It was an old settler's saying that you could burn your eyes out faster by staring straight and hard at the sun-scorched flatlands of Tatooine than by looking directly at its two huge suns themselves, so powerful was the penetrating glare reflected from those endless wastes. Despite the flare, life could and did exist in the flatlands formed by long-evaporated seabeds. One thing made it possible: the reintroduction of water.

For human purposes, however, the water of Tatooine was only marginally accessible. The atmosphere yielded its moisture with reluctance. It had to be coaxed down out of the hard blue sky—coaxed, forced, yanked down to the parched surface. Two figures whose concern was obtaining that moisture were standing on a slight rise of one of those inhospitable flats. One of the pair was stiff and metallic— a sand-pitted vaporator sunk securely through sand and into deeper rock. The figure next to it was a food deal more animated, though no less sun-weathered.

Luke Skywalker was twice the age of the ten-year-old vaporator, but much less secure. At the moment he was swearing softly at a recalcitrant valve adjuster on the temperamental device. From time to time he resorted to some unsubtle pounding in place of using the appropriate tool. Neither method worked very well. Luke was sure that the lubricants used on the vaporator went out of their way to attract sand, beckoning seductively to small abrasive particles with an oily gleam. He wiped sweat from his forehead and leaned back for a moment. The most prepossessing thing about the young man was his name. A light breeze tugged at his shaggy hair and baggy work tunic as he regarded the device. No point in staying angry at it, he counseled himself. It's only an unintelligent machine.

As Luke considered his predicament, a third figure appeared, scooting out from behind the vaporator to fumble awkwardly at the damaged section. Only three of the Treadwell model robot's six arms were functioning, and these had seen more wear than the boots on Luke's feet. The machine moved with unsteady stop-and-start motions.

Luke gazed at it sadly, then inclined his head to study the sky. Still no sign of a cloud, and he knew there never would be unless he got that vaporator working. He was about to try once again when a small, intense gleam of light caught his eye. Quickly he slipped the carefully cleaned set of macrobinoculars from his utility belt and focused the lenses skyward.

For long moments he stared, wishing all the while that he had a real telescope instead of the binocs. As he stared, vaporators, the heat, and the day's remaining chores were forgotten. Clipping the binoculars back onto his belt, Luke turned and dashed for the landspeeder. Halfway to the vehicle he thought to call behind him.

"Hurry up," he shouted impatiently. "What are you waiting for? Get it in gear."

The Treadwell started toward him, hesitated, and then commenced spinning in a tight circle, smoke belching from every joint. Luke shouted further instruction, then finally gave up in disgust when he realized that it would take more than words to motivate the Treadwell again.

For a moment Luke hesitated at leaving the machine behind—but, he argued to himself, its vital components were obviously shot. So he jumped into the landspeeder, causing the recently repaired repulsion floater to list alarmingly to one side until he was able to equalize weight distribution by sliding behind the controls. Maintaining its altitude slightly above the sandy ground, the light-duty transport vehicle steadied itself like a boat in a heavy sea. Luke gunned the engine, which whined in protest, and sand erupted behind the floater as he aimed the craft toward the distant town of Anchorhead.

Behind him, a pitiful beacon of black smoke from the burning robot continued to rise into the clear desert air. It wouldn't be there when Luke returned. There were scavengers of metal as well as flesh in the wide wastes of Tatooine.

Metal and stone structures bleached white by the glaze of twin Tatoo I and II huddled together tightly, for company as much as for protection. They formed the nexus of the widespread farming community of Anchorhead.

Presently the dusty, unpaved streets were quiet, deserted. Sandflies buzzed lazily in the cracked eaves of pourstone building. A dog barked in the distance, the sole sign of habitation until a lone old woman appeared and started across the street. Her metallic sun shawl was pulled tight around her.

Something made her look up, tired eyes squinting into the distance. The sound suddenly leaped in volume as a shining rectangular shape came roaring around a far corner. Her eyes popped as the vehicle bore down on her, showing no sign of altering its path. She had to scramble to get out of its way.

Panting and waving an angry fist after the landspeeder, she raised her voice over the sound of its passage. "Won't you kids ever learn to slow down!"

