Water continued to drip into the broken, open cockpit from the wood above. Luke suddenly realized he was parched and opened his mouth to let the water quench his thirst. He noticed a slight saltiness that didn't seem right. The rain (or mist) water looked clear and pure. It was. The saltiness, he realized, came from the blood trickling down from the gash in his forehead. It ran down the left side of his nose and onto his lips.
Undoing the g-locks, Luke slipped free of the harness. Even moving slowly and carefully, he felt as if every muscle in his body had been grabbed and pulled from opposite ends to the near-breaking point. Ignoring the pain as best he could, he inventoried his surroundings.
Between the distortions generated by the electronic storm he'd passed through and the more prosaic results of the crash, his instruments had become candidates for the secondhand shop. They would never operate this fighter again. Turning to his left, he keyed the exit panel but was not surprised when it failed to respond. After throwing the double switch on the manual release he jabbed the emergency stud. Two of the four explosive bolts fired. The panel moved a few centimeters, then froze.
Pressing himself back in the pilot's seat, Luke braced himself with both hands and kicked. That accomplished nothing save to send shooting pains up both legs. All that remained was the standard exit, if it hadn't been too badly jammed. Reaching up with both hands, he shoved the release mechanism, then pushed. Nothing. He paused, panting as he considered his alternatives.
The cockpit hood began to lift by itself. Squirming frantically, Luke tried to find his pistol. A querulous beep reassured him. "Artoo Detoo!"
A curved metallic hood looked down at him, the single red electronic eye studying him anxiously. "Yes, I'm okay... I think."
Using Artoo's center leg as a brace, Luke pulled himself up and out. Clearing his legs, he got to his feet and found himself standing on top of the grounded X-wing. He rested his back against the curve of the great, overhanging branch.
A mournful whistle-honk sounded and he glanced down at Artoo, who clung securely to the metal hull nearby. "I don't know what you're saying, Artoo, without Threepio to translate for us. But I can guess." His gaze turned outward. "I don't know where he and the Princess are. I'm not even sure where we are."
Slowly he took stock of the surface of Mimban. Dense growth rose all around, but it was clumped in large pockets, instead of presenting a continuous front like a normal jungle. There was ample open space. Mimban, or at least the section where he'd come down, was part swamp, part jungle, part bog.
Fluid mud filled most of a languid stream to the right of the ship. It meandered in slow motion. To his left the trunk of the enormous tree he'd nearly hit towered into the mist. Beyond lay a tangle of other tall growths fringed with bushes and tired, drooping ferns. Gray-brown ground bordered it. There was no way to tell from a distance how solid the surface was. Bracing himself with a hand on a small branch, Luke leaned over the side of the ship. The X-wing appeared to be resting on similar terrain. It wasn't sinking. That meant he might be able to walk. This was some comfort to him, since without a ship he was a rotten flier.
Smiling slightly to himself, he crouched and peered under the limb. The double wing on the port side of the ship had been snapped off cleanly somewhere back in the forest, leaving only twin metal stubs. Both engines on that side, naturally, were also missing. Unequivocally, he was grounded.
Carefully crawling back into the ruined cockpit he unlocked the seat and shifted it to one side, then began rummaging in the sealed compartment behind it for the material he'd have to carry with him. Emergency rations, his father's lightsaber, a thermal suit... the last because despite the tropic appearance of some of the vegetation, it was decidedly cool outside.
Luke knew there were temperate rain forests as well as tropical ones. While the temperature would probably not become dangerously cold, it still could combine with the omnipresent moisture to give him an uncomfortable and potentially debilitating chill. So he took the precaution of packing the thin suit. The survival pack for his back was strapped to the backside of the seat. Unbuckling it, he began to fill its copious interior with supplies from the compartment.
When the rip-proof sack was stuffed, he tried to seal the cockpit as best he could to protect it. Then he sat on the edge of the seat and thought.
