by John Whitman
Platt drew her blaster. "If that's true, this will be a lousy secret
base. Let's have a look."
Boldly, she jumped out to the first stepping-stone. It sank a little
under her weight, but held. Tru'eb went next, with Hoole and the Arrandas
behind. The others brought up the rear.
The stepping-stones led straight through a dark, fetid swamp. As they
walked, Tash pointed out various plants and small animals she had read about
in the records.
Why does she always seem to know everything? Zak said to himself.
He thought back to Nar Shaddaa, when Tash had helped Hoole defeat the
bounty hunter while he had done nothing. And then, later, when he had been
stunned by Boba Fett, Tash had tried to fight the killer off.
Now she was flaunting how smart she was.
It wasn't fair. He didn't have the Force. How could he hope to match
his sister?
Now and then a stone was missing and they each had to make a long jump
to the next step. At one particularly long gap, Platt had to shift herself
to the back edge of her stepping-stone and use a running start to reach the
next one. Tru'eb made the jump, and Hoole hopped across easily on his long
legs. Tash gathered herself and leaped. Her feet just reached the edge of
the next stepping-stone. She slipped on the mossy surface, but Hoole grabbed
her and pulled her up.
"Can you make it, Zak?" the Shi'ido asked.
If Tash can make it, I can make it, he thought. "Sure!" he said aloud.
Zak backed up to the edge of his stepping-stone, took two small steps,
and launched himself into the air.
The instant his feet left the ground he knew he wasn't going to make
it.
He came down a half meter short, falling chest-deep into the cold,
murky swamp water. He felt his feet stick in the ooze at the bottom. But he
didn't care about the cold or the slimy water. His cheeks flushed red with
embarrassment as the others started to laugh.
But the next moment, all the color drained from Zak's face.
Two figures were rising up out of the water beside him. Zak saw two
human heads covered with stringy hair, two sets of pale eyes, two gaping
mouths missing several teeth, and two sets of bony arms. The skin hanging
from those arms looked old and dead.
They were corpses. Human corpses.
And they were reaching out to grab him.
CHAPTER 6
Shouting in fright, Zak tried to scramble up onto the stepping-stone,
but he slipped on the moss.
He felt a cold, wet hand close around his arm.
Before he could cry out again, Platt was kneeling beside him. She
jabbed her blaster over Zak's shoulder and fired. The corpse screamed and
let go, falling into the water with a splash.
As friendly hands pulled Zak up to safety, Platt swiveled her blaster
to fire at the other corpse. But this one threw its hands up in front of its
face and wailed, "No, please!"
Platt's finger eased off the trigger. The corpse continued to back away
through the waist-deep water. Its pale, frightened eyes looked from the
newcomers to the body of its companion, now floating on the surface, and
back again. "Don't hurt me."
"Why not?" Platt said in a hard voice. "You were going to hurt one of
us."
"Wait," Hoole said firmly, putting one hand on top of the smuggler's
weapon.
From the safety of the raised stepping-stone, Zak took a second look at
his attacker. It obviously wasn't a corpse-it was a young human male. But
his skin was so pale that Zak was sure the man had never spent any time in
the sun. And he was incredibly thin, like a living skeleton. His sunken
cheeks and eyes gave his head the look of a skull.
"Why did you attack us?" Hoole asked.
The pale man shook his head, his stringy hair flopping around his neck
and face. "Did not attack. Tried to help. Boy fell into water. Tried to
help."
"That's not what it looked like from here," Platt muttered.
"Tried to help," the skeletal man insisted. He glanced again at his
dead companion.
"Who are you?" Tash asked.
The man's eyes narrowed. "I live here. Who are you? You are not from
Dagobah."
"No," Hoole answered before anyone else could. "We're here to explore
this planet."
The skeleton's eyes lit up. "Explorers? The parents were explorers!"
"What in space 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 massive trees, the moss-covered mud, and the
endless pools of water all looked alike. Without the path, they would have
go
tten 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 space 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 passing 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 space 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