Luke might have seen her, but he certainly didn't hear her. In both cases his attention was focused elsewhere as he pulled up behind a low, long concrete station. Various coils and rods jutted from its top and sides. Tatooine's relentless sand waves broke in frozen yellow spume against the station's walls. No one had bothered to clear them away. There was no point. They would only return again the following day.

Luke slammed the front door aside and shouted, "Hey!"

A rugged young man in mechanic's dress sat sprawled in a chair behind the station's unkempt control desk. Sunscreen oil had kept his skin from burning. The skin of the girl on his lap had been equally protected, and there was a great deal more of the protected area in view. Somehow even dried sweat looked good on her.

"Hey, everybody!" Luke yelled again, having elicited something less than an overwhelming response with his first cry. He ran toward the instrument room at the rear of the station while the mechanic, half asleep, ran a hand across his face and mumbled, "Did I hear a young noise blast through here?"

The girl on his lap stretched sensuously, her well-worn clothing tugging in various intriguing directions. Her voice was casually throaty. "Oh," she yawned, "that was just Wormie on one of his rampages."

Deak and Windy looked up from the computer-assisted pool game as Luke burst into the room. They were dressed much like Luke, although their clothing was of better fit and somewhat less exercised.

All three youths contrasted strikingly with the burly handsome player at the far side of the table. From neatly clipped hair to his precision-cut uniform he stood out in the room like an Oriental poppy in a sea of oats. Behind the three humans a soft hum came from where a repair robot was working patiently on a broken piece of station equipment.

"Shape it up, you guys," Luke yelled excitedly. Then he noticed the older man in the uniform. The subject of his suddenly startled gaze recognized him simultaneously.

"Biggs!"

The man's face twisted in a half grin. "Hello, Luke." Then they were embracing each other warmly.

Luke finally stood away, openly admiring the other's uniform. "I didn't know you were back. When did you get in?"

The confidence in the other's voice bordered the realm of smugness without quite entering it. "Just a little while ago. I wanted to surprise you, hotshot." He indicated the room. "I thought you'd be here with these other two nightcrawlers." Deak and Windy both smiled. "I certainly didn't expect you to be out working." He laughed easily, a laugh few people found resistible.

"The academy didn't change you much," Luke commented. "But you're back so soon." His expression grew concerned. "Hey, what happened—didn't you get your commission?"

There was something evasive about Biggs as he replied, looking slightly away, "Of course I got it. Signed to serve aboard the freighter Rand Ecliptic just last week. First Mate Biggs Darklighter, at your service." He performed a twisting salute, half serious and half humorous, then grinned that over bearing yet ingratiating grin again.

"I just came back to say good-bye to all you unfortunate landlocked simpletons." They all laughed, until Luke suddenly remembered what had brought him here in such hurry.

"I almost forgot," he told them, his initial excitement returning, "there's a battle going on right here in our system. Come and look."

Deak looked disappointed. "Not another one of your epic battles, Luke. Haven't you dreamed up enough of them? Forget it."

"Forget it, hell—I'm serious. It's a battle, all right."

With words and shoves he managed to cajole the occupants of the station out into the strong sunlight. Camie in particular looked disgusted.

"This had better be worth it, Luke," she warned him, shading her eyes against the glare.

Luke already had his macrobinoculars out and was searching the heavens. It took only a moment for him to fix on a particular spot. "I told you," he insisted. "There they are."

Biggs moved alongside him and reached for the binoculars as the other strained unaided eyes. A slight readjustment provided just enough magnification for Biggs to out two silvery specks against the dark blue.

"That's no battle, hotshot," he decided, lowering the binocs and regarding his friend gently. "They're just sitting there. Two ships, all right—probably a barge loading a freighter, since Tatooine hasn't got an orbital station."

"There was a lot of firing—earlier," Luke added. His initial enthusiasm was beginning to falter under the withering assurance of his older friend.

Camie grabbed the binoculars away from Biggs, banging them slightly against a support pillar in the process. Luke took them away from her quickly, inspecting the casing for damage. "Take it easy with those."

