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She nodded, and continued toward the back of the ship. It bothered her, speaking with a Shamed One, but she knew it should not.

Corran wiped the sweat from his brow. “After this,” he said, “our next priority is to find Luke.” He sliced his lightsaber through the base of another sapling and added it to the pile. Nearby, Tahiri did the same.

“There. That ought to be enough for the frame.”

“I don’t know about you, but the planet is still interfering with my senses. How do we find Master Skywalker without the Force?” Tahiri asked. “It’s a big planet. We can’t just start walking and hope to run into him.”

“No, but this place is supposed to be inhabited—by Ferroans, if I understand correctly, and they ought to be able to help us get in contact with the others.”

“I haven’t seen any signs of civilization,” Tahiri said.

“Neither have I,” Corran admitted. “But tomorrow I’ll start looking. Just short searches, and maybe I can talk Harrar and the Prophet into going with me.”

“What about me?” Tahiri asked. “What do I do?”

“I want you to keep an eye on the shaper. You know her better than I do. What I don’t want is any of them left to their own devices for too long.”

“Okay,” Tahiri replied.

Corran slung the poles over his shoulder and started back toward the clearing near the ship where Nen Yim was depositing a variety of weird biots.

“What have you done?” Harrar asked when he saw them. His tone was dense with reproach.

“Nen Yim said she needed a shelter,” Corran explained. “The ship is pretty twisted up and probably won’t be very pleasant when its organic components start to deteriorate, so that means building a hut. These will furnish the frame.”

“You killed living things to build a shelter? We’re to stay in deadlife?”

“Unless you brought the means to grow your own, yes. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to sleep in the rain. Unless you have a better idea.”

“I—Consider,” the priest pleaded. “We came to this place following the legends of a living planet, a planet like no other. If these legends are true, is it best we begin by killing things? What if the planet is angered?”

“I never thought I would hear a Yuuzhan Vong say anything remotely like that,” Corran said. “You guys started this war by wiping out not just a few saplings but entire ecosystems. Remember Belkadan? Remember Ithor?”

“Yes,” Harrar said, stonily. He seemed to want to say more, but he didn’t.

Corran glanced at the saplings. “Unfortunately,” he confessed, “you’re right, I wasn’t thinking. Which means, I suppose, we need to find some sort of natural shelter. A cave, maybe, or a rock shelter. There might be some in the high ground to the east of here. Would you care to accompany me, Harrar?”

“I would,” the priest said. “And—thank you for considering my words.”

“What about you, Yu’shaa?” Corran asked, hopefully.

“I’m about to go on a collecting expedition,” Nen Yim said. “He will accompany me.”

“That sounds neat,” Tahiri said. “Can I go?”

Aces, kid, Corran thought.

The shaper shrugged noncommittally.

Tahiri shared a quick mental smile with Corran. He was amazed at how quickly she had turned a misstep into an opportunity, solving their immediate problems rather neatly. He wished she could deal with social situations as conveniently.

Nom Anor watched Nen Yim move among canelike plants, stroking them with her shaper’s hand and occasionally recording cryptic entries in a portable qahsa. The Jedi brat sat on a log some distance away, pretending not to be interested, but she was watching them, nonetheless.

The shaper had been “collecting” for hours, but so far as Nom Anor could see, she hadn’t collected anything. She had examined trees, shrubs, moss, fungi, and arthropods with singular intensity. She hadn’t shared anything of what she was thinking, though the expressions that flitted across her usually impassive face indicated that she found much to think about.

One thing had come clear, though—Shimrra was right to fear this planet. He had seen the faces of his Yuuzhan Vong companions, knew they felt the