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Terpfen would have taken no offense even if his organic circuitry had allowed him to. “I have set into motion another plan that may provide the information you seek.”

Terpfen had performed the task with parts of his mind he did not own. Flipper-hands moving not of his own volition had completed what the rest of him wanted to scream against.

“Your plan had better work,” Furgan said. “And one last question—I’ve noticed that Mon Mothma has avoided public appearances for several weeks. She has not attended many important meetings, sending proxies instead. Tell me, how is dear Mon Mothma’s health?” He began to chuckle.

“Failing,” Terpfen said, cursing himself. The laughter in Furgan’s face suddenly vanished, and his holographic eyes stared into Terpfen’s great watery disks.

“Go back to Coruscant, my little fish, before they notice you’ve disappeared. We wouldn’t want to lose you, when there is so much work left to do.”

Furgan’s transmission winked out. A moment later the beetlelike ship turned and, with a blue-white flare of its hyperdrive engines, burst into a fold of space and vanished.

Terpfen hung alone in the darkness, looking out at the glowing slash of the Cron Drift, surrounded by the echoing walls of his own betrayal.

7

Bearing only a dim glowlamp, Luke Skywalker led a procession of his Jedi students deep into the lower levels of the Massassi temple. Dressed in hooded robes, none of them voiced objections to Luke’s nighttime journey; by now they had grown accustomed to his eccentric training methods.

Luke noted the cold, smooth stone against his bare feet, then dismissed the sensation. A Jedi must be aware of his environment, but must not let it affect him in ways he does not desire. Luke repeated the phrase to himself, focusing on the state of perfect control he had learned only gradually through the teachings of Obi-Wan Kenobi, Yoda, and his own exercises of self-discovery.

He initially noted the silence of the temple, then scolded himself as he broadened his perceptions. The Great Temple was not silent: The stone blocks ticked and trembled as they cooled in the deepening night. Air currents danced in faint breaths, slow-motion rivers through the enclosed passageways. Tiny, sharp-footed arachnids clicked across the floors and walls. Dust settled.

Luke led his group down the flagstoned steps until he stood facing a blank stone wall. He waited.

Dark-haired Gantoris was the first to notice a tenuous wisp of pale mist through a flaw in the rock. “I see steam.”

“I smell sulfur,” Kam Solusar said.

“Good,” Luke said. He worked the secret panel that slid aside the stone door to a maze of sunken and half-collapsed passages. The tunnel sloped down, and the students followed as he ducked into the deeper shadows. His glowlamp spilled a flickering pool of light in a faint, washed-out circle. His own shadow looked like a hooded monster, a distortion of Darth Vader’s black form against the cramped walls.

The underground passage hooked to the left, and now Luke could smell bright and sharp brimstone fumes; the lumpy rock wept condensed moisture. In a moment he could hear the simmering of water, the whisper of steam, the stone sighing with escaping heat.

Luke emerged into the grotto and paused to draw a deep breath of the acrid air. The stone felt slick beneath the soles of his feet, warm and wet.

The other trainees joined him, looking down at a roughly circular mineral spring. Pearllike chains of bubbles laced the clear water as volcanic gases seeped through the rocks. Steam rose from the pool’s surface, twisting in stray air currents. The water reflected the glowlamp with a jewel-blue color from algae clinging to the sides. Ledges of stone and crusted mineral deposits made footholds and shallow seats on the walls of the hot spring.

“This is our destination,” Luke said, then switched off the glowlamp.

The underground darkness swallowed them, but only for a moment. Luke heard two trainees draw in deep breaths—Streen and Dorsk 81—but the others managed to restrain