“Over here, Leia!” She hurried around the side, came up to him.
“Luke, we can’t stay …” He shook his head, pointed to something inside the wall. Leaning over, she saw the cause of his excitement.
They were standing at a place where the wall had been cut away. A gateway covered with indecipherable alien scrawl framed the stoneless section. Attached to small stone pillars were two vines. They descended into the darkness, intertwining to form a strange spiral ladder.
“Luke, I don’t know …” she began.
He dropped to the ground, grabbed one of the vines and tugged on it with all his strength. The vine didn’t give. Behind them, the wandrella had approached to within fifteen meters. It opened its toothy maw. A low, lymph-curdling ululation issued from within.
That made up Luke’s mind. “We haven’t got a choice,” he insisted.
“Down there, Luke?” The Princess shook her head. “We can’t. We don’t know what …”
“I’d rather die in a dark hole,” he said tightly, staring hard at her, “than be some monster’s breakfast.” Then he started down the vine ladder. “Come on,” he urged her, yelling upward. “It’ll hold both of us!” He continued his descent.
A last look at the quivering mouth hunching toward her and the Princess swung both legs over the side of the pit and started down into nothingness. It was not quite black as night, but dark enough so that Luke had to feel for each succeeding rung. Once he moved too quickly and almost fell. With his right leg he felt around for the next rung.
There was no next rung.
He’d reached the bottom of the ladder.
“Hold it!” he shouted softly up to Leia. The slight echo of the pit gave his voice a sepulchral quality. Above, he could barely make out her frightened face as she turned to look down at him.
“What is it … what’s the matter?”
“End of the line.” Beyond his feet he could see only unending blackness. It seemed as if they’d descended no distance at all. But as his eyes adjusted to the light, he thought he saw something a couple of steps above and to his right.
Climbing, he soon made contact with the Princess’ feet. After calming her, he reached out, stepped off to one side. The ledge he’d spotted was barely a meter wide, but another of the tough vines had been attached to the wall above it, running parallel to the ledge about waist-high. Carefully, Luke hooked one arm over the vine. “There’s a ledge, Leia,” he explained, reaching out a hand for her. She stepped over, grabbed the vine with both hands and examined the rock underfoot.
“Someone cut this out of the pit wall,” she observed positively. “I wonder who, and for what purpose?”
“I wish I knew,” Luke admitted. “Too bad Halla’s not here. I bet she could tell us.”
A loud, reverberant scraping sound from overhead killed further conversation. Pressing tight against the pit wall, they turned wide eyes upward. The sound wasn’t repeated.
Luke felt the warmth of the body next to him, lowered his gaze. Framed in the faint light from above, the Princess looked more radiant, more beautiful than ever. “Leia,” he began, “I …”
More scraping, louder, ominously so. Several rocks and pieces of wall fell from above and shot past them. They tried to bury themselves in the unyielding stone, tried to merge with the dampness dripping down its sides.
A loud thunk sounded far below. It was one of the fallen stones finally hitting something. Luke wasn’t sure it was bottom.
Breathless, they stayed huddled together, eyes fixed on the circle of misty sunlight above. With infinite slowness, something slid into view. At first it looked like a sooty cloud obscuring the sun. Small sounds came from the Princess’ throat. Luke was completely paralyzed.
The massive worm-head eclipsed the opening. It swung back and forth like a horizontal pendulum, moving from side to side, searching with senses unimaginable.
Looking around desperately, Luke spied what might have been an opening in the pit wall. It was at the far end of the ledge.
“Follow me,” he instructed the Princess. When she didn’t move, he grabbed one hand and pulled. She followed him, her gaze still frozen on the monstrosity above.
The opening turned out to be large enough to hold both of them. It was tall enough so that Luke hardly had to stoop to fit inside. Both stared up and out, relieved to be off the narrow ledge.
Perhaps the creature above was sensitive to their relief. Something certainly attracted it, because the great skull abruptly ceased its weaving motion. It turned downward, facing them.