His preliminary observations had revealed no sign of the Princess' Y-wing. Yet in the damp, foggy air it could have touched down ten meters away and still be effectively invisible. She probably had landed or crashed slightly ahead of him, according to his estimate of how rapidly he had set his own ship down. Lacking any other information, he had no choice but to continue on foot along his last plotted course for her.
It had occurred to him to stand on the nose of the ship and shout, but he'd decided it would be better to locate the ship visually first. The cacophony of cries, hoots, howls, whistles and buzzings which seeped out of the encircling bog and thick vegetation didn't encourage him to make himself conspicuous. Shouting might attract all sorts of attention, some of it possibly carnivorous.
Better to find the Princess' ship first. With any luck she would be seated sensibly in the cockpit, alive and intact and fuming with impatience as she waited for him to arrive.
Pulling himself clear of the cockpit again, Luke used branches for balance as he climbed down to the broken stub of the port double wing. He lowered himself carefully to the ground, which was soft, almost springy. Pulling up one foot, he saw that his boot sole was already coated with sticky gray gook that resembled wet modeling clay. But the ground held, supported him. Artoo joined him a moment later.
Thanks to the abruptness of his forced landing, he didn't have to search for a walking stick. There was an abundance of shattered, splintered limbs strewn in the fighter's wake. He selected one which would serve both for support and for testing the ground ahead.
Using the nose of the ship as a crude guide, he set his tracomp and they started off, angling a few degrees to starboard.
It might have been a movement of bush branches in the forest, it might have been the Force, or it might have been an old-fashioned hunch, but even Ben Kenobi would have admitted that Luke had only one chance of finding the Princess' ship. If it didn't lie close along the path he was taking, if he missed it and passed on, he could continue trodding the surface of Mimban for a thousand years without ever seeing her again.
If his original plotting tape had been accurate and if she hadn't altered her course of descent at the last moment for some strange reason, he ought to find her within a week. Of course, he considered, she might not have been able to prevent her fighter from changing its angle of fall. He shunted that possibility aside. The situation was grim enough without such speculations.
The fog-mist-rain altered its consistency but never dried up completely. So it wasn't long before the exposed portions of his body were thoroughly soaked. At present, he thought, it was more of a belligerent fog than a real rain.
His suit kept his body moisture-free, but face, hands and scalp soon had rivulets of their own as water accumulated. There were rare, almost clear-dry moments, but he still spent a lot of energy regularly wiping the accumulated water beads from his forehead and cheeks.
Once he saw something that looked like a four-meter-long pale snake slither off into the underbrush at his approach. As he strode cautiously over the path it had taken, he saw that it had left a grooved track lined with luminous mucus in the soft earth. But Luke wasn't impressed. He had spent little time in zoological study. Even on Tatooine, which harbored its own protoplasmic freaks, such things hadn't interested him much. If a critter didn't try to eat you, claw you or otherwise ingest you, there were other things to absorb one's interest.
Nonetheless, he now had to direct all his attention to keeping to his predetermined path. Despite the tracom built into his suit sleeve he knew he could easily lose his way. A deviation of a tenth of a degree could be critical.
He mounted a slight rise during one of
the rare, almost clear periods. Through the fog and mist he glimpsed monolithic gray battlements off in the distance. It seemed likely to him that those walls had not been raised by human hands.
Their uniform steel-gray color made them look as if they'd been constructed of a child's toy blocks. Luke couldn't be sure, this far away, whether their color was true or distorted by the shifting fog. Soaring gray towers were inlaid with black stone or metal and boasted misshapen domes.
He paused, tempted for the first time to change direction and explore. There were discoveries to be made here. However, the Princess waited not in that eldritch city but somewhere further on, in an environment which at any moment might prove hostile.
As if in response to his thought, he noticed a stirring in a clump of rust-green bushes ahead. Straining every sense, he dropped to one knee and removed the lightsaber from its place at his waist. The vegetation began to rustle violently. His thumb slid over the activation stud. Artoo beeped nervously alongside.
