Jerec had grabbed the front of Hoole"s tunic and lifted him off he ground with one hand. Tash realized that the Imperial must be immensely strong to overcome the force of the gravboots with just one arm.
"Where is it?" Jerec demanded angrily.
Hoole"s calm face stared directly into Jerec"s. "I do not know what "it" is. I told you, we are here by coincidence. I have no information."
Jerec looked as if he was trying to control his rage. Finally, he set Hoole down on the floor. Hoole"s face remained calm, but Tash thought she detected an angry fire in her uncle"s eyes.
"If I find out you were involved in this, I"ll have you skinned alive," Jerec growled.
Hoole straightened the front of his s.p.a.cesuit. "Perhaps if you tell me what has happened, I can be of service."
Jerec snarled and pointed to the center of the room. For the first time, Tash looked around. She was in a small circular chamber. The room was bare except for a pedestal in the very center.
"When I got here I found the door to the tomb open," Jerec snarled.
"And it was completely empty!"
CHAPTER 8.
As Jerec had stated, the tomb was bare. Tash could see that the pedestal had once held something, but the something had been removed.
Hoole considered. "Obviously, whoever murdered that miner came here and stole the contents of this room. Do you know what was here?"
Jerec sneered. "That is none of your concern."
By now the others had entered the room. Fandomar pushed her way past the others. Staring at the empty pedestal in wide-eyed horror, she let out a scream with her twin mouths that nearly shattered Tash"s eardrums through the comlink. "Nnnnnnoooooooooo!"
Then Fandomar fainted.
It took a few minutes to revive her. When she came to her senses, Tash could see that her eyes were full of fear. They darted frantically from one person to the next. When Fandomar"s eyes fell on her, Tash knew that Fandomar was looking for something. Not something on Tash"s face, but something inside her. But she didn"t know what.
"What is wrong with you?" Jerec demanded scornfully.
Fandomar studied Jerec carefully. Earlier, she had timidly avoided staring at him. Now she looked into his face. Again, Tash had the eerie feeling that Fandomar was trying to see something that was underneath Jerec"s skin.
Finally, Fandomar answered in a whisper, "I"m sorry. I don"t know what came over me. I apologize."
Jerec ignored Fandomar and turned to Hodge. He loomed threateningly over the chief miner as he growled, "And you. I delayed reaching this place on your advice. If I find out that you are involved with this, I"ll have you vaporized."
Hodge only shrugged.
While Jerec raged and the others tried to console Fandomar, Hoole studied the pedestal. Like the statue, the pedestal was decorated with carved designs. These had been hastily sc.r.a.ped away, but again, just as at the statue, a few symbols remained.
"See anything, Uncle Hook?" Tash asked.
Hoole studied the remaining symbols a moment longer. "I am not sure. Someone has gone to a great deal of trouble to remove any clues as to the nature of this tomb. But I suspect that there was never any treasure here. There are no indications that there were any containers or devices in here. If there was nothing valuable, why would anyone hide this room? Yet someone obviously thought it was important enough to kill for. For once," the Shi"ido admitted, "I seem to have more questions than answers."
"Speaking of questions," Zak added, "I have one. Has anyone else noticed the door?"
They all turned. Zak pointed at the heavy durasteel door that had sealed the tomb. Zak explained, "Look. The door opens outward, into the tunnel. But don"t swinging doors usually open in, especially when they"re locked?"
"Right!" Tash agreed. "Like in a house, the door opens in so that the people inside can lock it and keep strangers out."
Zak nodded furiously. "But this door opened into the tunnel. Which means that it wasn"t designed to keep people out-"
"It was designed to keep something in," Tash said. Her face turned pale.
Hoole frowned. "And whatever it is, it is now free." Tash felt a cold shadow pa.s.s over her and realized that Jerec was standing behind her. She shuddered, wondering if he could sense her tiny Force power the way she could feel his dark side.
