Chewie eyed the Falcon’s speed indicator nervously, and voiced another suggestion.
“You’ll buy everyone’s dinner if I slow down?” Han gave his copilot an incredulous glance. “Hey pal, marriage must be makin’ you soft these days.
I can handle this. The Falcon can handle it. We’re gonna win this one!”
Even as he spoke, his instruments registered a strange sensor signature from the recklessly accelerating Rimrunner. Han stared, eyes wide, at his board. “Oh, no …” he whispered. “Salla, you crazy? Don’t do it!”
Moments later Rimrunner’s mynock-shaped form elongated, then popped out of real space. Chewie howled. “Salla!” Han yelled, uselessly. “You crazy fool! Tryin’ a microjump near the Maw is just asking for trouble!”
Chewie fretted as Han frantically increased speed even more, checking his sensors to try and find the Rimrunner. “Where’d she go? Crazy woman!
Where’d she go?”
Ten minutes passed, then fifteen, as the Falcon sped along, hugging the perimeter of the Maw. Han considered trying a microjump himself, but he had no way of discovering what course Salla had followed. The only thing he could be sure of was that she wouldn’t have tried jumping straight from one side of the Maw to the other. The deep gravity wells from the black holes and neutron stars would have yanked her out of hyperspace in short order—and probably straight into a black hole’s event horizon, the point of no return.
No, she had to have jumped along the perimeter, perhaps to get a straight shot at the Pit ….
Chewie whined and stabbed a hairy finger at the sensors. “That’s her!”
Han said, studying Rimrunner’s readings. Salla was still moving, but she wasn’t headed toward the Pit. She was …
“Oh, no…” Han whispered, feeling horror wash over him. “Chewie, something must have gone wrong. She ain’t goin’ in the right direction …. “He checked his instruments again. “She came outta hyperspace within the magnetic field of that neutron star up ahead!”
Rimrunner was still moving, but no longer in a straight path. Instead Salla’s ship was within a thousand kilometers of a neutron star, looping up in a high orbit. Han’s sensors showed jets of deadly plasma spewing out both sides of the flattened accretion disk that marked the neutron star’s location.
“Either the gravity well or the magnetic field must have disrupted her navicomputer, and she came out of the microjump in the wrong place ….
“Han breathed, feeling as though his chest were being squeezed by a giant, invisible hand. “Oh, Chewie… she’s a goner ….
Within minutes, Salla’s ship would reach apastron, or the highest and slowest point in her orbit around the dying star. Then, scant minutes later, Rimrunner’s orbit would pull it looping back around, and Salla’s ship would pass through the edge of the plasma jet. The deadly radiation levels there would fry her in moments.
A hundred memories of Salla raced through Han’s mind between one heartbeat and the next. Salla, smiling at him in the morning …
Salla, dressed in a glamorous gown, taking him out for a night in the casinos ˇ . . Salla, her face smudged, fixing a hyperdrive as easily as most people would fix breakfast.., except that Salla never had learned to cook ….
“Chewie …” he whispered hoarsely, “we gotta try and save her.”
Chewbacca shot him a look, then pointed a hairy finger at the sensors and growled.
“I know, I know, Rimrunner’s awfully close to that plasma jet,” Han said.
“And for us to get close, we risk gettin’ our ship knocked out and joinin’ Rimrunner. But Chewie … we gotta try.”
The Wookiee’s blue eyes narrowed with determination and he roared his agreement. Salla was a friend. They couldn’t abandon her.
Han opened a frequency on the Falcon’s comm, even as he began frantically ordering his navicomputer to run calculations. “Salla?
Salla? This is Han.
Honey, you there? We’re gonna try and get you … but you’ll have to do what I tell you. Salla? Come in! Over.”
He tried twice more as the navicomputer began spouting possible approach vectors. He knew the magnetic fields, ionized gas, and plasma trails would interfere with communications, but he hoped that the Falcon’s powerful sensors and transmitters could punch through.
“Chewie, tell Jarik to get into a vacuum suit and stand by the airlock with the magnetic grapple and the winchˇ I’m gonna tell her to eject, and we’ll match her trajectory and pick her up.”
Chewie gave Han a skeptical glance. “Don’t look at me like that!” Han snapped. “I know it won’t be easy! I’ve got the navicomputer workin’ on an approach vector that will keep us outta the plume’s magnetic field.