CHAPTER 19.
By the time Tash got to the c.o.c.kpit, Hoole had already completed the ignition sequence and was ready to lift off. Zak and Tash strapped themselves in.
Hoole powered up the repulsor lift. The thrusters fired-but the ship didn"t move.
Pressing her face against the transparent viewport, Tash looked down at the launchpad floor. The tarmac had completely vanished under D"vouran"s mud. The living sludge rose waist-high all through the s.p.a.ceport. The Lightrunner was caught in its unbreakable grip.
"We"re trapped!" Deevee cried.
"I don"t think my skimboard"s going to help us this time," said Zak.
"It won"t have to," Tash said. "Look up there!"
In the sky above the s.p.a.ceport, a saucer-shaped ship appeared. It dove toward them with surprising agility for a battered old Corellian freighter. Its pilot guided the ship over the Lightrunner, then skillfully powered down his repulsors until the freighter hovered only a few meters above the Lightrunner. It was a risky maneuver for most pilots.
But most pilots weren"t Han Solo.
Zak and Tash popped open the top hatch of the Lightrunner. The noise from the underside of the Millennium Falcon was deafening, but it was a welcome sound to them, followed by the even more welcome sight of the Falcon"s belly- hatch opening wide. The face of Chewbacca the Wookiee poked through, roaring for them to hurry.
The boiling mud was halfway up the sides of the Lightrunner.
While Hoole pushed from below, Zak and Tash pulled Deevee up. Then they carried him over to the Falcon"s underside hatch. The Wookiee grabbed Deevee with one ma.s.sive paw and easily hauled him up. Zak and Tash were next. Chewbacca picked them up as if they were rag dolls and brought them aboard Han Solo"s ship, where he handed them off to the waiting arms of Luke Skywalker.
Han Solo"s voice crackled over the comm system. "Come on, come on, what"s taking so long down there?"
As soon as everyone was aboard, Luke signaled, "Everyone"s accounted for, Han. Now get us out of here!"
The Falcon roared into motion.
Zak, Tash, and Hoole left Deevee in the care of Luke"s droids, C-3P0 and R2-D2. When they reached the c.o.c.kpit a moment later, the Falcon was flying five kilometers over D"vouran. Leia vacated the copilot"s chair so Chewbacca could take over.
Solo glanced down at the churning surface of the planet. "Something strange is happening down there. You"re pretty lucky we stopped by."
"Luck had nothing to do with it," Leia said. "Luke suggested we swing back this way and see how you were doing. That"s when we saw all four of you on the skimboard."
Hoole spoke quickly. "You must get us out of here as fast as you can."
"No problem," Han Solo drawled. "Whatever"s going on down there, you"re safe in the Falcon."
Han pointed his ship toward outer s.p.a.ce, then leaned back and listened as Hoole hastily explained what they had discovered about D"vouran.
Han looked skeptical. "Look, something"s obviously churning things up down there. But a living planet? Gotta be a mistake of some kind.
We"ll sort it out once we"re in hypers.p.a.ce. Chewie, get ready to cut out the sublights."
Chewbacca checked his instruments, then growled.
"What do you mean we"re still within D"vouran"s gravity?" Solo muttered. "We"ve been going full thrusters for four minutes. We should be halfway outta this star system by now."
He double-checked the readings. The c.o.c.ky grin left his face. "I"ve got a bad feeling about this."
"What is it, Han?" Leia asked.
Solo turned the Falcon so that they could just make out D"vouran through the viewport. "I don"t think we"ve gotten away yet."
"What do you mean?" Tash felt her heart sink.
"D"vouran is following us."
CHAPTER 20.
"That"s crazy!" Leia said. "Planets don"t move."
"Well this one is. And it"s getting closer!"
Tash"s voice dropped to a horrified whisper. "Didn"t you say when you came here, you arrived twenty minutes early?"
"That"s right," Luke recalled.
"And we were early, too," Hoole added. He looked out at the planet.
At this distance, the writhing ground could not be seen. D"vouran looked calm and beautiful. He muttered, "It does move."
"Can you get into hypers.p.a.ce, Han?" Luke asked. "We"ll be safe there."
"No can do, kid. Not while we"re inside the planet"s gravity field.
And I don"t think it plans on letting us out. Chewie, lock in the auxiliary power!"
As Zak, Tash, and the others watched, pilot and copilot labored over their controls, pouring every ounce of the Falcon"s power into its engines. But when Tash checked the viewport again, D"vouran looked bigger and closer.
"Come on, Han," Leia urged. "You always said this ship was the fastest thing in s.p.a.ce."
Sweat poured down Han Solo"s brow. "Yeah, well, I never had to race a planet before. Chewie, draw all power from the shields!" The Wookiee growled. "Did that, huh? How about the gun turrets?" Chewbacca snarled.
"All right, all right! Just checking."
D"vouran was now close enough to fill the viewport.
