Star Wars_ The Han Solo Adventures - Brian Daley [149]
A soarer’s cry sounded and he spied the creature rising from the cliff across the valley, bearing what looked like a stunned or injured grazer calf. The Wookiee growled an imprecation at the flier and wished for a second that he, too, had wings. Then he shook his fist in the air and bellowed wildly, for a mad inspiration worthy of Han Solo had just struck him.
As he worked out details, he slung his bowcaster and began rummaging through the equipment he had brought. First, the tripod. He clamped all three legs under his arm and got a firm grip on its mounting plate. Cords of muscle swelled in his arms and paws, and he gritted his fierce teeth in exertion. Slowly, he put the needed crease into the tough metal of the plate.
When he was satisfied, he put down the tripod and began to work furiously, casting occasional glances down to the growing turmoil in the valley as it surged toward his high ground. He had, he believed, the tools and materials he required; time was another question entirely.
He threw the downed soarer’s carcass over onto its back without trouble; its bones were hollow and it had, for all its size, evolved for minimum weight. He jammed the bent mounting plate up under its chin, ignoring the ruin of its gaping skull, and fixed it there with a retainer from his tool roll, turning its screw down as tightly as he could without crushing the bone.
He spread two of the tripod’s legs, extending them to maximum length, and lay them out along each wing. He curled the leading edge of the wings over the tripod legs and wrapped them two full turns at the tips, exerting his strength against the resistance of the wing cartilage. There was barely any fold at all near the wing joints, but it would have to serve. He had only eight clamps in his carryall pouch; four for each wing had better be enough. He tightened them down quickly to hold the tripod legs in place within the folds of the wing edges.
Stopping to check, he saw that the grazers were already thronging on the lower slopes of his high ground, packed tightly together, antlers swaying and flashing. He applied himself to his task with redoubled energy.
He drew the central tripod leg out along the soarer’s body as a longitudinal axis. The creature was an efficient glider, but its breast lacked the prominent keel to which flight muscles are attached in birds, and that made fastening a problem. He settled, after no more than a few seconds’ thought, on a row of ring-fasteners punched through the skin and passed around the creature’s slender sternum. Fortunately, it had no more than a vestigial tail. He swallowed and tried to ignore its nauseating odor as he worked.
Then came his worst problem, a kingpost. Taking one of the bracing members he had brought, he thrust it up directly through the soarer’s body next to the sternum, to stand a meter and a half out its back, and made it fast to the longitudinal axis. Then he fit the longest brace he had across the juncture, securing it to the other two tripod legs as a lateral axis. He didn’t fret over the various vile substances now leaking out of the soarer; that decreased the weight, which could only help.
He spent a frantic several minutes cutting and fitting cable, with no time to measure or experiment, connecting wingtips, tail, and beak to the tip of the kingpost.
He had to pause when a group of grazers breasted the ridge, wild-eyed and quick to swing their antlers in his direction. He jammed a new magazine into his bowcaster and emptied it into the ground, filling the air with explosions that could