SW0411 Crystal Star, The (v5) by Vonda N McIntyre

Author:Vonda N McIntyre [McIntyre, Vonda N]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 10

Lelila heard something. It was a cry from a far distance, a call to someone else.

“What did you say?”

Geyyahab made a questioning sound. He had not spoken.

“I said nothing,” Rillao said. “What did you hear?”

Lelila felt her mind tremble. She slapped the emergency controls of her ship, and crashed out of hyperspace.

Chewbacca howled in shock, and Rillao snarled something in a language Lelila had never heard.

“What are you doing? We must hurry to Asylum Station!”

“Look,” Lelila said.

Before them lay a tiny star and a tiny blue and green and brown planetoid.

Artoo-Detoo trilled, Geyyahab made a gruff bark, and Rillao lunged forward in surprise. They all stared at the display. Lelila expanded it, marveling.

“It’s artificial,” she exclaimed. “It’s too small to be natural. The star, the planet—”

“It’s a worldcraft,” Rillao said.

Chewbacca growled.

“No,” Rillao said. “They are not mythical. I wish they were. I hoped never to see one. The Emperor caused a few to be created. He gave them as rewards, to the crudest and most loyal of his officers. Tokens, he called them. His ‘tokens’ were a greater gift than a natural world.” She trembled with tension. “It appears … he presented one to Hethrir.”

Lelila put on a burst of speed. Her ship arrowed toward the tiny artificial planet.

Geyyahab hunkered over the controls, preparing for evasion. The worldcraft had survived so long by concealment, by being nothing but a tiny spark of light, always moving, always avoiding the spaceways. Yet it might have defenses. It might attack.

But the worldcraft made no challenge. As far as Lelila could tell, it was deserted. It spun beneath her. She sought a starship. She found a landing field, but it was empty. Its center glowed in the infrared with the heat of a recent departure.

Have they all fled? she wondered. But if they fled, what brought me here?

The starship slipped into the atmosphere, slowed, and changed to its soaring mode. It crossed a desert that gave way to a meadow, a stream.

Alderaan stopped, hovering low over the flowing silver water. A great lizard rose up from the ripples, snorting, flailing its tail.

“There!” Rillao exclaimed.

Beyond the stream, past a wind-rippled sea of low green bushes, a huge tree twisted upward at the edge of a marsh.

In the marsh, a group of people struggled in the mud. They looked like they had walked to the middle before they sank. Lelila could not imagine how they could have gotten themselves in such a predicament. She arrowed toward them, for they looked like they needed help. They were holding to each other, the ones nearest the shore desperately scrambling to reach solid ground, the ones in the center trying to clamber on top of their fellows.

Rillao’s strong sharp fingers clamped around her shoulder.

“Leave them,” she said. “They aren’t the ones we seek. If we help them, they’ll try to stop us.”

“But they’re drowning!”

“They might drown each other,” Rillao said without sympathy. “If they helped each other, if they did not panic, they would survive. If we help them—they will kill us.

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