by George Lucas
“Come on,” Lando answered over the din of the battle, “we’ll try another way.”
The wind that shrieked though the reactor shaft entirely absorbed the sounds of the clashing lightsabers.
Luke moved agilely across the gantry and took refuge beneath a huge instrument panel to evade his pursuing foe. But Vader was there in an instant, his lightsaber thrashing down like a pulsating guillotine blade, cutting the instrument complex loose. The complex began to fall, but was abruptly caught by the wind and blown upward.
An instant of distraction was all Vader needed. As the instrument panel floated away, Luke involuntarily glanced at it. At that second, the Dark Lord’s laser blade came slashing down across Luke’s hand, cutting it, and sending the youth’s lightsaber flying.
The pain was excruciating. Luke smelled the terrible odor of his own seared flesh and squeezed his forearm beneath his armpit to try to stop the agony. He stepped backward along the gantry until he reached its extreme end, stalked all the while by the black-garbed apparition.
Abruptly, ominously, the wind subsided. And Luke realized he had nowhere else to go.
“There is no escape,” the Dark Lord of the Sith warned, looming over Luke like a black angel of death. “Don’t make me destroy you. You are strong with the Force. Now you must learn to use the dark side. Join me and together we will be more powerful than the Emperor. Come, I will complete your training and we will rule the galaxy together.”
Luke refused to give in to Vader’s taunts. “I will never join you!”
“If you only knew the power of the dark side,” Vader continued. “Obi-Wan never told you what happened to your father, did he?”
Mention of his father aroused Luke’s anger. “He told me enough!” he yelled. “He told me you killed him.”
“No,” Vader replied calmly. “I am your father.”
Stunned, Luke stared with disbelief at the black-clad warrior and then pulled away at this revelation. The two warriors stood staring at one another, father and son.
“No, no! That’s not true …” Luke said, refusing to believe what he had just heard. “That’s impossible.”
“Search your feelings,” Vader said, sounding like an evil version of Yoda, “you know it to be true.”
Then Vader turned off the blade of his lightsaber and extended a steady and inviting hand.
Bewildered and horror-stricken at Vader’s words, Luke shouted, “No! No!”
Vader continued persuasively. “Luke, you can destroy the Emperor. He has foreseen this. It is your destiny. Join me and together we can rule the galaxy as father and son. Come with me. It is the only way.”
Luke’s mind whirled with those words. Everything was finally beginning to coalesce in his brain. Or was it? He wondered if Vader were telling him the truth—if the training of Yoda, the teaching of saintly old Ben, his own strivings for good and his abhorrence of evil, if everything he had fought for were no more than a lie.
He didn’t want to believe Vader, tried convincing himself that it was Vader who lied to him—but somehow he could feel the truth in the Dark Lord’s words. But, if Darth Vader did speak the truth, why, he wondered, had Ben Kenobi lied to him? Why? His mind screamed louder than any wind the Dark Lord could ever summon against him.
The answers no longer seemed to matter.
His Father.
With the calmness that Ben himself and Yoda, the Jedi Master, had taught him, Luke Skywalker made, perhaps, what might be his final decision of all. “Never,” Luke shouted as he stepped out into the empty abyss beneath him. For all its unperceived depth, Luke might have been falling to another galaxy.
Darth Vader moved to the end of the gantry to watch as Luke tumbled away. A strong wind began to blow, billowing Vader’s black cloak out behind him as he stood looking over the edge.
Skywalker’s body quickly plunged downward. Toppling head over foot, the wounded Jedi desperately reached out to grab at something to stop his fall.
The Dark Lord watched until he saw the youth’s body sucked into a large exhaust pipe in the side of the reactor shaft. When Luke vanished, Vader quickly turned and hurried off the platform.
Luke sped through the exhaust shaft trying to grab the sides to slow his fall. But the smooth, shiny sides of the pipe had no hand-holes or ridges for Luke to grasp.