Han sat back in his chair. For a split second he looked like he"d been beaten. Then he straightened up. "All right, let"s turn the tables on this thing. Gravity"s our problem, right? Let"s just make it our friend."
He whipped the Falcon around hard, throwing everyone off balance.
When they recovered, the ship was heading back toward the planet.
Chewbacca howled.
"Han, what are you doing!" Luke cried. "You"re heading straight for it!"
"Hold on!" the pilot shouted.
Pulled by the planet"s gravity and pushed by its own engines, the Falcon picked up enormous speed and plunged toward D"vouran. At the last possible moment, Han veered away. Keeping just within gravity"s reach, he gunned his engines and sc.r.a.ped along the planet"s atmosphere. The belly of his ship left a trail of flames in the air as the freighter looped around the monstrous planet.
The effect was like a slingshot. The vessel whipped around the far side of the planet, and Han broke orbit. Driven by its increased momentum, the Falcon was flung out into s.p.a.ce, far ahead of D"vouran.
Chewbacca barked a comment. "Gravitational force is dropping!" Han translated.
"You did it!" Leia cried. "We"re in open s.p.a.ce!" Freed of D"vouran"s gravity, the Falcon picked up even more speed.
He turned to his pa.s.sengers nonchalantly. "The slingshot gimmick.
Oldest trick in the manual."
Zak and Tash looked at each other and grinned. Uncle Hoole had not taken his eyes off the planet. "Look," he said.
"I don"t believe it," Tash whispered. Even with everything she had seen, she found it hard to grasp what was happening.
The planet D"vouran was squirming. It wriggled and trembled as though trying to change its shape. Bright flashes of light that looked like volcanic eruptions appeared on its surface. The planet bulged outward, becoming a horribly misshapen ma.s.s. Then it collapsed in on itself, churning and swirling into a smaller and smaller lump of writhing matter in s.p.a.ce. With a final shudder, D"vouran vanished altogether.
"I don"t believe it," Zak said.
"Is it gone?" Tash asked.
"It seems to have... devoured itself," Hoole said. "Most remarkable."
"Yeah, well we"re not sticking around to admire it," said Han.
"Chewie, get ready to make the jump. Now!"
The pilot grabbed a large lever and pulled down hard. Zak and Tash were thrown backward as the Falcon ripped through the fabric of reals.p.a.ce.
EPILOGUE.
In the Falcon"s common area, Tash sat across from Uncle Hoole.
"I thought I had been left alone," Tash said. "I thought everyone had been killed. Like my parents."
There was the slightest crack in Hoole"s usually grim expression.
"I"m sorry, Tash. While you were gone, I saw my chance to spy on the Enzeen. So I became one of them."
"But why did you wait so long to help us?" she demanded. "We could have been killed."
The Shi"ido explained, "I needed to know what was going on. I couldn"t find out until Chood spoke to you. I helped you as soon as I could."
"What did you find out?" Princess Leia asked. "What was that thing?"
Hoole said, "I didn"t find out much more than Tash did. But my best guess would be this: D"vouran was some kind of scientific experiment that went wrong. The Empire is always experimenting with mutations and biological weapons. They lost control of this one. The pendant was some kind of protective shield. The technology in that small device must have been amazing. I wish I"d been able to study it."
"Well, it couldn"t have worked too well," Zak pointed out. "The scientists were all gone. They must have been eaten."
"Were they?" Hoole wondered. "It"s just as likely that the creators simply abandoned their project and left it to fend for itself. They may still be out there somewhere."
Tash remembered Chood"s evil grin. "And the Enzeen"?"
"Parasites, just as you and Deevee guessed. They fed off of D"vouran, and D"vouran allowed them to survive as long as they attracted more food."
"How did they get there?" Zak wondered.
"Maybe they crash-landed like Bebo," Tash suggested, "but the planet didn"t like the taste of them."
"Perhaps," Hoole mused. "But I fear the worst. I think whoever is responsible for creating D"vouran also created the Enzeen to watch over and feed the planet. Someone is using science to create mutants."
Luke Skywalker asked the question on everyone"s mind. "But whoever is behind these experiments-what are they trying to do?"
"I can"t be sure," Hoole replied. "But I intend to find them."
Yet again, Tash remembered Smada"s words, and she wondered why Hoole wanted to find these mysterious scientists-to catch them, or join them? She decided to watch him closely.
Aloud, she said gratefully, "Well, whoever it was, at least his experiment is over. D"vouran is gone, and it will never bother anyone again."
Light-years away, in the far reaches of the Outer Rim, in an area of s.p.a.ce ignored by both the Empire and the Rebel Alliance, a commuter starship chugged through hypers.p.a.ce, carrying miners from an asteroid field back to their home planet.
To the pilot"s surprise, his pa.s.senger ship suddenly dropped out of hypers.p.a.ce with a jolt. The pilot checked his instruments, and once he was sure his ship was undamaged, he realized that his vessel had fallen into orbit around a beautiful blue-green planet.
"That"s odd," he muttered. "I"ve never seen that on the charts before..."