"Your detective work bores me," the Imperial sneered. "And it is not needed here. I suggest you end it. Or I shall end it for you."
The stormtrooper fingered his blaster, leaving no doubt in Tash"s mind just how Jerec would end things.
Jerec led them back to the mining facility at a rapid pace. Again, the stormtrooper brought up the rear... but this time Tash felt sure he was waiting eagerly for Jerec"s order to shoot them all in the back.
They pa.s.sed the body of the miner, still held in place by his gray-boots. Hodge and the other miner wanted to take the body with them, but Jerec refused to let them stop.
Tash stared straight ahead, fixing her eyes on the mining colony in the distance. It was the only safe place to look. She dared not glance up, where the storm of asteroids continued to spin crazily in the darkness of s.p.a.ce. Looking to either side, all she could see was the lifeless rock of the asteroid. And behind her marched Jerec"s stormtrooper.
She found herself wishing she were back on Ithor. The forest had been so beautiful, so full of life. Remembering her brief experience with the Bafforr trees, she felt a warm glow spread through her, right down to her fingertips. She suddenly felt stifled inside the bulky s.p.a.cesuit. She felt trapped. She wanted to get out of this place. Everything would be all right if she could just get off the asteroid.
But until then, the closest thing to safety was the mining colony.
Then they could take the cargo ship back to Ithor. If Jerec didn"t kill them outright, or discover who they were first.
Finally they reached the airlock that led into the miners" outpost.
Jerec"s other stormtrooper was waiting there. By the time Tash stepped through the airlock, Jerec, Hoole, and Zak were already inside the docking bay. Although they all still had their s.p.a.ce helmets on, Zak had removed his gray- boots.
"I always wondered what it was like to fly!" he joked. He kicked his feet off the ground and floated toward the ceiling. "This is prime!"
"I"m repressurizing the airlock," Hodge said, once everyone was inside. He pulled a large handle. There was soft click, a rush of air...
... and an enormous explosion.
CHAPTER 9.
Tash and the others were thrown to the floor as a loud BOOM! echoed inside their s.p.a.ce helmets. The deafening sound seemed to go on forever.
Then Tash realized that the sound she heard wasn"t a continuing explosion-it was the howling of air rushing out of the airlock. The explosion had blown a hole through the airlock door, and the sealed atmosphere of the mining facility was now being sucked into s.p.a.ce.
"Helmets on!" Hoole commanded. Tash had just started to remove hers, and had barely snapped it back into place before the wind tried to tear it right off her head.
The howling wind tugged at her, but she quickly grabbed hold of a metal rail along the wall. The combination of her tight grip and the gray-boots held her in place. The others, too, grabbed hold of the closest thing they could find to keep from being sucked out of the airlock.
Zak was not so lucky.
He had still been floating in the zero-gravity room without his boots when the explosion happened. He hovered in the air long enough to make eye contact with his sister before the wind grabbed him with great force and sent him tumbling through the hole in the wall.
"Zak!" Tash screamed. Releasing her grip on the railing, she let the powerful wind push her toward the hole, the gray-boots slowing her movements. When she reached the hole, she braced herself on the wall and looked out into s.p.a.ce. By the time she spotted him, Zak was a small white dot tumbling head over heels into the asteroid field.
"Tash, help!" she heard Zak"s voice inside her helmet"s comlink.
Then he vanished from sight.
Tash turned to the nearest person, Jerec, and pleaded, "We"ve got to help him!"
Jerec ignored her. He had hardly noticed Zak"s disappearance. The Imperial was scanning the room. "The Ithorian," he muttered. "That Ithorian is missing." He turned to his stormtroopers. "This must be her doing. Find her! I want that Hammerhead!"
Most of the mining station"s air had escaped by now. With less oxygen sealed inside the walls, there was less pressure, and the wind died down. By the time the two stormtroopers churned into motion, there was hardly a breeze left, and then nothing at all.