At last he came to the end of the tunnellike pipe, his feet striking hard against a circular grill. The grill, which opened over an apparently bottomless drop, was knocked out by the impact of Luke’s momentum, and he felt his body start to slide out through the opening. Frantically clawing at the smooth interior of the pipe, Luke began to call out for assistance.
“Ben … Ben, help me,” he pleaded desperately.
Even as he called out, he felt his fingers slip along the inside of the pipe, while his body inched ever closer to the yawning opening.
Cloud City was in chaos.
As soon as Lando Calrissian’s broadcast was heard throughout the city, its residents began to panic. Some of them packed a few belongings, others just rushed out into the streets seeking escape. Soon the streets were filled with running humans and aliens, rushing chaotically through the city. Imperial stormtroopers charged after the fleeing inhabitants, exchanging laser fire with them in a raging, clamorous battle.
In one of the city’s central corridors, Lando, Leia, and Chewbacca held off a squad of stormtroopers by blasting heavy rounds of laser bolts at the Imperial warriors. It was urgent that Lando and the others hold their ground, for they had come upon another entrance that would lead them to the landing platform. If only Artoo succeeded in opening the door.
Artoo was trying to remove the plate from this door’s control panel. But because of the noise and distraction of the laser fire blasting around him, it was difficult for the little droid to concentrate on his work. He beeped to himself as he worked, sounding a bit befuddled to Threepio.
“What are you talking about?” Threepio called to him. “We’re not interested in the hyperdrive on the Millennium Falcon. It’s fixed. Just tell the computer to open the door.”
Then, as Lando, Leia, and the Wookiee edged toward the door, dodging heavy Imperial laser fire, Artoo beeped triumphantly and the door snapped open.
“Artoo, you did it!” Threepio exclaimed. The droid would have applauded had his other arm been attached. “I never doubted you for a second.”
“Hurry,” Lando shouted, “or we’ll never make it.”
The helpful R2 unit came through once again. As the others dashed through the entrance, the stout robot sprayed out a thick fog—as dense as the clouds surrounding this world—that obscured his friends from the encroaching stormtroopers. Before the cloud had cleared, Lando and the others were racing toward Platform 327.
The stormtroopers followed, blasting at the small band of fugitives bolting toward the Millennium Falcon. Chewbacca and the robots boarded the freighter while Lando and Leia covered them with their blasters, cutting down still more of the Emperor’s warriors.
When the low-pitched roar of the Falcon’s engines started and then rose to an ear-battering whine, Lando and Leia discharged a few more bolts of brilliant energy. Then they sprinted up the ramp. They entered the pirate ship and the main hatchway closed behind them. And as the ship began to move, they heard a barrage of Imperial laser fire that sounded as if the entire planet were splitting apart at its foundations.
Luke could no longer slow his inexorable slide out the exhaust pipe.
He slid the final few centimeters and then dropped through the cloudy atmosphere, his body spinning and his arms flailing to grip on to something solid.
After what seemed like forever, he caught hold of an electronic weather vane that jutted out from the bowllike underside of Cloud City. Winds buffeted him and clouds swirled around him as he held on tightly to the weather vane. But his strength was beginning to fail; he didn’t think he could hang like this—suspended above the gaseous surface—for very much longer.
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nbsp; All was very quiet in the Millennium Falcon cockpit.
Leia, just catching her breath from their close escape, sat in Han Solo’s chair. Thoughts of him rushed to her mind, but she tried not to worry about him, tried not to miss him.
Behind the princess, looking over her shoulder out the front windscreen, stood a silent and exhausted Lando Calrissian.
Slowly the ship began to move, picking up speed as it coursed along the landing platform.
The giant Wookiee, in his old copilot’s chair, threw a series of switches that brought a dancing array of lights across the ship’s main control panel. Pulling the throttle, Chewbacca began to guide the ship upward, to freedom.
Clouds rushed by the cockpit windows and everyone finally breathed with relief as the Millennium Falcon soared into a red-orange twilight sky.
Luke managed to hook one of his legs over the electronic weather vane, which continued to support his weight. But air from the exhaust pipe rushed at him, making it difficult for him to keep from slipping off the vane.
“Ben …” he moaned in agony. “… Ben.”
