"Foster, Alan Dean - Star Wars - Splinter Of The Mind's Eye" - читать интересную книгу автора (Foster Alan Dean)

A querulous chittering sounded behind them. "Kee wonders if we have anything to eat," Luke asked. A second grunt. "Hin wonders, too."
"Never heard of a Yuzzem that wasn't always hungry," Halla replied. She turned in the chair, pointed toward the rear of the vehicle. "There's a big storage locker back there. It's full of rations." She permitted herself a smug grin. "I checked through the yard pretty thorough before settling on this particular mud-mauler. Engines are full-charged and we can run on them for weeks. Plenty of food and equipment on board. Water's never a problem on Mimban, so long as you take care to kill the things that live in it before you drink."
"I'm impressed," the Princess admitted. "How did someone like you-not authorized, I mean-manage to set up the theft of a fully equipped, expensive vehicle like this crawler?"
"You sure are strangers here," Halla commented. "Nothing's put under guard here if it's larger than a personal handcase. There's nowhere to run off to with anything big. The only way off-planet is under Imperial supervision and they check everything that comes down and especially anything going off.
"Anyone could make off with a crawler like this one or a truck. But just try and steal one drill bit! No, any thief has only one place to run to, and that's back to one of the five mine towns... and Grammel."
The Princess nodded. "I'm hungry myself. Luke?"
"In a minute." While she moved to excavate something for them to eat, Luke turned to Halla.
"How far do you estimate we have to go before we reach the temple where the crystal's supposed to be?"
"According to what the native told me... Oh, here, it makes more sense if you can see it." She reached inside the top of her suit, brought out a small slipcase. It bulged with papers. Hunting through it, she finally selected one and unfolded it before Luke.
He studied the drawing in the dim light of the crawler's console illumination. "I can't make anything out of this."
"I'm no artist," she grumbled, "and the native wasn't either."
"No, you're not." Luke stared at this enigmatic old woman in the mist. "What are you, Halla?"
She broke into a wide, toothy smile. "I'm ambitious, boy. That's enough for you to know." Picking up the map, she checked some instrumentation on the console, then pointed into the darkness.
"A week to ten days' travel, local time, in the crawler."
"That's all?" Luke exclaimed in surprise. "So close to the mine? I'd think a ship coming down would be able to spot it easily."
"Even if it could, through this soup," Halla told him, "it wouldn't inspire a rush to the site. There are probably a hundred temples in the immediate vicinity of the mine towns, and more scattered through the jungle nearby. Why bother with it? Also, a thousand men could march within five meters of a temple here and miss it entirely."
"I see." Luke sat back, considering. "What kind of place is it? Is it anything like the temple building that Grammel's people used for a headquarters?"
"That, nobody knows, not even the native. No human's ever seen the temple of Pomojema. Remember, the natives who built the temples had thousands of gods and deities. Each had its own sanctuary.
"According to the records I managed to get a look at-they're not classified or anything-this Pomojema was a minor god, but one who was supposed to be able to give his priests the ability to perform miraculous feats. Healing the sick and stuff like that. Of course, half the Mimbanian gods were supposed to be capable of miracles. Nobody wants his neighbor's god to have a bigger reputation than his own. But with this Pomojema, those legends could hold some truth. The Kaiburr crystal could be the basis for those stories."
"If Grammel's Essada gets hold of it," Luke muttered disconsolately, "it'll become a force for destruction, not healing."
Halla frowned. "Essada? Who's this Essada?" Her gaze went from Luke back to the Princess. "Is there something you two aren't telling me?"
"Governor Essada," the Princess told her, shifting uncomfortably at the mention of the name.
"A Governor? An Imperial Governor?" Halla was becoming visibly upset. Luke nodded. "An Imperial Governor's after you two?" Another nod.
She spun in her seat, started the crawler's engine. "This expedition is canceled, boy! Off! I've heard rumors of what the Governors can order done to ordinary citizens. I don't want any part of it."