"Don't worry so much, Wormie." She sneered. Luke took a step toward her, then halted as the huskier mechanic easily interposed himself between them and favored Luke with a warning smile. Luke considered, shrugged the incident away.

"I keep telling you, Luke," the mechanic said, with the air of a man tired of repeating the same story to no avail, "the rebellion is a long way from here. I doubt if the Empire would fight to keep this system. Believe me, Tatooine is a big hunk of nothing."

His audience began to fade back into the station before Luke could mutter a reply. Fixer had his arm around Camie, and the two of them were chuckling over Luke's ineptitude. Even Deak and Windy were murmuring among themselves—about him, Luke was certain.

He followed them, but not without a last glance back and up to the distant specks. One thing he was sure of were the flashes of light he had seen between the two ships. They hadn't been caused by the suns of Tatooine reflecting off metal.

The binding that locked the girl's hands behind her back was primitive and effective. The constant attention the squad of heavily armed troopers favored her with might have been out of place for one small female, except for the fact that their lives depended on her being delivered safely.

When she deliberately slowed her pace, however, it became apparent that her captors did not mind mistreating her a little. One of the armored figures shoved her brutally in the small of the back, and she nearly fell. Turning, she gave the offending soldier a vicious look. But she could not tell if it had any effect, since the man's face was completely hidden by his armored helmet.

The hallway they eventually emerged into was still smoking around the edges of the smoldering cavity blasted through the hull of the fighter. A portable accessway had been sealed to it and a circlet of light showed at the far end of the tunnel, bridging space between the rebel craft and the cruiser. A shadow moved over her as she turned from inspecting the accessway, startling her despite her usually unshakable self-control.

Above her toward the threatening bulk of Darth Vader, red eyes glaring behind the hideous breath mask. A muscle twitched in one smooth cheek, but other than that the girl didn't react. Nor was there the slightest shake in her voice.

"Darth Vader…I should have known. Only you would be so bold—and so stupid. Well, the Imperial Senate will not sit still for this. When they hear that you have attacked a diplomatic miss—"

"Senator Leia Organa," Vader rumbled softly, though strongly enough to override her protests. His pleasure at finding her was evident in the way he savored every syllable.

"Don't play games with me, Your Highness," he continued ominously. "You aren't on any mercy mission this time. You passed directly through a restricted system, ignoring numerous warnings and completely disregarding orders to turn about—until it no longer mattered."

The huge metal skull dipped close. "I know that several transmissions were beamed to this vessel by spies within that system. When we traced those transmissions back to the individuals with whom they originated; they had the poor grace to kill themselves before they could be questioned. I want to know what happened to the data they sent you."

Neither Vader's words nor his inimical presence appeared to have any effect on the girl. "I don't know what you're blathering about," she snapped, looking away from him. "I'm a member of the Senate on a diplomatic mission to—"

"To your part of the rebel alliance," Vader declared, cutting her off accusingly. "You're also a traitor." His gaze went to a nearby officer. "Take her away."

She succeeded in reaching him with her spit, which hissed against still-hot battle armor. He wiped the offensive matter away silently, watching her with interest as she was marched through the accessway into the cruiser.

A tall, slim soldier wearing the sign of an Imperial Commander attracted Vader's attention as he came up next to him. "Holding her is dangerous," he ventured, likewise looking after her as she was escorted toward the cruiser. "If word of this does get out, there will be much unrest in the Senate. It will generate sympathy for the rebels." The Commander looked up at the unreadable metal face, then added in an off-handed manner, "She should be destroyed immediately."

"No. My first duty is to locate that hidden fortress of theirs," Vader replied easily. "All the rebel spies have been eliminated—by our hand or by their own. Therefore she is now my only key to discovering its location. I intend to make full use of her. If necessary, I will use her up—but I will learn the location of the rebel base."

The Commander pursed his lips, shook his head slightly, perhaps a bit sympathetically, as he considered the woman. "She'll die before she gives you any information." Vader's reply was chilling in its indifference. "Leave that to me." He considered a moment, then went on. "Send out a wide-band distress signal. Indicate that the Senator's ship encountered an unexpected meteorite cluster it could not avoid. Readings indicate that the shift shields were overridden and the ship was hulled to the point of vacating ninety-five percent of its atmosphere. Inform her father and the Senate that all aboard were killed."