Darth Vader strode onto the empty landing platform and watched the speck that was the Millennium Falcon disappear in the far distance.
He turned to his two aides. “Bring my ship in!” he commanded. And then he left, black robes flowing behind him, to prepare for his journey.
Somewhere near the supporting stalk of Cloud City, Luke spoke again. Concentrating his mind on one whom he thought cared for him and might somehow come to his aid, he called, “Leia, hear me.” Pitifully he cried out once again. “Leia.”
Just then, a large piece of the weather vane broke off and went hurtling off into the clouds far below. Luke tightened his grip on what remained of the vane, and strained to hold on in the blast of air rushing at him from the pipe above.
“It looks like three fighters,” Lando said to Chewbacca as they watched the computer-screen configurations. “We can outdistance them easily,” he added, knowing the capabilities of the freighter as well as Han Solo did.
Looking at Leia, he mourned the passing of his administratorship. “I knew that setup was too good to last,” he moaned. “I’m going to miss it.”
But Leia seemed to be in a daze. She didn’t acknowledge Lando’s comments, but stared straight ahead of her as if transfixed. Then, out of her dreamlike trance, she spoke. “Luke,” she said, as if responding to something she heard.
“What?” Lando asked.
“We’ve got to go back,” she said urgently. “Chewie, head for the bottom of the city.”
Lando looked at her in astonishment. “Wait a minute. We’re not going back there!”
The Wookiee barked, for once in agreement with Lando.
“No argument,” Leia said firmly, assuming the dignity of one accustomed to having her orders obeyed. “Just do it. That’s a command!”
“What about those fighters?” Lando argued as he pointed to the three TIE fighters closing in on them. He looked to Chewbacca for support.
But, growling menacingly, Chewbacca conveyed that he knew who was in command now.
“Okay, okay,” Lando quietly acquiesced.
With all the grace and speed for which the Millennium Falcon was famed, the ship banked through the clouds and turned back toward the city. And, as the freighter continued on what could become a suicide run, the three pursuing TIE fighters matched its turn.
Luke Skywalker was unaware of the Millennium Falcon’s approach. Barely conscious, he somehow maintained his hold on the creaking and swaying weather vane. The device bent under the weight of his body, then completely broke off from its foundation, and sent Luke tumbling helplessly through the sky. And this time, he knew, there would be nothing for him to cling to as he fell.
“Look!” Lando exclaimed, indicating a figure plunging in the distance. “Someone’s falling …”
Leia managed to remain calm; she knew that panic now would doom them all. “Get under him, Chewie,” she told the pilot. “It’s Luke.”
Chewbacca immediately responded and carefully eased the Millennium Falcon on a descent trajectory.
“Lando,” Leia called, turning to him, “open the top hatch.”
As he rushed out of the cockpit, Lando thought it a strategy worthy of Solo himself.
Chewbacca and Leia could see Luke’s plunging body more clearly, and the Wookiee guided the ship toward him. As Chewie retarded the ship’s speed drastically, the plummeting form skimmed the windscreen and then landed with a thud against the outer hull.
Lando opened the upper hatch. In the distance he glimpsed the three TIE fighters approaching the Falcon, their laser guns brightening the twilight sky with streaks of hot destruction. Lando stretched his body out of the hatch and reached to grasp the battered warrior and pull him inside the ship. Just then the Falcon lurched as a bolt exploded near it, and almost threw Luke’s body overboard. But Lando caught his hand and held on tightly.
The Millennium Falcon veered away from Cloud City and soared through the thick billowing cloud cover. Swerving to avoid the blinding flak from the TIE fighters, Princess Leia and the Wookiee pilot struggled to keep their ship skyborne. But explosions burst all around the cockpit, the din competing with Chewbacca’s howl as he frantically worked the controls.
Leia switched on the intercom. “Lando, is he all right?” she shouted over the noise in the cockpit. “Lando, do you hear me?”
From the rear of the cockpit, she heard a voice that wasn’t Lando’s. “He’ll survive,” Luke replied faintly.
