The roughness of the chewed surface threatened to abrade Obi-Wan’s hands, and the strain of staying up on his toes as they crawled was slowly burning the muscles in his calves and shoulders. The rasp of his breathing echoed in the tube, making the close spaces seem closer still.

Then Jesson sighed, a long, low sound. The X’Ting warrior was outlined by a dim radiance coming from somewhere ahead of them. He made a contentedclick-pop mutter, and dropped from sight.

Chapter 5

Cautiously, Obi-Wan crawled forward until he reached the end of the tube, and looked out.

"Come down, " Jesson whispered.

There was no need to whisper. Nothing lived in this chamber. Its walls were crowded floor to ceiling with empty little pentagonal chambers, each just under a meter in diameter. An X’Ting larva hatchery? Obi-Wan crawled out and jumped down to another inclined ledge.

Jesson’s faceted eyes shimmered with tears. "This is one of the old breeding chambers, "

he said. "We changed in so many ways after the Republic came. The hive was never the same.

But this is as it used to be. "

Here the luminescent fungus was bright enough to give a misty view of the floor twenty meters beneath them. It was covered with broken chrysalis shells, some of which might have lain there for a thousand standard years. Had this place ever known brightness or the shining of a star? As Obi-Wan’s eyes adjusted to the light, he could see spires of rock that rose up irregularly through the soil beneath the cast-off X’Ting shells. Stalactites depended from the cavern’s roof.

"Is this the chamber? " Obi-Wan asked.

"The other side, " Jesson said, pointing across the way. "Through the next wall. "

Astounding. Clearly, only an X’Ting could find his way through this labyrinth. The royal eggs had indeed found safe haven.

The chamber was similar to that of the Hall of Heroes: created by water erosion rather than by machines or the flow of lava. Despite its origin, the cubicles chewed in the rock walls implied that it had been modified by countless eons of hive activity, countless millions of willing workers. A thin, milky fog wreathed the floor, but through it he saw vast heaps and furrows of plowed dirt.

"How was the soil deposited here? " he asked. Usually soil was the result of plant and animal action degrading rock over time. Obi-Wan was surprised to find so much of it underground, away from a nurturing sun.

"Remember, " Jesson said, pointing at the walls with his spear, "thousands of generations of us lived down here. Just as we had builders, and warriors, and leaders, there were also those who chewed rock, their digestive systems creating soil in which we could grow our crops. For eons we lived here, and the interior of Cestus was kinder to us than the surface. "

Thousands of generations. A planet whose surface was sand and chewed rock, its interior rich soil.