Luke threw up a warning hand and the four would-be escapees slowed to a halt. “There’s the exit,” he informed them, pointing around the corner.
Ahead lay double transparent doors leading to the now-attractive damp ground outside. An un-armored soldier sat scribbling at a desk to one side of the doorway.
“They haven’t gotten the alarm here yet,” Luke muttered.
“That won’t last long,” the Princess declared knowingly. “He’s not alone.” She indicated the two guards flanking the exit. Each was armed with assorted devices in addition to a brace of heavy rifles.
Luke leaned against the wall, thinking furiously. It was a long way across an open floor to the doorway.
“We could cover the Yuzzem,” the Princess suggested. “If they can take out the man at the desk before he can sound an alarm …”
“No,” Luke objected. “Too risky. If the two guards are good shots Hin and Kee will both be killed. Maybe if you and I put our weapons down and fake one of us being in trouble …
“Well,” Luke went on thoughtfully, “we could make some noise here, maybe draw one or both of them away from the alarm switches …”
Hin and Kee listened a minute longer to the two humans chattering, then exchanged glances. Hin grunted and Kee nodded in reply.
An ear-splitting shriek made both Luke and Leia jump. Waving their gangly arms and brandishing their rifles like toys, the two Yuzzem went charging around the corner like a hirsute avalanche.
The tactic was unrefined, but it worked. All three guards became momentarily paralyzed by the sight of the two giants bearing down on them. At the desk the uniformed trooper shakily hit two studs … neither of them the right one.
Hin was on the first guard before he could raise his heavy weapon. It went off, blasting a gaping hole in the floor. Without bothering to remove the man’s armor, Hin proceeded to dismember him.
Kee picked up the entire desk and communications console and brought it down on the terrified trooper behind it. The other guard finally unlimbered his heavy weapon. He was taking aim on the nearest rampaging Yuzzem.
“Kee, look out!” Luke yelled, even as he and Leia were charging around the corner and across the alcove. A bolt of energy ionized the air above the Yuzzem and then exploded against the far wall. Luke dropped the guard with one burst from his pistol.
By then the Princess had reached the double doors and was trying the manual release frantically. “It’s no good, Luke! It’s got to be activated remotely. From that, probably.” She pointed to the demolished desk.
Luke looked around, started fumbling at the body of the soldier he’d shot. There were several smooth, hand-sized canisters attached to the man’s waist and he was carefully removing them.
Taking action of his own, Hin yanked the helmet off the man he had killed. Placing it over his fist, he began punching at the transparent doors. Despite the Yuzzem’s enormous strength, the fragile-looking material refused to crack.
“That won’t work, Hin,” Luke finally informed him, hurrying up alongside. “Security material … you’d never break through. Get behind the corner. You too, Princess.”
She didn’t argue with him. Together with the two Yuzzem she rushed to take cover around the bend from which they’d attacked.
Luke twisted the dial set on top of the canister, flipped the small cylinder over and adjusted a matching dial set on the bottom. After placing it at the junction of the double doors, he ran to join his companions. Several seconds passed.
The blast gave the feeling that lightning had struck just behind them. Green fire flared around the corner, faded instantly to acrid smoke. When they peered around the wall, they saw that both doors and a portion of the building’s foundation had vanished.
“They’ve improved those things,” Luke observed professionally. The Princess didn’t wait for the smoke to dissipate. She was already picking her way toward freedom through the steaming rubble. Hin and Kee followed close behind.
A shot passed over Luke’s head and he ducked, hesitated. Leia had reached the gaping hole where the doorway had been. She paused, looked back and waved anxiously. “Come on, Luke!”
But Luke was busy. Kneeling on the floor while bolts continued to strike around him, he activated the remaining three canisters he’d taken. One energy bolt struck dangerously close, making him blink. Rapidly, he rolled each canister down the hallway, then rose and ran madly after his companions.
Grammel and the mass of troops behind him pulled up short as the canisters came rolling and bouncing innocently toward them. The corridor cleared with inhuman speed.
