Star Wars_ The Han Solo Adventures - Brian Daley [226]
They were at the steepest part of the insane plunge, shearing through the snowfield, rocking in furrows, and smashing out of depressions in the surface. Several times Han saw energy beams of various hues register hits in the snow, but always far wide of their mark. As targets go, we must be pretty fast and furious.
He clung doggedly, fingers, ears, and face numbed by the cold, eyes streaming a constant flow of tears. “My fingers are slipping!” cried Hasti with unmasked fear. “I can’t feel them.”
Han knew with a sense of utter futility that he could do little to help her. He griped her as tightly as he could, hoping that his frozen fingers would hold.
Badure yelled, “We’re slowing down!” Chewbacca bellowed pure joy. Hasti began to half-laugh, half-sob.
The gong had reached a gentler portion of the slope close to the foot of the snowfield and was losing speed moment by moment. The bumps and jolts became less dramatic, the spinning less pronounced. In seconds they were coasting.
“An excellent job, First Mate Chewbacca,” Bollux was saying, when suddenly the gong’s rim hit a slab of rock that lifted it into the air like a jump ramp. Frozen hands, servo-grips, Ruurian digits, and Wookiee toes, all lost their final struggle. The gong threw them free. Human bodies, the tubular Skynx, a yeowling Chewbacca, and gleaming Bollux sailed through the air on assorted trajectories, cartwheeling, tumbling, spinning—and falling.
XIII
HAN heard the whine of servo-motors over the moan of wind. From where he lay, mostly buried by the mound of snow he had scraped up on his landing approach, he could see Bollux draped belly-up over a low snowbank. The halves of the ’droid’s chest plastron opened up and outward.
Blue Max’s vocoder blustered. “Hey! Let’s get moving; we’re not out of it yet!”
A drift to Han’s right sloughed and erupted. Chewbacca appeared, spitting out snow and rumbling an acid remark to the diminutive computer module.
“No, he’s right,” Han groaned to his partner. He raised himself on unsteady arms and gazed up the slope, foggily curious about whether his head was actually going to fall off or if it simply felt that way. A bobbing column of lights was wending its way down the snowfield from the Survivors’ base. Their former captors were in hot pursuit.
“The short circuit’s right on the money, folks; everybody up!” Han thrashed and floundered in the snow for a moment, then pulled himself to his feet and began beating his hands together to bring some sensation back.
Hasti was also struggling up. Han caught her hand and pulled her to her feet. She ran over to see to Badure. Chewbacca had just reclaimed his bowcaster and bandoleer from Skynx, whom he had dug free. The Wookiee growled his gratitude, patting and stroking the Ruurian’s woolly back in a gruff gesture of thanks.
Hasti was chafing Badure’s hand’s and wrists, trying to get him upright. Han moved to help and saw that the tip of the old man’s nose and patches on his cheeks were whitened.
“He’s getting frostbite. On deck, Trooper; time to depart the area.” They pulled him up. Meanwhile, with Chewbacca’s help, Bollux was once more upright.
Counting heads before striking off, Han spied Skynx bent over the gong, which had fallen face up, a flattened dome in the snow. The Ruurian was making minute examination of the whorls and patterns on the ancient metal, laboring to see in the light of moons and stars. When Han called him, the academician yelled back. “I think you’d better see this first, Captain.”
They all gathered around him. His small digits traced the raised characters. “I thought I recognized these when I first saw this object, but I was too hurried to study them. All these,” a splay of digits indicated groups of characters, “are technical notations and operating instructions. They have to do with pressure equalization and fastening procedures.”
“Then