Rising from the game table, the Wookie followed his partner toward the cockpit.
Luke watched them depart, but his mind wasn’t on their imminent arrival at Alderaan.
It was burning with something else, something that seemed to grow and mature at the back of his brain as he dwelt on it.
"You know," he murmured, "I did feel something. I could almost ’see’ the outlines of the remote." He gestured at the hovering device behind him.
Kenobi’s voice when he replied was solemn. "Luke, you’ve taken the first step into a larger universe." Dozens of humming, buzzing instruments lent the freighter’s cockpit the air of a busy hive. Solo and Chewbacca had their attention locked on the most vital of those instruments.
"Steady…stand by, Chewie." Solo adjusted several manual compensators.
"Ready to go sublight…ready…cut us in, Chewie." The Wookie turned something on the console before him. At the same time Solo pulled back on a comparatively large lever. Abruptly the long streaks of Doppler-distorted starlight slowed to hyphen shapes, then finally to familiar bolts of fire. A gauge on the console registered zero.
Gigantic chunks of glowing stone appeared out of the nothingness, barely shunted aside by the ship’s deflectors. The strain caused the Millennium Falcon to begin shuddering violently.
"What the--?" a thoroughly startled Solo muttered. Next to him, Chewbacca offered no comment of his own as he flipped off several controls and activated others.
Only the fact that the cautious Solo always emerged from supralight travel with his deflectors up—just in case any of many unfriendly folks might be waiting for him— had saved the freighter from instant destruction.
