"What in s.p.a.ce does that mean?" Zak asked.
"Platt, let"s help him up out of the water." Hoole gestured at the corpselike man. "He is undoubtedly freezing."
Reluctantly, the smuggler reached out a hand and hauled the soaked man up to one of the stepping-stones as the others moved farther down the path to make room. The pale man was dressed in slime-coated rags, and stood only a little taller than Zak and Tash.
"Now," Hoole asked, his dark eyes staring into the man, "if you were not attacking us, why were you hiding under the water?"
"We were hunting," The pale man said. "We saw you come down the steps. Didn"t know what you were. Came for a closer look, when that one fell in the water. Tried to help."
The story sounded suspicious to Zak, and he could see doubt in everyone else"s eyes, too. But this stranger was no danger to them at the moment.
"We thought Dagobah was uninhabited," the Shi"ido said. "What is your name? And who are these parents you speak of?"
"I am Galt," the skeleton man explained. "The parents were . . .
the parents were the parents of the Children. Us. They were the explorers. We are the Children."
"You mean the explorers who came to Dagobah forty years ago?" Tash asked.
Galt nodded. "That is when the explorers came here."
"How many of you are there?" Hoole asked.
"This many," Galt said. He held his hand up to show five fingers.
He did that five times.
"Twenty-five people?" Platt groaned. "So much for our uninhabited planet."
"How can that be?" Tash asked. "According to the records, there weren"t that many people on the original expedition."
"The records are incomplete," Hoole pointed out. "Maybe they are flawed. At any rate, Galt is proof that someone survived here long enough to have children. Galt, where are your friends? Can you take us to them?"
Galt agreed to lead them to his home, but he insisted on bringing the body of his companion with them. Some of Platt"s smugglers helped him lift the body out of the swamp, and Galt hefted the corpse over one shoulder.
Despite his frail appearance, Galt seemed quite strong. Even with the added weight of the body, he jumped easily from stone to stone, and soon they were hurrying along the path.
"We should go fast," Galt said. "There"s a dragonsnake nest around here. We don"t want to be here when she gets hungry."
Zak was glad of the path, and not just because it kept his feet out of the slimy water. The swamp seemed to go on forever, and it was impossible to tell one part from another. The ma.s.sive trees, the moss-covered mud, and the endless pools of water all looked alike. Without the path, they would have gotten lost in minutes. And Zak had a feeling that getting lost in this swamp was not a good idea.
Ggggggrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
A deep growl, long, low, and menacing, rose from the swamp water.
Instantly, Galt dropped to his hands and knees, cowering on the stepping-stone where he"d stopped. He froze so quickly that Platt stumbled over him and almost fell. To keep her balance, she hopped to the next steppingstone in the line.
"What in s.p.a.ce are you doing?" she demanded, turning back. "You nearly made me fall right into that-"
Another deep growl cut her off. Suddenly, the stone on which she stood started to rise. The water beneath it churned, and Zak realized that something was rising up from under the water, lifting the stone as it came. Platt shouted in alarm and jumped from the stone, falling into the murky swamp.
The creature that rose out of the water was enormous. Its head towered at least five meters above them, and Zak saw that most of its body was still hidden beneath the water. Its skin was sickly white and its huge eyes glowed yellow. Two thick antennae grew out of its head, quivering as the creature swayed back and forth. A gigantic mouth opened and shut slowly, as though tasting the air.
"Swamp slug!" Galt shrieked, not moving.
"Shoot it!" Platt sputtered from the water. "Shoot it!"
Her smugglers opened fire. Several shots went wild as the shooters panicked. But even the blaster bolts that hit their mark seemed to do nothing but vanish in the giant slug"s slimy flesh. It gurgled and lurched toward its attackers, pushing itself through the water alongside the stone path. Terrified, the smugglers dove into the water.
Zak saw Hoole start to shape-change, but he was too slow. The swamp slug lunged at him, its mouth open, and the Shi"ido had to jump aside to avoid being swallowed.
Only Zak and Tash were left teetering on the steppingstones. "Run!"
Tash yelled.
"Where?" Zak asked.
There was nowhere to go.
Zak saw Tash pick up a tree branch that was floating in the water.
Following her lead, he grabbed a rock. They raised their little weapons as the swamp slug reared to its full height, towering over them.
Suddenly, a loud shriek filled the air. The swamp slug paused and growled, its antennae quivering in the direction of the scream.
Another huge creature pushed its way out of a wall of bushes and slipped into the water. Zak caught a glimpse of a long black tail covered with scales, splashing across the surface.
"We"ve got more company," he said Tash. "I bet that"s the dragonsnake Galt was talking about!"
The swamp slug seemed to forget about Tash and Zak. It turned toward the dragonsnake as it surfaced, teeth snapping. The two swamp creatures lunged at each other.
Zak felt a hand on his shoulder. "Hurry," Hoole said.
He and the smugglers had managed to climb back onto the stepping-stones. For a half second, they all watched the two beasts thrash about, churning up the dark swamp water. Then they pulled Galt to his feet and hurried on. The growls of the swamp slug and the screams of the dragonsnake could be heard long after they"d left the battle behind.
Soaking wet and shivering with cold and fright, they reached their destination a half hour later.
The Shelter, as Galt called it, was a small island of dry ground, large enough to hold twenty to thirty small huts. The walls of the huts were made of dried mud, and the roofs were gnarlwood branches coated with slime.
As Zak and the others followed Galt onto the little island, two dozen pale-skinned figures came out of the huts, their eyes wide with astonishment. Galt trotted ahead and whispered to them. They all seemed most interested in the body of Galt"s companion. Several of the others took the body from Galt and hurried away with it.
