[Galaxy Of Fear] - 11

CHAPTER 1


Tash Arranda was lying on her back in the grass. Her eyes were closed and she was half asleep. She could feel the warm sun on her face and hear a soft breeze whisper around her. It was a perfect summer day on the planet Dantooine.

Tash felt something tickle her arm, maybe a blade of grass blowing in the wind. Then she felt something sharp clamp down on her skin.

“Ouch!” she yelled, sitting up with a start.

A snail hung from the soft inside part of her arm by its sharp teeth. She tried to shake it off, but it only bit harder. “Zak, help!”

Tash’s younger brother was already on his feet. Unlike Tash, who was only dozing, Zak had been deep in a nap, and he was bleary-eyed and confused.

“What is it?” he shouted. “Stormtroopers? Pirates?”

“Snails!” Tash shouted back.

Now awake enough to see what was happening, Zak laughed. Tash usually looked so calm and organized, with her neat clothes and her blond hair pulled back into a tidy braid. But now there was grass stuck to her hair, and her arms were flapping around as she yelped. She looked like a clown in a holovideo. Zak laughed again.

“Don’t laugh, help me!” she snapped.

Zak swallowed another laugh and grabbed his sister’s arm. “Here, you can’t shake these snails off. You have to pry them loose.”

The snail was almost the size of his fist. Zak grabbed it by its squishy head and carefully pulled it off so that its teeth slid straight out of Tash’s skin.

“Yuck,” she said, checking the wound. It wasn’t very deep. The snail’s teeth were sharp but not very long.

Zak tossed the snail into the grass. “There are more of them around here. Maybe we should move.”

“Where to?” Tash asked. “It’s all the same.”

Tash was right. A huge prairie stretched out before them. Here and there, the grassy plain was spotted by groves of thorny bilba trees, and in the distance was a line of small hills. Over their heads floated a flock of fabools. Tash thought of them as birds, but they weren’t birds, exactly. With their swollen round bodies and tiny wings, the fabools were more like living balloons that floated on the air currents, trying to avoid the bilba trees.

Zak and Tash, along with their uncle Hoole, had been hiding out from agents of the Empire on the planet Dantooine. Months ago, they had stumbled upon an evil Imperial plot and, with the help of some Rebels named Luke Skywalker, Leia Organa, and Han Solo, they had foiled it. Now the Emperor’s agents wanted revenge.

They’d spent weeks looking for a place to hide, only to find themselves in more and more trouble. But finally they’d reached Dantooine, a planet so far from the rest of the Empire that no one visited the place. Ever. It was a beautiful world, covered by blue oceans and plains of green grass. But there wasn’t much else. There weren’t any cities, although Hoole had mentioned that there was an abandoned Rebel base somewhere around. The only inhabitants were tribes of primitive nomadic humanoids called Dantari.

Tash looked to her left, at a cluster of Dantari tents. When they’d arrived on Dantooine, Zak, Tash, and Hoole had made friends with one tribe of Dantari. The Dantari knew nothing about technology. Unaware that starships armed with blasters, ion cannons, and photon torpedoes traveled among the stars over their heads, the Dantari wandered across their prairies, using spears and stone axes to hunt the animals on the plains.

For the first two weeks, Zak and Tash had loved it.

Hoole had landed their starship, the Shroud, in an isolated spot in the hills to avoid scaring the natives. Hoole had equipped the Shroud with something called a slave circuit-a remote control device that would bring the ship to them wherever they might be.

After a few days of watching the Dantari to make sure they weren’t dangerous, the star travelers had cautiously approached the nearest tribe. Since all the natives had dark hair and wide, flat faces, they were fascinated by Tash’s blond braid. Zak’s hair was almost as dark as the Dantari’s, but his smaller mouth and nose revealed him to be human.

The Dantari saved their greatest fascination for Hoole.

Tash and Zak’s uncle was a different species altogether. From a distance, he might pass for human. But his skin was gray and his face and hands were elongated. He was obviously from another planet. He was, in fact, a Shi’ido, a rare species with an even rarer ability: Hoole could change his shape at will.

Instead of being frightened by the newcomers, the Dantari tribe had welcomed them. Zak, Tash, and Hoole had joined in the Dantari’s routine as they folded up their tents every morning and continued their endless journey across the plains in search of food. At midday, the tribe stopped to eat and rest, and that was what Tash had been doing when the snail bit her.