Star Wars_ Splinter of the Mind's Eye - Alan Dean Foster [0]
He took a couple of unsteady steps. “What?”
“We were worried, Master Luke. You …” Threepio broke off as Luke turned away to stare eastward.
“He’s coming,” he murmured. “He’s near, very near.”
“Luke, boy, you’d better start making some sense,” Halla said. “Who’s coming?”
“There was a stirring,” Luke whispered. “A profound disturbance in the Force. I’ve felt it before, weakly. I felt it most strongly when Ben Kenobi was killed.”
Princess Leia inhaled in terror, her eyes widening. “No, not him again, not here.”
“Something blacker than night stirs the Force, Leia,” Luke said. “This Governor Essada must have contacted him, sent him here. He’d be especially interested in locating you and me.”
“Who would?” Halla half-shouted in frustration.
Leia’s hands trembled. She fought to still them. “Lord Darth Vader,” she whispered.
A Del Rey® Book
Published by The Random House Publishing Group
Copyright © 1978 by The Star Wars Corporation
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Del Rey Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Del Rey is a registered trademark and the Del Rey colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
www.delreybooks.com
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 77-28428
eISBN: 978-0-307-79546-5
Cover art by Ralph McQuarrie
v3.1
For Dad & Mom Oxley, Louis & Ellie;
with all my love,
which would fill several universes …
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Introduction
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
About the Author
Also by this Author
Introduction to the Star Wars Expanded Universe
Excerpt from Star Wars: The Thrawn Trilogy: Heir to the Empire
Introduction to the Old Republic Era
Introduction to the Rise of the Empire Era
Introduction to the Rebellion Era
Introduction to the New Republic Era
Introduction to the New Jedi Order Era
Introduction to the Legacy Era
Star Wars Novels Timeline
Introduction
It wasn’t long after I began writing Star Wars that I realized the story was more than a single film could hold. As the saga of Skywalkers and Jedi Knights unfolded, I began to see it as a tale that could take at least nine films to tell—three trilogies—and I realized, in making my way through the back story and after story, that I was really setting out to write the middle story.
After Star Wars was released, it became apparent that my story—however many films it took to tell—was only one of thousands that could be told about the characters who inhabit its galaxy. But these were not stories that I was destined to tell. Instead they would spring from the imagination of other writers, inspired by the glimpse of a galaxy that Star Wars provided. Today it is an amazing, if unexpected, legacy of Star Wars that so many gifted writers are contributing new stories to the Saga. This legacy began with Splinter of the Mind’s Eye, published less than a year after the release of Star Wars. Written by Alan Dean Foster, a well-known and talented science-fiction author, Splinter was promoted as a “futher adventure” of Luke Skywalker. It hit the bookstores just as I was preparing to write my own “further adventure” of Luke, in the form of a script entitled The Empire Strikes Back.
It seems only fitting, after all these years, that Splinter would be republished as I prepare once again to write another further adventure set a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away …
I
HOW beautiful was the universe, Luke thought. How beautifully flowing, glorious and aglow like the robe of a queen. Ice-black clean in its emptiness and solitude, so unlike the motley collage of spinning dust motes men called their worlds, where the human bacteria throve and multiplied and slaughtered one another. All so that one might say he stood a little higher than his fellows.
In depressed