"Stop it, Halla! Stop it!" Luke was wrestling with her for the controls. His greater strength finally prevailed and he shut the engine back down. "Artoo, don't start up again unless I give permission." A response beep sounded.
Halla gave up, slumped tiredly. "Leave it alone, boy. I'm an old woman, but I've still got some life left in me. I don't want to throw it away. Not even for a chance at the crystal."
"Halla, we have to find the crystal, and we have to do it before Grammel can catch us or this Governor or his representatives arrive on Mimban."
"Grammel," she muttered knowingly. "He must have recognized the significance of the splinter he took from you. He must have contacted this Essada."
"He did," admitted Luke, "but I'm not so sure he understands the worth of the crystal, or this Essada either. We can't take that chance. We have to find it first, because if we're captured, they'll learn about it from us... no matter how hard we try to keep it a secret."
"That's so," she admitted.
"And if we can't escape with it," Luke continued remorselessly, "we have to destroy it. It must not be allowed to come into Imperial possession."
"Seven years, boy, seven years," Halla muttered. "I can't promise you that if we do find it, I'll be ready to break it into dust."
"All right," Luke agreed. "Let's say we don't worry about that now. All that's important is finding it before Grammel finds us."
"A week to ten days," she told him. "If the terrain doesn't get too bad and we don't run into trouble with the locals."
"What locals?" The Princess wasn't impressed. "You don't mean those pitiful things we saw crawling and begging for a drink back in the town?"
"Some of the native races of Mimban haven't been ruined by contact with human beings," Halla, told them. "They're not all as degraded as the greenies. Some of them can, and will, fight. Keep in mind how little of this world has actually been explored. Nobody really has much idea what's out there," she waved toward the night, "beyond the immediate perimeter of the mine towns. Not the archeologists, not the anthropologists... no one.
"There are enough discoveries right by the towns to keep the small scientific station here plenty occupied, girl. They don't have the time or the need to go tramping off into this muck looking for specimens. Not when the specimens wander into town.
"We'll be going places no one's had reason to go before, and we'll likely encounter things no one's met up with before. This is a thriving, healthy world. We're a nice dollop of meat. I've seen visuals of some of the carnivores of Mimban. Their described methods of eating aren't any prettier than they are."
She turned back to Luke. "Look under the seat, boy." Luke did so, found a compartment holding two blaster rifles and four pistols. "They're all charged," she informed him, "which is more than you can say for the ones you broke out with."
Luke removed the two rifles, passed them to the Yuzzem who would be able to handle the bulky weapons easily. Then he handed a pistol to Leia, gave one to Halla, and kept the third for himself. The remaining one he left inside the compartment.
Hin began sighting along the rifle experimentally. On this model, the trigger guard was set close to the trigger itself. Too close for a thick Yuzzem finger. Hin used both hands, applied pressure in a certain way. After the guard snapped off, he tossed it over the side and thumbed the trigger with satisfaction.
Luke speculatively aimed his own pistol at a nearby bush. A touch of the firing stud and a brief flare of intense light dissolved the bush. Pleased with the new weapon, he slipped on the safety and attached it to his belt.
There was one more thing he had to do. Taking the pistol he had brought with him, he flipped open its butt end. Switching the terminal control from Charge to Draw, he attached it to the matching terminals in the haft of his lightsaber.
Leaning back, he regarded the mist silently as his father's ancient weapon sucked power....

VIII

AFTER replacing the marrow, the doctor had heat-sealed the bone, then folded muscle, flesh and skin around it to reform. An epidermal flush concluded the operation and assured that the new skin would take and not fall off in fragments and flakes in the near future.
While powerful, the local anesthetic the doctor had used was beginning to wear off. Captain-Supervisor Grammel still had no sensation in his right arm, but he could see it. He used his left hand to lift the rebuilt limb toward the light, turned it over for a look at the obverse side.
Experimentally he tried flexing his fingers. They reacted only slightly, but they reacted.