'I've got it, too,' Mara muttered from behind him. 'Doesn't feel like my usual danger warnings, though.'
'Maybe it's not all that dangerous,' Luke said. 'At least, not to us.' Artoo warbled, a sound that managed to be suspicious and forlorn at the same time. 'He wasn't talking about you,' Mara assured the droid. 'You see it, Luke?'
'Yes,' Luke said, smiling tightly. Up ahead, their three Qom Jha guides, who up until now had ranged freely back and forth ahead of their slower ground-walking charges, had all taken up rock perches just this side of the cavern mouth. 'I'd say there's something in there they're not anxious to run into.'
'Which they seem to have forgotten to tell us about,' Mara pointed out. 'Another test?'
'Could be,' Luke said. 'No—Child Of Winds, stay back here.'
'We're about to find out,' Luke told him, getting a grip on his lightsaber and easing toward the cavern. 'Mara?'
'Right behind you,' she said. 'Want me to handle the lights?'
'Please,' Luke said, handing his glow rod over his shoulder to her. Stretching out with all his senses, he stepped into the opening.
For a long minute he stood there motionlessly, studying the terrain as Mara swept the beams from the glow rods slowly around. The chamber was impressively large and high-ceilinged, with a handful of shallow channels conducting rippling streams of water across the otherwise more or less flat floor. There were none of the stalagmites and stalactites they'd had to put up with through the rest of the cave system, but the lower wall areas were pockmarked with dozens of half-meter-diameter holes that seemed to extend deeply back into the rock. The whole chamber—walls, ceiling, floor, even the creek beds—was covered with what looked to be a thick coating of a white mosslike substance. At the far side, the chamber again shrank down to a tunnel like the one they were standing in.
'There must be openings to the surface,' Mara said quietly, her breath a momentary warmth on the back of his neck. 'No light, but you can feel the air moving. And there's water, too.'
'Yes,' Luke murmured. Air, water, and a plant base—even a moss one—meant there could be a complete ecology down here.
An ecology that might well include predators...
'You want to offer it a ration bar?' Mara suggested.
'Let's try a rock first,' Luke said, stooping down to pick up a fist-sized stone. He threw it out toward the center of the chamber; and as it arced toward the floor, he caught it in a Force grip and twisted it sharply to the side—
And abruptly something snapped out from one of the walls and back again. And in that movement, the stone vanished.
'Whoa!' Luke said, looking over at that part of the wall as Mara swung the glow rods that direction. 'Did you see where that came from?'
'Somewhere over there, I think,' Mara said. 'It went by too fast—there. See it?' Luke nodded. From one of the deep holes in the wall, a brief cascade of gravel dribbled silently out down the white moss. There was some movement from the moss as the gravel passed, then it settled down again and the chamber was again silent and still.
'I guess it doesn't like rocks,' Mara commented.
'We should have gone with the ration bar,' Luke agreed, reaching out to the Force and replaying his short-term memory. It didn't help; the grab had been just too fast. 'Could you see what it was?'
'Some kind of tongue or tentacle, I'd guess,' Mara said. 'The main part of the creature is probably inside that hole.'
'And he's probably not alone,' Luke said, eyeing the other holes around the chamber. 'Any suggestions?'
'Well, for starters, we're going to need a closer look at one of them,' Mara said. 'You picking up any sentience in there?'
Luke stretched out into the chamber with the Force. 'No,' he told her. 'Nothing.'
'So they're simple predator animals, then,' she said, squeezing into the opening beside him and handing him the glow rods. 'That helps. Get out of the way, will you?'
