"Perhaps he was interested in piloting the ship himself," Qui-Gon mused.

"Or saving the fare," Obi-Wan added.

The pilot sighed. "There are many thieves on Nolar. This kind of thing happens all the time." He looked around the empty hangar and a spark of fury came into his eyes. "Just not to me."

Obi-Wan knew how the pilot felt. He'd been frustrated with this mission pretty much since it started.

But at the moment he and Qui-Gon needed information more than anything else. He had to stay calm and focused.

"Can you tell us where you were going to take the Quermian?" he asked.

"Of course," the pilot said. Obi-Wan noticed that he seemed more willing to help the Jedi. Perhaps he thought it might get his ship back. "I had just finished keying the information into my navcomputer. I remember because it's not a planet I'm asked to fly to very often. In fact, I can't say I've ever been there."

"And the name of the planet?" Qui-Gon asked.

"Kodai," the pilot said. "We were going to Kodai."

Qui-Gon thanked the pilot and got to his feet. He had no way of knowing if the ship was really going to Kodai or not; Dr. Lundi was certainly smart enough to throw them off the trail or even deftly set a trap. But they had nothing else to go on. The sooner they could get to Kodai to investigate, the better.

"Do you need help getting somewhere?" Qui-Gon asked the pilot.

The pilot got to his feet. Though it had been only minutes since he'd woken up, he was already quite steady. "No, I'll be fine," he replied. "But if you find my ship, you know where I am."

"Of course," Qui-Gon said. "We'll do what we can."

Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon quickly left the small hangar and made their way down the street and into a larger one. It was full of ships of all sizes, and pilots from all over the galaxy talking shop or tinkering with their vessels. It seemed like it would be easy enough to hire one of them.

Qui-Gon strode up to a pilot and asked if he would take them to Kodai. "Kodai?" the pilot repeated. "You've got the wrong guy."

"I'll take you there, but I won't land — at least not until next week," said another.

Qui-Gon asked half a dozen pilots before he finally found one who was willing to make the journey, a humanoid who wouldn't give them a last name.

"Call me Elda," she said before agreeing to drop them off and leave immediately. She could not be convinced to wait around for the return trip.

The Jedi could not afford to be choosy. They boarded right away.

While the pilot readied the ship, they settled in for the journey.

"Not many people want to go to Kodai right now," Elda said as she keyed the destination points into her navcomputer.

Qui-Gon raised an eyebrow. "I gathered as much," he said. "Why is that?"

The pilot turned to look over her shoulder at Qui-Gon, giving him an "If you don't know I'm not going to tell you," look.

Qui-Gon didn't prod. It's just as well, he thought. I can get the information from the Temple.

Stepping out of the cockpit and into the hold, Qui-Gon switched on his comlink. He had heard of Kodai, and thought it was located somewhere in the Outer Rim Territories. If he was not mistaken, its surface was mostly covered by a vast sea.

His comlink crackled to life and a moment later Temple Archivist Jocasta Nu's voice echoed quietly in the hold of the ship.

"It is good to hear from you, Qui-Gon," she said. "How is the mission going?"

"It's hard to tell at the moment," Qui-Gon responded honestly. "I was hoping you could provide me with information on the planet Kodai."

"Kodai, in the Outer Rim," she said. There was a brief silence as Jocasta plugged the data for the request into her Temple computer. "I seem to remember something about a massive, swelling sea."

Qui-Gon could hear Jocasta pressing buttons and keys on a computer.

Then she spoke.

"Kodai is, in fact, covered by a giant sea — a sea that hundreds of years ago swelled so much that it drowned most of the planet's land- dwelling inhabitants," she reported. "Today there is only one pocket of land — a single city. It is sparsely populated by a few thousand Kodaians who spend most of their time trying to preserve their way of life on land, in spite of the fact that most believe that the sea will rage again and kill them all." Jocasta was silent for a moment. Qui-Gon guessed that she was reading ahead.

"Interesting," she murmured. "It seems that the sea has shown no signs of raging in the last hundred years. In fact, the opposite seems to occur. Every ten years, when the planet's two moons sync up, the sea experiences a spectacularly low tide."

"I see," said Qui-Gon, filing away this information.

"That's not all," Jocasta said. "What's particularly fascinating is that the planet's moons will be syncing up the day after tomorrow."

"Interesting timing," Qui-Gon agreed. It seemed obvious enough that Lundi's trip to Kodai at this particular moment and his search for mining equipment were not coincidences. But he was still not clear about why it had been so difficult to find a pilot to take them to Kodai.

Jocasta was quiet for several long moments while Qui-Gon digested this information. When she did not end the transmission, Qui-Gon guessed that she had more to tell him.

"Is there something else?" he finally asked.

"Yes," Jocasta replied slowly. "Another collection of Sith materials was found — this time on the planet Tynna in the Expansion Region. And a strange explosion has occurred on the peaceful planet Nubia. Nobody has come forward to take credit for the blast, but a drawing of a crude Sith Holocron had been scraped onto a duracrete wall outside the ruined building."

Qui-Gon closed his eyes for a moment. The discovery of the additional stash was not surprising. But an explosion was something new — something deadly. The situation was heating up, and he felt a great deal of pressure to defuse it.

"Thank you for the information," Qui-Gon told Jocasta. "We will be in touch if we need anything further."

"Of course, Qui-Gon. I will be here if you need me."

As Jocasta switched off her comlink, Qui-Gon felt a pang of sorrow.

He wished that those parting words had been spoken by the woman at the Temple who had helped him with research in the past — Tahl. Qui-Gon had been deeply in love with Tahl, and though she had been killed several months ago, her absence still felt like a blade in his chest.