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Indeed, the creeping plague might well be an even more unpleasant death than the vacuum' of space.

Once he stepped outside the ship he could feel the wind rippling gentle fingers across the fabric of his suit. His breathing echoed in his ears, reflecting back inside the helmet so that it sounded as if he were hyperventilating. When he switched on the suit's external voice pickup, he heard only a sighing breeze, like the panting of a grieving parent too exhausted to cry any longer. He heard the hissing of sand and dust being blown around, the groaning of empty buildings, settling houses. But he heard no signs of life. Nothing at all.

He walked along the street. The buildings around him were tall, their windows like blind eyes. He found cadavers sprawled on the street, smothered by drifts of dust.

He stood close to one and nudged the sand away with his thick boot, exposing a shriveled, dessicated arm. The skin had turned grayish, peppered with strikingly vivid blotches of blue and green.

He could not bear to uncover the dead man's face, though. Yes, this must be a plague, all fight. A terrible plague. As bad as the Death Seed sickness that had struck down so many people years before.

He walked down the street, leaving footprints that were gradually erased by the shifting dust. All around him the dead city seemed eerie, oppressive. He switched on his loudspeaker, turned up the volume, and shouted into the numb air: "Hello! Is anyone alive? Can anyone hear me?"

He listened intently, trying to discern any rustle of movement some weak survivor crawling to a doorway, hands outstretched for help.

Instead, Zekk heard only the echoes of his own words bouncing upward off the abandoned buildings until they were swallowed in the dust-laden sky.

He trudged on down the street, feeling dread. He realized he would never find Fonterrat here... at least not alive. And what good would it do him to find the scavenger dead? He did not want to go inside the darkened buildings, which were little more than decaying tombs.

Then, through a gap in the buildings leading to a broad courtyard beyond, he saw a glint of metal not yet covered with dust--a ship!

Apparently it had landed not long ago.

As he stopped, he recognized the vessel's configuration, the odd elongated form and ovoid main body. He had seen that vessel among the shards of Alderaan and chased it through the asteroid field, but it had eluded him in the forest of rocks.

Slave IV!

Feeling a sudden sharp tingle of warning, Zekk whirled in his bulky suit and stumbled to one side just as a blaster bolt struck the ground at his feet, fusing the sand into a lump of molten glass.

Unable to run in his unwieldy suit, he staggered against a railing outside one of the prefab buildings and saw the helmeted form of Boba Fett stride out from a sheltered doorway.

The bounty hunter pointed his heavy blaster directly at Zekk.

Zekk had a weapon attached to his suit, but he would never be able to draw it in time... and he doubted he could shoot faster or more accurately than the fearsome mercenary Boba Fett.

Slowly, he raised both of his gloved hands in surrender. His thoughts whirled as he tried to figure out a way to escape this situation. If Boba Fett recognized Zekk as the one who had shot at him in the asteroid field of Alderaan,' the bounty hunter might take great pleasure in eliminating him just for revenge.

"I had thought no one remained alive on this world," Boba Fett said in a rough voice filtered through the speaker in his sealed Mandalorian helmet. "But I see I was wrong.

And now you are my captive."

"AH. KUAR, FIFTH planet orbiting a single sun in a star system of the same name," Tenel Ka said, reading from her datapad while sitting in one of the crew seats of the Hapan passenger cruiser.

"Still capable of sustaining human life, but apparently abandoned for some time..."

"Does it say anything about particular cities or structures?"

Jaina asked, craning her neck to look out