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While trapped in the detention levels of the Star Destroyer Gorgon, when he had been sentenced to death by Admiral Daala, Kyp had vowed that he would never again allow himself to become so helpless. A Jedi was never helpless, since the Force came from all living things.

Still balancing, dark eyes closed, Kyp felt the other creatures in the jungle, traced their ripples in the great tapestry of the Force. He smelled the plants and flowers and small creatures in the rain forest. He ignored the tiny gnats swarming around his head and body.

He felt the tidal vibrations of the gas giant Yavin and its other moons as he extended his thoughts outward to space. He felt at peace, a part of the cosmos. He pondered what difficulties he could add to his balancing act. But before he could decide, Kyp sensed Artoo-Detoo being lifted from his perch high in the Massassi trees and lowered gently to the ground. The little droid made relieved beeping sounds.

Then Kyp felt the mossy boulder invisibly removed from his hand and set back in its depression. The rotting branch also drifted down, replaced exactly in its former place on the mulch of the jungle floor.

Kyp felt a slash of annoyance at having his exercise forcibly stopped, and he opened his eyes to see Master Skywalker grinning proudly at him.

“Very good, Kyp,” Master Skywalker said. “In fact, it’s incredible. I’m not sure even Obi-Wan or Yoda would know what to do with you.”

Kyp nudged with his levitating skills to flip himself upright so that he landed on his feet. Staring into Master Skywalker’s eyes, he felt his heart pounding with exhilaration, filled with far more energy than he knew how to contain.

He spoke breathlessly, blinking as if he had suddenly opened his eyes into the brighter daylight on Yavin 4. “What else can you teach me today, Master?” He felt his skin flush. Droplets of sweat trickled from his dark hair and along his cheeks.

Master Skywalker shook his head. “Nothing more for today, Kyp.” The other Jedi candidates stood slumped in exhaustion, resting on broken stumps and overgrown rocks.

Kyp tried not to let his disappointment show. “But there is so much more to learn,” he said.

“Yes,” Master Skywalker answered with a barely contained smile, “and patience is one of those things to learn. The ability to do a thing is not all there is. You must know the thing. You must master every facet of it. You must understand how it fits with everything else you know. You must possess it for it to be truly yours.”

Kyp nodded solemnly at the spoken words of wisdom, as Jedi students were expected to do. But he promised himself that he would do everything necessary to make all of these new abilities his.

Even in the deepest hours of the night, Kyp did not sleep. He had eaten a bland but filling meal by himself, then retired to his cool quarters to meditate and practice the skills he had already learned.

As he concentrated, with only a small glowlamp in the corner, he sent his mind out to feel between the cracks of all the stone blocks in the Great Temple. He followed the life cycles of the strands of moss. He tracked tiny arachnids skittering through the corridors and vanishing into dark spaces, where his delicate touch could follow them through the blackness into their hidden homes.

Kyp felt as if he had plugged into a network of living things that expanded his mind and made him feel both insignificant and infinite at the same time.

As Kyp thought and dabbled with his fledgling abilities, he felt a great cold rip in the Force, like a black gash opening the structure of the universe. He snapped himself back to the present.

Kyp whirled and saw behind him the looming shadow of a tall cloaked figure. Even in the dim room the dark man’s silhouette seemed intensely black, a hole that swallowed up all glimmers of light. Kyp said nothing, but as he continued to gaze, he saw the tiny starpoints of distant suns within the outline of his mysterious visitor.

“The Force