Part 24 (1/2)

Anakin was moving faster now, running full tilt down the gloomy pa.s.sages of the lower level. If anything, it was a bit danker, a bit darker, than it had been above. Jacen tried to peer into the dim tunnel.

Whoever had installed the lights down here had been working on a tight budget, that was for sure. It was dark. But that didn't seem to bother Anakin.

He was moving straight ahead, still staring at the tunnel floor.

Jaina and Jacen were hard-pressed to keep up.

Suddenly Anakin stopped dead in his tracks, and the twins nearly bowled him over before they could stop. As best either of the twins could see, he was standing in front of a stretch of corridor that looked exactly like every other stretch they had seen. But that did not seem to bother Anakin. He was literally hopping with excitement. ”Here!” he muttered under his breath. ”Here! Here! I need to His voice faded out, and he stopped moving. Then he squatted down on the floor of the tunnel, stuck his right index finger out, and pointed it at the tunnel floor.

”There,” he whispered. ”And it goes up Holding his finger about ten centimeters away from the floor, he moved his hand toward the wall, and then, slowly, up it.

”He's tracing something,” Jaina said in a whisper. ”Following it back.”

”Yeah, but what's he tracing?” Jacen whispered back.

”And what's he tracing it to?”

By now, Anakin was pointing to a spot on the wall a good fifteen centimeters beyond his reach. He jumped up and tried to reach it, but he could not. He turned toward the twins, and it seemed to Jacen at least that he was only just at that moment aware of them at all. ”Up!”

he said.

”I need to go up. Let me up on your shoulders.”

Jaina knelt down next to her brother and he scrambled up on her shoulders. She stood up carefully, Anakin swaying back and forth just a little bit as she overbalanced a trifle.

”Forward!” he said. ”More, more. Stop. Good. Now go left-no, right. No, no, not so far. Back back-stop!

Good, good. Hold it.”.

”Jacen, what's he doing?” Jaina asked. ”I can't see.

”He's got his hand flat out against the wall,” Jacen said.

”He's pus.h.i.+ng against the wall, real hard. Oh, wow!”

There was a slight shower of pebbles and dust. ”Great, I just got a face full of gravel,” Jaina spluttered. ”What hapened?”

It's a panel,” Jacen said. ”Like a keypad panel, but way different. It's a five-by-five grid of little green b.u.t.tons.

A little door popped open in the tunnel wall, and there was this little panel behind it. It lit up kind of all purple and green as soon as the little door swung open.”

”It lit up?” Jaina asked. ”You mean there's still a live power supply down there?” .

”I guess. Probably that was what Anakin was tracing.”

”Now what is he doing?” Jaina demanded. ”Anakin, hurry up, whatever you're doing. You're getting heavy.”

”Just a sec,” Anakin said. ”Almost got it.”

”I think he's trying to figure out what b.u.t.ton to push,” Jacen said. ”This is getting weird.”

Anakin stared hard at the purple keypad, whispering to himself and pointing at the green b.u.t.tons. ”Okay,” he said at last. ”Here goes.” He started pus.h.i.+ng b.u.t.tons, one after the other. Every time he pressed a b.u.t.ton, another green light would wink out.

”Here goes what?” Jaina demanded. ”Jacen, what is he doing?”

”The thing he does best,” Jacen said. ”He's pus.h.i.+ng b.u.t.tons.”

”Done,” said Anakin. ”Let me down.”

Jaina complied eagerly. ”But now what?” she asked.

”What happens now?”

And then, with the dull rumble of heavy machinery, a ten-meter-wide section of the tunnel wall in front of them slid out of the way, dropping down into the floor. There was a clattering of pebbles, and a feeble cloud of dampish dust shook loose from the wall.

Behind the false wall was a huge, seamless panel of faultless, gleaming silver. Suddenly a seam line appeared in the silver wall, and a huge section of it swung back, like the door of a huge bank vault swinging open. The children hurried to one side to get out of its way.

A gleaming light poured out into the tunnel as the vault door opened, and the children had to s.h.i.+eld their eyes for a moment before they could see clearly.

Inside the door was a long corridor, made of the same silver stuff as the vault door. The corridor seemed to be open at the other end, but they could not make out clearly what was there. There did not seem to be any sort of place for the light to come from, but it came just the same.

The three children stared down that corridor for a long moment.

They knew what to do next, but there was a universe of courage between knowing and doing.

”What is it, Anakin?” Jaina asked her little brother.

He shrugged. ”Don't know. I just felt it there, and I followed it. Don't know what it is.”

”Well,” said Jacen with far more confidence than he felt, ”we'll never find out here. Come on.

The three children took each other by the hand, with Anakin in the middle, and stepped up onto the gleaming corridor.

The corridor was a good hundred meters long, and they moved down it at a slow, careful pace. At last they reached its other end, and stood looking down at-at something that Jacen had never seen before. He had never even seen anything like it before.

The floor went past the end of the corridor, and ended in a view platform about five meters across. The platform hung out in empty s.p.a.ce, with no guardrails or any other sort of protection around the edge.

And it was the sort of platform you wished did have guardrails. It stood at the apex of an impossibly deep artificial cavern, made of the same silver-colored material, a half kilometer deep at least. The cavern was in the shape of a sharply angled cone, with the platform at the point, and the base of the cone on the floor of the cavern, far below.

Jacen let go of his brother's hand, got down on his hands and knees, and crept out toward the edge of the platform.

He stuck his head out over the edge, and swallowed hard.

The first thing he noticed was that there seemed to be no support of any kind for the platform they were on, other than the bit of walkway that stuck out of the tunnel they had come down.

Far below, he could make out other conical shapes, much smaller than the cavern itself, yet still extremely large. There were seven of the cones, with six in a circle around the central seventh. All of them seemed to have the same heightto-width proportions as the cavern itself.

”What in the name of s.p.a.ce have you children gotten yourselves into now?” a querulous droid voice demanded.