Part 24 (1/2)

Ebrihim had worried that the children might be afraid in the dark forbidding tunnels, but he soon realized that he had underestimated them once again. They were clearly used to dealing with odd circ.u.mstances.

There was another bit of good news that quickly became apparenthe Drallists were unlikely to find this particular piece of tunnel anytime soon. An underground subsidence, many years before, had collapsed the main tunnel back toward the main entrance. In all probability, it wasn't the only such cave-in. Maybe their backs would be safe.

On the other hand, Ebrihim reflected, the Drallists could drill a vertical hole just as well as anyone else. It would be best not to let their guard down.

Ebrihim tried to stay out of the way while people got organized.

There seemed to be enough going on without his adding to the party.

Chewbacca was checking the winch gear to make sure they could get back out, Aunt Marcha had wandered ahead down the tunnel, and Q9 was hovering about, generally getting in the way. Meantime, the two older children were doing what they could to get Anakin on the job, encouraging him to reach out with his ability in the Force and see if he could find anything like the whatever-it-was he had detected in the Corellian tunnels.

”I can son of feel it,” Anakin said, a bit doubtfully.

He reached out his hand and seemed to be trying to catch something floating in the air. ”Not as strong as it was the other place. Not sharp.

Just sort of floating SnFSu MM-fl11 there. Like it got broke. Maybe when the roof fell in back there, something gone torn up.”

”'fly, Anakin,” said Jacen. ”Try.”

Anakin shrugged helplessly. ”I am trying,” he said.

”But it's just not strong enough.”

”Excuse me,” said Q9. ”Perhaps I can be of help.

Your Grace, you believe that the entrance to this chamber will be in exactly the same position relative to the entrance as the one on Corellia?”

”That is correct.”

”Then I can use my inertial tracking data to lead us to the proper coordinates. My best estimate is that we still have some way to go, and are probably not in the right crnsscorridor.

However, I should be able to get us within thirty meters of the correct point.”

Anakin nodded eagerly. ”Get me that close, and I can find it!”

”Then allow me to lead the way,” Q9 said, the pride in his voice plainly apparent.

The droid set the rest of the group a fairly brisk pace, especially considering that none of the others had the benefit of repulsor skirts and had to contend with the increasingly uneven floors and the mud slides. How long had these tunnets been re, anyway?

Ebrihim wondered.

The two Drall had the hardest time keeping up with the others.

The children could climb over anything, and Chewbacca could walk faster than anyone else in the group could run. But the Drall had evolved from exclusively grotind-dwelling animals, not brachiators like the humans and the Wookiee. Their short legs and arms, and their limited climbing ability, made negotiating the various obstacles far more difficult for them.

Q9 was getting farther ahead with every moment, the beams of his floodlights zipping along down the tunnel.

Three times he stopped abruptly at cross-corridors and dove down the left side pa.s.sages. IWke he came back.

The third time, it would seem, he found the path he was looking for. Ebrihim and Marcha puffed along as best they could, trying to keep up. They made the left turn and came around the corner just in time to see the Wookiee and the children making a right down the next corridor.

The two Drall redoubled their efforts, but they were just barely able to keep Q9 from getting still farther ahead.

The children, however, were actually closing the distance between them and Q9 as Anakin grew more eager in the chase and the other two children urged him on.

”Keep trying, Anakin!” Jaina shouted as her brother paused for a moment, looking a little lost. Anakin nodded, then pointed at something invisible under the floor.

”Can you feel it now?” Jacen called to his brother as he climbed over a pile of collapsed rock. ”Can you?”

”Yeah!” Anakin said. ”Starting to! It's there in the floor, just like in the other place. Q9! Stop! You're going too far.” The droid stopped and turned-and managed to blind everyone for a moment as his forward-view floodlight swept across their eyes. ”Q9! Shut that thing off!”

Ebrihim shouted, feeling irritable. He didn't like being left behind.