“It sees us!” the Princess breathed, gripping Luke’s arm so hard it hurt. “Oh, it sees us!”
“Maybe … maybe it’s just looking down the pit,” Luke responded, more hopeful than sanguine.
With a hunching movement that filed stone and rock from the upper edge of the chasm, the head drifted lazily down toward them. Its vast mouth was agape, framing a darkness deeper than that of the pit itself.
“It’s coming down,” the Princess breathed. “It’s coming for us, Luke.”
“It can’t. It can’t reach us,” Luke insisted, feeling for his pistol. It wasn’t there. He’d dropped it in the retreat from the crawler. His hand went around the hilt of his lightsaber.
A ponderous groaning sounded. Larger chunks of dislodged stone fell past them, went crashing and booming off the walls below.
“How long is it?” Luke wondered, indicating the worm-like creature.
“I don’t know. I didn’t get a good look. It seemed to go on forever,” she responded. The wandrella was less than a dozen meters above them, and still moving. There was no doubt that it saw them now. “Can it get a purchase on the wall? It’s so slick.”
“I don’t know,” he mumbled dully. His fist tightened convulsively on the hilt of the saber.
All at once the worm-thing seemed to leap down at them. The Princess screamed, her shriek echoing madly around the walls of the pit as Luke yanked the saber from his belt and activated it. In the plutonian confines of the well its clean blue light was small comfort.
But the wandrella was not striking at them. Overextended even for its own incredible length, it was falling. It went rocketing past, a seemingly endless white waterfall of faintly glowing flesh. Leaning out, they saw it shrink to a dot, a pinpoint of brightness before it finally vanished into the abyssal depths. Echoes of the creature bouncing and bumping from wall to wall drifted up to them with steadily increasing faintness, dying memories of a massive death.
Luke shakily deactivated his saber and reattached it to his belt.
At the same time, the Princess grew aware of how tightly she was clinging to him. Their proximity engendered a wash of confused emotion. It would be proper to disengage, to move away a little. Proper, but not nearly so satisfying. She was utterly drained, and the comfort she derived from leaning against him was worth any feeling of impropriety.
They stood like that for a timeless stretch. Luke slid his arm around her and she didn’t resist. She didn’t look yearningly up at him, either, but this was enough for him, for now at least. He was happy.
An eternity later a querulous voice bounced down the walls to them, so gently he wasn’t certain he’d heard anything at all.
“Luke, boy … are you down there?”
They exchanged glances. Luke leaned uncertainly out of the little alcove they’d sought refuge in and stared upward. Four faces were staring back down at him from high above. Two were bewhiskered and furred. One was golden and metallic.
“Halla?” An excited chittering came back to him. Hin, unmistakably. When the hysterical hooting finally died down, Halla called to him again.
“Are you two all right, Master Luke?” Threepio called down to them.
“I think so,” he shouted back. “It came down after us.”
“I thought you were behind me all the time,” came Halla’s reply. “I’m glad you’re still alive.”
“So are we,” exclaimed the Princess, her norma
l self-reliance flooding back rapidly. “We’ll join you in a minute.” She started out of the rock recess.
“No we won’t,” countered Luke somberly, putting out an arm to stop her. “Take a look.”
Her gaze followed his pointing arm. Where the wandrella had fallen, the walls of the pit were scraped clean and chipped away as if scoured by some huge abrasive pad. The vine spiral ladder they’d climbed down was completely gone. So was more than half the ledge.
“We’ve no way back up,” he called out to the anxious watchers above. “The vine ladder we came down was torn away. Can you make another one?”
Silence from above. For a few moments the faces moved out of sight. Luke found their absence worrying, but they finally returned.
“I wouldn’t trust any of the vines growing near here,” Halla called down to them. “The ladder you used must have been made from vines brought from some distance away. But there might be another way out.” Luke studied the smooth-sided interior of the pit.
“Another way? What are you talking about, Halla?”
“Where were you standing when the worm fell past you?”
“There’s a small recess in the wall here, at the end of a ledge,” he informed her.