Whatever was in there was moving toward him. He thought about testing the wind, remembered sheepishly that there wasn't any. That, however, might not prove an inhibition to the creature approaching him.
Quite abruptly the greenery ahead parted. Out walked the Mimbanite. It was a large dark brown furry ball, with patches and stripes of green covering its body, roughly a meter in diameter. Four short furry legs supported it, ending in thick, double digits. Four arms poked clear of the upper surface. The modest tail was naked like a rat's.
Two wide eyes peering out from among the bristly fur were all that showed of a face. They grew wider as they settled on Luke and Artoo Detoo.
Luke waited tensely, finger poised over the lightsaber switch.
The creature did not charge. Instead, it produced a startled, muffled squeal and whirled. With all eight limbs propelling it, the creature shot back into the protective brush.
After several minutes of silence, Luke rose. His finger slid clear of the saber stud and he reattached the weapon to his belt, smiling somewhat hysterically.
His first confrontation with an inhabitant of this world had sent it fleeing in terror from him. Maybe the wildlife hereabouts, if not actually benign, was something less than dangerous. With that in mind he continued on, his stride a bit longer, a touch more self-assured. His posture was straighter and his spirits considerably higher, raised up by that stoutest of buoys, false confidence....
II
LEIA Organa made another half-hearted try at adjusting her rain-slicked hair, then gave up in disgust and peered out at the lush growth surrounding her.
After losing all contact with Luke, she'd managed to land hard in this wet hell. She took some measure of comfort in knowing that if Luke had also survived setdown, he'd try to reach her. After all, his job was to see that she arrived safely at Circarpous IV.
Angrily she mused that now she was going to be rather more than slightly late for the conference. A quick examination had indicated that she would no longer have to worry about the malfunctioning port engine which was now a crumpled oblong metal shape, incapable of propelling itself or anything else across so much as a light-second. The rest of the Y-wing was in little better shape.
She considered looking for Luke. But it made more sense for one of them to wait for the arrival of the other, and she knew Luke would come for her as soon as he was ready.
"Pardon me, Princess," said the metal form behind her, "but do you think Artoo and Master Luke set down safely in this awful place?"
"Of course they did. Luke's the best pilot we've got. If I made it down, I'm certain he had no trouble." That was a slight lie. What if Luke was lying injured somewhere, unable to move, and she simply sat here awaiting him? Better not to think about that. The vision of a twisted, broken Luke, bleeding to death in the cockpit of his X-wing, made her insides spin tightly.
She slid back the roof of the cockpit once again, her nose wrinkling at the rankness of the dripping morass encircling them. Plenty of noise assailed her from hidden things moving stealthily through the undergrowth. Nothing larger than a couple of brightly hued quasi-insects had shown themselves thus far, however. Her pistol rested comfortably on her lap. Not that she'd need it, secure as she was in the cockpit whose sliding roof panel she could throw back in place and lock in seconds. She was perfectly safe.
Threepio felt otherwise. "I don't like this place, Princess. I don't like it at all."
"Relax. There can't be anything out there," she nodded toward the densest growth, "that would find you digestible."
A shrill, hooting cry sounded like a sick trumpet close on her left. She jerked around sharply, sucking in a startled breath. But there was nothing there.
Her face pressed close by the open port as she strove to penetrate the green-brown wall of vegetation with anxious eyes. When the noise did not recur, she forced herself to relax.
"Do you see anything, Threepio?"
"No, Princess. Nothing larger than a few small arthropods, and I'm scanning with infrared also. That doesn't mean something large and inimical couldn't be out there."
"But you don't see anything?"
"No."
She was furious at herself. A simple noise had panicked her. Probably only the forlorn cry of some harmless herbivore, and she'd panicked like an infant. It would not happen again.
