I
HOW beautiful was the universe, Luke thought. How beautifully flowing, glorious and aglow like the robe of a queen. Ice-black clean in its emptiness and solitude, so unlike the motley collage of spinning dust motes men called their worlds, where the human bacteria throve and multiplied and slaughtered one another. All so that one might say he stood a little higher than his fellows.
In depressed moments he felt sure there was no really happy living matter on any of those worlds. Only a plethora of destructive human diseases which fought and raged constantly against one another, a sequence of cancerous civilizations which fed on its own body, never healing yet somehow not quite dying.
A particularly virulent strain of one of those cancers had killed his own mother and father, then his Aunt Beru and Uncle Owen. It had also taken from him the man he had learned to respect more than any other, the elderly Jedi knight Ben Kenobi.
Although he had seen Kenobi struck by the light-saber of Darth Vader on board the now obliterated Imperial Deathstar battle station, he could not be certain the old wizard was truly dead. Vader's saber had left only empty air in its wake. That Ben Kenobi had departed this plane of existence was unarguable. What no one could tell was what level of existence he had passed into. Maybe death and...
Maybe not.
There were times when Luke experienced an agreeably crawly sensation, as if someone were lurking just behind him. That unseen presence occasionally seemed to move arms and legs for him, or to supply suggestions and thoughts when his own mind was helplessly blank. Blank as that of the former farm boy of Tatooine's desert world.
Unseen spirits or not, Luke reflected grimly, if there was one thing he was sure of it was that the callow youth he had once been was dead and dry as dust. In the Rebel Alliance of worlds struggling against the corrupt rule of the Imperial government he held no formal title. But no one taunted him or called him farm boy-not since he had helped destroy the bloated battle station secretly built by Governor Moff Tarkin and his henchman Darth Vader.
Luke had no experience with titles, hence no use for them. When the Rebel leaders offered him any reward within their ability to grant, he had asked only to be permitted to continue piloting a fighter in the Alliance's service. Some thought his request unduly modest, but one shrewd general disagreed, explaining how Luke might be more valuable to the Rebellion without a title or commission which, the veteran pointed out to his colleagues, would serve only to make the youth a prime target for Imperial assassination. So Luke remained the pilot he'd always wanted to be, perfecting his flying skills and always, unceasingly, wrestling with the Force Ben Kenobi had enabled him to begin to understand.
No time for meditating now, he reminded himself as he studied the instruments of his X-wing fighter. A glance forward showed the brilliant pulsing sun-ball of Circarpous Major, its devastating radiance stopped down to viewable intensity by the phototropic material of the transparent port itself.
"Everything okay back there, Artoo?" he called into his pickup. A cheerful beep from the stubby 'droid locked in position behind the cockpit assured Luke that it was.
Their destination was the fourth planet out from this star. Like so many others, the Circarpousians were appalled by the atrocities perpetrated by the Empire, but too paralyzed by fear to openly join the Rebel Alliance. Over the years, a burgeoning underground movement had arisen on Circarpous, an underground needing only enough aid and encouragement from the Alliance to rise and swing their world to the cause of freedom.
From the tiny, hidden Rebel station on the outermost planet of the system, Luke and the Princess were racing to a critically important meeting with the heads of that underground, to offer the necessary promise of support. He checked his console chronometer. They would arrive in plenty of time to reassure the highly nervous underground chiefs.
Leaning slightly forward and glancing to starboard, he could admire the sleek Y-wing fighter cruising alongside. Two figures sat silhouetted by instrument lights within its cockpit. One was the gleaming golden shape of See Threepio, Artoo's 'droid companion.
The other... whenever he looked at her, the other caused emotions to boil within him like soup too long on the fire, no matter if she was separated from him by near vacuum as at present or by only an arm's length in a conference room. It was for and because of that individual, Princess and Senator Leia Organa of the now-vaporized world of Alderaan, that Luke had originally become involved in the Rebellion. First her portrait and then her person had initiated the irreversible metamorphosis from farm boy to fighter pilot. Now the two of them were the official emissaries from the ruling council of the Rebel government to the vacillating underground on Circarpous.
