“You might be surprised,” Control said. “I take it you haven’t noticed where your lightsaber ended up?”
Luke couldn’t even remember when during all those gravity switches he’d dropped it. Now, straining out of the corner of his eye, he spotted the weapon fifteen meters away across the room, wedged just like he was within the interlocking sets of bars. “You can see it’s a tighter group of bars over at that end,” Control pointed out. “Holds the thing pretty solidly in. place.”
Luke smiled. Clearly, for all his preparation, the pirate hadn’t learned enough about Jedi. Reaching out with the Force, he activated the lightsaber’s switch. With a snap-hiss the green blade flashed into existence; reaching out again, Luke attempted to twist the handle sideways.
Nothing happened.
“You see the genius of the design,” Control said conversationally. “It’s held at just the right angle so that the blade sticks out in the gap between bars, without touching any of them. Clever, eh?”
Luke didn’t answer. The lightsaber seemed to be solidly wedged in place … but if the blade wasn’t touching the bars, the handle ought to slide freely either backward or forward. Getting a Force grip on it, he slid it forward.
“Oh, it’ll go that direction, all right,” Control said as the lightsaber began to move. “Unless it gets hung up by its switch or something. But that won’t do you any good. The blade still won’t touch any of the bars-“
The tip of the blade had reached the wall now. Luke continued forcing it that direction, pushing the blade straight into the metal plating.
“-and naturally we weren’t stupid enough to put any critical equipment behind the walls for you to cut into,” Control finished. “A little more impressed now, are we?”
“Maybe a little,” Luke said. “Now what?”
“What do’ you think?” Control retorted, his voice suddenly dark. “We know what you Jedi can do, Skywalker-don’t think we don’t. I figure that from that little ride through our base alone you’ve probably already dug out enough dirty silt about our operation to send everyone here to Fodurant or Beauchen for the next twenty years. You think we’re going to just sit here and let you do that to us, you’re crazy.”
Luke grimaced with the irony. Control was right: using his full Jedi strength, he almost certainly could have invaded the pirates minds that deeply. But with his new reluctance to use his power. so casually, he had in fact done nothing of the sort. “So what do you want to do, make a deal?”
“Hardly,” Control said. “We want you to die.”
“Really,” Luke said dryly. The bars here might be too strong for human muscle, but that was hardly the limiting factor for a Jedi. Bending enough of the bars out of the way for him to get to his lightsaber would be a long and tedious job, but he bad more than enough depth in the Force to accomplish it. “From old age, or do you have something more immediate in mind?”
“I’m actually kind of sorry,” Control said. “Seems a waste, dusting you like this, especially after what this Jedi trap cost to build. But no one’s offering bounties on captured Jedi these days. Even if they were, I don’t suppose that cage would hold you long enough for us to collect. So there it is. Good-bye, Skywalker.” There was a click, and the speaker fell dead … and in the silence, Luke heard a sound that hadn’t been there before.
The quiet hiss of escaping gas.
He took a deep breath, stretching out to the Force. There were Jedi poison-neutralizing techniques that should be able to handle whatever they were pumping in at him. Still, he’d better not dawdle on getting out of here. Closing his eyes, reaching more deeply to the Force, he began bending one of the bars away from his face&mdash
And then, suddenly, his eyes snapped open as the truth belatedly hit him.
The pirates weren’t pumping poison in. They were pumping the air out.
And not even a Jedi could survive for long without air.
Luke took another deep breath, pushing away his rising fear. A Jedi must act when he is calm, at peace with the Force. All right. Artoo and the X-wing might already be in the pirates’ hands. Even if they weren’t, there was no way for the snubfighter to maneuver its way through the cramped and twisting corridors. He was on his own here, with no resources but the few pieces of equipment he was carrying: a comlink, glow rod, datapad&mdash
And two spare blaster power packs.
Luke reached out with the Force, lifting the small flat boxes off his belt and floating them up to where he could see them. Back during the height of the Rebellion, the mechanical genius General Airen Cracken had found a way to rig blaster power packs to explode. All it took was two or more packs fastened together with their overload sturm dowels removed, and in thirty seconds they would blow with the power of a medium-sized grenade.