Then the aft hatchway slid open, metal stairs lowered, and Darth Maul appeared. The Sith Lord had discarded his black robes and wore loose-fitting desert garb, a collared coat belted at the waist, his lightsaber hanging within easy reach. His stunted horns, fully exposed now with his hood removed, formed a wicked crown above his strange red-and-black-colored face. Ignoring the banthas, he walked to the edge of the mesa, produced a pair of low-light electrobinoculars, and began to scan the horizon in all directions.

Desert sand and rocks, he was thinking. Wasteland. But a city there, and another there. And there, a third.

He took the electro binoculars from his eyes. The lights of the cities were clearly visible against the growing dark. If there were others, they were far on the other side of the Dune Sea where he had already been, or beyond the horizon much farther still where he would later be required to go.

But the Jedi, he believed, were here.

There was no expression on his mosaic face, but his yellow eyes gleamed expectantly. Soon now. Soon.

He lifted his arm o view the control panel strapped to his forearm, picked out the settings he wished to engage, and punched in the calcqiations required to identify the enemy he was looking for. Jedi Knights would manifest a particularly strong presence in the Force. It took only a minute. He turned back toward his ship. Spherical probe droids floated through the hatchway, one after another. When all were clear, they rocketed away toward the cities he had identified.

Darth Maul watched until they were out of view, the darkness closing quickly now. He smiled faintly. Soon.

Then he walked back to his ship to begin monitoring their response.

Darkness cloaked Mos Espa in deepening layers as night descended. Anakin sat quietly on the balcony rail of his back porch while Qui-Gon studied a deep cut in the boy's arm. Anakin had sustained the cut sometime during the afternoon's prep work on the Podracer, and in typical boy fashion, he hadn't even noticed it until now.

Anakin gave the injury a cursory glance as the Jedi prepared to clean it, then leaned back to look up at the blanket of stars in the sky.

"Sit still, Annie," Qui-Gon instructed.

The boy barely heard him. "There are so many! Do they all have a system of planets?"

"Most of them." Qui-Gon produced a clean piece of cloth.

"Has anyone been to all of them?"

Qui-Gon laughed. "Not likely."

Anakin nodded, still looking up. "I want to be the first one then, the first to see them all-ouch!"

Qui-Gon wiped a smear of blood from the boy's arm, then applied some antiseptic. "There, good as new."

"Annie! Bedtime!" Shmi called out from inside. -

Qui-Gon produced a comlink chip and wiped a sample of Anakin's blood onto its surface. The boy leaned forward interestedly. "What are you doing?"

The Jedi barely looked up. "Checking your blood for infections."

Anakin frowned. "I've never seen-"

"Annie!" his mother called again, more insistent this time. "I'm not going to tell you again!"

"Go on," Qui-Gon urged, gesturing toward the doorway. "You have a big day tomorrow." He tucked the cloth into his tunic. "Good night."

Anakin hesitated, his eyes fixed on the Jedi Master, intense and questioning. Then he turned and darted off into his home. Qui-Gon waited a moment, making sure he was alone, then slipped the chip with the boy's blood sample into a relay slot in the comlink and called Obi-Wan aboard the Queen's transport.

"Yes, Master?" his protege responded alert in spite of the lateness of the hour.

"I'm transmitting a blood sample," Qui-Gon advised, glancing about guardedly as he spoke. "Run a midi-chlorian test on it."

He sent the blood readings through the comlink to Obi-Wan and stood waiting in the silence. He could feel the beating of his heart, quick and excited. If he was right about this...

"Master," Obi-Wan interrupted his musings. "There must be something wrong with the sample."

Qui-Gon took a slow, deep breath and exhaled softly. "What do the readings say, Obi-Wan?"

"They say the midi-chlorian count is twenty thousand." The younger Jedi's voice tightened. "No one has a count that high. Not even Master Yoda."

No one. Qui-Gon stood staring out into the night, staggered by the immensity of his discovery. Then he let his gaze wander back toward the hovel where the boy was sleeping, and stiffened.

Shmi Skywalker stood just inside the doorway, staring at him. Their eyes met, and for just an instant it felt to the Jedi Master as if the future had been revealed to him in its entirety. Then Shmi turned away, embarrassed, and disappeared back into her home.

Qui-Gon paused a moment, then remembered the open comlink. "Good night, Obi-Wan," he said softly, and clicked the transmitter off.

Midnight approached. Anakin Skywalker, unable to sleep, had slipped out of his bed and gone down into the backyard to complete a final check of the racer, of its controls, its wiring, its relays, its power source-everything he could think of. Now he stood staring at it, trying. to determine what he might have missed, what he might have overlooked. He could afford no mistakes. He must make certain he had done all that he could.

So that he would win tomorrow's race.

Because he must.

He must.

He watched R2-D2 scuttle around the racer, applying paint in broad strokes to its polished metal body, aidedy a light projecting from a receptacle mounted over his visual sensors and a steady stream of advice from C- 3PO. The boy had activated the latter earlier on the advice of Padme. Many hands make light work, she had intoned solemnly, then grinned. C-3PO wasn't much with his hands, but his vocoder was certainly tireless. In any case, R2-D2 seemed to like having him around, exchanging beeps and chirps with his protocol counterpart as he scuttled about the racer. The little astromech droid worked tirelessly, cheerfully, and willingly. Nothing perturbed him. Anakin envied him. Droids were either well put together or they weren't. Unlike humans, they didn't respond to weariness or disappointment or fear...

He chased the thought away quickly and looked up at the starry sky. After a moment, he sat down, his back against a crate of old parts, his goggles and racing helmet at his side. Idly, he fingered the japor carving in his pocket, the one he was working on for Padme. His thoughts drifted. He couldn't explain it exactly, but he knew that tomorrow would change his life. That strange ability to see what others did not, that sometimes gave him insights into what would happen, told him so. His future was coming up on him in a rush, he sensed. It was closing fast, giving him no time to consider, ascending with the certainty of a sunrise.