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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, Lute 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
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drifted lazily down toward them. Its vast mouth was agape, framinga 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 pastthem, 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.
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"Are you all right, Master Luke?" Threepio called down to them.
"I think so," he shouted back. "It came down after us."
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