“A ledge, too,” she repeated, sounding satisfied. “How big is the recessed place?”
“Big enough for both of us to stand in.”
“I thought so. You’re in a Coway shaft, Luke boy.”
“A what?” the Princess called out, frowning.
“Coway, child,” Halla repeated. “I told you there are, and were, all kinds of races coexisting on Mimban. The Coway are related to the greenies of the towns, but they’re not the least bit subservient. They live underground, which is why nobody knows a helluva lot about them. But they use the old Thrella wells for occasional access to the surface, in addition to natural sinkholes and other surface openings.”
“First Coways, now Thrella wells,” mumbled Luke, studying the emptiness below them. “What’s a Thrella well?”
“A well bored by the Thrella,” Halla replied, not unexpectedly. “They’re just called wells. Nobody knows what they were really used for, just like no one knows much about the Thrella. Maybe they built a lot of the temples, too.
“In any case, they’re long gone and the Coway are here. If you go to the back of your recess, you’ll probably find that it opens onto a passageway.”
“If it does, we’ll find it,” Luke assured her.
“The Coway don’t try to conceal their surface exits,” Halla went on. “If you can find your way out, we’ll meet you there. I’m sure I can find the nearest Coway egress.”
“Sounds good,” a hopeful Luke admitted, “except for one thing. What do we do for light? I’ve got an emergency luma on my belt, and I can always use the saber, but I don’t want to use up the charges.”
“Just find the passageway,” Halla told them confidently. “You’ll have plenty of light, if it is a Coway passage. Take my word for it, boy.”
“We’ll try it,” Luke agreed. “We’ll go through and meet you.” He turned away, hesitated, then leaned back out and called upward again. “Halla?”
A small face reappeared over the rim of the chasm.
“Yes, Luke boy?”
“What do we do if we meet any Coway?”
“They’re not very numerous, and they move around a lot,” Halla told him. “It’s not likely you’ll run into any. If you do meet up with a couple, they’ll probably be so startled they’ll run from you. Remember, they’re not domesticated like the greenies. They know as little about us as we do about them … I think. You hear lots of reports of them lingering around the towns, but they disappear if anyone goes after them. So that probably means they’re shy and peaceful.”
“That’s two very important probablys,” he shouted uncertainly.
“You’ve still got your saber.”
Luke’s hand went to the comforting shaft of the weapon. “All right. Stay there a second.” He turned to Leia. She wasn’t there. “Leia?” he said aloud. Swelling fears vanished when she reappeared seconds after his call.
“There’s a tunnel back there, just like the old woman thought,” she said cheerfully. “I used my own luma.” She gestured with the tiny, self-contained light. “It widens out right away.”
“Which direction?”
“Off to the east, about a thirty-one-degree heading.” She indicated her suit tracom.
“Thirty-one degrees east, Halla,” he shouted upward, relaying Leia’s information.
“Okay, boy. We’ll move in that direction. How are you two on rations?”
Both hurried to check their belts. The brief survey was more encouraging than Luke had hoped.
“We’ve got enough concentrates between us to keep going for about a week. I expect we’ll find plenty of water.”
Halla’s cackle rippled down the well walls. “I expect you’ll have trouble avoiding it, Luke boy. If what I know about Coway tunnels holds, we should meet up with you in a couple, three days at most. Light, food, water … you two kids hang on, understand? We’ll find you.” A concurring series of squeaks from Hin and Kee, and then the three faces disappeared.
“Please be careful, sir,” Threepio added. Then he, too, vanished.
Luke stood a moment longer gazing at the inviting circle of sunlight and mist above. He reached upward. Despite the seeming nearness, he was not surprised to discover that he couldn’t touch the sky with a fingertip.
“They’re on their way,” he told Leia, turning back to her and switching on his own luma. “We’d better be on ours.…”
IX
THEY’D been walking for some ten minutes when Luke ventured thoughtfully, “I wonder if we might not’ve been better off waiting in the alcove until Halla and the Yuzzem could’ve gone back to a town and come back with some stolen cable. Hin could pull us out of there by himself, with those arms he has.”