She was angry because whatever had caused them to crash would certainly cause her to miss her scheduled arrival demonstration on Circarpous, possibly aggravating the government officials assigned to greet her. She was twice over angry at Luke. Angry for not performing a navigational miracle and following her safely down without instruments or control, and angry most of all because he'd been right in insisting they ought not land here.
So she sat and fumed silently to herself, alternately conjuring up the curses she'd employ when he finally did arrive and worrying about what she'd do if he didn't.
Aahhh-wooop!
Again the trumpeting sound. Whatever had produced it had not left after all. If anything, the sharp hooting sounded closer. This time her hand tightened around the pistol. Once more she examined the surrounding jungle, saw nothing.
As she stared she theorized. Suppose she had misinterpreted that landing beacon somehow? Suppose it was only the barest of automatic installations and this world was devoid not only of mechanics but of facilities for organic travelers as well?
If Luke was dead she'd be marooned here alone, without any idea of... There was a loud crashing, off to her right this time. Swinging around in the seat she instinctively fired off a burst through the cracked port and was rewarded with the odor of burnt, wet vegetable matter. The muzzle of the pistol remained focused on the carbonized spot. Hopefully, she'd hit the thing. Fortunately, she hadn't.
"It's me!" a voice shouted, sounding more than a little shaky. She'd barely missed him.
"It's me and Artoo."
"Artoo Detoo!" Threepio clambered out of the cockpit, moved to greet his squat counterpart.
"Artoo, it's good to..." Threepio paused, then continued in a different tone. "What do you think you're doing, making me wait like this? When I think of the anguish you've caused me...."
"Luke, are you all right?"
He began climbing up the damaged side of the fighter, sat down next to the open cockpit. "Yes. I touched down behind you. I was afraid Artoo and I might miss you."
"I was afraid you..." She stopped, looked down, unable to meet his gaze. "I apologize, Luke. I made a mistake in trying to land here."
Luke also looked away, embarrassed. "Nobody could have foreseen the atmospheric disturbance that forced us down, Leia."
She looked into the jungle. "I managed to plot the location of that homing beacon before my instruments went out completely." She pointed slightly behind them and to her left. "It's back that way. Once we reach the station we can locate whoever's in charge and arrange for passage off this world."
"If there's a station," Luke pointed out mildly, "or anyone in charge of it."
>
"It occurred to me that it might be a fully automated station," she confessed, "but I don't know what else we can do."
"Agreed," said Luke with a slow sigh. "We've got nothing to gain by sitting here. I used to believe in miracles. I don't, anymore. We can get eaten just as quickly here as we can on the trail."
The Princess looked downcast. "You've encountered carnivorous life, then?"
"No, hardly any life at all, actually. The only animal of any size I confronted," he went on with a slight grin, "took one look at me and ran off like a spooked Bantha." He turned, moved to enter the cockpit. "Let's get started while it's still light. I'll give you a hand making up a pack."
Carefully he lowered himself in next to her. As he unlatched her seat he became conscious of the confined space they were working in. Awkwardly pressed up against him, the Princess seemed to take no notice of their proximity. In the dampness, though, her body heat was near palpable to Luke and he had to force himself to keep his attention on what he was doing.
Raising herself from the cockpit, the Princess stood on the nose of the fighter and reached down to him. "Hand it up, Luke."
He lifted the burgeoning pack. "Too heavy?" he asked as he handed it to her. She slid it onto her back, slipped both arms through the straps and adjusted the weight before tightening them.
"The burden of public office was a lot heavier," she shot back. "Let's get moving."
Briskly scrambling over the side, she let herself drop to the ground, planted her feet, took two steps in the direction of the distant beacon... and began to sink.
"Luke... Threepio..."
"Take it easy, Princess." Edging carefully over the same side, he walked out on the intact wing facing her.
"Luke!" Already she was up to her knees in gray muck. If anything, she was beginning to sink faster.
Trying to anchor himself with his left hand, Luke reached out with his right from the wing edge. "Lean toward me. Artoo, you lock onto the ship. Threepio, give me your hand."