Star Wars_ The Han Solo Adventures - Brian Daley [2]
In minutes the ship had neared the western end of the fissure. Han was compelled to dump some velocity; it was time to look for road signs. He reviewed the instructions given him, instructions he’d committed to memory alone. Off to the south a gigantic mountain range loomed. He banked the Falcon sharply to port, slapped a pair of switches, and bore straight for the mountains.
The ship’s special Terrain Following Sensors came on. Han kept the freighter’s bow close above a surface of cooled lava and occasional active rifts, minor offspring of the great fissure. For whatever small edge it might give against detection, he trimmed the Falcon off at virtual landing altitude, screaming over eddied volcanic flatlands. “Anybody down there better duck,” he advised, keeping one eye pinned to the Terrain Following Sensors. They bleeped, having located the mountain pass for which he’d been searching. He adjusted course.
Funny. His information said the break in the mountains was plenty wide for the Falcon, but it looked mighty narrow on the TFS. For a second he debated going for altitude fast, hurdling the high peaks, but that just might put him back onto the Authority’s scopes. He was too close to his delivery point, and a payday, to risk having to cut and run. The moment of option passed. He shed more airspeed, committed now to taking the pass at low level.
Sweat collected on his forehead and dampened his shirt and vest. Chewbacca uttered his low rumble of utmost concentration as both partners synched to the running of the Millennium Falcon. The image of the pass on the TFS grew no more encouraging.
Han tightened his grip on the controls, feeling the press of his flying gloves against them. “Pass, nothing—that thing’s a slot! Hold your breath, Chewie; we’ll have to skin through.”
He threw himself into a grim battle with his ship. Chewbacca caterwauled his dislike for all unconventional maneuvers as he cut in braking thrusters, but even those would not be enough to avert disaster. The slot began to take on shape, a slightly lighter area of sky lit by bright stars and one of Duroon’s three moons, set off by the silhouette of the mountains. It was, just barely, too narrow.
The starship took some altitude, and her speed slackened. Those extra seconds gave Han time to pilot for his life, calling on razor-edge reflexes and instinctive skills that had seen him through scrapes all across the galaxy. He killed all shields, since they’d have struck rock and overloaded, and wrenched his controls, standing the Millennium Falcon on her port-side. Sheer crags closed in on either side, so that the roar of the freighter’s engines rebounded from the cliffs. He made minute corrections, staring at rock walls that seemed to be coming at him through the canopy, and rattled off a string of expletives having nothing whatsoever to do with piloting.
There was a slight jar, and the shriek of metal torn away as easily as paper. The long-range sensors winked out; the dish had been ripped off the upper hull by a protrusion of rock. Then the needle’s eye was threaded sideways, and the Falcon was through the mountains.
Perspiration beading his face, dampening his light brown hair, Han pounded Chewbacca. “What’d I tell you? Inspiration’s my specialty!”
The starship soared over the thick jungle that began beyond the mountains. Han leveled off, wiping a gloved hand across his brow. Chewbacca emitted a sustained growl. “I agree,” Han replied soberly in the wake of his elation. “That was a stupid place to put a mountain.” He took up scanning for the next landmark and spied it almost at once: a winding river. The Falcon skimmed in low over the watery coils as the Wookiee lowered the ship’s landing gear.
In seconds they’d reached the landing area near a spectacular waterfall that dropped two hundred meters to the river in a flume like a blue-white, ghostly scrim under stars and moonlight. Han, reading the TFS, found a clearing in the heavy cover of vegetation and settled the ship slowly. The broad disks of the landing gear