A cluster of tired-looking troops marched purposefully up to their Commander and the Dark Lord. Vader eyed them expectantly.

"The data tapes in question are not aboard the ship. There is no valuable information in the ship's storage banks and no evidence of bank erasure," the officer in charge recited mechanically. "Nor were any transmissions directed outward from the ship from the time we made contact. A malfunctioning lifeboat pod was ejected during the fighting, but it was confirmed at the time that no life forms were on board."

Vader appeared thoughtful. "It could have been a malfunctioning pod," he mused, "That might also have contained the tapes. Tapes are not life forms. In all probability any native finding them would be ignorant of their importance and would likely clear them for his own use. Still…"

"Send down a detachment to retrieve them, or to make certain they are not in the pod," he finally ordered the Commander and attentive officer. "Be as subtle as possible; there is no need to attract attention, even on this miserable outpost world."

As the officer and troops departed, Vader turned his gaze back to the Commander. "Vaporize this fighter—we don't want to leave anything. As for the pod, I cannot take the chance it was a simple malfunction. The data it might contain could prove too damaging. See to this personally, Commander. If those data tapes exist, they must be retrieved or destroyed at all costs." Then he added with satisfaction, "With that accomplished and the Senator in our hands, we will see the end of this absurd rebellion."

"It shall be as you direct, Lord Vader," the Commander acknowledged. Both men entered the accessway to the cruiser.

"What a forsaken place this is!"

Threepio turned cautiously to look back at where the pod lay half buried in sand. His internal gyros were still unsteady from the rough landing. Landing! Mere application of the term unduly flattered his dull associate.

On the other hand, he supposed he ought to be grateful they had come down in one piece. Although, he mused as he studied the barren landscape, he still wasn't sure they were better off here than they would have been had they remained on the captured cruiser. High sandstone mesas dominated the skyline to one side. Every other direction showed only endless series of marching dunes like long yellow teeth stretching for kilometer on kilometer into the distance. Sand ocean blended into sky- glare until it was impossible to distinguish where one ended and the other began.

A faint cloud of minute dust particles rose in their wake as the two robots marched away from the pod. That vehicle, its intended function fully discharged, was now quite useless. Neither robot had been designed for pedal locomotion on this kind of terrain, so they had to fight their way across the unstable surface.

"We seem to have been made to suffer," Threepio moaned in self-pity. "It's a rotten existence." Something squeaked in his right leg and he winced. "I've got to rest before I fall apart. My internals still haven't recovered from that headlong crash you called a landing."

He paused, but Artoo Detoo did not. The little automation had performed a sharp turn and was now ambling slowly but steadily in the direction of the nearest outjut of mesa.

"Hey," Threepio yelled. Artoo ignored the call and continued striding. "Where do you think you are going?"

Now Artoo paused, emitting a stream of electronic explanation as Threepio exhaustedly walked over to join him.

"Well, I'm not going that way," Threepio declared when Artoo had concluded his explanation. "It's too rocky." He gestured in the direction they had been walking, at an angle away from the cliffs. "This way is much easier." A metal hand waved disparagingly at the high mesas. "What makes you think there are settlements that way, anyhow?"

A long whistle issued from the depths of Artoo.

"Don't get technical with me," Threepio warned. "I've had just about enough of your decisions."

Artoo beeped once.

"All right, go your way," Threepio announced grandly. "You'll be sandlogged within a day, you nearsighted scrap pile." He gave the Artoo unit a contemptuous shove, sending the smaller robot tumbling down a slight dune. As it struggled at the bottom to regain its feet, Threepio started off toward the blurred, glaring horizon, glancing back over his shoulder. "Don't let me catch you following me, begging for help," he warned, "because you won't get it."

Below the crest of the dune, the Artoo unit righted itself. It paused briefly to clean its single electronic eye with an auxiliary arm. Then it produced an electronic squeal, which was almost, though not quite, a human expression of rage. Humming quietly to itself then, it turned and trudged off toward the sandstone ridges as if nothing had happened.

