Vision of the future

'Probably worn down by years of little fire creeper feet running over it.'

Artoo seemed to shudder, warbling uncomfortably. 'I doubt we'll run into any more of them this time around,' Luke soothed him as he untangled the syntherope and tucked it back into the droid's storage compartment. 'Swarms that size can't travel too close together—there won't be enough food for them all.'

'Let's just hope they're smart enough to know that,' Mara added. You are fortunate you have come when you did, Child Of Winds said. There has been much rain in the past few seasons, and the Lake of Small Fish has been growing ever larger.

'And have the small fish been getting bigger, too?' Mara asked. Child Of Winds fluttered his wings. I do not know. Is it important?

Mara shook her head. 'It was a joke. Skip it.'

Oh. Child Of Winds looked back at Luke. I simply meant that soon this entrance may be covered over with water.

'I understand,' Luke said. 'But for the moment it's not, and you got us here safely.' It was to our great honor, Child Of Winds said. What do you wish us to do now?

'You've done more than enough already,' Luke assured him. 'Thank you. Thank you all.' Shall we wait for you? the Qom Qae persisted. We would be honored to wait and take you again to your flying machine.

Luke hesitated. A ride back to the ship could be very useful indeed. Unfortunately—'The problem is that I have no idea where we'll be coming out,' he said. Then we will watch, Child Of Winds said firmly. And others will watch also.

'Yes, all right,' Luke agreed, anxious to cut off the discussion and get on their way. 'Thank you.'

'So what's our marching order?' Mara asked.

'I'll go first,' Luke said, sitting down on the edge of the slope and putting his legs into the opening.

'Artoo next, you last. I'll watch for bottlenecks and try to widen them as I pass. If I miss one, you'll have to deal with it.'

'Right,' Mara said, pulling her lightsaber from her belt. 'Happy landings, and try not to cut off your own feet along the way.'

'Thanks.' Igniting his lightsaber, holding the blade ready over his outstretched legs, Luke eased onto the slope and started down.

It wasn't nearly as bad as he'd feared. Years of little fire creeper feet might indeed have smoothed down the rock; more importantly, they'd also worn away most of whatever obstructions might once have existed there. Only twice did he have to slice out pieces of rock as he slid his bouncy way down, and in one of those cases it probably hadn't really been necessary. Behind him, he could hear the much louder metallic clattering as Artoo slid down the slope, almost but not quite covering up his continual unhappy twittering.

The slope emptied into one of the same sort of tunnels they'd spent far too much time in over the past couple of weeks. Luke caught Artoo as he fell out, getting him out of the way in time to give Mara a clear landing spot. 'Well, here we are again,' she said, playing her glow rod around. 'Doesn't look particularly familiar. Any guesses as to which way?'

'From the position of the fortress, I'd say that way,' Luke said, pointing to the left.

'Okay,' Mara said. 'Let's go.'

The Qom Qae, whether by design or simple luck, had chosen their entrance well. They had gone no more than a hundred meters along the tunnel when Luke rounded a curve to see an all-too-familiar natural stone archway in the near distance. 'We're here,' he murmured back toward Mara. 'Be ready; if they know about the stairway, they'll probably have guards waiting for us inside.' There were no guards. Fifteen minutes later, having struggled through the narrow gap in the cortosis-laden rock, they were once again standing in the underground room.

'I guess they don't know about the stairway, after all,' Mara commented, playing her glow rod across the cut they'd made earlier in the yellow inner wall.

'Or else don't have any way of getting into it,' Luke reminded her. 'Even the locking mechanism on those doors seemed to be made of Hijarna stone.'

'Don't misunderstand—I'm just as happy to give them a miss this time through,' Mara hastened to say. 'I wonder how many of those power conduits are running at the moment?'

'Probably more than the last time we went through,' Luke said, turning his glow rod to point the other way. As before, the far end of the room was lost in the shadows beyond the light. 'I wonder how