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Beside him, the slimy assassin and the treacherous guard leveled their handheld blasters at Lowie. He knew that they had no intention of letting him survive.

With his cloud car failing and unable to outrun them, with no other weapon, Lowie let loose a huge Wookiee roar at them. He flashed his fangs and snarled loudly enough that even his uncle Chewbacca would have been proud.

Just then, shadows passed overhead. Great wings flapped as creatures swooped and ducked. The slime-dripping alien looked up and instinctively fired his blaster, though the bolt went wide. Within moments, seven great thrantas circled the pursuing cloud car, sweeping down.

The painted riders on the thrantas called to each other in a strange high-pitched language, shouting orders to set up a routine, as if it were mere practice for their sky rodeo. The thrantas flitted under the pursuing cloud car now. One of the flying creatures bumped against it, sending it into a spin.

The Wing Guard pilot cried out while the slime-dripping alien waved his blaster pistol, but the riders were much too fast for them.

They continued their sky ballet, swirling, looping. Finally, one thranta swooped down just above the pursuing vehicle, so that its rider could drop a slender lasso artfully around the pilot's chest and amns.

Cinching the noose tight, the rider yanked the pilot up out of his seat in the cloud car.

He kicked and struggled, thrashing his head from side to side, but his arms were pinned to his ribs. His weapon dropped from his gloved hand and fell tumbling far down into the soup of clouds below.

The slimy alien assassin, now the only occupant of the cloud car, looked around wildly, trying to avert the flying creatures' attack. He wrestled to keep the vehicle under control, but as he reached toward the navigation console, another cloud rider skimmed by, close enough to lasso him around the shoulders of his slime-stained uniform. The alien clawed at the rope and pulled himself free just as the thranta rider jerked him out of the cloud car. Still dripping slime, he tumbled over the side of the vehicle to fall, screaming and flailing his anus.

Then two thrantas dove even faster than Bespin's gravity could pull the would-be assassin downward. The thranta riders snatched the alien in midair, looped a rope around him, and tossed him onto the back - I one of their thrantas. When the alien began to struggle, the cloud rider grinned and easily tossed the slimy captive off his thranta, so that his partner could spin around to catch him on the second thranta's smooth back.

The second thranta now flapped up to join the cluster of other sky performers and the entire troupe made a show of tossing their two helpless captives from one thranta to another as if they were balls in a juggling contest.

Unpiloted now, the pursuing cloud car spun out of control, its rudder sending it into a dive until the craft zoomed at full speed down into the deep layers of impenetrable clouds.

Lowie brought his own puttering vehicle closer to Cloud City. Under the watchful eye of the thranta rider, he used every trick he could think of to increase his altitude and keep the cloud car afloat.

Finally he reached an open-rigged set of free-form hover-scaffolding that clung to the underside of Cloud City's hull.

As he brought the craft in, the thranta riders flew off with their captives. Lowie wondered what the colorful aliens would do with them when they returned to their berths on Cloud City.

"Ah, it is a fine thing to have friends in high places," Em Teedee said.

Lowie barked his agreement. He held on tightly as the cloud car bumped and skidded onto an open platform on the hover-scaffolding.

Sparks flew from scraped metal. Although the engine had completely died, he managed to spin the craft around so that it came to a rest with a loud thump on the unoccupied ledge right near an emergency exit into Cloud City.

Groaning, the Wookiee turned to look at the vast sky behind him, thick with bulging clouds.