Jesson sat stunned in the chair, unable to move. "No, " he said. "I did everything right.

I did everything. No, please. "

"Vaporization fifty percent complete-"

The chamber lights flashed on and off in dizzying bursts, and nozzles at the corners of the rooms began to hiss, expelling a thin greenish gas. Obi-Wan snapped his rebreather into his mouth, sorry that he didn’t have one for Jesson, as well. But if he could just get through this lock, if he could just get to the egg vault, even if his companion perished, the mission would still . . .

"Vaporization complete. "

He felt numb.

Jesson leaned over the controls, sobbing. "Kill me, kill me, " he said, speaking to no one in particular, and the universe in general.

The weapons array around Jesson began to glow, and the mist filling the air was sucked toward it. In a few minutes the room was cleared of mist, and Jesson lay still. Obi-Wan looked at his companion’s limp body, feeling a sense of despair and failure that he had rarely known.

Then . . . Jesson moved .

He sat up and looked around, as torpidly as if he had been drugged. "Why am I still alive?

" he asked.

"Look at the holo, " Obi-Wan said quietly.

Without any fuss, the schematic had reappeared on the display. In miniature form, the egg chamber was rising up through the shaft.

"What . . . what is this? " Jesson said.

The computer began a series of clicks and pops.

"What does it say? " Obi-Wan asked.

Jesson listened carefully. "It says . . . ’Congratulations, X’Ting warrior. You have succeeded. ’ "

Obi-Wan was staggered. What was this?

He looked more carefully at the weapons array around the chair and realized that he had been wrong. It wasn’t a weapons array at all. They weresensors. And the gas? It had been some kind of analytic compound that combined with Jesson’s pheromones, the smells that X’Ting emitted under stress. The resultant cocktail had been reabsorbed and analyzed by the sensor array . . .

Clarity struck like lightning. "You were never intended to answer the questions successfully, " Obi-Wan exclaimed. "Your answers were probably correct. Answering them proved that you knew X’Ting history. The sensors proved you were X’Ting. But it needed to know how you would react to failure. "

"To . . . failure? But I don’t understand. "

"You might have sought the egg from a wish to destroy it. Or to control all the X’Ting. It might have been for lust of power, or from greed. But when you came from love of hive, and failed, and saw your failure as killing the last king and queen, you felt not anger, but anguish. The test was not for your mind. It was for your heart. "

"It smelled my grief, " Jesson said, comprehending.