By:  John Whitman Published by Bantam Books October 1998 A survey team crash-lands on an unknown planet.  The planet is dark, and its fetid swamps are filled with flesh-eating flowers, swamp slugs, and dragonsnakes.  No one hears the survey team's distress signals.  They are stranded. Thirty years later, Zak and Tash Arranda and their uncle Hoole land on the planet.  Descendants of the survey team--half starved and crazed with strange fevers--are still alive.  They call themselves the Children, and how they have survived is a mystery.  Does the strange creature named Yoda have an answer?

Swamp things . . .

    The minute Zak's feet left the ground he knew he wasn't going to make it.
    He came down a half meter short, falling chest-deep into the cold, murky swamp water.  He felt his feet stick in the ooze at the bottom.  But he didn't care about the cold or the slimy water.  His cheeks flushed red with embarrassment as the others started to laugh.
    But the next moment, all the color drained from Zak's face.
    Two figures were rising up out of the water beside him.  Zak saw two human heads covered with stringy hair, two sets of pale eyes, two gaping mouths missing several teeth, and two sets of bony arms.  The skin hanging from those arms looked old and dead.
    They were corpses.  Human corpses.
    And they were reaching out to grab him.