by John Whitman
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 space. 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?"
"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 muffled 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 h
is 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 grass sprouting
from the mud. Out of the center of the grass 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 snatched 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."
"Really?" Zak said.
A rush of excitement filled him. If there really was an imp, this would
be his chance to do something important. He'd been letting Tash and Uncle
Hoole take control for too long. Now it was his turn to be a hero.
"Come on," Zak said, starting forward.
"No, no!" Galt said, holding him back. "It's not safe."
Zak snorted, thinking of the smuggler's head. "It's not very safe here
either, is it?"
"But it's a waste of-"
Zak didn't hear the end of Galt's statement. He was splashing through
puddles and jumping over fallen logs. Somewhere in the back of his mind he
knew that what he was doing was dangerous. The next puddle could swallow him
whole, or his next step could land him in the mouth of some swamp beast. But
none of that mattered. He felt an irresistible urge to move forward.
Zak didn't think he had run very far, maybe a hundred meters. His legs
weren't tired. But suddenly, the urge to run left him. The moment it did, he
felt drained, like a power cell with all the energy sucked out. And into the
space left behind poured all the fear he had ignored for the past few
minutes.
He was alone in a clearing in the swamp where one person had already
been killed. He couldn't see the Children's village. He wasn't even sure in
which direction it was.
"What am I doing?" he asked aloud.
"Stepping on me, you are," said a throaty voice at his feet.
Zak nearly jumped out of his skin. He stumbled backward and fell into a
muddy puddle. Propping himself up on his arms, he found himself at eye level
with one of the strangest beings he'd ever seen.
The creature was less than one meter tall. Its skin was the color of
the Dagobah mud, dry and cracked with age. Tufts of gray hair, grew in
little bushes around its large, pointed ears. But its eyes were youthful and
bright.
Those eyes were round, and soft, and deep, and they reminded Zak of
nothing he'd ever seen before, except maybe the feeling he had when he
looked up at night and saw the whole galaxy spread out across the sky.
"Deaf as well as blind, are you?" the creature said. It poked him in
the ribs with a little c
ane it held in one hand.
"Wh-What?" Zak stammered.
"Asked a question, I did. Where are my seeds?" Zak was utterly
confused.
"My seeds, my seeds. Ah, here! Hiding with you, they are!"
The creature struggled to push Zak aside and get at something beneath
him. Zak rolled away, and the creature started to gather up a pile of round
seeds it had been collecting, humming, "Good for the soup. Good for the
bones, mm-hm."
"You eat those?" Zak said doubtfully, staring at the seeds. Each one
was about the size of his fingernail, but they all looked as hard as rocks.
"Eat them? Eat them, no," the creature said. He looked at Zak and
smiled. "Plant them, I do. Grow and bear fruit, they will. That is the way."
"Who are you?" Zak asked.
The creature dropped the seeds into a little pouch at his side. Then he