Han pushes the Wookiee’s hand away. “You should have thought of that before you came hollering down the chute like a wounded Bantha.”
Chewbacca rolls off Han and they both scramble away from the crate pile. The room is darker than deep space there is not even the light of a distant star. Han can see nothing: not a wall, not the ceiling, not even the floor upon which he stands. It feels as immense and endless as the galaxy, though in truth it may be no larger than one of the Falcon’s storage bins.
The steady thrum of heavy machinery reverberates around and through them. The air smells of mildew and something else – something more putrid.
Chewbacca rumbles a question.
“The planetary environmental control facility,” Han answers, “whatever that is.”
“Aaaoogh?”
“Bigger than a power converter,” Han snaps. “How do I know?” He kicks one of the crates. “We’ve got three things to find in this basement: the blaster, that Droid, and a way out.”
Han drops to his knees and runs his hands over the floor in great sweeps. He touches something cold, soft, and scaly. It does not move. When he withdraws his hand, a foul-smelling slime clings to his fingers.
“I’m going to be sick,” he says, trying to clean his hand on the clammy floor. From across the room, Chewbacca also utters a disgusted groan. “I wonder what those things belong to?” the pilot asks.
Han continues to search the floor. After his first three encounters with the soft scaly things, he gives up trying to keep his hands clean. What they are, he cannot imagine.
At length, he finds the blaster. Neither he nor Chewbacca detect any sign of the Droid, however. Han assumes it fled immediately after dropping into the room – probably with the benefit of built-in artificial lumination. Finally, the Corellian works his way to a wall. He has no way to determine which wall it is, for in the darkness he cannot tell directions.
Han calls Chewie, then lays a hand on the wall and begins to follow it. The thrums grow louder as they move forward. Whether the wall leads someplace the spacers want to go, he does not know.
Fifty steps later, the wall ends. A rhythmic rumble issues from somewhere directly ahead. He ventures a step forward. A steady hot wind blows from the right. Han turns to the left and starts walking.
“Mooougnnh?” demands Chewbacca.
“I have no idea,” he answers. “But if this is a planetary environmental control facility, that way -,” Han gestures in the direction he has not chosen, striking Chewbacca accidentally, “must lead to the furnace.” Within a few steps, the Corellian finds a wall to guide them.
Four hours later, they emerge, exhausted and covered with grime, from a tunnel leading into the ground. A huge conveyor belt carries chunks of black rock into the tunnel.
“Fossil fuel!” Han exclaims. “No wonder Ord Mantell is so barren. Let’s get back to the Falcon.”