Leia stepped over a small pile of rough gravel. “You think she’d consider going back to town without the crystal to face Grammel?”
“What difference would the crystal make?”
Leia eyed him fondly. “You don’t understand her, do you, Luke? Obviously she’s convinced she can turn Grammel into a frog with it.”
Luke made a disparaging sound. “Leia, she’s not that irrational about the crystal.”
“You don’t think so?” The Princess formed her next words carefully, gently. “Think a moment, Luke. Halla’s a very persuasive, knowledgeable old woman, but she’s been on this world a long time. Years spent hunting down a myth. It’s clear to me that she believes the Kaiburr has supernormal powers. Even you agree it doesn’t possess any such thing.”
“I know. Okay, so maybe she’s a little fanatical on the subject, but—”
“Fanatical?” The Princess sighed. “Luke, the poor woman is sick with delusions, can’t you see that? Her dreams have overwhelmed her sense of reality. But we need her, ill as she is, to get off this planet.”
“The crystal’s no delusion,” Luke argued mildly. “It’s real. If this Governor Essada and his people get to it before we do …”
She shuddered visibly. “Essada. I’d almost forgotten about him.”
“Leia, why are you so afraid of an Imperial Governor,” he asked gently as they walked on. “What could Moff Tarkin have done to you back on the Death Star before Han Solo and I rescued you?”
She turned memory-haunted eyes on him, “Maybe I’ll tell you someday, Luke. Not now. I’m not … I haven’t forgotten enough. If I told you I might remember too much.”
“Don’t you think I could take it,” he asked tightly.
She hastened to correct him. “Oh not you, Luke, not you. It’s me, my own reactions I’m worried about. Whenever I start trying to remember exactly what they did to me that time, I start to come apart.”
They walked on in silence. “Say, don’t you think it’s getting brighter in here?” she finally said, with exaggerated cheerfulness
.
Luke blinked, the feelings that had been running searingly through him the past several minutes beginning to fade as he considered the import of her comment.
Yes, it did seem lighter. Almost bright, in fact.
“Switch off your luma,” he instructed her, even as he was thumbing the switch of his own.
For a brief instant it grew darker. Then their eyes compensated and it was as bright as before. The light was a faint blue-yellow, somewhat brighter than the hue of his own saber.
When his gaze returned to the Princess he saw she was standing next to the tunnel wall. “Over here,” she called, directing him to an especially luminous section of stone. He leaned close. It seemed as if the rock itself was pouring out the light.
“No,” she corrected when he voiced that thought, “look closer. Here.” She dug at the stone with her nails and the light came off in her hands, setting her palm aglow. It burned coldly in her hand. After a while it started to fade out.
“Some kind of growth,” she announced, “Lichen, a fungus … I don’t know. I’m no botanist. This is what Halla told us we’d find if we kept on.” She brushed living light from her hand, looked on down the gradually descending cave, “It’s another world down here, but now I don’t find it frightening.”
As they continued downward, the path they were traveling leveled off. The tunnel widened into a true cavern. Multicolored stalactites began to appear, mineral impurities turning them into painted pendants coated with the phosphorescent growths. Blunt-tipped stalagmites thrust ceilingward. They were accompanied by the ever-present music of dripping water.
A faint rumble sounded ahead and they slowed cautiously. The noise turned out to be the song of a running underground stream. It ran parallel to their path, a bubbling, unceasingly cheerful guide and companion.
They passed a hole in the cave’s roof. Water poured through it and disappeared into a bottomless pond, looking for all the world like a piece of standard piping with the middle section removed.
Further on, they encountered a miniature forest of helicites. These twisted, grotesquely contorted crystals of gypsum defied gravity in their swirling projections from floor, walls, and ceiling. Luke had the feeling they were walking through a gigantic clump of glass wool. Here the reflections from the glowing plant life reached blinding proportions.