[Galaxy Of Fear] - 02

CHAPTER 1


Tap. Tap. Tap.

Zak sat up in bed. What was that noise?

Something was wrong. He was in his own room, in his own house on the planet Alderaan. But that was impossible.

I can’t be here. Alderaan was destroyed by the Empire.

Zak and his sister, Tash, had lost their family, their friends, and their home. They had spent the last six months in the care of their only living relative, an uncle named Hoole.

So Zak knew he couldn’t be home, but everything around him looked and felt so real.

Maybe it was all a bad dream! Maybe Alderaan wasn’t destroyed. Maybe Mom and Dad are still alive!

To Zak a bad dream would explain a lot. It would explain how his mother and father, and his entire world, could have vanished in a blast of Imperial laser fire. It would explain how he and his sister had been put into the care of their mysterious Uncle Hoole, a shape-changing alien scientist. And it would explain how they had barely escaped from a monstrous planet that had almost eaten them alive.

“It explains things,” Zak said out loud, “because that was all a dream. It never happened. And that means I’m home!”

He jumped out of bed.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

That noise had awakened him. Now it repeated itself.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

The noise was coming from outside his bedroom window. Zak got out of bed. His feet felt heavy, and his vision was blurred. He fumbled his way to the transparisteel window. He was about to press the Open button but suddenly stopped.

On the other side of the window, he saw the empty void of deep space.

Deep space? How could his bedroom be traveling through deep space?

But it was. In the darkness, Zak could see stars and distant solar systems blazing like tiny points of light.

He rubbed his sleep-filled eyes, but the vision didn’t change.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

The sound came from just below his window. Zak resisted the urge to open it. If he did, the vacuum of space would suck him out. He pressed his face against the pane, trying to see what was down there.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

The object started to drift upward into Zak’s range of vision. Zak gasped and stumbled back from the window.

A dead, gray hand rose into view.

It was followed by a pale white arm, and then strands of blackened hair. Finally the figure’s face floated into view. It was white with empty sockets for eyes, but he recognized the face anyway.

It was his mother.

As he watched in horror, the mouth moved, and Zak heard his mother’s voice moan, “Zak, why did you leave us behind?”

Zak screamed.

He opened his eyes.

And found himself sitting up in a bunk onboard the ship known as the Millennium Falcon. His bedroom on Alderaan was gone. The corpse was gone. Tash was sitting bolt upright in a nearby bunk.

“Zak! What’s the matter?” his older sister cried.

Zak tried to catch his breath. “I-I guess I was dreaming,” he finally said. “I dreamed I was in my room… but my room was floating in space. And then I saw Mom, but she was floating through space, too. Dead.” He squinted to hold back a tear. He couldn’t say any more.

Tash walked over to her brother and put a comforting arm around his shoulder. Before she could speak, the door to their small cabin slid open and the snarling face of Chewbacca the Wookiee appeared. He was holding a wicked-looking bowcaster, and his enormous frame filled most of the doorway. Behind him, Tash and Zak could just see the silver frame of the humanoid droid, D-V9.

Chewbacca growled a question.

“I think the Wookiee wants to know what’s going on,” D-V9 said. “So do I. “

D-V9-or Deevee for short-cocked his mechanical head

sideways

in impatience. The droid had been Uncle Hoole’s research assistant for years, until Zak and Tash came along and Hoole had made Deevee their caretaker. Deevee didn’t always appreciate his new role, especially when one of his charges caused chaos in the middle of the night.

“It’s nothing, Deevee,” Zak said. “I just had a bad dream.”

“Hey, what’s all the shouting?” demanded Han Solo, squeezing past his Wookiee companion.

“Nothing.” Tash answered for her brother. “Sorry if we woke you.”

“No problem,” the starpilot said. “The navicomputer says we’re coming up on our destination anyway. Your uncle is in the lounge with Luke and Leia. You might as well get up.”

It didn’t take Zak and Tash long to get ready. They had lost everything when they were orphaned six months ago. Anything that they had acquired since then, they had lost again only days before, when the planet D’vouran destroyed their ship and nearly took them with it. They had been saved by the Millennium Falcon and its crew.

A few moments later, Zak and Tash entered the common area of the Millennium Falcon, where Uncle Hoole was waiting for them.