He reached the other side unharmed.
Grimpen stretched out his hand to Tash. “Your turn.”
Zak grabbed Tash’s arm. “You’re beyond hyper if you do that.”
Tash shook her arm free of Zak’s hold. “If he did it, I can do it.”
Grimpen nodded. “All you have to do is believe, Tash. This is your pathway to a whole new life, a whole new way of seeing the galaxy.”
Tash paused, but only for a moment. Grimpen was offering her what she wanted-something that Uncle Hoole and even Zak could not give her.
“Don’t do it, Tash,” Zak warned.
“Relax,” she replied.
She stepped onto the burning coals. As she did, she vanished into a cloud of steam.
And screamed.
CHAPTER 6
“Tash!” Zak cried. He leaped to the edge of the burning coals, reaching through the steam.
But Tash’s scream hadn’t been a cry for help.
“It doesn’t hurt!” she shouted in excitement. “It’s not hot at all!”
“Of course not,” Grimpen called back. “Once your mind reaches a certain advanced stage, normal sensations like heat and cold no longer mean anything. It’s mind over matter.”
The steam cleared momentarily, and Zak saw his sister step across to the other side of the coal bed. Zak couldn’t believe it. He looked down at the coals and saw Tash’s footprints clearly in the glowing rock. Wherever her steps had crushed a rock, tiny flames shot up, leaving a fiery trail.
“What about me?” Zak called out to Tash.
“You are welcome to join us,” Grimpen said. “If you have the strength of mind, all you have to do is cross.”
Zak studied the coals again. He was tempted to try. But Tash had the Force on her side-he had seen her use it in the past.
“No thanks,” he replied.
Grimpen shrugged. “Then we will say goodbye. Come on, Tash, there are many things I can teach you.” Tash glanced back at her brother for a moment, then turned and disappeared.
Zak stood alone in the tunnel. “Oh, frag,” he whispered. “It’s not fair.”
He was somewhere in Jabba’s palace-he didn’t know where. He’d been walking for an hour, turning down whatever passageway caught his eye, going through whichever doors were open. Sometimes short-snouted Gamorrean guards appeared and pushed him away, not allowing him through certain portals, but Zak didn’t care. He just turned and walked in another direction.
Zak had lost friends before. He’d even lost members of his family. Everyone he had ever known was wiped out when the Empire destroyed Alderaan. But this was different. Tash wasn’t the victim of some Imperial plot. She wasn’t being forced to leave. She had chosen to leave him behind.
He hadn’t felt so abandoned since the day his parents died.
Clickclick-click. Clickclick-click.
“Maybe it’s me,” he wondered aloud.
His voice echoed down the hallway, making him feel even lonelier.
Clickclick-click.
Under the echoes of his voice, Zak heard something scratching on the stone floor, but he was too deep in thought to pay much attention.
Tash is older than me. Maybe she is just growing up. Maybe I am too much of a kid for her now, and I’m just in her way.
Clickclick-click-click-click.
He frowned. Leaving a friend behind didn’t seem like a very grown-up thing to do. It wasn’t something his mom and dad would have done. It wasn’t even something Uncle Hoole would do.
Clickclick-click-click-click-click!
Suddenly, Zak realized that the noise had become louder. It sounded like a dozen metal knives being dropped to the ground, one after another. “What-?” Zak started to ask.
A brain spider shuffled out of the darkness.
“Oh, great,” Zak muttered.
The mechanical spider took a few more steps. Clickclick-click! Then it stopped a meter away from Zak. In the center of its metal body, he could see the gray brain floating in a greenish liquid in its transparent container. The spider’s servos hummed as if it were waiting.
“What, am I in your way, too?” Zak said sarcastically. He stepped to the left to clear a path for the spider.
The spider followed him.
“All right, I’ll go the other way.” Zak stepped to the right.
So did the brain spider.
“What do you want?” he asked it.
But the brain spider couldn’t answer.
Zak frowned. “I’m in no mood to dance with droids, thanks, so I’ll be going.” He took one step back, and then another.
The brain spider followed.
As Zak took a few more steps, the creeping brain-carrier matched his movements. When he sped up, the brain spider increased its speed. It had no eyes, but Zak was overcome by the sensation that the brain itself was… staring at him.