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She was trim, in her early twenties, wearing a comfortable utility suit, her hair dark brown and cropped close to her head. Her eyes, a deep sepia, squinted with weariness and strain.

"Are you Zekk?" she said, gesturing for him to accompany her back to the headquarters building. She began walking immediately without waiting for Zekk, as if she had no time at all for light conversation.

She called over her shoulder. 'Welcome to Another Hopetown. I'm Shinnan.

I remember your parents from when I was thirteen years old, during the last evacuation. You were just a boy then... seven?"

'Almost nine," Zekk corrected. 'I think I remember you, too. You were kind of a bossy girl telling the other kids what to do." She smiled.

"Yes, and now I'm a bossy woman telling grown-ups what to do. I hope you've come here to help. We could certainly use an extra hand during the last stages of the evacuation."

Zekk looked up into the darkening clouds.

He saw crisscrossed lines of ship exhausts like white spiderwebs highlighted by flashes of hghtning. "I came home," he said. "I've done a lot of things in my life, but now I've returned to Ennth. I'll gladly lend a hand. "

He hurried to keep up with Shinnan's rapid steps. Around him he saw the foundations of sheared-off buildings and tentcovered supply stacks lashed down and waiting to be picked up by cargo ships. The Ennth colonists continued to work steadily without rest, managing to look frenzied and organized at the same time.

On the way to the main command center, they passed abandoned buildings; some of the roofs had collapsed, windows broken.

Tremors and aftershocks had slammed through Ennth for the past year or so, yet the colonists had waited until the last minute to pack up.

Partly through the Force and partly through his own nerve endings, Zekk felt the ground trembling beneath his feet, as if he stood on a bomb just waiting to explode.

The only structures still inhabited seemed to be small stone dwellings near the command center-probably the quarters for Shinnan and Rastur and the other evacuation workers who had vowed to stay until the bitter end... just as his own parents had tragically done, eight years before.

The ground suddenly shook, as if a squirming krayt dragon lay just under the surface. Zekk stumbled, but Shinnan did not even pause in her step.

The tremors ceased in only a few seconds. Shinnan made no comment at all as she took him inside the command center.

A lean, hard-looking man stepped up to them. His eyes were old beyond his years, with stress lines etched into his face. He carried a deep sorrow within him. "Rastur, this is Zekk-returned to us after these many years."

Shinnan paused, seeing the dead look on Rastur's face.

"What's wrong, my love?" She slid her arms beneath his and held him tightly.

"I received word from our reconnaissance flyers," Rastur said. 'Newest Coast 'fbwn has just been destroyed." Shinnan gasped, then composed herself.

"What happened?"

"A tidal wave," he said, "undersea seismic activities. We saw it coming, but had only a few minutes' warning. The wave came in a thousand meters high and wiped out the entire settlement." He drew in a deep breath and crossed his arms over his chest. 'Luckily, we had already stepped up evacuation and salvage procedures. We got eighty percent of the supplies to safety in orbit. Most of the settlers had taken refuge, except for a hundred or so who remained behind for a last run. We also lost two supply ships." Zekk listened with growing horror, but didn't say anything.

Shinnan spoke up.

"Any chance for rescue operations?"

"There were no survivors,' Rastur said firmly, "not even any flotsam and jetsam to salvage...." His voice hitched before he brought it back under control. "In fact, there's not even much of a coast left where the wave hit."

Shinnan hugged the man briefly. "We knew to expect casualties, Rastur,"

she said. "We'll have a year to mourn once we're all off planet and waiting for the land to settle down