C H A P T E R 17
In front of Luke, the scopes and displays glowed softly as the diagnostic messages, most of them bordered in red, scrolled past. Beyond the displays, through the canopy, he could see the X-wing’s nose, lit faintly by the sheen of distant starlight. Beyond that were the stars themselves, blazing all around him with cold brilliance.
And that was all. No sun, no planets, no asteroids, no cometary bodies. No warships, transports, satellites, or probes. Nothing. He and Artoo were stranded, very literally, in the middle of nowhere.
The computer’s diagnostic package came to an end. “Artoo?” he called. “What’ve you got?”
From behind him came a distinctly mournful electronic moan, and the droid’s reply appeared on the computer scope. “That bad, huh?”
Artoo moaned again, and the computer’s summary was replaced by the droid’s own assessment of their situation.
It wasn’t good. Luke’s reverse-triggering of the acceleration compensator had caused an unanticipated feedback surge into both hyperdrive motivators—not enough to fry them on the spot, but scorching them badly enough to cause sudden failure ten minutes into their escape. At the Point Four the ship had been doing at the time, that translated into approximately half a light-year of distance. Just for good measure, the same power surge had also completely crystallized the subspace radio antenna.
“In other words,” Luke said, “we can’t leave, we aren’t likely to be found, and we can’t call for help. Does that about sum it up?”
Artoo beeped an addition. “Right.” Luke sighed. “And we can’t stay here. Not for long, anyway.”
Luke rubbed a hand across his chin, forcing back the sense of dread gnawing at him. Giving in to fear would only rob him of the ability to think, and that was the last thing he could afford to lose at this point. “All right,” he said slowly. “Try this. We take the hyperdrive motivators off both engines and see if we can salvage enough components to put together a single functional one. If we can, we remount it somewhere in the middle of the aft fuselage where it can handle both engines. Maybe where the S-Foil servo actuator1 is now—we don’t need that to get home. Possible?”
Artoo whistled thoughtfully. “I’m not asking if it’ll be easy,” Luke said patiently as the droid’s response came up. “Just if it would be possible.”
Another whistle, another pessimistic message. “Well, let’s give it a try anyway,” Luke told him, unstrapping his restraints and trying to wriggle around in the cramped confines of the cockpit. If he pulled off the back of the ejection seat, he would be able to get into the cargo compartment and the tools stored there.
Artoo warbled something else. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to get stuck,” Luke assured him, changing his mind and reaching for the in-cockpit pouches instead. The gloves and helmet seals for his flight suit were stored there; it’d be just as easy at this point to gear himself for vacuum and then get into the cargo compartment through its underside hatch. “If you want to be helpful, you might pull up the maintenance specs and find out exactly how I go about getting one of those motivators out. And cheer up, will you? You’re starting to sound like Threepio.”
Artoo was still jabbering indignantly over that characterization when the last of Luke’s helmet seals cut off the sound. But he did sound less frightened.
It took nearly two hours for Luke to get past all the other cables and tubing in the way and remove the port engine hyperdrive motivator from its socket.
It took less than a minute more to discover that Artoo’s earlier pessimism had been justified.
“It’s riddled with cracks,” Luke told the droid grimly, turning the bulky box over in his hands. “The whole shield casing. Just hairlines, really—you can barely see some of them. But they run most of the length of the sides.”
Artoo gave a soft gurgle, a comment which required no translation. Luke hadn’t done a lot of X-wing maintenance, but he knew enough to recognize that without an intact superconducting shield, a hyperdrive motivator was little more than a box of interconnected spare parts. “Let’s not give up yet,” he reminded Artoo. “If the other motivator’s casing is all right we may still be in business.”
Collecting his tool kit, feeling inordinately clumsy in zero-gee freefall, he made his way under the X-wing’s fuselage to the starboard engine. It took only a few minutes to remove the proper access cover and tie back some of the interfering cables. Then, trying to get both his faceplate and his glow rod together in the opening without blinding himself, he peered inside.
A careful look at the motivator casing showed that there was no need to continue the operation.
For a long moment he just hung there, one knee bumping gently against the power surge vent, wondering what in the name of the Force they were going to do now. His X-wing, so sturdy and secure in even the thick of combat, seemed now to be little more than a terribly fragile thread by which his life was hanging.
He looked around him—looked at the emptiness and the distant stars—and as he did so, the vague sense of falling that always accompanied zero-gee came flooding back in on him. A memory flashed: hanging from the underside of Cloud City, weak from fear and the shock of losing his right hand, wondering how long he would have the strength to hang on. Leia, he called silently, putting all the power of his new Jedi skill into the effort. Leia, hear me. Answer me.
There was no answer except for the echoing of the call through Luke’s own mind. But then, he hadn’t expected one. Leia was long gone, safe on Kashyyyk by now, under the protection of Chewbacca and a whole planet of Wookiees.
He wondered if she’d ever find out what had happened to him.
For the Jedi, there is no emotion; there is peace. Luke took a deep breath, forcing back the black thoughts. No, he would not give up. And if the hyperdrive couldn’t be fixed … well, perhaps there was something else they could try. “I’m coming in, Artoo,” he announced, replacing the access panel and again collecting his tools. “While you’re waiting, I want you to pull everything we’ve got on the subspace radio antenna.”
Artoo had the data assembled by the time Luke got the cockpit canopy sealed over him again. Like the hyperdrive data, it wasn’t especially encouraging. Made of ten kilometers of ultrathin superconducting wire wound tightly around a U-shaped core, a subspace radio antenna wasn’t something that was supposed to be field-repairable.
But then, Luke wasn’t the average X-wing pilot, either.
“All right, here’s what we’re going to do,” he told the droid slowly. “The antenna’s outer wiring is useless, but it doesn’t look like the core itself was damaged. If we can find ten kilometers of superconducting wire somewhere else on the ship, we should be able to make ourselves a new one. Right?”
Artoo thought about that, gurgled an answer. “Oh, come on now,” Luke admonished him. “You mean to tell me you can’t do what some nonintelligent wire-wrapping machine does all day?”
The droid’s beeping response sounded decidedly indignant. The translation that scrolled across the computer scope was even more so. “Well, then, there’s no problem,” Luke said, suppressing a smile. “I’d guess either the repulsorlift drive or else the sensor jammer will have all the wire we need. Check on that, will you?”
There was a pause, and Artoo quietly whistled something. “Yes, I know what the life support’s limitations are,” Luke agreed. “That’s why you’ll be the one doing all the wiring. I’m going to have to spend most of the time back in hibernation trance.”