Sending her on so dangerous a mission, Luke had thought from the first, was a risk. But a second system was ready to commit itself to the Alliance, if it was announced that Circarpous had also joined. At the same time, if that second system would declare its defiance of the Empire, then the Circarpousian underground would undoubtedly come over to the side of the Rebellion. So not one, but two systems waited on the outcome of this mission. And if it failed, Luke knew, both systems would probably lose heart and withhold their desperately needed aid. They had to succeed.
Luke had no doubts, as he silently adjusted his ship's attitude a quarter of a degree to the plane of the solar ecliptic, about the outcome of their mission. He couldn't imagine anyone who could not be persuaded by Princess Leia. She could convince him of anything. Luke treasured those moments when she forgot her station and titles. He dreamed of a time when she might forget them forever.
A beep from behind woke Luke from his daydreaming, wiped the smile from his face. They were preparing to pass close by Circarpous V, and Artoo was reminding him of it. A vast, cloud-shrouded globe, the planet was listed in Luke's library as being mostly unexplored, save for a single early Imperial scouting expedition. According to the computer readout, it was also known to the Circarpousians as Mimban, and... His intership communicator dinged for attention. "I'm receiving you, Princess."
Her reply was filled with irritation. "My port engine is beginning to generate unequal radiation pulses." Even when bothered, to him that voice was as naturally sweet and pleasing as sugar-laden fruit. "How bad?" he inquired, frowning worriedly. "Bad enough, Luke." The words sounded strained. "I'm losing control already, and the inequality's getting worse. I don't think I'm going to be able to compensate. We'll have to stop at the first base down below on Mimban and have the problem corrected." Luke opened his mouth to reply, did so after hesitating briefly. "You can't possibly make it safely to Circarpous IV?"
"I don't think so, Luke. I might make near-orbit, but then we'd have to deal with official repair systems and couldn't set down as planned. We'd miss the meeting, and we can't miss it. Resistance groups from all over the Circarpous system are going to be there. If I don't arrive, they'll panic. We'll have one Stang of a time getting them to surface again. And the Circarpous, worlds are vital to the Rebellion, Luke."
"I still don't think..." he began.
"Don't make me make it an order, Luke."
Biting back his initial response, he hurriedly began a check of visual readout charts and records. "According to my information tapes, Mimban doesn't have a repair station, Leia. In fact," he added with a glance at the murky green-white sphere below and to one side, "Mimban might not even have an emergency standby station."
"It doesn't matter, Luke. I have to make the conference, and I'm going down while I still have some real control. Surely, in a system as populous as this one, any world with a breathable atmosphere's going to be equipped with facilities for emergency repair. Your data must be old or else you're searching the wrong tapes." A pause, then, "You c
an prove it by shifting your communicator monitor to frequency oh-four-six-one."
Luke adjusted the requisite controls. Instantly a steady whine filled the small cabin.
"Sound familiar?" she asked him.
"That's a directional landing beacon, all right," he replied, confused. Several further queries, however, revealed no records of a station on Mimban. "But there's still nothing in the listings on either Imperial or Alliance tapes. If we..." He broke off as a puff of gas glowed brightly from the Princess' Y-wing, expanded brightly and vanished. "Leia! Princess Leia!"
Her small ship was already curving away from him. "Lost lateral controls completely now, Luke! I've got to go down!"
Luke rushed to match her glide path. "I don't deny the presence of the beacon. Maybe we'll be lucky! Try to shift power to your port controls!"
"I'm doing the best I can." A brief silence, followed by, "Stop moving around, Threepio, and watch your ventral manipulators!"
A contrite, metallic, "Sorry, Princess Leia," sounded from her cabin companion, the bronzed human-cyborg relations 'droid See Threepio. "But what if Master Luke is correct and there is no station below? We could find ourselves marooned forever on this empty world, without companionship, without knowledge tapes, without... without lubricants!"
