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“I don’t know,” Han said. “Nothing like I’ve ever seen before.”

Chewbacca chuffed in anger and annoyance and immense relief, and Han sighed. “I agree. This wasn’t one of my smarter ideas.”

12

Luke Skywalker showed Gantoris the wonders of the universe. He took his passenger into orbit in the modified shuttle, letting the man look down on the doomed planet of Eol Sha. The too-close moon hung above the world like a raised fist against a curtain of stars.

Igniting the shuttle’s sublight engines, Luke soared into the blazing wonder of the Cauldron Nebula as Gantoris stared out the viewports into the chaotic, glowing gases. Then they plunged down the endless, other-dimensional hole through hyperspace, shortcutting across the galaxy.

To Bespin.

During the uneventful trip Luke began telling Gantoris about the Force, about the training the candidates would undergo at the proposed Jedi academy. Now that he had agreed to come along, Gantoris seemed willing and even eager to understand the strange echoes and feelings that had touched his mind throughout his life.

The hum of the shuttle’s powerful engines and the giddy, abstract swirls of hyperspace were conducive to beginning a few exercises for awakening Gantoris’s potential. Luke was surprised at the man’s powers of concentration, at how he could close his eyes and sink into his mind undistracted. Luke had been an impatient young man during his own Jedi training; Gantoris had had a much harsher upbringing, making him grim and enduring.

“Reach out and feel your mind, feel your body, feel the universe surrounding you. The Force stretches around and through everything. Everything is a part of everything else.”

Luke paid close attention to what he asked Gantoris to do. Obi-Wan Kenobi had spent some time training Luke, and Yoda had spent much more. But Luke had also undergone the abortive training of Joruus C’baoth as well as learning the powers of the dark side during his time with the resurrected Emperor.

Luke could not forget that Obi-Wan’s training had also transformed Anakin Skywalker into Darth Vader. Would it be worth bringing back the Jedi Knights if the price was the creation of another Vader? Gantoris’s ominous dreams of a “dark man” who would show him power and then destroy him made Luke very uneasy.

By the time Luke brought the shuttle out of hyperspace on an approach to Bespin, he thought Gantoris might be overwhelmed with new sights. But the stern man gawked out the viewports like a child, awed by the roiling gas planet where Lando Calrissian had once run Cloud City. The sight of the swirling planet suddenly brought back some of the greatest horrors in Luke’s life. He squeezed his eyes shut as he felt the sting of those memories.

Gantoris, in the passenger compartment behind him, bent forward. “Is something wrong? I just sensed a strong flow of emotions from you.”

Luke blinked. “You could detect that?”

Gantoris shrugged. “Now that you’ve taught me how to feel and how to listen, it came through very clearly. What’s disturbing you? Are we in danger?”

Luke opened his eyes and looked out at Bespin again. He thought of his friend Han Solo kidnapped and frozen in carbonite for delivery to Jabba the Hutt; he thought of the duel with Darth Vader on the catwalks of Cloud City that had cost Luke his hand. And, worst of all, he recalled Vader’s deep voice pronouncing his terrible message. “Luke, I am your father!”

Luke shuddered, but he turned to look back into Gantoris’s dark eyes. “I have powerful memories of this place.”

Gantoris kept his silence, asking no further questions.

Airborne mining installations rode Bespin’s wind currents—floating automated refineries, storage tanks bobbing above the clouds, and facilities to scoop valuable gases from the cloud banks. Not all of these floating installations had proved profitable, though. The drifting colossus of Tibannopolis hung empty, a creaking ghost town in the sky.

Luke tracked the derelict floating city on his navigation screens. The construction hovered over the dark clouds as a storm