bristles and tapped it on the port. 'There. See?'
'I see it,' Anakin said.
The little food-kin scrambled for a better view and cluttered in admiration. Two perched on Anakin's shoulders. A smaller fringed wormlike creature curled around one of the boy's legs and made contented gurgling sounds.
'They do not bother you?' Charza asked Anakin.
'They're fine,' Anakin said.
'They feel you are safe,' Charza said approvingly. 'You have a rare attraction for them!' He swung his couch around and played some of his spikes over another instrument panel. The green planet was already as wide as a thumb tip held at arm's length. 'When I came to Zonama Sekot last, I released Vergere on a mountain plateau high in the northern hemisphere, near the pole. I fervently hope she is still alive.'
'It is believed she is alive,' Obi-Wan said.
'Perhaps,' Charza said with a chuffing of his bristles. 'There are no pirates here, no commerce centers- indeed, the only inhabited planet for many light-years is Zonama Sekot. But Zonama Sekot is very close to the edge of the galaxy. Beyond this point, there is much that is not known. Anything could happen.'
'The edge of the galaxy!' Anakin said, still entranced by the picture. 'We could be the first beings to go beyond the edge!' He looked at Obi-Wan. 'If we wanted to.'
'There are still frontiers,' Obi-Wan agreed, 'and that is a comforting thought.'
'Why comforting?' Charza asked. 'Empty places without friends are not good!'
Obi-Wan smiled and shook his head. 'The unknown is a place where we can discover who we truly are.'
Anakin regarded his master with some surprise.
'So Qui-Gon taught me,' Obi-Wan concluded, drawing the long sleeves of his robe in over his booted knees.
'Zonama Sekot itself is not empty,' Charza said. 'There are beings there, not native to the planet. They arrived many years ago, not known how long. But they invite guests only recently, mostly rich buyers from worlds that do not owe strong allegiance to the Republic or trade with the Trade Federation. I will show you a picture now that Vergere sent to my ship before I left the system.'
Charza chuffed orders to a cluster of food-kin perched on one console. They danced on buttons and tugged levers, and a viewer swung into place.
'Best for humans,' Charza murmured, and the food-kin ad justed the colorful but blurry image. It floated in the middle of the bridge, suddenly sharpened and took on motion. Obi-Wan and Anakin leaned forward and stared. An intensely green landscape, viewed at sunset, spread before them. The scale of treelike growths that filled most of the image was not immediately apparent until Anakin spotted a structure in the lower left, a kind of balcony with what looked like humans standing on it. Then it became apparent that the trees were easily five or six hundred meters tall, and that the great green domes of foliage in the upper right were easily hundreds of meters across. Green was the dominant color, but the foliage was also rich with gold, blue, purple, and red.
'They do not look like trees,' Obi-Wan commented.
'Not trees,' Charza said. 'Not trees at all. Vergere called them boras.'
The planet's yellow sun, setting in a golden haze between the ranks of huge growths, was not the only light in the sky. The vast pinwheel of red and purple gas covered all they could see of the northern sky beyond the boras.
'That is all I know,' Charza continued. 'I dropped off Vergere, then waited until I was dismissed, and returned to orbit. There was no message to retrieve her, so I departed, as she had ordered. At that time, I detected six ships of known types in the region. All were private craft, I think belonging to customers of the shipbuilders on Zonama Sekot.'
'You did well, Charza,' Obi-Wan said, getting to his feet. 'Perhaps nothing is amiss.'
'She may be alive,' Charza said, 'but I do not think all is well.'
'Your instinct?'
Charza burred and lifted his head to the ceiling, then twisted around to regard them with all of his eyes. 'Simple observation. Where one Jedi travels alone, perhaps no cause for alarm. Where a Jedi falls silent, and other Jedi follow. . mishap and adventure!'
Chapter 13
Tarkin marched ahead of Raith Sienar down the tunnel toward the waiting shuttle. 'There is no time to lose,' Tarkin shouted over his shoulder. 'They've emerged from hyperspace, and we've received the tracker signal. We have less than an hour before you must join your squadron and leave Coruscant.'
Sienar clutched his travel bag and passed last-minute instructions to his protocol droid, which followed at a quick if lurching pace a few steps behind.
'Come on, man!' Tarkin shouted.
Sienar handed the droid the last thing he had packed earlier that morning: a small disk containing special instructions should he not return.
The droid halted at the embarkation slip and gestured a formal good-bye as Sienar joined Tarkin inside the well- appointed shuttle lounge. The hatch slid shut with an ear- popping hiss, and the shuttle immediately pulled from its tower berth and punched through a clear space in the traffic lanes.
It rose rapidly into orbit.
