Star Wars_ Splinter of the Mind's Eye - Alan Dean Foster [59]
Then he was breaking the surface, gasping for air and wiping water from his eyes after deactivating the saber. Once it was secured to his belt again, he put out a hand and tugged the freed pad close to shore.
He employed the saber briefly again to cut a small hole in the rear of the pad. With a thin roll of survival cord he secured their craft to a stalagmite on shore.
“These might do for propulsion!” the Princess called to him. She was further up the shoreline and slightly uphill. Luke moved to stand beside her.
A series of transparent selenite crystals flowed from roof to floor here. Each was taller than a man, perhaps a couple of centimeters thick. Phosphorescent growths on them gave them the look of windows in a church, and the knife-edged mineral was suffused in places with vermilion light.
“They’re almost too beautiful to break,” Luke commented in admiration. “But you’re right … they’ll make good paddles.” Using the invaluable saber once more, he cut loose four blades of the right size, shaped them with the blue beam for holding. Then they carried them down to the water and placed them carefully in the leprous lily they hoped would carry them across the lake.
“Ready to go?” he asked finally. Leia hesitated, checked her wrist chronometer.
“We’ve been walking for nearly sixteen hours, Luke” She gestured at the lake. “If we’re going to try and cross that, I’d just as soon do it on a full night’s sleep.”
“Or day’s sleep,” Luke agreed. They had no way of telling whether it was day or night in the world above.
He found a rotting piece of one of the pad-growths marooned on shore and dragged it upslope. It would make an acceptable mattress.
“You go ahead,” he urged her, as they stretched out on the soft matter. “I’m not quite tired yet.” She nodded, tried to find a comfortable position on the damp cellulose.
In two minutes they were both sound asleep.…
Luke awoke with a start, sitting up fast and flicking his eyes in all directions. He thought he’d heard something moving. But there was nothing, only the steady trickle of the stream merging with the lake, and the sound of drops falling into the lake itself from overhead.
After checking his timer he woke the Princess. She rubbed sleep from her eyes, asked, “How long?”
“Nearly twelve hours. I guess I was exhausted, too.”
They broke out fresh concentrates, munched them hungrily. Luke brought water from the stream in a collapsible cup. They ate by the transparent brook, watching waterbugs swim anxiously back and forth.
“I never dreamed concentrates could taste so good,” the Princess observed, finishing the last of one cube and downing several swallows of water.
“My appetite will improve when we see sunlight again,” was Luke’s comment. Out of excuses, he stared at the lake. “I hope this lake’s not as wide as it looks. I don’t like traveling on water.”
“That’s not surprising,” soothed the Princess, knowing that on the desert world of Tatooine where Luke had been raised, an open body of water was as rare as an evergreen.
Wordlessly, they slipped onto the pad-boat. Each took up one of the long selenite blades. Luke untied the cord from the stalagmite, recoiled it and replaced it on his belt, then pushed off. They slid out onto the lake as if greased.
Luke experienced exquisite terror as they rowed out across what looked like a bottomless crater. The actual bottom could have been a mere meter beneath them, but the dark water was literally unfathomable.
Like the waterbugs in the stream, worries darted rapidly through Luke’s mind. What if the lake ran on for hundreds of kilometers? Or suppose it branched in several directions? Without the visible pathway, they could easily get lost forever.
Their best chance was to hug the wall on their left, where the path had vanished into the water. It seemed unlikely that it would cut across the lake—more sensible for it to stay close to the wall, where presumably