anything it could find in the cold empty tunnels.
"Keep running!" Han yelled, now that he could see the forms ahead. He made
out a dim glow of warmth still radiating from the floating mine transport.
"The car's right in front of you, Chewie! Get on it!"
The Wookiee bumped into the metal side of the vehicle and dragged himself to
a stop. Chewbacca reached over and grabbed Kyp, hauling him into the seat of
the car.
Then Han heard the clacking, scrambling footsteps behind him again, charging
down the tunnel. He was the next one in line. He dashed ahead, gasping,
tripping on debris and bumping into walls he could not see. His blood had
turned to ice water.
Chewbacca fumbled along the control panel of the floating mine car, trying
to distinguish the buttons in the dark. Han kept running. The sounds of the
sharp legs grew louder, rumbling.
Han risked a glance over his shoulder. Though he could hear the thing
charging at top speed after him, he could see nothing in the darkness,
nothing at all. He reached the floating car and leaped in. "Just punch
return, Chewie! Hit anything!"
Chewbacca hit the start button, and the car pivoted on its axis to move back
in the direction they had come.
The galloping sounds of the ice-pick-legged creature skittered faster and
faster. The floating mine car picked up speed, but the creature kept coming
behind it. Han still couldn't see it with the infrared goggles.
With a loud spang something struck the back car, rocking it sideways and
slamming it against the side wall of the tunnel. Sparks flew as it scraped
along the rocks, but the vehicle continued to accelerate.
Han heard a hollow roar behind them, and then they left the noises farther
and farther away. The creature ceased chasing them. The darkness rolled
ahead like a great black vacuum.
Han knew they were automatically heading back to the muster room. Chewbacca
groaned and roared at him. Kyp sat panting in terror. "What did you see?"
Kyp asked.
"I don't know," Han said. "Nothing like I've ever seen before."
Chewbacca chuffed in anger and annoyance and immense relief, and Han sighed.
"I agree. This wasn't one of my smarter ideas."
Luke Skywalker showed Gantoris the wonders of the universe. He took his
passenger into orbit in the modified shuttle, letting the man look down on
the doomed planet of Eol Sha. The too-close moon hung above the world like a
raised fist against a curtain of stars.
Igniting the shuttle's sublight engines, Luke soared into the blazing wonder
of the Cauldron Nebula as Gantoris stared out the viewports into the
chaotic, glowing gases. Then they plunged down the endless,
other-dimensional hole through hyperspace, shortcutting across the galaxy.
To Bespin.
During the uneventful trip Luke began telling Gantoris about the Force,
about the training the candidates would undergo at the proposed Jedi
academy. Now that he had agreed to come along, Gantoris seemed willing and
even eager to understand the strange echoes and feelings that had touched
his mind throughout his life.
The hum of the shuttle's powerful engines and the giddy, abstract swirls of
hyperspace were conducive to beginning a few exercises for awakening
Gantoris's potential. Luke was surprised at the man's powers of
concentration, at how he could close his eyes and sink into his mind
undistracted. Luke had been an impatient young man during his own Jedi
training; Gantoris had had a much harsher upbringing, making him grim and
enduring.
"Reach out and feel your mind, feel your body, feel the universe surrounding
you. The Force stretches around and through everything. Everything is a part
of everything else."
Luke paid close attention to what he asked Gantoris to do. Obi-Wan Kenobi
had spent some time training Luke, and Yoda had spent much more. But Luke
had also undergone the abortive training of Joruus C'baoth as well as
learning the powers of the dark side during his time with the resurrected
Emperor.
Luke could not forget that Obi-Wan's training had also transformed Anakin
Skywalker into Darth Vader. Would it be worth bringing back the Jedi Knights
if the price was the creation of another Vader? Gantoris's ominous dreams of
a "dark man" who would show him power and then destroy him made Luke very
uneasy.
By the time Luke brought the shuttle out of hyperspace on an approach to
Bespin, he thought Gantoris might be overwhelmed with new sights. But the
stern man gawked out the viewports like a child, awed by the roiling gas
planet where Lando Calrissian had once run Cloud City. The sight of the
swirling planet suddenly brought back some of the greatest horrors in Luke's
life. He squeezed his eyes shut as he felt the sting of those memories.
Gantoris, in the passenger compartment behind him, bent forward. "Is
something wrong? I just sensed a strong flow of emotions from you."
Luke blinked. "You could detect that?"
Gantoris shrugged. "Now that you've taught me how to feel and how to listen,
it came through very clearly. What's disturbing you? Are we in danger?"