"You heard the beacon, didn't you?" Luke saw a small explosion whereupon the Y-wing dove surface-ward at an abruptly sharper angle. For a few moments only static answered his frantic calls. Then the interference cleared. "Close, Luke. I lost my starboard dorsal engine completely. I cut port dorsal ninety percent to balance guidance systems."
"I know. I've cut power to slow with you."
In the Y-wing's tiny cabin Threepio sighed, gripped the walls around him more firmly. "Try to set us down gently, please, Princess. Rough landings do terrible things to my internal gyros."
"They're not so good on my insides either," the Princess shot back, lips clenched tightly as she fought the sluggish controls. "Besides, you've nothing to worry about. 'Droids can't get spacesick."
Threepio could have argued otherwise, but remained silent as the Y-wing commenced a stomach-turning roll downward. Luke had to react rapidly to follow. There was one tiny positive sign: the beacon signal was not imaginary. It was really there, beeping steadily when he adjusted the controls on his board so that the signal was audible. Maybe Leia was right.
But he still didn't feel confident. "Artoo, let me know if you spot anything unusual on our way down. Keep all your sensory plug-ins on full power." A reassuring whistle filled the cockpit.
They were at two hundred kilometers and descending when Luke jumped in his seat. Something began pushing at his mind. A stirring in the Force. He tried to relax, to let it fill and flow over and through him just as old Ben had instructed him.
His sensitivity was far from perfectly attuned and he sincerely doubted he would ever attain half the command of the Force that Kenobi had possessed... though the old man had expressed great confidence in Luke's potential. Still, he knew enough to categorize that subtle tingling. It sparked an almost palpable feeling of unease in him, and it came from something (or several somethings) on the surface below. Yet he wasn't sure. Not that he could do anything about it now. The only concern of the moment was hoping the Princess' ship could set down safely.
But the sooner they left Mimban, the better he'd feel.
Despite her own problems, the Princess was taking the time to relay coordinate information to him. As if he couldn't plot her own course by himself. Instead, he tried to identify something he'd just spotted below them as they entered the outer atmosphere. Something funny in the clouds here... he couldn't decide just what.
He voiced his new concern to the Princess. "Luke you're worrying too much. You'll worry yourself to death at an early age. And that would be a waste of..."
He never did find out what worrying himself to death would be a waste of because at that moment they entered troposphere for the first time and the immediate reaction of both ships to the thicker air and air to ships was anything but normal.
It seemed as if they'd suddenly plunged from a cloud-dotted but unexceptional-appearing sky into an ocean of liquid electricity. Gigantic multicolored bolts of energy erupted from empty air, contacted the hulls of the two ships and fomented instrumental chaos where order had reigned seconds before. Instead of the blue or yellow-tinged canopy they'd expected to sail through, the atmosphere around them was drenched with bizarre, perambulating energies so wild and frenzied they bordered on the animate. Behind Luke, Artoo Detoo beeped nervously.
Luke fought his own instrumentation. It flaunted a farrago of electronic nonsense at him. The madly bucking X-wing was held in the grip of unidentified forces powerful enough to toss it about like a plaything. The chromatic storm vanished behind him as if he'd suddenly emerged from a waterspout, but his controls continued to exhibit what were probably permanent manifestations of the electronically addled.
A quick verbal survey revealed what he most feared: the Princess' fighter was nowhere in sight. Trying to control his drunken ship with one hand on the manual controls, Luke activated the communicator with the other.
"Leia! Leia, are you...?"
"No... control, Luke," came the static-sprinkled reply. He could barely make out the words. "Instruments... replonza. I'm trying to get down in... one piece. If we..."
Gone, no matter how frantically he cajoled the communicator. His attention was diverted as something in one overhead panel blew out in a shower of sparks and metal fragments. The cockpit filled with acrid fumes.
