Star Wars_ The Jedi Academy Trilogy 01_ Jedi Search - Kevin J. Anderson [93]
“Ah, but they are sources of ryll spice, not glitterstim—”
“They are still profitable.”
Artoo withdrew and chittered to Luke. Though Luke only partially understood the droid’s language, he heard enough to know that Artoo had not found Han, nor anything particularly incriminating as far as Doole was concerned. If the information banks had held any record of the Falcon, they had been wiped clean.
“Well, what’s your droid’s opinion?” Doole asked, hearing the bleeps.
“He finds nothing out of the ordinary,” Luke said. He exchanged a dejected glance with Lando.
Doole stood up, beaming. “All right. I understand your concerns, Mr. Tymmo. Sometimes inconvenience must take precedence in business matters. I wouldn’t want you to leave Kessel with any doubts. Come, I’ll show you the spice-processing line, then we’ll arrange a tour of the newly opened tunnels.”
He burbled off, leading the way as they followed, still looking for any sign of Han.
A floater car took them across the surface to the entrance shaft of the collapsed tunnels. Luke and Lando ducked involuntarily as they sped into the narrow corkscrew passage.
“This was the site of an illegal mining operation back when the Imperial Correction Facility was in full control,” Doole said, raising his voice above the sound of the speeding engines. “The perpetrators were caught, and this access shaft was sealed off until a recent avalanche opened everything up again.”
Doole took them down into a wide grotto where part of the ceiling had fallen in. Wan light spilled down, illuminating the open areas. Workers had strung lights around the perimeter as they hammered and hauled broken rock. A crew of thirty or so milled around the chamber, shoring up walls and removing debris. The tunnels out of the grotto had been blocked by portable pneumatic doors that sealed the rest of the tunnels in blackness.
“This is a rare opportunity, Mr. Tymmo,” Doole said. He had grown more and more loquacious after showing them the spice-processing rooms where the blind larvae packaged glitterstim. “Spice must be mined in total darkness, so we almost never get to see the tunnels in direct illumination. But the avalanche let in sunlight that spoiled all this glitterstim anyway. We sealed off the other shafts to preserve the rest.”
“So what really happened here?” Lando asked, looking around.
“Tectonic disturbance,” Doole said.
Luke could see the blackened marks where powerful blaster strikes had scored the stone walls, and he knew there was much more to this than simple seismic activity.
He felt a surge of startled fear from Lando. “What’s that thing!” Lando pointed to the other side of the grotto.
Buried under a pile of jagged rubble, dozens of glassy spearlike legs protruded at all angles. Dim jewellike nodules dotted the spherical body core, eyes glazed in death. The rest of the body seemed to be made entirely of fangs. Falling chunks of rock had crushed it, and the creature’s whiplike legs lay askew as if it had tried to flail the boulders aside.
Doole strutted over to the carcass. “That, my friends, seems to be the thing that creates the spice itself. It’s the first such creature we’ve encountered, but there must be others deep in the tunnels. We’re getting a xenobiologist to study it. The bulk of its body seems to be made of glitterstim itself, and the strands we pull from the tunnel walls are what it uses as a web.” Doole stopped short of actually touching the fallen monster.
The guard in charge of dissection joined them. He nudged one of the sharp crystalline legs with his boot. “We want to see if we can extract raw glitterstim from the web sac and spinnerets in the dead body.”
Doole bobbed his head up and down. “Wouldn’t that be something? Absolutely pure glitterstim!”
Lando nodded noncommittally. Luke, playing his part, fished around for more information. “So how does this affect your safety record? Did this creature prey on