make the first move," Lando said. "Artoo, Threepio, come on up here.
I want you to try to interface with the vagabond."
Lobot turned toward the droids. "Threepio--Artoo--I ask you to wait
until we know more. None of our supplies are critical yet. We do not
know what we are dealing with."
"I am sorry, sir, but Master Luke placed us in the care of Master
Lando," Threepio said, allowing Artoo to tow him toward the panel. "We
are obliged to follow his instructions, no matter what reservations you
may have."
"Thank you, Threepio," Lando said, fixing Lobot with a baleful gaze
touched with a hint of smug triumph.
"I'm glad to know that you're still on the team."
Whether it was due more to Lobot's misgivings or to Artoo's innate
sense of self-preservation, the as-tromech droid proceeded cautiously
in carrying out Lando's instructions, and Lobot was glad to see it.
At first Artoo stopped a safe distance from the panel and began to scan
it, his dome rotating back and forth as he brought different sensors to
bear--optical, thermal, radionic, electromagnetic. Threepio called out
the results of each reading to the two men, who were watching from
opposite sides of the passage.
Lobot already knew the results by the time Threepio pronounced them,
for the droid--on his own initiative, and without any notice to
Lando--had opened another of his data registers to the cyborg's neural
interface. It was a signal of support that Lobot accepted in silence,
saying nothing that would betray the small mutiny.
When the initial scans produced no obvious red flags, Artoo moved in
closer and extended his sensor probe. The scan head was too large to
fit fully into the smaller sockets, but Artoo brought it as close to
the first of them as he could without actually touching it.
"Field, zero-point-zero-nine gauss," said Threepio.
"Flux density, one-point-six-zero-two. Alpha rate, zero.
tive--Artoo, I don't understand a word of this. Will someone please
tell me what it means?"
Artoo swiveled his head and emitted a sharp series of whistles, which
Threepio did not translate.
"I am trying to hold still," Threepio said as Artoo moved the probe to
the next socket. "It's not my fault I wasn't designed for
weightlessness. Most sensible beings live on planets, where they
belong."
The response from Artoo sounded churlish even to Lobot's ears.
"I don't care what you think," Threepio said.
"Why, you're only a mechanic. I was meant for nobler purposes. I
should be at a diplomatic reception, helping to forge peace between
bitter rivals, arranging a dynastic marriage-- Oh, how I miss the old
days--" Artoo's response was an electronic bleat. "Very well, then,"
Threepio said haughtily. "See if I care. I don't need your help."
With that, the golden droid released his grip on Artoo's right tread
support and folded his arms across his chestplate.
"But I need your help, Threepio," said Lando. "So stop squabbling with
your brother and call out the numbers."
"Why do you keep making that error, Master Lando? That egotistical
little tyrant is no kin of mine," Threepio sniffed.
"I can help you, Lando," Lobot said quietly, without explanation.
"Field, zero-point-eight-two gauss.
Flux density, one-point-seven-four. Alpha rate--" Lando looked at
Lobot with annoyance, a sight that gave Lobot surprising
satisfaction.
Neither of them saw Threepio reach out and clutch one of the
projections on the panel to steady himself. But both heard a loud
burst of static on the contact suit comm unit and saw a blue glow in
the passage.
"Gracious me!" Threepio exclaimed.
Quickly looking that way, Lobot saw that the end of the panel was
crawling with blue-white snakes of en ergy. They were crackling
to the elbow joint, and rapidly growing more intense.
"Threepio--don't let go--" Lobot began.
The warning came too late. The moment his surprise abated, Threepio
pulled back his hand in a reflex of squeamishness.
An instant later a massive, squirming bolt of energy leaped from the
panel to Threepio's hand, flashed up his arm and one side of his head,
and sprang from there to the face of the passage. Before anyone could
react, it had raced away down the passage and disappeared, spreading as
it went until it was dancing over the entire surface like a halo of
blue fire. One finger of the bolt ran along the hand lines, leaving
them crumbling into black dust in its wake.
The bolt left Threepio convulsing and spinning in midair. His right
arm was burned black and smoking from the servos and energizer
controls, his head was frozen at an odd angle and quivering as though
an actuator were caught in a feedback loop.
