the relative safety of his chosen ravine. This had happened before: focusing his attention—and the Force—too narrowly in one direction had a tendency to blind him to anything happening outside that cone. Clearly, at least one of the alien pilots had been smart enough to abandon the chase and fly up over the maze to wait for the target to show himself. But the gambit had failed; and if the terrain cooperated, he wouldn't get another chance at it. The X-wing emerged into a second valley, this one smaller than the first, and veered off into another ravine. Letting the Force guide his hands, Luke watched the cliffs around him, looking for just the right place...
And then, suddenly, there it was. On both sides of the X-wing steep cliffs rose upward, one of them angling sharply toward the other until only a tiny ribbon of daylight showed at the top between them. Lines and clusters of drab and scraggly bushes clung to various parts of the craggy rock, with a thick matting of brown bushes and squat trees covering the canyon floor below. Ahead and behind, the canyon curved sharply to either side, leaving this center part as an isolated bubble surrounded by rock.
It was the perfect place to go to ground.
Artoo didn't squeal or screech as Luke swung the starfighter around in a hundred-eighty-degree skid in a classic smuggler's reverse. Probably, Luke decided as he fed power to the thrusters, because the little droid was too busy holding on for dear life. For a handful of seconds the X-wing bucked beneath him, and he fought hard for stability as it tried to flip out of control. Outside, the canyon walls shooting past began to slow, and as they did so he eased off on the drive and keyed in the repulsorlifts. The deceleration pressure crushing him against the seat cushions faded; spinning the X-wing around to face forward again, he threw a quick look around. Directly ahead, a pair of squat but bushy trees rose up from the canyon floor, straddling what appeared to be a dry creek bed, their trunks just the right distance apart. Killing the last of the X-wing's forward velocity, he dropped its nose down to slide neatly between the tree trunks.
'There,' he said, running the last steps of the landing cycle and shutting down the repulsorlifts.
'That wasn't so hard, now, was it?'
There was a weak and slightly shaky whistle from behind him. Apparently, Artoo hadn't found his voice yet.
Smiling tightly, Luke popped the canopy, wincing at the high-pitched scratching sounds as dozens of thorn-edged leaves scraped across the transparisteel, and slid off his helmet and gloves. The air flooding in from outside was cool and smelled vaguely mossy. For a long minute he listened, stretching out with Force-enhanced senses for sounds of pursuit. But there was nothing except the normal sounds of wind rustling through the leaves and the distant chirps of avians or insects. 'I think we've lost them,' he told Artoo. 'At least for now. You figured out where we are?' Artoo beeped, still sounding a little dazed, and a map appeared on the computer display. Luke studied it. Not too bad, but not too good either. They were no more than ten kilometers from Mara's cave, but most of the territory between here and there consisted of the same kind of narrow gorges and rocky cliffs they'd just been flying through. At least a full day's travel, probably two, possibly three.
On the other hand, the very roughness of the ground would give them better cover than they could reasonably have asked for. All in all, a pretty fair trade.
But it wouldn't be much of a trade if the aliens found them before they even got started. 'Come on,' he said, easing out of the cockpit and rolling out to the ground. The attempt to avoid the leaf thorns was only partially successful, but only a couple of them actually drew blood. 'Let's get the pack sorted out and get out of here.'
It was the work of a few minutes to break out the camo-net Karrde had sent along and to pull it snugly over the X-wing. Then, as an extra precaution, he cut up some of the smaller bushes and tree limbs with his lightsaber and scattered them on top of the net. It wasn't perfect, especially at close range, but it was the best he could do in the available time.
Karrde's people had also put his survival pack together, assembling the supplies and loading them aboard the X- wing while Luke hurried through the datawork necessary for getting off Cejansij. And as Luke had come to expect from the smuggler's organization over the years, they'd done a first-rate job of it. Split into two separate carrypacks, the supplies included ration bars, water filter/bottles, medpacs, glow rods, a good supply of syntherope, a spare blaster, a survival tent with bedroll, and even a small selection of low-yield grenades.
'I'm surprised they didn't try to cram a landspeeder in,' Luke grunted as he hoisted one of the packs experimentally onto his shoulders. It was heavy enough, but the weight had been well distributed and would be reasonably easy to carry. 'I guess we'll have to leave the other pack here. You ready to do a little climbing?'
Artoo warbled questioningly, his dome swiveling to peer first one direction down the canyon and then the other. 'No, that's where they'll expect us to come out,' Luke told him. He pointed upward toward one of the cliffs towering over them. 'That's our route, up there.' The droid swiveled his dome again, whistling skittishly as he leaned way back to look up.
'Relax—we won't have to go all the way to the top,' Luke calmed him. 'See that gap about two-thirds of the way up? If I read the aerial pictures right, that should lead into a cut that'll take us the rest of the way to the top.'
Artoo warbled forlornly, looking back and forth along the canyon again. 'No, Artoo, we can't go that way,' Luke told him firmly. 'And we don't have time to argue the point. Even if those ships can't get in there, they may have smaller ones back at the fortress. And they can always come in on foot, too. You want to be sitting around when they get here?'
The droid beeped emphatically. Swiveling himself around, he started bumping determinedly along the dry creek bed toward the base of the cliff below the gap Luke had pointed out. Smiling, Luke gave his pack one final settling shrug. Then, stretching out with the Force, he lifted Artoo high enough off the ground to clear the undergrowth and headed toward the cliff.
* * *
