse for exposing the Jedi Temple to possible intrusion by an enemy. The order had enemies, like the woman his father kept mentioning, Lumiya.

The second door also opened without activating an alarm, but sound washed over Ben anyway, and warm, heavy air—it was raining, individual drops pinging off a surface over his head. In the moments before his eyes adjusted he could see the lights of traffic streams to his right, but they were broken up, somehow disconnected. He doused his glow rod and shut this door, too.

When his eyes did adjust, he found that he was in a strange durasteel framework, long and narrow like a corridor. The floor and ceiling were metal sheeting, but the sides were mostly vertical metal bars with very narrow gaps between them. Through the gaps to the left, he could see only dressed stone, probably the Temple exterior; to the right was darkness and Coruscant cityscape.

Quietly, he moved toward the end of this pseudo-corridor and could feel it sway slightly under his feet. And at the end, its purpose became evident. There he found a stand-up-set of mechanical controls—several sets of wheels to spin. It took him only a few moments to work out their functions.

This was a telescoping access. One wheel would cause it to stretch out to its maximum length, and as it extended, the metal bars all along its length would thin out. Other wheels allowed the controller to change the angle