”I beg your pardon, Master Ebrihim,” said the droid, and doused his forward-view flood. ”Have you found it, Master Anakin?”

”Yeah! There!” the boy said, pointing at a blank spot on the muddy wall. ”Someone lift me up anooofl” Anakin got the wind knocked out of him as hewbacca scooped him up in his arms, but he scarcely even noticed as he squirmed with excitement. ”There! There!”

he called out, pointing to where he wanted to go. He pushed on a section of wall, but nothing happened. ”All this junk on it,” he muttered to himself, and clawed away a patch of the caked-on mud until he had cleared an area about fifteen centimeters square. The wall underneath still seemed pretty blank to Ebrihim, but Anakin pressed on it again, harder this time, and a section of wall popped away, as if it were trying to open, but it got stuck with less than a finger's breadth of s.p.a.ce clear. Anakin put his fingers around the open edge, but couldn't get it to go any farther. Finally Chewbacca simply tucked Anakin under one arm and pulled the little door open himself. Even he had to strain a bit to get it to move, but then it popped clear and came open smoothly as clots of mud and dirt rattled to the floor.

A thin layer of mud hid the interior, and Anakin eagerly sc.r.a.ped it off. He revealed a five-by-five grid of green b.u.t.tons that flickered to life, with a purple light backlighting the b.u.t.tons.

Anakin frowned at the b.u.t.tons and muttered to himself, ”Might not be working too well. Just have to try.” He punched a combination mt0 the b.u.t.tons and waited a few seconds for something to happen. Nothing did. He balled up his fist and punched the top of the keypad. The green light b.u.t.tons came on more brightly, and stayed on. Anakin tried the combinati0n again-and this time something very definitely happened.

There was a clunk and a thud and a deep, unnerving sort of rattle, and then suddenly the muddy overlayer of the wall in front of them shuddered and fell off in a heap, spattering everyone with mud and dirt.

The stone wall under the mud dropped down onto the floor.

In the Corellian tunnels, the panel behind the false wall had been a gleaming silver. The panel here was tarnished and splotched. But the panel worked properly, even if it did show signs of age. A line appeared in the panel, then began to form into a seam. Suddenly there was an enormous door in the wall, and it swung open, forcing everyone to scuttle out of its way. The big door bulldozed the heaps of mud out of the way as if they weren't even there.

Behind the door was a long corridor of silverstuff, all of it perfect and untarnished, exactly like the one on Corellia Light from the corridor flooded the muddy corridor, and everyone shut off their handlamps. Q9 powered down his overhead light and retracted both of his lights back into his body.

Chewbacca set Anakin down and stepped up into the silver corridor, moving slowly and cautiously, the twins and the other adults and the droid behind him. The Wookiee had to lower his head in order to fit in the corridor, which meant he had to move even more slowly. But Anakin was in motion as soon as the Wookiee put him down. He raced down the corridor ahead of everyone else.

”Oh, boy,” Jaina said to her brother. ”If he falls off the edge, Mom and Dad will kill us.” The twins hurried after their brother, even though there was no hope of catching him before he got to the end.

The corridor ended in open s.p.a.ce, with the platform they were standing on jutting out into nothingness, forming a rounded view ledge roughly five meters on a side. There were no guardrails. Chewbacca was unconcerned by the sheer drop. He went right over to the edge and looked down. The others stayed bunched up, close to the center of the platform.

The cavern was an exact duplicate of the one hidden away on Corellia It was a sharply angled cone about a half-kilometer tall, all the surfaces made of the same silvery metal-if it was a metal.

The children and Q9 had been forced to leave the huge chamber on Corellia almost the moment they found it, for fear of leading the Human League to it.

There had been no chance to examine it closely or explore it.

This time, there was the chanceut no one quite knew how to proceed.

The obvious thing to do was to get to the base of the chamber, but short of jumping over the edge, there seemed to be no way to accomplish it. Ebrihim was on the verge of asking if they could do something with the winch when events overtook him.