Several hours later a straining Threepio, his internal thermostat overloaded and edging dangerously toward overheat shutdown, struggled up the top of what he hoped was the last towering the dune. Nearby, a pillars and buttresses of bleached calcium, the bones of some enormous beast, formed an unpromising landmark. Reaching the crest of the dune, Threepio peered anxiously ahead. Instead of the hoped-for greenery of human civilization he saw only several dozen more dunes, identical in form and promise to the one he now stood upon. The farthest rose even higher than the one he presently surmounted.

Threepio turned and looked back toward the now far-off rocky plateau, which was beginning to grow indistinct with distance and heat distortion. "You malfunctioning little twerp," he muttered, unable even now to admit to himself that perhaps, just possibly, the Artoo unit might have been right. "This is all your fault. You tricked me into going this way, but you'll do no better."

Nor would he if he didn't continue on. So he took a step forward and heard something grind dully within a leg joint. Sitting down in an electronic funk, he began picking sand from his encrusted joints.

He could continue on his present course, he told himself. Or he could confess to an error in judgment and try to catch up again with Artoo Detoo. Neither prospect held much appeal for him.

But there was a third choice. He could sit here, shining in the sunlight, until his joints locked, his internals overheated, and the ultraviolet burned out his photoreceptors. He would become another monument to the destructive power of the binary, like the colossal organism whose picked corpse he had just encountered.

Already his receptors were beginning to go, he reflected. It seemed he saw something moving in the distance. Heat distortion, probably. No—no—it was definitely light on metal, and it was moving toward him. His hopes soared. Ignoring the warnings from his damaged leg, he rose and began waving frantically.

It was, he saw now, definitely a vehicle, though of a type unfamiliar to him. But a vehicle it was, and that implied intelligence and technology.

He neglected in his excitement to consider the possibility that it might not be of human origin.

"So I cut off my power, shut down the afterburners, and dropped in low on Deak's tail," Luke finished, waving his arms wildly. He and Biggs were walking in the shade outside the power station. Sounds of metal being worked came from somewhere within, where Fixer had finally joined his robot assistant in performing repairs. "I was so close to him," Luke continued excitedly, "I thought I was going to fry my instrumentation. As it was. I busted up the skyhopper pretty bad." That recollection inspired a frown.

"Uncle Owen was pretty upset. He grounded me for the rest of the season." Luke's depression was brief. Memory of his feat overrode its immorality.

"You should have been there, Biggs!"

"You ought to take it a little easier," his friend cautioned. "You may be the hottest bush pilot this side of Mos Eisley, Luke, but those little skyhoppers can be dangerous. They move awfully fast for tropospheric craft—faster than they need to. Keep playing engine jockey with one and someday, whammo!" He slammed one fist violently into his open palm. "You're going to be nothing more than a dark spot on the damp side of a canyon wall."

"Look who's talking," Luke retorted. "Now that you've been on a few big automatic starships you're beginning to sound like my uncle. You've gotten soft in the cities." He swung spiritedly at Biggs, who blocked the movement easily, making a halfhearted gesture of counterattack.

Biggs's easygoing smugness dissolved into something warmer. "I've missed you, kid."

Luke looked away, embarrassed. "Things haven't exactly been the same since you left, either, Biggs. It's been so—" Luke hunted for the right word and finally finished helplessly, "so quiet." His gaze traveled across the sandy, deserted streets of Anchorhead. "Its always been quiet, really."

Biggs grew silent, thinking. He glanced around. They were along out there. Everyone else was back inside the comparative coolness of the power station. As he leaned close Luke sense an unaccustomed solemness in his friend's tone.

"Luke, I don't come back just to say good-bye, or to crow over everyone because I got through the Academy." Again he hesitate, unsure of himself. Then he blurted out rapidly, not giving himself a chance to back down, "But I want somebody to know. I can't tell my parents."

Gaping at Biggs, Luke could only gulp, "Know what? What are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about the talking that's been going on at the Academy—and other places, Luke. Strong talking. I made some new friends, outsystem friends. We agreed about the way certain things are developing, and—" his voice dropped conspiratorially—"When we reach one of the peripheral systems, we're going to jump ship and join the Alliance."