Luke opened his eyes and looked out at Bespin again. He thought of his
friend Han Solo kidnapped and frozen in carbonite for delivery to Jabba the
Hutt; he thought of the duel with Darth Vader on the catwalks of Cloud City
that had cost Luke his hand. And, worst of all, he recalled Vader's deep
voice pronouncing his terrible message. "Luke, I am your father!"
Luke shuddered, but he turned to look back into Gantoris's dark eyes. "I
have powerful memories of this place."
Gantoris kept his silence, asking no further questions.
Airborne mining installations rode Bespin's wind currents--floating
automated refineries, storage tanks bobbing above the clouds, and facilities
to scoop valuable gases from the cloud banks. Not all of these floating
installations had proved profitable, though. The drifting colossus of
Tibannopolis hung empty, a creaking ghost town in the sky.
Luke tracked the derelict floating city on his navigation screens. The
construction hovered over the dark clouds as a storm gathered. The city
tilted due to malfunctioning repulsorlift generators.
"Is that where we're going?" Gantoris said.
The roof, decks, and sides of Tibannopolis had been picked over by
scavengers hauling away scrap metal. It looked like a skeleton of its former
self, with buckled plates and twisted support girders in a broad hemisphere;
dented ballast tanks hung below. Numerous antennae and weather vanes
protruded from the joints.
"We're going to wait for someone here," Luke answered.
He brought the shuttle down on a primary landing deck that looked sturdy
enough to support his ship. The crisscrossed structural beams were covered
with scaled plating, but in some spots the seams had bent upward, popping
their welds.
Luke emerged from the shuttle, and Gantoris joined him. The other man's long
dark hair whipped around him like a mane, no longer braided, but he stood
proudly in his hand-me-do
wn pilot's outfit. His black eyes glittered with
wonder.
The high wind gusting through the carcass of Tibannopolis made a moaning
sound. The swaying metal groaned as rusted joints rubbed against each other.
The wind had a bitter chemical tang from trace gases wafting to higher
altitudes.
Black birdlike creatures with triangular heads clustered in the open gaps of
buildings, nesting on stripped girders. As Luke and Gantoris moved forward,
the flying creatures stirred and rustled leathery wings. Their mouths
snapped open and closed with croaking sounds.
Below and around Tibannopolis, the clouds had turned the smoky gray of
impending thunderstorms. Flashes of lightning rippled through the cloud bank
below.
"What now?" Gantoris asked.
Luke sighed and gathered some inflatable blankets and a sleep roll from the
passenger shuttle's storage compartments. "We've spent two days cooped up in
the ship. I have no way of knowing when Streen might come back, and I think
we should try to get a good rest."
"Streen?" Gantoris asked.
"The man we're waiting for."
The storm came through that night and rinsed off the exposed surfaces of
Tibannopolis, causing fresh blooms of rust and patina on the construction
alloys. Luke and Gantoris had found shelter in the decaying buildings of
Tibannopolis, resting on the slanted floor because of the derelict city's
tilt.
Awash in a Jedi trance more restful than sleep, Luke paid little attention
to his surroundings but kept a small window open in his mind, ready to flick
him back to wakefulness.
Gantoris surprised him. "Luke, I think someone's coming. I can sense it."
Luke became instantly awake and sat up from under the sheltered metal
alcove, looking out at the washed-clean swirls of clouds. It took his mind
only a moment to locate the approaching presence of a human--but he was
impressed that Gantoris had been able to sense the distant stranger at all.
"I was practicing," Gantoris said, "reaching out and looking with my mind.
There isn't much around here to distract me."
"Good work." Luke tried to keep the pleased expression from his face but
failed. "This is the man we've been waiting for."
He used his sense to focus on a black shape approaching across the skyscape
of rising gases. Luke saw an amazing cluster of lashed-together platforms
and bulbous tanks held aloft by balloons and maneuvered with propellers that
stuck out at all angles. The hodgepodge vehicle drifted toward them, riding
the winds.
Luke smiled at the bizarre construction, while Gantoris stared in awe. They
could make out the silhouette of a single man standing at the helm as
buffeting breezes rippled trim sails at the sides of the main platform.
Streen, the gas prospector, was returning home.
Luke and Gantoris made their way down to the landing platform to wait for
him. As the collection of gas tanks, balloons, and flat walkways approached,
Streen finally noticed them.
At the controls of his contraption he swerved and circled around the ruined
city, as if frightened and reluctant to land. But somehow, seeing only the
two of them waiting, he regained his nerve and rode the breezes in.