Leia and Chewbacca turned to see Luke, battered and bloodied and wrapped in a blanket, being helped into the cockpit by Lando. The princess jumped up from her chair and hugged him ecstatically. Chewbacca, still trying to guide the ship out of the TIE fighters’ range of fire, threw back his head and barked in jubilation.
Behind the Millennium Falcon, the planet of clouds was receding farther in the distance. But the TIE fighters kept up their close pursuit, firing their laser weapons and rocking the pirate craft with each on-target hit.
Working diligently in the Falcon’s hold, Artoo-Detoo struggled against the constant lunging and tossing to reassemble his golden friend. Meticulously trying to undo the mistakes of the well-intentioned Wookiee, the little droid beeped as he performed the intricate task.
“Very good,” the protocol droid praised. His head was on properly and his second arm was nearly completely reattached. “Good as new.”
Artoo beeped apprehensively.
“No, Artoo, don’t worry. I’m sure we’ll make it this time.”
But in the cockpit, Lando was not so optimistic. He saw the warning lights on the control panel begin to flash; suddenly alarms all over the ship went on. “The deflector shields are going,” he reported to Leia and Chewbacca.
Leia looked over Lando’s shoulder and noticed another blip, ominously large, that had appeared on the radar-scope. “There’s another ship,” she said, “much bigger, trying to cut us off.”
Luke quietly gazed out the cockpit window toward the starry void. Almost to himself, he said, “It’s Vader.”
Admiral Piett approached Vader, who stood on the bridge of this, the greatest of all Imperial Star Destroyers, and stared out the windows.
“They’ll be in range of the tractor beam in moments,” the admiral reported confidently.
“And their hyperdrive has been deactivated?” Vader asked.
“Right after they were captured, sir.”
“Good,” the giant black-robed figure said. “Prepare for the boarding and set your weapons for stun.”
The Millennium Falcon so far had managed to evade its TIE fighter pursuers. But could it escape attack from the ominous Star Destroyer that pressed toward it, ever closer?
“We don’t have any room for mistakes,” Leia said tensely, watching the large blip on the monitors.
“If my men said they fixed this baby, they fixed it,” Lando assured her. “We’ve got nothing to worry about.
”
“Sounds familiar,” Leia mused to herself.
The ship was rocked again by the concussion of another laser explosion, but at that moment a green light began flashing on the control panel.
“The coordinates are set, Chewie,” Leia said. “It’s now or never.”
The Wookiee barked in agreement. He was ready for the hyperdrive escape.
“Punch it!” Lando yelled.
Chewbacca shrugged as if to say it was worth a try. He pulled back on the light-speed throttle, suddenly altering the sound of the ion engines. All on board were praying in human and droid fashion that the system would work; they had no other hope of escape. But abruptly the sound choked and died and Chewbacca roared a howl of desperate frustration.
Again the hyperdrive system had failed them.
And still the Millennium Falcon lurched with the TIE fighters’ fire.
* * *
From his Imperial Star Destroyer, Darth Vader watched in fascination as the TIE fighters relentlessly fired at the Millennium Falcon. Vader’s ship was closing in on the fleeing Falcon—it would not be long before the Dark Lord had Skywalker completely in his power.
And Luke sensed it, too. Quietly he gazed out, knowing that Vader was near, that his victory over the weakened Jedi would soon be complete. His body was battered, was exhausted; his spirit was prepared to succumb to his fate. There was no reason to fight any more—there was nothing left to believe in.
“Ben,” he whispered in utter despair, “why didn’t you tell me?”
Lando tried to adjust some controls, and Chewbacca leaped from his chair to race to the hold. Leia took Chewbacca’s seat and helped Lando as they flew the Falcon through the exploding flak.
As the Wookiee ran into the hold, he passed Artoo, who was still working on Threepio. The R2 unit began to beep in great consternation as he scanned the Wookiee frantically trying to fix the hyperdrive system.
“I said we’re doomed!” the panicked Threepio told Artoo. “The light-speed engines are malfunctioning again.”
Artoo beeped as he connected a leg.