Lobot loosed a string of curses he had forgotten he knew and started
toward the injured droid. Lando stared dumbly for a moment, then did
the same. But Artoo beat both of them to Threepio, latching on and
dragging him away down the passage in the opposite direction from the
one the bolt had taken. As Artoo passed Lando, the droid made a
hostile noise.
"I'm sorry," Lando said, throwing his arms up in a gesture of
surrender. "It's not my fault. Lobot--tell him it's not my fault."
Hastening up the passage after Artoo and Threepio, Lobot letted past
Lando in purposeful silence.
Artoo would not allow Lando to approach Threepio. He had to content
himself with watching from several meters away while Lobot and Artoo
hovered over the protocol droid and tried to assess the damage.
From several meters away, the damage looked to be considerable.
An R6 or R7 could have survived the jolt handily.
The latest combat-rated droids were armored against power surges and
induced currents up to and including a near-direct hit from a class one
ion cannon.
But Threepio had been designed for wars of words.
His buffers and breakers were minimal, and the bolt of energy from the
panel had overwhelmed them. If the charge had passed across his body,
through the primary processors, instead of up one side, Threepio would
be dead.
As it was, Lando could see that Threepio's right arm was rigid and
useless at his side, the servo controllers burned and the linkages
fused. Even worse, his speech synthesizer or vocal processor had been
crippled. When he spoke, his voice phased and changed timbre, as
though he were a million klicks away on a pocket comlink.
Twice already he had halted in midsentence, as though stuck searching
for the most ordinary of words--something Lando had never heard him do
before.
After a few minutes, Lobot left Threepio with Artoo and joined Lando.
To Lando's surprise, there were no words of recrimination--only a
business-like coolness barely distinguishable from Lobot's usual
demeanor.
"Threepio's arm is beyond repair, given that we have no spare parts,"
Lobot said. "Artoo is t
rying to free the lateral actuator and restore
freedom of motion to Threepio's head." He nodded past Lando at the
equipment grid, which Lando had towed away from the scene of the
accident. "I need the tool kit."
"In a moment," Lando said. "What happened back there---have you
thought about it?"
"I need the tool kit, Lando," Lobot repeated, and moved to pass between
Lando and the passage wall.
Lando reached out and caught Lobot's forearm.
"You were right about these passages. They're getting ready to--"
Something moved at the periphery of his vision, and Lando's gaze
flicked past Lobot to the droids, then past the droids to the growing
glow where the passage bent out of sight. "Blast!" he exclaimed.
"Get away from the wall. Artoo, look out!"
"What?" Lobot craned his head.
Using his grip on Lobot's suit, Lando dragged him toward the center of
the passage, just as the energy halo appeared at the horizon of their
vision and sped toward them. It surrounded them for only a moment as
it raced through on its course, but its passage made the hair rise on
the back of Lando's neck.
"It's gone all the way around?"
"Yes."
"It doesn't seem to have lost any strength at all," Lobot said in
wonder.
"No," Lando said. "That's what I was trying to tell you. You were
right. These are conduits--superconduct-ing accumulators. Perhaps
even some sort of gas-tube cascade generator."
"For the weapons," Lobot said slowly. "It has to be for the
weapons."
"That panel is the ballast, the source of the spark.
Threepio created an arc path while it was building up to fire--probably
prematurely. He may have caused the system to report a failure, buying
us a little time as it resets."
"The weapons are useless in hyperspace. That explains our reprieve."
"It also answers your question about the panel--about why it showed up
now," Lando said. "Smart.
She's a smart lady. The last thing I do before I enter an unfriendly
room is check my weapon."
"Testing the integrity of the system. She must be getting ready--"
"Wait," Lando said. "Listen."
All at once, all around them, the ship began to groan and growl in a
slow, deep voice.
Lando released Lobot and dove toward the equipment grid, wresting the
sensor limpet from its restraints.
The limpet was secured in a harness of silk line, with a single
trailing cord ending in a loop.
"I have to do this now," Lando said. "Artoo! Map!
What's the shortest way to the outer hull?"
Artoo's reply was a squawk.
"Point out the direction--I can't understand you!"
"He's not answering you," said Lobot. "He's asking me why I'm not back
with the tools yet." He closed his eyes. The lights on his interface
blinked at a furious rate.
"Through there," he said. "Eighteen meters. But I don't know what's
between here and the hull."
"I'll tell you when I get back," Lando said. He drew his blaster,
burned a hole in the direction Lobot had pointed, and was gone.
