"Eat." Galt whispered the word as if it were a secret, magic spell.
His eyes bore into Zak but seemed to look through him. "We eat what we can. We eat when we can. Always hungry. Always," he said. Then he licked his lips. "Mostly we eat fungus."
No wonder they"re so thin, Zak thought. "What was that meat you just ate?" he asked.
"That was . . . ," Galt said slowly, "that was a lucky find." Then he added, "Will your friends bring food?"
Hoole told him that Platt had promised to bring food from the ship.
That news made an eager light burn in the eyes of all the Children.
"Can"t you hunt animals?" Tash asked.
"It is dangerous to hunt," Galt answered. "There are the spiders.
And dragonsnakes. And the imp."
"Imp?" Zak asked, remembering his conversation with Platt. "Do you mean Imperials?"
"I don"t know that word," Galt said. "The imp lives out there. In the swamp. It has strange powers."
Hoole said, "Galt, have you ever seen this imp? Is it human?"
Galt shook his head. "I never saw it. But the parents told us. It"s out there. Somewhere."
"All right, I"ve got good news, and bad news, and more bad news,"
Platt announced when she returned from the ship.
Zak, Tash, Hoole, and the Children had met the returning smugglers in the center of the little village.
"The good news is, we can use the ship"s repulsor lift to break free of the muck."
"Great!" Zak exclaimed.
"The bad news is it"s going to take us a couple of days to rig the repulsors up to do it."
Hoole looked concerned. "I am relieved we will be able to leave.
But this is a rather inhospitable environment. This may be a long two days."
"What"s the other bad news?" Zak asked.
Platt frowned. "We were carting the food supply back here when two of my men slipped. The food containers ended up in the swamp. Before we could get to them, some sort of scavenger creatures swarmed over them.
There was nothing we could do."
Zak"s heart sank. Two more days on this planet with no food. They were going to get awfully hungry.
"Anyway, we"ll get started on the ship in the morning," the smuggler said. "It"s getting darker, and something tells me there will be even more creatures stirring around here at night. We should all find a place to sleep."
"Shouldn"t we sleep on the ship?" Hoole said.
"You can, if you want to sleep in a mud pit," Platt snorted. "The Last Chance is sunk up to her lateral stabilizers, and ooze poured into all the compartments. It"s going to be a mess when we finally take off."
"There is an empty hut," Galt offered. "Some of you can sleep there."
They agreed. At Hoole"s insistence, Platt posted a sentry. The smuggler grumbled but did as he was told and sat in the middle of the village with a blaster across his lap. Everyone else bedded down on the floor of the hut. They all rolled up inside therma-blankets Platt had given them, and soon all were fast asleep.
All except Zak.
Zak felt itchy. Not itchy on the outside. It was more like something was tickling him inside. Something was bothering him.
He heard Tash"s soft, regular breathing beside him.
She even sleeps better than I do, he thought. It"s just not fair.
Why does she have to be so good at everything? Zak searched for a word to describe what he was feeling. Then he found it: Jealous.
He"d never been jealous of Tash before. In fact, he"d felt sorry for her. She was always reading books and studying while he was outside having fun, or taking apart machines to learn how they worked. Zak preferred action to thought.
But somehow, lately, Tash had managed to put the two things together. She thought more than he did, and she seemed able to do more, too.
Is it the Force? Zak wondered.
He wanted to think so. But he wasn"t sure.
Maybe she was just better than he was. Better at facing dangers like the bounty hunter on Nar Shaddaa. Better at studying planets like Dagobah. Better at everything.
A m.u.f.fled voice drifted through the heavy swamp air. Zak thought he heard a second voice respond, but it was hard to tell. Even at night, the swamp creatures of Dagobah kept up a constant chatter of chirps, whistles, and croaks.
Then he heard a short grunt, and something heavy shuffling along the ground. Curious, he unrolled himself from his therma-blanket and stood up.
Outside the hut, the night was pitch-black. Neither moons nor stars lit the swamp. In the center of the village, Zak could see the sentry"s small glowrod. As he approached, he saw that the glowrod was lying on the ground, faintly illuminating the sentry"s face.
Zak chuckled. Some guard! He must have fallen asleep on the job.
I"ll just go wake him before he gets into trouble with Platt, Zak thought.
He reached the glowrod and froze.
The glowrod lit up the sentry"s head, but not the rest of his body.
The rest of his body was gone.
CHAPTER 8.