Luke passed through the blown doorway, counting out loud to himself. When he got to six, he threw himself to the ground and placed both arms over his face. Three titanic explosions erupted inside the temple, sending shards of both modern metal and ancient stone whoo-whooing over his head.
When the debris finally stopped falling, he scrambled to his feet and ran on. Leia and the Yuzzem left their concealing trees and rushed to meet him.
“Nothing broken,” Luke assured them in response to the unvoiced question. He brushed mud and plastic splinters from his coveralls. “I feel filthy all over, though.”
“Funny,” said the Princess tightly, “that’s the feeling I got whenever Grammel looked at me.” She gestured behind him. “They won’t be chasing us for a couple of minutes, anyway.”
Luke turned. The entire entrance of the temple had collapsed. Smoke and flame were issuing from cracks in the walls and roof. Sirens and alarms were beginning to sound from the town.
Moving at a fast trot, with the Yuzzem hurrying to keep pace with the two humans, they rushed off in the direction specified by Halla. Eventually they encountered the stream, hurried on alongside it. Before too long they reached the maintenance yard, which was larger and more imposing than Luke had expected. It was dark out now. The vast, silent open space was littered with huge sections of mining machinery and portable transporters, some lying about in assorted stages of breakdown.
“I don’t see anything,” Luke whispered.
Beside him, the Princess’ suspicions were returning. “Do you think she left without waiting for us?”
Luke shot her a look of irritation. “She risked her life to get us out of that cell.”
“Even certifiable heroes can panic,” was the Princess’ cool rejoinder.
“I will panic,” came a voice, startling them all, “if we don’t get out of here and fast!” Halla emerged from the shadows cloaking the vast assembly shed on their left. Two figures, one humanoid, the other not, trailed her.
“Threepio … Artoo!”
“Master Luke!” Threepio called. “We were worried you wouldn’t get free. Oh.”
Threepio was staring at the squat, snouty shapes standing behind Luke and the Princess.
“Don’t worry. These are Hin and Kee, a couple of Yuzzem. They’re with us.” Artoo beeped querulously. “I know they look ferocious, Artoo, but they helped us escape.” A pleased whistling.
Halla was looking admiringly at Luke. “What did you do, boy?” A faint explosion sounded by way of footnote to her comment, from the general direction of the temple headquarters. “Sounds like the mine itself’s going up.”
“I just tried to delay our pursuit a little while,” he explained modestly. Another explosion made them all wince reflexively. A pillar of yellow flame lit the night sky, piercing the mist. “I might’ve overdone it a little.”
Halla led them inside the open shed, directed them between a long line of massive shapes to an open vehicle mounted on bloated, multiple wheels. They climbed in. Halla positioned herself behind the controls. “At first I didn’t know how I was going to start this beast,” she told them. “Your little friend took care of that. Artoo, get us going.”
The stubby Detoo unit trundled forward. Extending an arm, it positioned a tool part of itself into a coded, locked slot. The engine rumbled to life immediately.
“Occasionally,” Threep
io was forced to concede, “he’s useful for something.”
“Are you sure you can drive something this size?” the Princess inquired.
“No, but I can drive anything smaller, and I learn fast.” Halla touched something with a finger and the crawler leaped forward with startling acceleration for so bulky a vehicle. They exploded out of the shed entrance, nearly ran over several mechanics who were walking toward them to investigate the noise the engine had made. They scattered, one man throwing his helmetcap after them in disgust and frustration. Others ran to notify their superiors.
Halla put the wheel hard over. They smashed through a wire fence. In seconds the graded ground gave way to bog and jungle. She headed the swamp crawler over soft bog and through trees and bushes with reckless disregard for whether or not they might be traveling over solid earth or bottomless peat.
After barreling for half an hour through total darkness broken only by the crawler’s multiple fog lamps, Luke finally put a restraining hand on Halla’s arm. “I think we can slow down now,” he said, with a glance back the way they’d come. At least, he thought it was the way they’d come. Halla had made so many frantic turns and swerves during their wild flight he couldn’t be sure anymore.