Impelled by a desperate thought, Luke activated the fighter's tracker. Part of the little ship's offensive armament, it was among its best-built and sealed components. Even so, it had been overloaded by the fury of the peculiar distorting energies, energies which its designers had never anticipated that it would encounter.
Useless now, nonetheless its automatic record was intact and playable. It showed for several moments the falling spiral which could only have been left by the Princess' ship. As best as he could without auto-enhancement, Luke set the X-wing on a pursuit course downward. There was little to no chance of following the Princess precisely. He simply prayed that now they might land somewhere other than on opposite sides of the planet from each other. He simply prayed they might land.
Swerving slightly like a crippled camel in a sandstorm, the fighter continued to drop. As the lush surface of Mimban rushed up at him Luke caught rolling, twisting glimpses of mountainless green swaths interwoven with veins and arteries of muddy brown and blue.
Though he was utterly ignorant of Mimbanian topography, the green and blue-brown of rivers and streams and vegetation seemed infinitely preferable as landing sites to, say, the endless cerulean of open sea or the gray spires of young mountains. No rock is as soft as water and no water so soft as a swamp, he reflected, trying to cheer himself. He was starting to believe he actually might survive the touchdown, the Princess doing likewise.
Frantically he fought to discover a combination of circuits that would reactivate the target tracker. Once he partly succeeded. The screen showed the Y-wing still on the course he'd just plotted. His chance of setting down close to her ship was looking better.
Despite the demands on his mind, he couldn't help but consider the energy distortions that had ruined their instrumentation. The fact that the rainbow maelstrom was confined to one area-an area very close to the location of the landing beacon-raised questions as intriguing as they were disturbing.
Trying to minimize the effects of his insane controls, Luke switched off his engines and continued down on glide. Back on Tatooine he'd had plenty of practice idling in his skyhopper. But that was considerably different from doing practically the same thing in a vehicle as complex as this fighter. He had no idea if the same thought would occur to the Princess, or if she had had any experience in powerless flight. Anxiously chewing his lower lip, Luke realized that even if she tried gliding, his own craft was far better suited to s
uch a maneuver than her Y-wing.
If only he could see her he'd feel a lot better. Strain his eyes as he might, though, there was no sign of her. Soon, he knew, all chance of visual contact would vanish. His ship began plunging recklessly into a floor of dirty gray cotton, thick cumulo-nimbus clouds.
Several rambling flashes crackled through the air, only this time the lightning was natural. But Luke was deep in clouds by then and could see nothing. Panic hammered at him. If the visibility stayed like this all the way to the surface he'd locate the ground a bit too late, the hard way. As he considered switching back to auto, distorted as it was, he broke out of the bottom layer of clouds. The air was thick with rain, but not so bad that he failed to make out the terrain below. Time was running out faster than altitude now. He had barely enough of either to pull back on the atmospheric controls before something jolted the fighter from below. That was followed instantly by a series of similar crackings as he clipped off the crowns of the tallest trees.
Eyeballing his airspeed indicator, Luke fired braking rockets and nudged the ship's nose down ever so gently. At least he would be spared the worry of igniting the vegetation around the landing site. Everything hereabouts was drenched.
Again he fired the braking rockets. A series of violent jolts and jounces shook him despite his battle harness. A green floral wave crested ahead and overwhelmed him with darkness....
He blinked. Ahead, the shattered foreport of the fighter framed jungle with crystal geometry. All was quiet. As he tried to lean forward water caressed his face. That helped to clear his mind and bring the scenery into sharp focus. Even the rain was falling with caution, he mused, that is if it were indeed a light rain, instead of an exceptionally heavy mist.
Craning his neck, Luke noted that the metal overhead had been peeled back neatly-as if by some giant opener-by the thick, now cracked limb of an enormous tree. If by chance the fighter had slid in here slightly higher, Luke's skull would have been peeled off just as neatly-a bit more to port and the broad bole of the tree would have smashed him back into the power plant. He had escaped decapitation and fatal compression by a meter either way.