Anakin felt like an insect about to be squashed. Even with the shapers running and walking alongside, he had lost his confidence. Not even the memory of Qui-Gon's words-if they had come from Qui-Gon and not from his fertile imagination-could reassure him now. This was unsettling, disturbing-were there actually giants on either side? Maybe the air was drugged. Maybe it was all an illusion and something dreadful was about to happen to him and to his master. He felt his throat closing down and tucked his chin into his chest, drawing from the exercises he had learned two years ago: control of the body's fear, control of animal chemistry and hormonal rhythms.

The mind's fear-his worst enemy, the deepest and darkest failing of Anakin Skywalker-was another problem, one he was not sure he would ever overcome.

Obi-Wan could feel the faltering of his Padawan's heretofore almost boundless confidence. Strangely, he, himself, was now calm. The smells bothered him, but were no worse than some very unsavory places where he had stood beside Qui-Gon and calmly carried out his duties.

Anakin felt the frame lurch forward as the carapod was brought to a halt by Vidge's crew. Vidge climbed up slowly and gracefully beside them and waved his flat-bladed instrument over his head, letting the fumes of the gelatinous interior of the swollen fruit drift away in dim purple sweeps.

Vidge's assistants played bright torch beams along the shadows of the giants, and Anakin saw not arms and legs, but thick green and purple trunks, gleams of metal, glints of other artificial substances, supplements, add-ons to the natural makers of the boras and the tampasi.

The purple vapors rose between the giants. Limbs stirred, joints creaked.

"Stay here inside the frame, no matter what," Vidge said, and handed Anakin and Obi-Wan breather masks similar to the Jedi issue they carried concealed in their robes. "We're loading up the engines and core and organoform circuitry now. They will be conveyed alongside the frames, until the time comes for their placement. The ships will be made around you. The seeds will make you part of their dreams of growth. They will ask you questions." Vidge leaned forward to examine Anakin closely."They will make demands. This is crucial. The ship will not be made if you fail to give the necessary guidance."

"I won't fail," Anakin said.

Vidge's crew transferred the engines and core and circuitry o smaller Jentari. Large limbs lifted them high, like giant cranes in a starship maintenance yard.

"And you?" Vidge queried Obi-Wan. "You, too?"

"We will not fail," Obi-Wan said.

"There will only be one ship, unless I've guessed wrong,"

Vidge said softly. "And I've never guessed wrong before." He drew back. Great grasping limbs dropped from the sides of the cleft and lifted the frames high above the ground, above the carapods and shapers.

"The Jentari!" Vidge shouted. All the shapers waved their blades in unison. "The makers of Sekot!"

"Hang on!" Obi-Wan shouted. It was their turn now. The limbs dropped, lifted them along with the frames, and passed them from one Jentari to the next, along with stacks of forged and painted seed-disks. Other limbs slapped the disks around the frames, almost jolting the passengers loose. Instantly, the seeds began to join and grow, to mold and shape.

The two frames were jammed together. Engines were slipped into their fairings. Seed-disks slipped purple-edged tissues on the joints, and sparks flew as the points of lasers darted all around. Their journey began.

They were passed limb to limb down the cleft, the frames groaning, the fluid tissues of the seeds and the treatment juices flopping and slopping around them, deeper into the realm of the Jentari. Their eyes could hardly follow the process.

Every second, a thousand moves and assemblies were carried out on the joined frames. Around Obi-Wan and Anakin, the ship began to take shape as if by magic. The giants flung them even more quickly from limb to limb, hand to hand as it were, making sounds like hundreds of voices singing deep geological chants.

"The Jentari are composites! Cybernetic organisms!" Obi- Wan shouted. "The Magisters must have bred them, made them, and put them here to work for them!"

Anakin was lost to any rational explanation. His seed- disks, the former seed-partners, were asking him what he wanted. They offered him up Shappa's catalog of designs, plans for past ships, dreams of what future ships might be like in a century of more development and learning. Shappa's design was not final; Sekot would have its input, as well.

Anakin Skywalker was in a very special heaven. After a while, in his own time and in his own way, Obi-Wan joined him, and together they listened to the seed-disks, to the Jentari.

In the blur of speed and questions, they lost all sense of time.

The frame and the new ship-owners sped down the cleft, surrounded by sparks and vapors and flying tissues and trimmed bits of metal and plastic.

Within less than ten minutes, they were over twenty kilometers from the warehouse and the shapers, and the finishing was upon them.

The passage through the Jentari slowed.

Their numbness passed. Perception slowly returned.

"Wow!" Anakin said when he could breathe again. "That was unbelievably rugged!"

"Wow," Obi-Wan agreed.

Anakin was filled with an unadulterated, primal delight. He could think of nothing but the Sekotan ship. Obi-Wan could see it in the boy's eyes as they roamed over the smooth, iridescent lines of the ship's interior. Green and blue and red, gleaming like a coat of ruby and emerald mineral enamel, yet not just a dead brilliance, but a pulsing quality of light that signified youth and life.

"Ferocious!" Anakin cried out in approval. "It's here! I can't believe it's really here."

"It doesn't look quite finished," Obi-Wan observed.

Anakin's face wrinkled into a brief frown. "Some little stuff, that's all," he said. "Then it will fly. And did you see that hyper-drive core? I can't wait to find out what they did to it-how they modified it!"