The late Jabba's court had been opulent-and lucrative-enough to attract more than the usual lowlifes that one encountered on Tatooine.

But the bunch of rubble Dengar had found out here-the few scattered and pawed-over bits of the sail barge and the smaller skiffs that'd hovered alongside as outriders, the dead bodyguards and warriors-wasn't worth two lead ingots to him. Anything of value was already trundling away in the Jawas' slow, tank-treaded sandcrawlers, leaving nothing but bones and worthless scrap behind.

Might as well just stay here, he thought. And wait.

He'd sent his bride-to-be, Manaroo, aloft in his ship, the Punishing One, to do a high-altitude reconnaissance of the area. Soon enough she'd be finished with the task, and would come back to fetch him.

The knot of frustration in Dengar's gut was instantly replaced with surprise as the keelbeam suddenly tilted al most vertical. The strap of the electrobinoculars cut across his throat as they flew away from his eyes. He held on with both hands as the beam pitched skyward, as though it were on a storm-tossed ocean of water rather than sand.

Charred metal scraped tight against the ammo pouches on his chest as the keelbeam rotated. As the beam twisted about, Dengar could see the surrounding dunes heaving in a slow, seismic counterpoint to the wrecked barge's motion, cliff faces of rock and sand shearing away and tumbling downward, slower clouds of dust stacking across the suns' smoldering faces.

At the center of the dunes, the slope grew deeper, like a funnel with a black hole at its center. Another shudder ran beneath the planet's surface, and the keelbeam rolled almost sideways, nearly dislodging Dengar from his grasp upon it. His feet swung out from beneath him; Dengar looked down, past his own boots, and saw that the hole at the bottom of the sand funnel was lined with teeth.

Jaws clenched, Dengar muttered an obscenity from his homeworld. You gnurling idiot-he cursed his own stupidity, getting himself stuck here in the middle of the air, with no escape route. He hadn't considered what his presence might awaken, and how hungry it would be.

The Great Pit of Carkoon gaped wider, sand and rubble swirling around the blind, all-devouring Sarlacc creature at the center of the vortex. A sour stench hit Dengar like a wind hotter than any that crossed the desert's reaches.

A glance around him revealed to Dengar that the keelbeam had slid partway down the funnel, then snagged on a solid rock outcropping. He turned his face against his shoulder as the sail barge's scattered debris rained past him, the larger pieces hitting the Pit's sloping sides and pitching end over end into the Sarlacc's gaping maw. The keelbeam gave a sudden lurch in Dengar's sweating grasp as the end below him shattered part of the outcropping. Suddenly the beam swayed backward, leaving him dangling precariously, only a couple of meters from the Sarlacc's throat.

A pumping kick enabled him to get first one, then the other of his boot soles up onto the beam. He squatted into a deep knee bend on the narrow metal surface, then jumped, fingertips clawing for the funnel's edge above him. His belly hit the slope; sand slid maddeningly under his hands as he thrashed and kicked, struggling toward the bright and empty sky. With a gasp of effort, Dengar managed to get his chest across the shifting edge of the funnel, then scrabble the rest of his body over and tumble down the other side.

Too bad for the Jawas-that was all that Dengar could think of as he wrapped his arms around himself and waited for the animate disturbance in Tatooine's crust to subside. There might have been something of worth brought to the surface; but unless the little scroungers wanted to dive down the Sarlacc's throat to get it, that load of valuable salvage was lost to them now.

The Dune Sea grew silent again. Dengar let a minute pass, measured by his heartbeat gradually slowing to normal, then scrambled to his feet. The Sarlacc had most likely pulled its head back underground and was busy digesting the bits of wreckage it'd just been fed, or trying to. He figured that would give him time enough to get a safe distance away, if he hurried. Brushing sand from his gear, Dengar started trudging up the slope of the nearest dune.

Three dunes later he stopped to catch his breath. To his amazement, he saw that the scraps of debris, the barely distinguishable pieces of Jabba the Hutt's sail barge, still filled the center of the pit. The truth dawned on him. It's dead, thought Dengar. Something-or someone-had managed to kill the Sarlacc. The rotting stench had been from the creature's own torn-apart flesh, visible beneath the wreckage.

Now the sense of life, however malignant, beneath the desert's surface was extinguished. Only bits of wreckage, no longer recognizable as to form and function, and a few facedown bodies lay scattered around the empty zone.

The stink from the slope-sided hole motivated Dengar in the opposite direction, toward Jabba's palace. This was as good a time as any for him to verify the rumors about what the palace had become since the death of the Hutt. The orgiastic celebration of Jabba's liberated underlings had been just beginning, the last time Dengar had been inside the forbidding, windowless pile. If the palace was empty now-reports differed on that score-then the thick walls of the interior chambers would give him a safe place to hang out while night and its attendant hazards took possession of the Dune Sea, and he waited for Manaroo's return. His own private hideout, which he'd previously carved into a desert ridge of stone and stocked with supplies, would have done the same-but at the palace, there might be some remnants of Jabba's court, like the Hutt's majordomo, Bib Fortuna, and others who would be looking for ways to profit by the employer's death. Great minds think alike, Dengar noted wryly. Or at least the greedy ones do.

He gave the area one more scan, sweeping the horizon with the electrobinoculars. One of the suns had already begun to set, pushing his own shadow ahead across the wasteland. He was just about to power off the 'binocs when he spotted something nearly fifty meters away. That one looks like he took the worst of it-another corpse lay on a stretch of rough gravel. Faceup; Dengar could make out the front of a narrow-apertured helmet. That was about all of the corpse's gear that was intact. The rest of the dead man's gear looked as if it hadn't been burned away so much as dissolved, some kind of acid bath reducing uniform and armaments to rags and corroded, pitted shapes of useless metal and plastoid. Dengar thumbwheeled the 'binocs into closer focus, trying to figure out what could've happened to create that kind of lethal effect.

Wait a minute. The sprawled form filled the elec trobinoculars' lenses. Maybe not exactly lethal, Dengar corrected himself. He could see the figure's chest moving, a slight rise and fall, right on the edge of survival. The half-naked combatant, whoever it might be, was still alive. Or at least for the time being.

Now, that was worth checking out. Dengar slung the

'binocs back onto his equipment belt. If only to satisfy his own curiosity-the distant figure looked as if he'd discovered a whole new way of getting killed. As a bounty hunter and general purveyor of violence, Dengar felt a professional interest in the matter.

He glanced over his shoulder and saw his own ship, the Punishing One, descending a few kilometers away, its landing gear extended. His bride-to-be, Manaroo, was at the ship's controls. Good, thought Dengar. He'd be able to use her help, now that he had determined that there would be no immediate danger to her. He didn't mind risking his own life, but hers was another matter.

Balancing himself with one hand held back against the slope of the dune, Dengar worked his way toward the humanoid-shaped mystery he'd spotted. He hoped the other man would still be alive by the time he got there.