Star Wars_ The Adventures of Lando Calrissia - L. Neil Smith [172]
Billows and folds in the nebula resembled geologic flows, sheets of limestone deposition. All that was missing were stalagmites and stalactites. Illumination was provided by three small planetless blue-white stars that shone in the center of the StarCave, their photon pressure probably accounting for its hollow form, but not for their own presence. One star might have been sensible. Three, spaced a light-year or two apart, would have physicists making excuses to one another well into the next century. Lando was happy to be a gambler, a profession where alibis don’t count. Biologists would be unhappy, too—or ecstatic—at the strange life that had evolved in the sheltered space.
Fingering colored plastic control buttons set into a small panel on the arm of his spacesuit, Lando jetted away from the upper hull and retroed to a floating halt a daring few meters away from the impressive young Oswaft. It was something like greeting an ocean liner politely. He circumnavigated the five-hundred-meter creature in a smooth arc, tucked himself into a roll, straightened, and sprang away with arms extended wide, legs spread, and an expression of sudden joy on his face.
“Yaaahooo!” he whooped uncharacteristically, rejoicing in the sensation of free movement, open space. He realized he’d been cooped up aboard ship far too long. It felt like his entire life. Or perhaps evolving on a planet, squeezed between the ground and low-hanging sky, made one feel permanently claustrophobic.
Vuffi Raa, propelled by the Core alone knew what, spun like a bright metallic snowflake beside him as Lehesu rotated majestically, then veered off in a huge graceful curve the two smaller beings attempted to emulate. One of them succeeded.
“Hey, you guys, wait for me!” Lando shouted unnecessarily; his suit radio carried perfectly well over the kilometer or two he’d missed intercepting them by. Correcting, he tumbled slightly—the free-fall equivalent of tripping over his own feet—stabilized, and swooped to join his friends. By which time, of course, they were somewhere else.
Lando didn’t care. On his own, he began essaying ancient patterns, maneuvers that, elsewhere and elsewhen, would be called Luftberry circles, Immelmann turns, imitating the inspired antics of fighting aerocraft of the prespace eras of every culture momentarily infatuated with free flight and glorious death. He dived on Lehesu, showering the vacuum-breather with imaginary reciprocating gun bullets, then pulled up at the last instant as the startled being instinctively rolled to peel the attacking foe off his back.
That didn’t save Vuffi Raa. The unfortunate droid was sitting squarely in the bull’s-eye etching of Lando’s helmet—ordinarily used for the more mundane purpose of orienting oneself before setting off one’s suit propellants—when Lando’s deadly pointed fingers filled him full of hot-jacketed lead. Caught up in the spirit of the thing, the robot spun out and downward, wishing he could trail smoke for his master’s amusement. There were limits, however, even to Vuffi Raa’s remarkable capabilities.
Three small blue-white suns glowed against a somber dark-gray backdrop. Lightning licked the folds and billows of the cavern walls.
Three odd beings, Oswaft, droid, and, oddest of all, human, passed an endless hour or so, playing at combat like the young of all intelligent life everywhere. It was both a release and a return at the same time, marred only by the momentarily suppressed dread of what lay outside the StarCave—and the sudden flare of baleful energy as the fleet, on its clockwork schedule of mass murder sprayed poison and lethal power into