All their whispering seemed to make Platt nervous. "Tru"eb," she said to the Twi"lek, "take two of the boys and go back to check on the ship. I want to make sure none of these walking skeletons is planning to steal our ticket home."
"Right," Tru"eb said, and turned back down the path just as Galt finished his whispering.
Galt smiled. "The Children agree to let you into the Shelter."
"Thank you," Hoole said respectfully. "Galt, do you have any records? Anything that you saved from the explorers?"
Galt nodded. "Our parents left us a story."
In the center of the little village stood a small shelter. It had no walls, just four poles that supported a roof of gnarlwood branches.
Beneath it was a small box. Opening it, Galt removed a mud-crusted datapad and a tiny holo-projector. "This is the log. It"s broken," he said. "No life left in it."
"Here, let"s try this," Platt offered.
She popped the power pack out of her glowrod. Taking the holoprojector from Galt, she connected it to the power supply and hit Play.
The holoprojector crackled to life. A small, three-dimensional image of a woman appeared over the projector. She looked exhausted and thin. Her voice sounded weak and defeated as she spoke.
"The datapad"s power supply is almost gone, so I have resisted making an entry for almost a year. This may be the last.
"Our entire trip to Dagobah has proved to be a deadly failure. Even the distress signal we sent out has failed. A pa.s.sing cruise ship picked up our signal and tried to rescue us, only to crash-land as well. Now there are forty of us stuck here, with little hope of escape. Most of my original team has been killed by swamp creatures or by disease.
"We are trying to make the most of our new home. We"ve found an island and erected a new set of shelters. Some even talk about raising families here. But I don"t know how long we"ll survive.
"Dagobah has beaten us. It"s almost as if the planet resents our presence. If anyone finds this recording, get away from here as fast as you can. Dagobah is a death trap."
The hologram faded out for a moment. When it powered up again, they saw an image of the same woman. Now she was lying on a bed of damp moss.
Her eyes were only half open. Her lips barely moved. It was obvious that she was on her deathbed.
She rasped: "It"s been a year since my last entry. . . . We"ve found hardly anything to eat and most of the creatures that we might hunt spend their time hunting us. We"ve managed to make a home here. Just a few mud huts. Some of the survivors went ahead and started families.
They"ve had children. That"s the worst. We"re all on the edge of starvation . . . and now we have children to feed. We"ve gotten so hungry . . . the children crying from hunger . . . that we"ve-" The woman on the hologram shuddered and started to cry. "May the stars forgive us . . .
we"ve fed them meat from-" Zzzzkkzkkk!
The recording fizzled out.
"She must have lost power at that point," said Platt.
Hoole nodded. "It is quite surprising that Galt and the others have survived for so long. Without food, and in this hostile environment . . .
it"s amazing, really."
"I"m starting to think we should get out of here, and set a course for safe s.p.a.ce lanes," Platt said.
"I agree," said Hoole. "We should leave immediately."
"Then I"ve got bad news for you," Tru"eb said. The Twi"lek had just come trotting up, nearly out of breath. "We went back to check on the ship like you asked, Platt. No one"s touched, it, but it looks like the Last Chance was too heavy for the swamp. It"s sunk about three meters into the mud, and the engines won"t kick in."
Platt gritted her teeth. "Are you telling me what I think you are?"
"Yep," the other smuggler said grimly. "We"re stuck here."
CHAPTER 7.
A short while later, Zak, Tash, and Hoole sat inside one of the primitive shelters. Platt had gone back to the starship with the rest of her crew, hoping to find a way to free it from the swamp.
Hoole and the Arrandas, meanwhile, had offered to talk with the survivors-the Children, as they called themselves. Hoole hoped that Galt and the others might have salvaged more equipment from their parents.
Maybe there was something that could be used to break the ship out of the muck.
Before discussion began, one of the other Children came to offer them some food-a few thin strips of meat. It looked disgusting and smelled worse. Galt looked delighted when they turned it down, and he gobbled their portions eagerly. Once Galt had eaten, Hoole and the Children started to talk.
But Hoole was disappointed to learn that whatever technology had been left behind had been discarded. The survivors had no way to power up the equipment, and they tossed each piece into the swamp as soon as it died. The survivors had almost no mechanical knowledge.
"Didn"t your parents explain how the equipment worked?" Zak asked Galt.
The man blinked. "Almost all the parents died when we were young.
I"m the oldest of the Children. The last parent died when I was seven."
"What killed them?" Hoole asked.
"Different things," Galt answered. "Dragonsnakes. Insect bites.
Swamp fever killed many. It was the worst."
"But it didn"t kill you," Tash said.
Galt nodded. "All the Children caught the fever, but none of us died. Only the parents died."
"Sometimes children can be more resistant to disease than adults,"
Hoole said. "Your bodies probably adjusted to Dagobah"s environment better than theirs did."
"Well, I can"t wait to get off this planet and go somewhere else,"
Zak said.
Galt looked confused. "What is "somewhere else"?"
"Another planet," Zak said. When Galt looked even more confused, he added, "There are other planets out in s.p.a.ce. Out among the stars."
"What are "stars"?" Galt asked.
Zak"s jaw dropped. Then he realized that the Children could never have seen the stars. The canopy of trees was so thick that it hid the sky completely. They had never felt the sun on their skin, either.
"Galt, how have you Children survived all this time?" Hoole asked, changing the subject. "How did you avoid the swamp creatures? What do you eat?"