The stormtroopers opened the inner door of the airlock and hurried into the facility with Jerec close behind them.
That left Hoole, Tash, and the two miners. But Hodge and his partner were unwilling to help. "We"ve got to try to contain this explosion. We"ve got a fortune in minerals in this place!" the chief miner apologized as they hurried out of the room.
"Uncle Hoole, what do we do?" Tash started to ask. She stopped.
Hoole was already halfway to the row of yellow Starflies parked along one wall.
"I"ve never flown one of these before!" she said as her uncle climbed into the nearest craft.
"Neither have I," Hoole replied grimly. "I suspect Zak would tell us we were going to take a crash course. Get in."
Tash jumped into another of the tiny ships. She was surprised to find the c.o.c.kpit was quite large-until she remembered that the Starfly didn"t carry its own oxygen. The pilot had to wear s.p.a.ce gear, so the designers had added extra room to fit the bulky suits.
The controls were basic, and Tash had the engines fired up in seconds. "Tash, do you copy?" Hoole"s calm voice came over the comlink.
It steadied her trembling hands.
"Yes," she said into the microphone. "What are we going to do?"
"We must fly into the asteroids and grab him with the ship"s tractor beams, just as the miners rescued us," her uncle explained.
We must fly into the asteroids.
Tash shuddered. It was bad enough to have the asteroids rocketing through the sky over her head. Flying through them-that was like daring the s.p.a.ce rocks to smash them.
Hoole seemed to read her thoughts. "Don"t worry, Tash. Starflies were made for this type of work. Keep your eyes open and trust your skills. Let"s go."
Hoole"s Starfly lifted off the deck and accelerated toward the hole in the wall.
For an instant, Tash was frozen. She tried to force her hands to work the controls, but they wouldn"t move.
Think of Zak, she told herself. She took a deep breath, the kind that had always made her feel calm. Relaxed. Closer to the Force.
Her hands moved.
Before she knew it, her Starfly had slipped out of the docking bay and was rising from the asteroid"s surface. She could see Hoole"s ship like a bright yellow dot against the black field of s.p.a.ce. She hit her thrusters and sped to catch up.
Suddenly, an asteroid the size of a bantha dropped into view, tumbling toward her viewscreen. The Starfly seemed to leap out of the asteroid"s path with a mind of its own.
Tash looked down at her controls. She had moved the ship without thinking! Her arms tingled. Wasn"t this how she"d felt in the past when she"d used the Force? And wasn"t it just how she"d felt when she tried to talk to the Bafforr trees?
Tash moved the controls again, and her Starfly looped easily around the next s.p.a.ce rock.
She almost laughed out loud. She felt as if she were playing speed globe again. Only now she was the globe, and all the asteroids were trying to catch her!
It"s like I can predict where they"re coming from and where they"re going, she thought. Almost like... I"m connected to them.
Tash knew that the Force was an energy field that connected all living things. Did it apply to s.p.a.ce rocks, too?
More than ever, she wished that someone could answer her questions.
She wished...
Whatever she wished, she forgot it the next instant, as her eyes fell on a small white object turning slow circles toward a giant asteroid-an asteroid even larger than the one the miners lived on. The surface of the asteroid was covered in holes and caverns. In one of those caverns, Tash could see a s.p.a.ce slug huddling, its mouth slowly opening and closing like that of a fish in water.
The small white object was Zak.
He was heading right into the s.p.a.ce slug"s mouth.
CHAPTER 10.
Zak was about to be swallowed by the s.p.a.ce slug.
Tash felt the tingling sensation leave her body. The asteroids that had seemed easy to dodge a moment ago swirled around her again. She jerked the controls hard to avoid one rock and nearly smashed into another.
"Uncle Hoole, help!" she called out.
"Stay calm, Tash," the Shi"ido"s steady voice replied. "I"ll distract the s.p.a.ce slug while you try to grab hold of Zak."