Just a few meters up the ramp was the door that would take them back to the main hive. A droid mechanism had barred the door. In all probability, the same booby trap had triggered the deadfall.

"I think my question is answered, " Jesson said behind Obi-Wan, voice deep and respectful.

"What question is that? " Obi-Wan asked, triggering his lightsaber’s energy beam. He examined the door more closely, judging the best angle for the initial cut.

"Look. Please, " Jesson said.

Obi-Wan turned around, allowing his eyes to follow Jesson’s beam of light. It played out along the cavern, illuminating in turn image after gigantic image of the kings and queens of the X’Ting, their greatest leaders in colossal array. Rendered in chewed stone was a veritable forest of noble, insectoid titans. Some male, some female, some tall and young, some stooped and old, their four hands variously held in postures of beseeching, imploring, protecting, comforting, teaching, healing.

A hall of heroes, indeed, Obi-Wan thought. "What is it? "

"There, " Jesson replied. "Where we first came in. " And he focused the beam on the largest statue.

Now Obi-Wan could see the stooped, aged figure far more clearly. The narrow ladder tube they had descended had been a cane. The chamber in which they had fought so desperately against the cannibal X’Ting was, from without, seen to be a muscularly rounded torso.

Their point of initial entry, the very first chamber, was a head with flared, triangular ears. The statue stood at least seventy meters high, taller than any other in the X’Ting Hall of Heroes.

Indeed, many questions were answered, but more remained, questions that Obi-Wan might never satisfy. For there, robed arm outstretched in greeting, gigantic and benevolent in the lamplight of a valiant, long-dead X’Ting soldier, loomed the hollow, chewed-stone statue of a smiling Master Yoda.