"Splinter Of The Minds Eye (Alan Dean Foster)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Foster Alan Dean)

boy?not since he had helped destroy the bloated battle station secretly built by
Governor Moff Tarkin and his henchman Darth Vader.

Luke had no experience with titles, hence no use for them. When the Rebel
leaders offered him any reward within their ability to grant, he had asked only
to be permitted to continue piloting a fighter in the Alliance's service. Some
thought his request unduly modest, but one shrewd general disagreed, explaining
how Luke might be more valuable to the Rebellion without a title or commission
which, the veteran pointed out to his colleagues, would serve only to make the
youth a prime target for Imperial assassination. So Luke remained the pilot he'd
always wanted to be, perfecting his flying skills and always, unceasingly,
wrestling with the Force Ben Kenobi had enabled him to begin to understand.

No time for meditating now, he reminded himself as he studied the instruments of
his X-wing fighter. A glance forward showed the brilliant pulsing sun-ball of
Circarpous Major, its devastating radiance stopped down to viewable intensity by
the phototropic material of the transparent port itself.

"Everything okay back there, Artoo?" he called into his pickup. A cheerful beep
from the stubby 'droid locked in position behind the cockpit assured Luke that
it was.

Their destination was the fourth planet out from this star. Like so many others,
the Circarpousians were appalled by the atrocities perpetrated by the Empire,
but too paralyzed by fear to openly join the Rebel Alliance. Over the years, a
burgeoning underground movement had arisen on Circarpous, an underground needing
only enough aid and encouragement from the Alliance to rise and swing their
world to the cause of freedom.

From the tiny, hidden Rebel station on the outermost planet of the system, Luke
and the Princess were racing to a critically important meeting with the heads of
that underground, to offer the necessary promise of support. He checked his
console chronometer. They would arrive in plenty of time to reassure the highly
nervous underground chiefs.

Leaning slightly forward and glancing to starboard, he could admire the sleek Y-wing
fighter cruising alongside. Two figures sat silhouetted by instrument lights
within its cockpit. One was the gleaming golden shape of See Threepio, Artoo's
'droid companion.

The other? whenever he looked at her, the other caused emotions to boil within
him like soup too long on the fire, no matter if she was separated from him by
near vacuum as at present or by only an arm's length in a conference room. It
was for and because of that individual, Princess and Senator Leia Organa of the
now-vaporized world of Alderaan, that Luke had originally become involved in the
Rebellion. First her portrait and then her person had initiated the irreversible
metamorphosis from farm boy to fighter pilot. Now the two of them were the
official emissaries from the ruling council of the Rebel government to the
vacillating underground on Circarpous.