With his thrusters holding his widely set feet against the outer
bulkhead of the vagabond, Lando pointed the cutting blaster down
between his legs and squeezed the actuator. A perfect circle of hull
vanished in a puff of gray smoke, which was instantly sucked out
through the opening.
The limpet had been floating freely, tethered to Lando's left wrist.
Now it strained at the end of a taut line, rocking as the compartment's
air rushed past it.
Pocketing the blaster, Lando let the line play out through his gloved
fingers until the limpet slipped through the opening. Only the cord on
Lando's wrist kept it from escaping completely into space.
Then he simply waited, watching the hull breach knit closed. When the
opening had shrunk enough to prevent the limpet from being pulled back
inside, Lando took up the slack and pulled the limpet back against the
hull. Reaching through, he pressed the dual switches that activated
the limpet's sensors and armed its attachment system.
Letting a little line play out again, Lando waited until the hole had
closed to the size of a peephole, then yanked the limpet toward him.
There was an audible thwack as the crisscrossing anchor spines fired
and drew the limpet flush against the hull. For insurance, Lando
knotted the cord around the safety tab that had cover ed the limpet's
switches, pulling it snugly against the inner face. Lando hoped that
even if the ship was somehow able to slough off the limpet's barbed
anchor spines, the harness and improvised stop would keep it in
place.
That job accomplished, Lando turned away to examine for the first time
the compartments he had crashed through en route to the outer hull.
Unlike in the accumulators, where the entire face of the passage itself
gave off a pale yellow glow, the only light in the outer compartment
came from the twin "ear lamps" located on either side of Lando's
helmet. When he swept their beams through the dark volume that
enclosed him, a great emptiness swallowed the light forward, aft, and
around the circumference of the ship. It was as if he were alone in
the darkest corner of space.
Only when he looked up, away from the outer hull near which he hovered
and back the way he had come, did the light catch and reflect to him
any of the substance of the ship. And what the light revealed there
made Lando shiver with a chill no warmer could drive away.
For the lamps showed that the inner wall was covered with alien
faces--a collage, a portrait gallery, a mural, a memorial, stretching
as far as the light could carry, and likely beyond. There were
thousands of different faces, or thousands of variations on the same
face, each gazing out from its own hexagonal cell. The faces were
unlike any Lando had ever seen, and yet he keenly felt the intelligence
in the large, round eyes that seemed to seek him out.
More than by any other gift, Lando had found his way by reading the
faces of strangers and knowing them better than they knew themselves.
He read in the sculpted, deeply lined faces of the Qella both strength
and surrender, a settled wisdom and a thwarted curiosity, and most of
all a terrible knowledge of the impermanence of life. The beings who
had sat for these portraits, and the artisans who had created them, had
known when they did so that these images might be all that survived
them, and they had held nothing back.
There was a circular gap in the mural where Lando had burned his way
through it from behind. The supporting wall had healed, but the
overlying portraits had not--four were damaged in varying degrees, one
obliterated forever. Lando fought off sharp pangs of guilt as he
jetted up toward the mural and reopened a hole at that same spot.
"I'm sorry," he said to the surviving faces as he left them behind.
"But this is your tomb--your memorial.
I'm trying to keep it from becoming mine. I like to think that if life
meant this much to you, you'd be rooting for me to succeed."
Lando found the others where he had left them, still tending to
Threepio. The golden droid was the only one to react strongly to his
return, turning his head toward Lando and greeting him cheerfully.
"Master Lando!" he said in a crackly voice. One glowing eye
flickered. "What are you doing on Yavin Four? Why are you wearing
that costume? Do you know, you look rather like a droid?"
"Threepio, take a look around," Lando said. "Do you recognize this
place?"
The droid's head swiveled. "Oh. Oh, yes, I see. The Qella
vagabond.
I seem to have had an accident." He turned and clanged Artoo on the
dome with his good arm. "And it's all your fault, you good-for-nothing
sabo teur. You belong in a waste compactor, along with all the
other--" "No," Lando said sharply. "It was my fault. I gave the
orders. I made the mistake. I'm sorry, Threepio. I promise you,
we'll get you put back to specs as soon as we get home."
"It is I who should apologize, Master Hambone," said Threepio. "I am
sure that my clamminess was the approximate corpse of my mishop."