Streen did not land his vehicle, merely bringing it to the edge of the
landing platform and lashing it to support posts mounted at the rail. Luke
held on to the fiber-chains and helped Streen secure his vessel.
No one spoke. Streen kept surreptitiously slipping glances in their
direction.
Luke sized him up. Streen was approaching old age, bearded, with brown hair
so intermingled with strands of gray that it had turned to a creamy color.
His skin bore a leathery look, as if the rough winds and harsh open air had
sucked something essential out of his flesh. The prospector was clad in a
well-worn jumpsuit studded with pockets, many of which bulged with hidden
contents.
As Streen stepped onto the landing area, four of the black birdlike
creatures fluttered up from roosts among the platforms, venting stacks, and
gas tanks of Streen's vessel, returning to the jungle of construction frames
in the floating city.
"Tibannopolis hasn't been inhabited for years," Streen said. "Why have you
come here?"
Luke stood tall and faced the man. "We came to see you."
Gantoris stood patiently beside Luke Skywalker, feeling odd to be in a
different position now. He had joined the Jedi to learn from him, swept up
by his visions of a restored order of Jedi Knights and the powers they could
tap through the Force.
This time Gantoris listened as Skywalker began to tell Streen of his plans
for an academy, of his need for potential candidates who might have a talent
for using the Force. He watched the skepticism on Streen's face, similar to
what he himself must have shown at first. But unless Streen had suffered the
same dark dreams or premonitions, this hermit on Bespin should be a more
open-minded listener than Gantoris himself had been.
Streen hunkered on the corroded surface of the landing platform and squinted
into the sky before looking back to Skywalker. "But why me? Why did you come
here?"
Skywalker turned instead to Gantoris. "There are many valuable substances
dissolved in Bespin's atmosphere at various layers. The floating cities are
huge mining operations that remain in place as they draw gas from below the
cloud layers. But Streen is a cloud prospector. At certain times some storm
or a deep atmospheric upheaval will make a cloud of volatiles belch up,
waiting to be siphoned off. Streen goes out on the winds with his tanks,
looking for the treasure.
"Bespin has computerized satellites to detect these outbursts and to
dispatch company men--but Streen always gets there first. He somehow knows
an upheaval is going to happen before it does. He is there waiting with his
empty tanks to siphon off whatever comes bubbling up and sell it back to the
independent refineries."
Skywalker squatted next to the hermit. "Tell me, Streen--how do you know
when a gas layer is going to rise? Where do you get your information?"
Streen blinked and fidgeted. Now he looked even more frightened than when he
had first seen the strangers waiting on the landing platform. "I just ...
know. I can't explain it."
Skywalker smiled. "Everyone can use the Force to some extent, but a few have
a stronger innate talent. When I form my Jedi academy, I want to work most
closely with those who already have the talent but don't know how to use it.
Gantoris is one of my candidates. I think you should be another one."
"Come with us," Gantoris added. "If Skywalker is right, think of all the
things we could accomplish!"
"How can you be sure about me?" Streen asked. "I always thought it was just
luck."
"Let me touch your forehead," Skywalker said. When Streen did not move away,
Skywalker tentatively reached forward with his fingers, brushing the man's
temples. Gantoris couldn't figure out what Skywalker was doing until he
remembered the test Luke had performed
on him down in the lava chamber.
Skywalker's face looked blank and lost in concentration for a moment, then
suddenly he jerked backward as if his body had been burned. "Now I'm sure,
Streen. You do have the talent. There is nothing to fear."
But Streen still looked nervous. "I came out to this place because I need to
be alone. I'm not comfortable around people. I feel them pressing in around
me. I like people. I'm lonely, but ... it's very difficult for me. It's all
I can do to be around them just while I deliver my cargo. Then I have to run
away.
"Seven or eight years ago, when the Empire took over Cloud City, everything
got much worse. The people were agitated. Their thoughts were full of
chaos." He looked up at Skywalker in dismay. "I haven't spent much time with
people for eight years."
Gantoris could sense the man's emotions winding toward panic--and just when
Gantoris felt certain Streen would refuse, Skywalker held up a hand. "Wait,"
he said. "Why not just watch us train for a while? Maybe you'll see what I'm
talking about."
As if pleased at having an option that did not require him to make an
immediate decision, Streen nodded. He looked toward his floating platforms
and gas tanks with a palpable stab of regret, as if wishing he had never
come back to Tibannopolis. Gantoris could feel an echo of the other man's
emotions, the yearning for freedom that Bespin's clouds offered, the solace
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