“Yes, slow down,” the Princess urged, “Luke may not have left anyone capable of organizing immediate pursuit.”
Halla brushed a strand of gray hair clear of her eyes, brought the crawler to a gradual idle. Using a flex-lamp set on her side of the crawler’s open cab, she hunted through the mist until it settled on a high clump of vegetation. After driving the crawler into it, she switched off the engine, leaving only the internal cab lights on.
“There!” she exclaimed tiredly, leaning back in the driver’s chair. “Even if they’re right behind us, which I’d bet against, they’ll have a time finding us here.” The cab lights gleamed eerily in the gentle, swirling mist.
A querulous chittering sounded behind them. “Kee wonders if we have anything to eat,” Luke asked. A second grunt. “Hin wonders, too.”
“Never heard of a Yuzzem that wasn’t always hungry,” Halla replied. She turned in the chair, pointed toward the rear of the vehicle. “There’s a big storage locker back there. It’s full of rations.” She permitted herself a smug grin. “I checked through the yard pretty thorough before settling on this particular mudmauler. Engines are full-charged and we can run on them for weeks. Plenty of food and equipment on board. Water’s never a problem on Mimban, so long as you take care to kill the things that live in it before you drink.”
“I’m impressed,” the Princess admitted. “How did someone like you—not authorized, I mean—manage to set up the theft of a fully equipped, expensive vehicle like this crawler?”
“You sure are strangers here,” Halla commented. “Nothing’s put under guard here if it’s larger than a personal handcase. There’s nowhere to run off to with anything big. The only way off-planet is under Imperial supervision and they check everything that comes down and especially anything going off.
“Anyone could make off with a crawler like this one or a truck. But just try and steal one drill bit! No, any thief has only one place to run to, and that’s back to one of the five mine towns … and Grammel.”
The Princess nodded. “I’m hungry myself. Luke?”
“In a minute.” While she moved to excavate something for them to eat, Luke turned to Halla.
“How far do you estimate we have to go before we reach the temple where the crystal’s supposed to be?”
“According to what the native told me … Oh, here, it makes more sense if you can see it.” She reached inside the top of her suit, brought out a small slipcase. It bulged with papers. Hunting through it, she finally selected one and unfolded it before Luke.
He studied the drawing in the dim light of the crawler’s console illumination. “I can’t make anything out of this.”
“I’m no artist,” she grumbled, “and the native wasn’t either.”
“No, you’re not.” Luke stared at this enigmatic old woman in the mist. “What are you, Halla?”
She broke into a wide, toothy smile. “I’m ambitious, boy. That’s enough for you to know.” Picking up the map, she checked some instrumentation on the console, then pointed into the darkness.
“A week to ten days’ travel, local time, in the crawler.”
“That’s all?” Luke exclaimed in surprise. “So close to the mine? I’d think a ship coming down would be able to spot it easily.”
“Even if it could, through this soup,” Halla told him, “it wouldn’t inspire a rush to the site. There are probably a hundred temples in the immediate vicinity of the mine towns, and more scattered through the jungle nearby. Why bother with it? Also, a thousand men could march within five meters of a temple here and miss it entirely.”
“I see.” Luke sat back, considering. “What kind of place is it? Is it anything like the temple building that Grammel’s people used for a headquarters?”
“That, nobody knows, not even the native. No human’s ever seen the temple of Pomojema. Remember, the natives who built the temples had thousands of gods and deities. Each had its own sanctuary.
“According to the records I managed to get a look at—they’re not classified or anything—this Pomojema was a minor god, but one who was supposed to be able to give his priests the ability to perform miraculous feats. Healing the sick and stuff like that. Of course, half the Mimbanian gods were supposed to be capable of miracles. Nobody wants his neighbor’s god to have a bigger reputation than his own. But with this Pomojema, those legends could hold some truth. The Kaiburr crystal could be the basis for those stories.”
