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“Like a web!” Han said.

The bogey struggled frantically as the spice around it grew brighter and brighter. Han saw long fibers of free-hanging glitterstim draped through the open air of the grotto.

From behind them Skynxnex fired again in a long continuous blast that missed them in the wide space. The powerful pulsed beam struck the far ceiling of the chamber, making it erupt with hot broken stone that poured down from the roof of the tunnel. The images in Han’s infrared goggles were blindingly bright.

The bogey stretched and struggled as parts of the spice web tore away in the avalanche, yanking portions of the glow with it.

Then Han saw the monstrous creature rise up from its lair on the grotto floor—a huge spider made of blown glass, all sharp edges, with a hundred legs and a thousand eyes. The bristling legs moved in a blur as it clambered up the debris toward the glowing bogey struggling in the spice web.

Han wrenched the floating car around, ready to plow his way out and away from the monster that had almost captured him in the tunnels—even if he had to fly right down Skynxnex’s throat.

On the rocks below, tossed aside like wadded sheets of used paper, lay the crumbled forms of Boss Roke, Clorr, and the guard, frozen solid and drained of every drop of their bodily energy.

The creature must lay down deposits of spice as its web to capture bogeys, Han thought, or any other warm creature it can find down in these tunnels. That was why light activated the glitterstim spice—to trigger the bogeys’ capture in the trap.

Skynxnex and the pursuing guard roared into the grotto. The scarecrow fired again, paying little attention to where he was going. His blast ricocheted off the wall, activating more spice.

The spider-thing glowed a dull blue with electric arcs crawling up and down its needlelike limbs, as if the creature itself were made out of activated spice. Attracted to the approaching heat source, it reared up.

Skynxnex did not see it until he had driven his floating mine car nearly into the grappling-hook claws. In the last instant Skynxnex pointed his hot double-blaster down and fired at the voracious creature—but the energy spider absorbed the blaster’s power and snatched out with a dozen limbs.

Skynxnex tried to leap out of the doomed car, but the spider thing speared him with a sharp leg, raising his scarecrow body higher. With the last of his strength, Skynxnex flailed his arms as his body grew cold.

The multilegged creature began to feed.

The pursuing guard rebounded sideways as he struck a thick mass of spice fibers dangling from the ceiling. The glitterstim sparked and glowed in the growing illumination. As the guard saw Skynxnex captured, saw the huge energy spider and the collapsing ceiling of the grotto, he whirled his floating mine car around and fled back out the cavern entrance as fast as he could go.

Han, though, saw an open passage in the ceiling and noticed a dim trickle of light coming from it. He wanted only to be out of there before the thing came scrambling after them, clawing its way up glasslike strands of glitterstim.…

“Up there!” Han urged.

Kyp plunged the car upward into the ceiling opening and suddenly came upon another network of tunnels. But these catacombs looked man-made. At last, one of the illicit mining shafts dug by spice smugglers searching to find active veins.

Han let out a whoop of delight. “This is it! We’re out of here now!” Chewbacca clapped him on the back, nearly belting Han out of the pilot’s seat.

They raced upward. The distant daylight pierced through the jagged obstacles of the passage. Han did not want to slow down. Kyp accelerated toward the light.

The floating car burst into the thin open air of Kessel, where watery light blinded them like a supernova. Blinking and struggling to see, Han yanked off his goggles and took back the pilot controls. He evened out their trajectory above the flat, desolate surface of the small planet.

Off to their right he saw the towering