"Swamp slug," some of the Children said.
"Dragonsnake," said others. "They can crawl across dry land."
"Giant spiders," argued still others.
But most agreed with Galt"s conclusion. Staring at the horrible sight in the middle of their little village, Galt whispered, "It"s the imp."
"Imp? Imp?" Platt said, pacing back and forth, her blaster held tightly in her hand. She had been more angry than frightened since Zak had awakened everyone with his gruesome discovery. The smuggler had been under her command, and she felt responsible. "I"ve seen a dragon-snake.
And I"ve been attacked by a swamp slug. But what"s an imp?"
"It might be Imperials-" Zak started to say.
"A creature that is supposed to live in the swamp," Hoole interrupted. "The Children say it has strange powers. But I think," he said, lowering his voice, "that it is merely an imaginary creature.
Remember, these survivors have had no parents to guide them since they were small. They really are still children, and I suspect that this imp is merely a leftover creation of childlike minds."
Platt was still fuming. "Well, it"s not as if we need made-up creatures to go along with the real ones. Anyway, something killed one of my men."
Hoole remained calm. "It is a tragedy. But what shall we do? Take revenge on the entire swamp? Platt, I suggest you put your blaster away before you hurt someone."
Grimacing, Platt reluctantly holstered her weapon.
"Now," Hoole continued. "The sooner we can free the ship, the sooner we will be out of here. Until then, we shall have to keep our eyes open."
"Uncle Hoole," Zak said insistently, "we can"t just sit here. Something"s wrong. I can feel it."
Hoole looked at Tash. "What do you feel?"
"I"m the one with the bad feeling!" Zak protested.
Hoole put a hand on Zak"s shoulder. "We have all come to rely on Tash"s instincts, Zak. You know that."
Tash cast a sympathetic glance Zak"s way. "Sorry, Zak, I just don"t feel the same way. I mean, there"s definitely something dangerous here .
. . but I think that"s just the swamp, and the animals. They"re all . . .
well, I get this feeling that everything around us is hungry. It"s like the whole place wants to swallow us whole. But I don"t feel as though something is wrong."
"This place reminds me of D"vouran," Zak grunted. Tash shuddered, and even Hoole gave a slight twitch at the unpleasant memory. Over a year ago-it seemed like a lifetime now-Zak, Tash, and Hoole had been trapped on a living planet that fed itself by absorbing the creatures that lived on its surface. They had barely escaped with their lives.
"The feeling of danger is only a small part of it," Tash went on.
"There"s something good here, too. Uncle Hoole, I"m sure we"re safe here.
I don"t know why. But I know we are.
Platt sighed. "And that"s good enough for you, Hoole?" Hoole nodded. "Yes, it is."
Zak bit his lip and thought, Tash is wrong. And we"re all going to pay for it.
Frustrated, Zak turned away. He saw Galt walking toward one of the huts on the edge of the village and ran after him. He wanted to ask the skeletal man more about the imp.
As he reached Galt, he stepped over a small clump of gra.s.s sprouting from the mud. Out of the center of the gra.s.s stretched a single thick, yellow flower about the size of his fist. Zak barely noticed the flower until, to his surprise, it bit him on the ankle!
CHAPTER 9.
Zak screamed. He shook his leg, but the yellow flower held firm.
He felt small razor-sharp teeth digging into his flesh. "Help!"
Galt rushed over and s.n.a.t.c.hed at the flower, ripping it off. Zak felt a few bits of his skin pull off with it. Galt tossed the strange plant away.
"What was that?" Zak asked, checking the wound on his leg. There was a row of small punctures on his shin. "Is it poisonous?"
"Meat flower," Galt said. "It"s not poison, but the bite hurts. Big ones can swallow a person whole."
Zak winced as he dabbed at the blood on his leg.
"The juice from the meat flower"s leaves makes it feel better,"
Galt said. "It stops the bleeding." He plucked a few leaves and started to rub them against the wound.
Almost immediately, the pain started to recede. Zak let out a huge sigh of relief.
Then he blinked.
He had been staring out into the swamp, focusing on nothing, when a movement caught his eye.
Was something out there?
He looked again. For just an instant, he thought he saw someone beckoning to him. "Hey, there"s someone there!"
Galt jumped to his feet and looked around. "But everyone"s in the village."
"Well, someone"s there," Zak insisted. "I saw them."
Galt looked genuinely frightened. "It is the imp."