"Yeah," Anakin said. He nodded his head forward, to the door that hid the pilot from them.

Obi-Wan held up his hand. "He is oblivious to our talk. It's important we analyze what's happening before we get drawn in further."

"It comes and goes, this sensation of a single wave. I might have made a mistake."

"You made no mistake. I feel it myself now. Something coming toward us rapidly, something dangerous."

Anakin shook his head sadly. "I hope nothing happens before we get our ship made."

Obi-Wan narrowed his eyes in disapproval. "I am concerned you are losing your perspective."

"We came here to get a ship!" Anakin said, his voice breaking. "And to find out about Vergere. She didn't get her ship, so it's even more important for us. That's all." He folded his arms.

Obi-Wan let these words sit between them for some seconds before asking, blandly enough, "What does the ship mean to you?"

"A ship that tunes itself to a need for speed. . Wow!" Anakin said. "For me, that would be the perfect friend."

"That's what I thought," Obi-Wan said.

"But it won't distract me from my training," Anakin assured him.

Once again, Obi-Wan felt he was losing control of the situation. Before Anakin had been Obi-Wan's apprentice, Qui- Gon had encouraged behavior in the boy that Obi-Wan had disapproved of. And now, the Council and Thracia Cho Leem, sending them to this world, were once more tempting Anakin in ways that made Obi-Wan uncomfortable.

"We're going where the Force sends us," Anakin said quietly, anticipating the direction of his master's thoughts. "I don't know what else we can do but observe and accept."

"And then act," Obi-Wan said. "We must be prepared for the course laid out for us and receptive to the unexpected. The Force is never a nursemaid."

"I'll know when something is about to happen," Anakin said with quiet confidence. "I like this planet. And the living things here like me. And you. Don't you feel it-something is watching out for us?"

Obi-Wan did in fact feel that-but the sensation gave him no comfort. He did not know who or what could extend such an influence over them, and especially over his Padawan.

The journey continued for another hour. Anakin looked east and pointed out a huge brown scar on the landscape, stretching over the horizon. Obi-Wan had seen this, or something like this, briefly from space-but Charza Kwinn had brought them down before completing a full orbit of Zonama Sekot. The scar had dug clear through to bedrock. Iron-rich red crust opened like the edges of a wound over dark tumbled chunks of basalt.

"What made that?" Anakin asked.

"It looks no more than a few months old," Obi-Wan said. Thin white threads of waterfalls slipped over the red cliff sides into the gouge. "It resembles a battle scar."

The craft now turned and headed due south, flying between and through the tops of the unbroken deck of cloud. A seemingly endless scape of billows and whorls puffed and streamed beneath them.

Anakin turned in his seat. "Look," he said excitedly, and pointed to their right. They were veering southwest toward a jagged reddish black mountain that pushed up through the clouds, its sloping flanks almost bare of Sekotan growth and its leveled summit capped with snow. It looked like an old, weatherworn volcano.

"We will be at the Magister's home in three minutes," the pilot said. "I hope you've had a nice nap."

Anakin smiled at Obi-Wan. "Well rested!" he said.

They crouched low once more to exit the transport, and stood on a level field of crushed lava. A few meters away a flat stone pathway led to a magnificent, fortresslike palace of skewed blocks stacked around a squat central tower. Beyond the palace, four volcanic terraces spilled orange- tinted water over broad, multicolored falls. The air smelled of Zonama's depths-hydrogen sulfide-alternating with fresh breezes blowing from the south.

Each of the blocks around the tower was over ten meters high and fifty meters wide, its walls lined with windows that gleamed like rainbows in the sunset light. The promontory supported only a few tendrils, barely as thick as an arm, nestled haphazardly between the rocks and around the mineral-spring terraces like lines of red and green thread.

"The Magister lives far from his subjects," Obi-Wan observed, rubbing his hands on the hem of his tunic, then holding them out palm up and dropping his chin. His eyes swept the horizon shrewdly. "And he makes do with very few attendants." Looking at the torn wisps of clouds passing overhead, and the darker masses visible to the south, Obi- Wan estimated they were a thousand kilometers below the equator. "Peculiar customs.They seem to prefer their clients be misinformed and kept off balance."

"At least they haven't checked us for weapons," Anakin said.

"Oh, but they think they have," Obi-Wan said.

"You did that. . without my knowing?" Anakin asked.

Obi-Wan smiled.

"You surprise me all the time, Master," Anakin said with a touch of awe. "But that's what an apprentice should expect from his teacher."

Obi-Wan lifted one brow.

"We make a great team, don't we?" the boy said with a sud den grin. His face colored with the expectation of adventure.

"We do," Obi-Wan agreed.

"I'm glad you're here. I'm glad you're my master, Obi- Wan," Anakin said. He gave a small shiver, then he, also, rubbed his palms on his tunic, held them out, and looked around. Obi-Wan had learned years ago that Anakin could become both expressive and imitative whenever he felt excited or ill at ease.

The boy looked up at the glowing pinwheel of plasma unwinding from the distant double-star system, obscured by rips and shreds of thin, high clouds. Zonama's own sun perched on the horizon, turning the sky above into a flaming tapestry easily the match of the astronomical spectacle beyond. "It's out there now. It's closing in."

"Do you see its shape more clearly?"

"It's a time of trial. For me."

"Do you fear it?" Obi-Wan asked.

Anakin shook his head but kept staring up at the red and orange sky. "I fear my reaction. What if I'm not good enough?"

"I have trust in you."

"What if the Magister turns us down?"

"That. . seems a separate issue, don't you think?"

"Yeah." Anakin said, but persisted with boyish stubbornness, focused on what seemed to him, for the moment, the most crucial of their many problems. "But what if the Magister doesn't want us to get a ship?"