[Galaxy Of Fear] - 09(16)

“Zak!” Tash screamed. Releasing her grip on the railing, she let the powerful wind push her toward the hole, the gray-boots slowing her movements. When she reached the hole, she braced herself on the wall and looked out into space. By the time she spotted him, Zak was a small white dot tumbling head over heels into the asteroid field.

“Tash, help!” she heard Zak’s voice inside her helmet’s comlink.

Then he vanished from sight.

Tash turned to the nearest person, Jerec, and pleaded, “We’ve got to help him!”

Jerec ignored her. He had hardly noticed Zak’s disappearance. The Imperial was scanning the room. “The Ithorian,” he muttered. “That Ithorian is missing.” He turned to his stormtroopers. “This must be her doing. Find her! I want that Hammerhead!”

Most of the mining station’s air had escaped by now. With less oxygen sealed inside the walls, there was less pressure, and the wind died down. By the time the two stormtroopers churned into motion, there was hardly a breeze left, and then nothing at all.

The stormtroopers opened the inner door of the airlock and hurried into the facility with Jerec close behind them.

That left Hoole, Tash, and the two miners. But Hodge and his partner were unwilling to help. “We’ve got to try to contain this explosion. We’ve got a fortune in minerals in this place!” the chief miner apologized as they hurried out of the room.

“Uncle Hoole, what do we do?” Tash started to ask. She stopped. Hoole was already halfway to the row of yellow Starflies parked along one wall.

“I’ve never flown one of these before!” she said as her uncle climbed into the nearest craft.

“Neither have I,” Hoole replied grimly. “I suspect Zak would tell us we were going to take a crash course. Get in.”

Tash jumped into another of the tiny ships. She was surprised to find the cockpit was quite large-until she remembered that the Starfly didn’t carry its own oxygen. The pilot had to wear space gear, so the designers had added extra room to fit the bulky suits.

The controls were basic, and Tash had the engines fired up in seconds. “Tash, do you copy?” Hoole’s calm voice came over the comlink. It steadied her trembling hands.

“Yes,” she said into the microphone. “What are we going to do?”

“We must fly into the asteroids and grab him with the ship’s tractor beams, just as the miners rescued us,” her uncle explained.

We must fly into the asteroids.

Tash shuddered. It was bad enough to have the asteroids rocketing through the sky over her head. Flying through them-that was like daring the space rocks to smash them.

Hoole seemed to read her thoughts. “Don’t worry, Tash. Starflies were made for this type of work. Keep your eyes open and trust your skills. Let’s go.”

Hoole’s Starfly lifted off the deck and accelerated toward the hole in the wall.

For an instant, Tash was frozen. She tried to force her hands to work the controls, but they wouldn’t move.

Think of Zak, she told herself. She took a deep breath, the kind that had always made her feel calm. Relaxed. Closer to the Force.

Her hands moved.

Before she knew it, her Starfly had slipped out of the docking bay and was rising from the asteroid’s surface. She could see Hoole’s ship like a bright yellow dot against the black field of space. She hit her thrusters and sped to catch up.

Suddenly, an asteroid the size of a bantha dropped into view, tumbling toward her viewscreen. The Starfly seemed to leap out of the asteroid’s path with a mind of its own.

Tash looked down at her controls. She had moved the ship without thinking! Her arms tingled. Wasn’t this how she’d felt in the past when she’d used the Force? And wasn’t it just how she’d felt when she tried to talk to the Bafforr trees?

Tash moved the controls again, and her Starfly looped easily around the next space rock.

She almost laughed out loud. She felt as if she were playing speed globe again. Only now she was the globe, and all the asteroids were trying to catch her!

It’s like I can predict where they’re coming from and where they’re going, she thought. Almost like… I’m connected to them.

Tash knew that the Force was an energy field that connected all living things. Did it apply to space rocks, too?

More than ever, she wished that someone could answer her questions. She wished…

Whatever she wished, she forgot it the next instant, as her eyes fell on a small white object turning slow circles toward a giant asteroid-an asteroid even larger than the one the miners lived on. The surface of the asteroid was covered in holes and caverns. In one of those caverns, Tash could see a space slug huddling, its mouth slowly opening and closing like that of a fish in water.