It was in this jumble that Obi-Wan found a thriving trade in race paraphernalia.

"Flight starting soon!" cried a little lump of a boy even younger than Anakin. The boy had obviously come from off- world, born on a high-gravity planet, strong, stout, fearless, and almost unbelievably grimy. "Wagers here for the Greeter? Fifty-to-one max, go home rich!"

"I'm looking for a young human racer," Obi-Wan said, bending down before the boy. "Sandy brown hair cut short, slender, older than you."

"You bet on him?" the stout boy asked, face wrinkled in speculation. This child's life was guided by money and nothing more.

So much distortion, Obi-Wan thought. Not even Qui-Gon could save all the children.

"I'll wager, but first I want to have a look at him," Obi- Wan said. He waved his hand slightly, like a magician. "To observe his racing points."

The stout boy watched the hand, but no scarf appeared. He smirked. "Come to the Greeter," the boy said. "He'll tell you what you want to know. Hurry! The race starts in seconds!"

Obi-Wan was sure he could sense Anakin somewhere near, on this level. And he could also sense that the boy was preparing for something strenuous, but whether for a fight or the competition he could not tell.

"And where will I buy a set of race wings?" Obi-Wan asked, aware there was no time for niceties.

"You, a racer?" The stout boy broke into howls of laughter. "The Greeter! He sells wings, too!"

Something was wrong. Anakin should have been aware of any anomalies earlier, but he had been focused on preparing for the race, and what confronted him now was another matter entirely.

The Naplousean tunnel master had been alerted by an ac complice that the maintenance droid had dropped to the next level, and that had distracted it from Anakin. In that instant, the Blood Carver withdrew one arm from a wing and reached into his tunic.

That made no sense. Anakin suddenly realized the Blood Carver's primary mission was not to race.

He knows I was a slave. He knows who I am, and that means he knows where I am from.

The Blood Carver swung out a twister knife. His arm seemed to telescope, all the joints going straight at once, then doubling back into a neat U.

"Padawan!" he hissed, and the spinning tips of the three blades glittered like a pretty gem.

Anakin, hampered by the bulk of the wings, could not move fast enough to completely avoid the thrust. He bent sideways, and the knife missed his face, but one blade gouged his wrist and the other two blades jammed against the left main strut. Pain shot up Anakin's arm. Quick as a snake, the Blood Carver drew his arm back and aimed another thrust.

Anakin had no choice.

He kicked away from the tunnel, skidded down the sloping apron, and spread the race wings to their full width.

Without hesitating, the Blood Carver followed.

"Race not yet!" the tunnel master husked, and a dense plume of stink shot from the tunnel, leaving the other contestants gagging.

Obi-Wan had only seconds to grasp the main points of this new piece of equipment he had purchased. He hefted the wings onto one shoulder and ran down the long tunnel, the loose and rattling struts scraping the ceiling. He hoped this was the tunnel from which the racers were flying, but found himself at the end, standing alone on the apron, staring across the vast lens-shaped space of the pit between two acceleration shields.

His newly purchased wings did not fit. Fortunately they were larger, not smaller, and the Greeter had not cheated him too badly, selling him wings intended for a biped with two arms. He cinched the thorax straps as tight as the buckles would allow, then ratcheted the arm clamps until the struts threatened to bend. Whether the wings were charged and fueled, he did not know until he swung up a little transparent optical cup and attached it over his eye.

The red and blue lines in his field of vision showed one- quarter charge in the small fuel tank. Hardly enough for a controlled fall.

Dying in a stupid garbage pit race, tangled in antique race wings, was not what Obi-Wan had hoped for as a Jedi.

He looked to his left, saw a blank space of wall, then turned right, grabbing a broken metal bar to lean out. The wings nearly pulled him out of balance, and he hung precariously for a moment. Recovering his footing, his race wings rattling ominously, Obi-Wan saw Anakin standing on the apron of the tunnel to his immediate right, about fifty meters away. He was just in time to witness the confused tangle of limbs and the flash of a weapon.

Obi-Wan leapt just as Anakin fell or jumped, and barely had time to observe a Blood Carver, Anakin's assailant, leap after.

His wings spread wide with almost no effort, and the tiny motors at their tips coughed and whined to life. Sensors on the struts searched for the intense tractor fields that permeated the space between the huge, curved shields. By themselves, the wings could not have supported a boy, much less a man, but by using the stray fields from the accelerator ports, a flyer could perform all sorts of aerobatics.

The first maneuver that Obi-Wan mastered, however, was to fall straight down.

Almost three hundred meters.

Anakin's confusion and pain quickly re-formed into a clarity he had not experienced in many years-three years, to be precise, since his final Podrace on Tatooine, when he had last been so close to death.

It took him almost three seconds to roll to a proper position, feet angled slightly down, wings folded by his side, head tilted back against the brace. Like diving into an immense pool. Then, slowly, the wings seemed to spread without his conscious volition. The motors coughed and sputtered to a sharp, well-tuned whine, like the skirling of two large insects. He felt the sensors twirling just beyond his fingertips, perceived the faint vibrating signal in the palms of both hands that a gradient field was available.

He had fallen less than a hundred meters. The wings, spread to their full width of five arm spans, quivered and shuddered like living things as they caught the air and the fields, and as the motors responded to subtle jerks of his arms, he gained complete control-and soared!

The optical cup that gave him fuel and other readings flopped uselessly below his chin, but he could get along without it.

Not bad, he thought, for someone so close to dying! The clarity became a rush of energy throughout his small frame. For an instant he forgot the race, the pain in his arm, the fear, and felt a thrill of complete victory over matter, over the awkward bundle of metal and fiber on his back, over the space between the huge curving shields.