Han and Chewbacca have been watching the doppler-shifted streaks of starlight for three hours. They are in the last period of hyperspace before the next jump. The smugglers have nothing to do except watch the ship fly itself. Although the Falcon needs some maintenance, they feel uncomfortable working with so many eyes about. Besides, they have repaired the worst of the recent damage.
Captain Sodarra and the stormtroopers are polite, but Han senses that he has nothing in common with the Imperial deserters. The troopers spend their time sharpening their martial disciplines or discussing what they will do after selling the cloaking device. He would not tell them as much, but Han suspects they will spend the rest of their lives dodging Imperial bounty hunters.
“I can’t figure Leia,” the Corellian says. He wants to talk, and Leia is the only subject he and Chewbacca have not talked to death. “Just when I think she’s a regular human being, she gets huffy and starts acting like a princess. Does she like us or not?”
Chewie grunts a response.
“It doesn’t matter?” Han repeats. “That’s easy for a Wookiee to say. You don’t understand humans.” Chewbacca is not in a talkative mood, but Han can restrain himself for only five minutes. “Maybe she just doesn’t like Wookiees.”
The co-pilot snarls an indignant question.
“Lots of people don’t like Wookiees,” Han says. “It’s nothing personal.”
“Ooouuuugh!”
“What makes you think it’s me she doesn’t like? She probably got herself kidnapped just so I’d rescue her!”
Chewbacca growls, then falls silent.
Something clicks in Han’s mind. He stares out the viewport, barely aware of the emptiness he watches. An hour later, he says, “I know who Alfreda Goot is! She’s Leia!”
The look Chewie gives Han says he is crazy.
“Who’s ever heard of Alfreda Goot? How would she have found us on Ord Mantell? Who but Leia would challenge me to a race? This crazy race is Leia’s way of trying to prove she’s as good as I am!”
Chewbacca shakes his head and returns to staring out the forward viewport.
Ten hours later, everyone aboard the Falcon is happy to drop to sublight speeds. The beauty of the Aldo Spachian Comet is legendary. Trapped between two stars of an otherwise unremarkable binary system, the comet is so spectacular that men risk death for a close look. Any pilot wishing to pass close has to fly a tightrope between its two stars. Overcompensating to escape one star’s gravitational attraction often means plunging into the other.
Han rechecks the course plotted by the nav computer. The quickest route to Tatooine runs right between the stars, through the comet’s coma, a gaseous sphere 100,000 kilometers across. Buried somewhere inside teh coma is a 10 kilometer chunk of dirty ice, rock, and metal which they will probably not see unless they hit it. Han briefly considers flying around the entire system. But Leia – or Alfreda – will no doubt risk the shortcut. Han does not intend to be outdone by a woman, whatever her name.
The comet currently hangs almost exactly between Aldo and Spach. Even from a distance of several tens of millions of kilometers, each star is the size of the Falcon and shines with an intensity that would dim a turbolaser blast by comparison.
Most comets have two tails, a straight one with a fiery appearance, and a glowing slightly curved one. The Aldo Spachian Comet has four tails, two straight and two curved. The straight, fiery tails shoot a quarter million kilometers in opposite directions from the coma. They end in stubby, mushroom-like caps. The straight tails are created when the solar wind passes through the coma and drags away certain ionized gases. Because the Aldo Spachian Comet has two stars, it has two tails of ionized gases. The Corellian guesses that the unusual stubby tail caps are created when the solar wind of the opposite star forces the tail to curl back on itself.
The glowing, curved tails sweep away from the coma, also in opposite directions. They consist of dust particles so fine that the touch of starlight knocks them into space. Perhaps a half-million kilometers from the coma, each tail turns back in a great arch and tapers to a narrow point that ends abreast of the coma.
“Now that I have seen such beauty, I would happily die,” Sodarra comments.
“You just may,” Han says. He shifts his attention to plotting the safest route between the two stars.
What he sees on the flight computer’s vidscreen concerns him more than the danger posed by the twin suns. A large wedge has appeared only 85,000 kilometers behind the Falcon. Two smaller silhouettes have separated from the large one. It can only be a Star Destroyer dispatching TIE fighters!
“They followed us!” Han yells. “How’d they do that?”
Sodarra looks over the pilot’s shoulder at the flight computer and curses. Then he points to the transmission actuaion switch. It is in the “on” position again.
“I told you to fix that!” Han yells at Chewbacca. “Do I have to do everything myself?”
For a moment, the Wookiee looks as if he will tear Han limb from limb. His face quickly sags into depression, however, and he moans an apology.
“At least the Eradicator’s not coming after us,” Han says. “Yet.”
“It will not,” Sodarra promises. “Vellam will not risk his prize so close to the gravity wells of a double-star – but I am certain those are his best pilots.”
The Corellian accelerates. The TIE fighters are much faster than his vessel. But if he can lure them into the comet, away from reinforcements, the Falcon stands a good chance of winning the battle. As the freighter enters the comet’s hazy dust tail, Sodarra assigns two men to operate the gun wells. The two TIEs enter just behind the Falcon.
Although the tail is not dense, its dust particle emit a brilliant ghostly light. The ambient glare impares Han’s vision as badly as a drak room would have. It is like flying inside an immense illumination tube.
TIE energy bursts flash past the Falcon every half-second. Each bolt quickly dissipates, leaving a red streak of fluorescing dust in its wake. Han pays the spurts of light no attentionl the tricky gravity wells of Aldo and Spach keep him too busy to worry about potshots. The freighter bucks and gyrates wildly as Han fights to walk the tight-rope between the two stars.
“Hold your fire,” Captain Sodarra orders his me. “Until we reach a stable gravity plateau, you are only wasting energy.”
A few minutes later, the Falcon reaches teh coma. Like the dust tail, it is a mass of glowing particles – twisting colors leads generally ahead. Although Han sees out of the coma easily enough looking deeper into it hurts his eyes. This relatively dense region is a near vacuum by planetary standards, but it contains dozens of atoms per square centimeter. Each atom glows with every erg of energy it has absorbed from two suns.
The ship ceases bucking. They have reached an area of equal gravitational pull between the two stars. “Time to fight!” Han says, pulling into a tight loop.
During the long hyperspace jump, Han, Chewbacca, and their guests drain one power cell from the Falcon’s batteries. Keep track of the number of power cells they use during this adventure.
If Han concentrates fire on one TIE fighter, Click Here
If Han splits his attention between both fighters, Click Here