Luke stared back at his friend, tried to picture Biggs—fun-loving, happy-go- lucky, live-for-today Biggs—as patriot afire with rebellious fervor.

"You're going to join the rebellion?" he started. "You've got to be kidding. How?"

"Damp down, will you?" the bigger man cautioned. "You've got a mouth like a crater."

"I'm sorry," Luke whispered rapidly. "I'm quiet—listen how quiet I am. You can barely hear me—"

Biggs cut him off and continued. "A friend of mine from the Academy has a friend on Bestine who might enable us to make contact with an armed rebel unit." "A friend of a—You're crazy," Luke announced with conviction, certain his friend had gone mad. "You could wander around forever trying to find a real rebel outpost. Most of them are only myths. This twice removed friend could be an imperial agent. You'd end up on Kessel, or worse. If rebel outposts were so easy to find, the Empire would have wiped them out years ago."

"I know it's a long shot," Biggs admitted reluctantly. "If I don't contact them, then"—a peculiar light came into Biggs's eyes, a conglomeration of newfound maturity and…something else—"I'll do what I can, on my own."

He stared intensely at his friend. "Luke, I'm not going to wait for the Empire to conscript me into its service. In spite of what you hear over the official information channels, the rebellion is growing, spreading. And I want to be on the right side— the side I believe in." His voice altered unpleasantly, and Luke wondered what he saw in his mind's eye.

"You should have heard some of the stories I've heard, Luke, learned of some of the outrages I've learned about. The Empire may have been great and beautiful once, but the people in charge now—" He shook his head sharply. "It's rotten, Luke, rotten."

"And I can't do a damn thing," Luke muttered morosely. "I'm stuck here." He kicked futilely at the ever-present sand of Anchorhead.

"I though you were going to enter the Academy soon," Biggs observed. "If that's so, then you'll have your chance to get off this sandpile."

Luke snorted derisively. "Not likely. I had to withdraw my application." He looked away, unable to meet his friend's disbelieving stare. "I had to. There's been a lot of unrest among the sandpeople since you left, Biggs. They've even raided the outskirts of Anchorhead."

Biggs shook his head, disregarding the excuse. "Your uncle could hold off a whole colony of raiders with one blaster."

"From the house, sure," Luke agreed, "but Uncle Owen's finally got enough vaporators installed and running to make the farm pay off big. But he can't guard all that land by himself, and he says he needs me for one more season. I can't run out on him now."

Biggs sighed sadly. "I feel for you, Luke. Someday you're going to have to learn to separate what seems to be important from what really is important." He gestured around them.

"What good is all your uncle's work if it's taken over by the Empire? I've heard that they're starting to imperialize commerce in all the outlying systems. It won't be long before your uncle and everyone else on Tatooine are just tenants slaving for the greater glory of the Empire."

"That couldn't happen here," Luke objected with a confidence he didn't quite feel. "You've said it yourself—the Empire won't bother with this rock."

"Things change, Luke. Only the threat is completely removed—well, there are two things men have never been able to satisfy; their curiosity and their greed. There isn't much the high Imperial bureaucrats are curious about."

Both men stood silent. A sandwhirl traversed the street in silent majesty, collapsing against a wall to send newborn baby zephyrs in all directions.

"I wish I was going with you," Luke finally murmured. He glanced up. "Will you be around long?"

"No. As a matter of fact, I'm leaving in the morning to rendezvous with the Ecliptic."

"Then I guess...I won't seeing you again."

"Maybe someday," Biggs declared. He brightened, grinning that disarming grin. "I'll keep a look out for you, brother. Try not to run into any canyon walls in the meantime."

"I'll be at the Academy the season after," Luke insisted, more to encourage himself than Biggs. "After that, who knows where I'll end up?" He sounded determined. "I won't be drafted into the starfleet, that's for sure. Tale care of yourself. You'll…always be the best friend I've got." There was no need for a handshake. These two had long since passed beyond that.

"So long, then, Luke," Biggs said simply. He turned and reentered the power station.

Luke watched him disappear through the door, his own thoughts as chaotic and frenetic as one of Tatooine's spontaneous dust storms.

