Padme Amidala stepped into the club and looked around. The loud music blasting, she coughed at so much smoke in the air. Why had she agreed to let Anakin go out with the boys tonight? Worse still, her royal decoy was obliged to spend a boring evening with Senator Palpatine, so she could not go out. Padme needed to cut loose, so she decided to go find something new. She settled on a tiny planet in Quadrant 7-B mysteriously called "Earth."

Captain Panaka had generously volunteered to drive his spacecraft to Earth, even though it was more than sixty billion light years away. "Give me a chance to test out this new cyber-hyperdrive!" he laughed. Padme now was wondering whether travelling to earth was such a good idea. The people looked so strange, and the music was loud and blaring. It was nothing like what she had heard in the clubs on Coruscant. There, the music was sophisticated and pleasing, even in the shadowy clubs in the Nedrihin district.

Suddenly the loud music cut off and the lights went down. People started cheering and Padme looked around to see what was happening. Instictively, her hand went for her blaster, but then she remembered that she had decided to come to Earth without a weapon. She was afraid, but also at the same time, unexplainably exhilarated.

Then a voice announced over the sound system: "Ladies, and gentlemen, LMP!"

The crowd roared a great cheer, like the arena crowds on Tattooine she had heard in her youth. Then, two young men who reminded Padme of Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin walked onto the stage and began singing: "You got to smile real wide ... you got to shout it out loud ..."

Padme was instantly enraptured. Who were these strange troubadours of Earth whose voices she was hearing? Why had she never seen them in the Intergalactic Senate? The many questions that raced through Padme's mind disappeared as LMP continued to sing ...

TO BE CONTINUED