The guard was lifted high in the air and turned around. Other shadows of the icicle legs wrapped around him. The glowing rectangle of the thermal suit’s battery pack burned brilliantly in the infrared, but one of the sharp claws thrust into it like a stinger. Sparks flew into the darkness, leaving glimmers in front of Han’s eyes.
As Han ran backward, stumbling and tripping, he saw the man’s infrared outline grow dim as he became as cold as his surroundings. The creature, whatever it was, must be draining or feeding on energy, on body heat or 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.”
12
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-down pilot’s cutfit. 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 thunde
rstorms. 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 Gantons 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 of being alone.
“Show me your new Jedi exercises, Master. Teach me other things.” Skywalker seemed to flinch at being called “Master,” and Gantoris wondered what he had done wrong—was not Luke Skywalker a Jedi Master? How else should he be called?
Skywalker brushed aside the comment. He pointed to the thicket of girders and rusted metal bars in which flocks of the leathery black creatures made their homes, chittering and moving about
in the afternoon. Far below, the clouds thickened into what could become another storm.
“Those flying creatures,” Skywalker said. “We will use them.”
Streen stiffened. His face grew dark and ruddy. “Hey, don’t disturb my rawwks.” Then he lowered his eyes, turning away as if embarrassed by his outburst. “They’ve been my only company all these years.”
“We won’t harm them,” Skywalker said. “Just watch.” He lowered his voice to speak as an instructor to Gantoris. “This city is a complex mechanism. Every girder, every metal plate, every life-form from those rawwks to the airborne algae sacks and everything around us, each has its own position in the Force. Size matters not. Tiny insects or entire floating cities, each is an integral part of the universe. You must feel it, sense it.”
He nodded to the derelict structures around them. “I want you to look at this city, imagine how the pieces fit together, find the girders with your mind, tell me what you can sense and how one thing touches another. When you think you have found the intersection where a rawwk and girder touch, I want you to reach out and push with your mind. Make a little vibration.”
Skywalker curled his forefinger around his thumb and stretched forward as he nodded toward a lone rawwk sitting on the end of a weather vane. He flicked out his finger, as if to shoo away a gnat, and Gantoris heard a distant pinnngg. Startled into the air, the rawwk flapped its wings and cried out in alarm.
Gantoris chuckled and, eager to try, flicked his own finger in imitation of what the Jedi had just done. He imagined seeing a whole flock of the rawwks take flight—but nothing happened.
“It is not that easy,” Skywalker said. “You aren’t concentrating. Think, feel yourself doing it, envision your success—then reach out with your mind.”
More serious this time, Gantoris pursed his lips and squinted, looking for his target. He saw a delicate many-branched antenna on which five rawwks sat. He pictured the antenna, knowing his target, and stared. He took a deep breath and pushed. He still didn’t quite know what he was doing, but he felt something happening in his mind, something working, some outside … force linking him and the antenna.
Star Wars: The Jedi Academy Trilogy I: Jedi Search Page 16