There were any numbers of extraordinary features unique to Tatooine's surface. Outstanding among them were the mysterious mists, which rose regularly from the ground at the points where desert sands washed up against unyielding cliffs and mesas.

Fog in a steaming desert seemed as out of place as cactus on a glacier, but it existed nonetheless. Meteorologists and geologists argued its origin among themselves, muttering hard-to-believe theories about water suspended in sandstone veins beneath the sand and incomprehensible chemical reactions which made water rise when the ground cooled, then fall underground again with the double sunrise. It was all very backward and very real.

Neither the mist nor the alien moans of nocturnal desert dwellers troubled Artoo Detoo, however, as he made his careful way up the rocky arroyo, hunting for the easiest pathway to the mesa top. His squarish, broad footpads made clicking sounds loud in the evening light as sand underfoot gave way gradually to gravel.

For a moment, he paused. He seemed to detect a noise—like metal on rock— ahead of him, instead of rock on rock. The sound wasn't repeated, though, and he quickly resumed his ambling ascent.

Up the arroyo, too far up to be seen from below, a pebble trickled loose from the stone wall. The tiny figure, which had accidentally dislodged the pebble, retreated mouse-like into shadow. Two glowing points of light showed under overlapping folds of brown cape a meter from the narrowing canyon wall.

Only the reaction of the unsuspecting robot indicated the presence of the whining beam as it struck him. For a moment Artoo Detoo fluoresced eerily in the dimming light. There was a single short electronic squeak. Then the tripodal support unbalanced and the tiny automation toppled over onto its back, the lights on its front blinking on and off erratically from the effects of the paralyzing beam.

Three travesties of men scurried out from behind concealing boulders. Their motions were more indicative of rodent than humankind, and they stood little taller than the Artoo unit. When they saw that the single burst of enervation energy had immobilized the robot, they holstered their peculiar weapons. Nevertheless, they approached the listless machine cautiously, with the trepidation of hereditary cowards.

Their cloaks were thickly coated with dust and sand. Unhealthy red-yellow pupils glowed catlike from the depths of their hoods as they studied their captive. The jawas conversed in low guttural croaks and scrambled analogs of human speech. If, as anthropologists hypothesized, they had ever been human, they had long since degenerated past anything resembling the human race.

Several more jawas appeared. Together, they succeeded in alternately hoisting and dragging the robot back down the arroyo.

At the bottom of canyon—like some monstrous prehistoric beast—was a sandcrawler as enormous as its owners and operators were tiny. Several dozen meters high, the vehicle towered above the ground on multiple treads that were taller than a tall man. Its metal epidermis was battered and pitted from with-standing untold sandstorms.

On reaching the crawler, the jawas resumed jabbering among themselves. Artoo Detoo could hear them but failed to comprehend anything. He need not have been embarrassed at his failure. If they so wished, only jawas could understand other jawas, for they employed a randomly variable language that drove linguists mad.

One of them removed a small disk from a belt pouch and sealed it to the Artoo unit's flank. A large tube protruded from one side of the gargantuan vehicle. They rolled him over to it and then moved clear. There was a brief moan, the whoosh of powerful vacuum, and the small robot was sucked into the bowels of the sandcrawler as neatly as a pea up a straw. This part of the job completed, the jawas engaged in another bout of jabbering, following which they scurried into the crawler via tubes and ladders, for all the world like a nest of mice returning to their holes.

None too gently, the suction tube deposited Artoo in a small cubical. In addition to varied piles of broken instruments and outright scrap, a dozen or so robots of differing shapes and sizes populated the prison. A few were locked in electronic conversation. Others muddled aimlessly about. But when Artoo tumbled into the chamber, one voice burst out in surprise.

"Artoo Detoo—it's you, it's you!" called an excited Threepio from the near darkness. He made his way over to the still immobilized repair unit and embraced it most unmechanically. Spotting the small disk sealed onto Artoo's side, Threepio turned his gaze thoughtfully down to his own chest, where a similar device had likewise been attached.

Massive gears, poorly lubricated, started to move. With a groaning and grinding, the monster sandcrawler turned and lumbered with relentless patience into the desert night.

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