Within one floor, all light was gone. Han fumbled for his goggles, pulled them up over his eyes. Immediately he could see, though everything was in shades of black and white. The illumination came from small light inserts in the walls. The turbolift plunged downward, and Han could see the workers as they crouched over their workstations.
Piles of raw, fibrous threads studded with minuscule crystals lay piled before them.
Finally, six floors down, the turbolift ground to a halt. Han and Muuurgh got off. “Have you ever been here before?” he asked the bodyguard softly.
Muuurgh’s neck fur was standing on end, and his white whiskers bristled beneath his goggled eyes.
“No …” the Togorian whispered back. “My people are plainsdwellers. Not like caves. Not like dark. Muuurgh will be happy when Pilot wishes to leave this place. Only Muuurgh’s word of honor keeps him here in wretched darkness.”
“Steady,” Han said. “We won’t be here that long. I just want to get a look around.”
He led the way into the factory. The cavernous area was filled with soft swishings, but was otherwise silent. Long tables lined the walls and were ranged in the isleways. Each table was a workstation, and a worker sat or crouched, according to his, her, or its individual anatomy, before the table. There were many humans, Han realized, sitting on tall stools, hunched over their work.
Few looked up as Han and Muuurgh went up to the level supervisor, a furred Devaronian female, and identified themselves. The supervisor waved a reddish, sharp-nailed hand at the floor. “My workers are the most skilled,” she said proudly. “It takes skill to measure and trim the number of fibrous strands so each dose will contain the correct amount of spice.
It is essential—but very difficult—to line up the fibers so precisely that they will all activate at the same moment when exposed to visible light.”
“Is it a mineral?” Han asked. “I know it’s mined.”
“It is naturally occurring, but we don’t know how it’s formed, Pilot.
We believe it may have a biological origin, but we’re not sure. It’s found deep in the tunnels on Kessel, and it must be mined in total darkness, just as you see here.”
“And the strands have gotta be put into these casings just right.”
“Correct. Improper alignment can cause the tiny crystals to fracture against each other. If that happens, they grind each other into a far less potent—and valuable—powder. It can take a skilled worker an hour to properly align just one or two cylinders of glitterstim.”
“I see,” Han said, fascinated. “Do you mind if we just wander around?
I promise we won’t touch anything.”
“You may. However, please avoid distracting any of the workers while they are aligning the spice. One inadvertent twist, as I said, could ruin an entire thread.”
“I understand,” Han said.
The raw glitterstim threads were all black, but Han knew from hearing about it that they would shine blue when they ignited in visible light.
Han stopped behind one of the human workers and watched in fascination as the worker separated out threads of ebony-colored spice, aligning them with the utmost care. The threads curled around the worker’s fingers, some of them as fine-spun as silk, but the tiny crystals made them incredibly sharp.
The worker positioned one group of incredibly tangled threads in the jaws of a tiny vise, then proceeded to painstakingly separate out the threads, until the crystalline structures were aligned. The worker’s fingers moved almost too fast to watch, and Han realized that he was watching a highly skilled craftsman—no, woman. He was amazed that these pilgrims could actually accomplish something requiring this much dexterity. After seeing them last night following the “Exultation,” he’d more or less assumed that they were dull-witted cretins. They’d certainly looked like it…
The glitterstim worker took out a minuscule set of pliers to untangle a particularly bad snarl. She wormed the narrow-nosed pliers into the tangle, peering intently to find the place where the sharp little crystals were caught together. The fibrous glitterstim curled around her hands like tiny, living tentacles, the sharp little crystal glimmering. The worker abruptly brought her hand back, tugging, and suddenly the snarl straightened out until all the fibers aligned perfectly.
Except one.
Han watched in distress as one sharp-studded strand cut between the woman’s forefinger and thumb. A thin line of blood welled from the deep gash. Han sucked in a breath. A few centimeters deeper, and the tendon in her thumb would have been severed. She hissed with pain, then muttered something in Basic and, freeing her hand, held it to stop the bleeding.