“If Grammel’s Essada gets hold of it,” Luke muttered disconsolately, “it’ll become a force for destruction, not healing.”
Halla frowned. “Essada? Who’s this Essada?” Her gaze went from Luke back to the Princess. “Is there something you two aren’t telling me?”
“Governor Essada,” the Princess told her, shifting uncomfortably at the mention of the name.
“A Governor? An Imperial Governor?” Halla was becoming visibly upset. Luke nodded. “An Imperial Governor’s after you two?” Another nod.
She spun in her seat, started the crawler’s engine. “This expedition is canceled, boy! Off! I’ve heard rumors of what the Governors can order done to ordinary citizens. I don’t want any part of it.”
“Stop it, Halla! Stop it!” Luke was wrestling with her for the controls. His greater strength finally prevailed and he shut the engine back down. “Artoo, don’t start up again unless I give permission.” A response beep sounded.
Halla gave up, slumped tiredly. “Leave it alone, boy. I’m an old woman, but I’ve still got some life left in me. I don’t want to throw it away. Not even for a chance at the crystal.”
“Halla, we have to find the crystal, and we have to do it before Grammel can catch us or this Governor or his representatives arrive on Mimban.”
“Grammel,” she muttered knowingly. “He must have recognized the significance of the splinter he took from you. He must have contacted this Essada.”
“He did,” admitted Luke, “but I’m not so sure he understands the worth of the crystal, or this Essada either. We can’t take that chance. We have to find it first, because if we’re captured, they’ll learn about it from us … no matter how hard we try to keep it a secret.”
“That’s so,” she admitted.
“And if we can’t escape with it,” Luke continued remorselessly, “we have to destroy it. It must not be allowed to come into Imperial possession.”
“Seven years, boy, seven years,” Halla muttered. “I can’t promise you that if we do find it, I’ll be ready to break it into dust.”
“All right,” Luke agreed. “Let’s say we don’t worry about that now. All that’s important is finding it before Grammel finds us.”
“A week to ten days,” she told him. “If the terrain doesn’t get too bad and we don’t run into trou
ble with the locals.”
“What locals?” The Princess wasn’t impressed. “You don’t mean those pitiful things we saw crawling and begging for a drink back in the town?”
“Some of the native races of Mimban haven’t been ruined by contact with human beings,” Halla told them. “They’re not all as degraded as the greenies. Some of them can, and will, fight. Keep in mind how little of this world has actually been explored. Nobody really has much idea what’s out there,” she waved toward the night, “beyond the immediate perimeter of the mine towns. Not the archeologists, not the anthropologists … no one.
“There are enough discoveries right by the towns to keep the small scientific station here plenty occupied, girl. They don’t have the time or the need to go tramping off into this muck looking for specimens. Not when the specimens wander into town.
“We’ll be going places no one’s had reason to go before, and we’ll likely encounter things no one’s met up with before. This is a thriving, healthy world. We’re a nice dollop of meat. I’ve seen visuals of some of the carnivores of Mimban. Their described methods of eating aren’t any prettier than they are.”
She turned back to Luke. “Look under the seat, boy.” Luke did so, found a compartment holding two blaster rifles and four pistols. “They’re all charged,” she informed him, “which is more than you can say for the ones you broke out with.”
Luke removed the two rifles, passed them to the Yuzzem who would be able to handle the bulky weapons easily. Then he handed a pistol to Leia, gave one to Halla, and kept the third for himself. The remaining one he left inside the compartment.
Hin began sighting along the rifle experimentally. On this model, the trigger guard was set close to the trigger itself. Too close for a thick Yuzzem finger. Hin used both hands, applied pressure in a certain way. After the guard snapped off, he tossed it over the side and thumbed the trigger with satisfaction.
Luke speculatively aimed his own pistol at a nearby bush. A touch of the firing stud and a brief flare of intense light dissolved the bush. Pleased with the new weapon, he slipped on the safety and attached it to his belt.