"Maybe he didn't need the ship," Obi-Wan said. "The Vanqors would pick him up."

"Okay," Anakin said. "But if I were a spy stuck on a remote moon, I'd want a back door, just in case. I wouldn't assume that everything would go as planned."

"Things rarely do." Obi-Wan nodded thoughtfully. "Meaning there must be a way to fix the ship."

"I just don't know what it is yet." Anakin ducked back under the ship.

"But I'll find it. Hand me that fuse-cutter, will you?"

Obi-Wan reached for the tool. For the next hour, he silently helped Anakin try one route, then another, to fix the ship. He admired Anakin's focus. It was as though the engine were an ailing organism that he was coaxing back to life.

Mezdec wandered out to help, and he and Anakin conferred. Obi-Wan lost the thread of the conversation, which skimmed over fuse switches, overrides, and surges. He knew something about engines, but not nearly as much as Anakin.

At last Anakin replaced the engine plate, entered the ship, and eased into the pilot seat. He hesitated before firing the engines.

"You might want to back up," he told Obi-Wan, who had also entered the ship.

"How far?"

"To the next star system." Anakin grinned. "Only kidding." He engaged the throttle and the engine roared to life.

Mezdec yelled from the outside, "The kid knows his stuff."

"That he does," Obi-Wan agreed as he exited.

Anakin powered down the engines and leaped out of the ship. "I can get it started, but I can't restore full power. That means no deflector shields. We had to bypass the weapons delivery system to juice up the generator, so we won't have turbolasers, either. In other words, we'll have a slow ride, and we'll be exposed if the Vanqors track us on radar. And then there's the fuel problem."