Star Wars - 136 - Lando Calrissian and the Flamewind of Oseon by L. Neil Smith

Author:L. Neil Smith [Smith, L. Neil]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, General, Science Fiction
ISBN: 9780345311634
Google: v-SgQAAACAAJ
Amazon: 0345311639
Publisher: Del Rey
Published: 1983-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

X

VIOLET FLARES LASHED at the Millennium Falcon, purple flames licked at her hull as lavender-colored lightning flashed in a sky that was infinitely mauve.

“Vuffi Raa, according to these instruments, we're spinning like a top and following a course that's essentially a giant figure eight!”

Lando shook his head. The plum-colored glare through the cockpit's canopy was souring his stomach, and the hard vacuum of space, which supposedly was incapable of conveying sound waves, rocked as if with the laughter of malicious giants.

He could scarcely hear the droid's reply.

“I'm sorry, Master, there isn't any help for it. We must trust the program I fed into the engines and attitude controls. I can't see a single instrument on the panel that's reliable.” Even the robot's voice had the faintest hint ofan hysterical edge. Or perhaps it was Lando's ears, battered by the screaming of a universe tearing itself into bits.

In the passenger lounge, Waywa Fybot was aroused from a sleep unusually deep even for his deep-dreaming species. He stirred, felt the feathers on his long neck rufflingthemselves , and tried to close his eyes again. A glimpse through a small round port across the room caught his attention. His gaze became involuntarily fixed upon it, as, one by one, his feathers lifted, stood perpendicular to his body. Bassi Vobah's hands covered her eyes. Had she been capable of a single linear thought, she would have wished for a second pair to cover up her ears. It seemed to her that the very Core of the galaxy was shrieking at her for some terrible thing she'd done and somehow forgotten. With a sob, she collapsed sideways on the curving couch, squeezed herself into a huddled ball, knees up to her chin, eyes shut tightly that they were slowly blackening under the self-inflicted pressure. Her hands were on her ears, now, so that the titanic bellowing of a sun gone mad and its resonating orbital companions transmitted itself through her very bones. Beneath her face, the cushion of the couch was soaked with tears.

What end was there to madness?

Starboard, in the cockpit, Vuffi Raa switched off another bank of useless instruments. They were distracting and therefore worse than useless. In a similar disgruntled humor and for identical reasons, he had shut off his hearing, but it hadn't done quite as much good. Where humans had a small cluster of senses, seven or eight at most, he had nearly a hundred, and at the moment, every one of them seemed to be his enemy.

Unlike Lando, who could suffer the effects but never feel the machine-gun sputter of ionizing particles through his body, part of Vuffi Raa'ssensorium was a sophisticated scintillation counter. He could experience the density and frequency with which a dozen distinct kinds of particle drilled through him. For the first time in his long existence, he wished sincerely that he had the same limits to his awareness as his master. For the first time in a very long existence indeed, he entertained the notion that what he didn't know mightn't hurt him.

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