The growling became a deep, dry chuckle that he didn’t need Leia to translate.

“You think that’s funny? Turn on a light and I’ll show you something funny!”

“Han, don’t antagonize him!” Leia whispered.

“Why not? You think anything I do is gonna make this worse?”

“Yes,” she said. “I think he’s here for me. I think if you can keep your mouth shut, he might let you live.”

There came another deep, half-growled chuckle that didn’t need translating, and from off to Han’s left, a faint glow began, greenish and cold. In the featureless dark, he couldn’t tell how big it might be, or how far away, but the glow spread slowly, growing into an amorphous patch of light, and in the middle of that light there was a darkness, a shadow, in the shape of a man’s splayed hand. The glow spidered outward around the hand, sending forth filaments that themselves spread like ice crystals forming on the inside of a window, limning the silhouette of a huge, powerful man, crouching on the floor like a katarn preparing to spring. The glow came from some kind of luminescent lichen that seemed to grow outward from the man’s hand; the bigger it got, the faster it spread, until in one final rush it coated the entire floor and walls of the cavern and grew together across the ceiling.

Han’s mouth was dry as sand, and he had to cough his throat clear. “Did—did he do that?”

“I think so,” Leia whispered hoarsely.

The man stood. Han tried to swallow his mouthful of imaginary sand and adjusted his grip on his blaster. This guy was huge.

He was almost as tall as Chewbacca, and twice as broad across his bare chest and shoulders. He wore spacer’s pants, stretched drumhead tight across thighs as big around as Han’s waist. His skin was dark as timmosun, his hairless scalp shone as if it had been polished, and when he smiled, his teeth looked jagged and sharp enough to make a Barabel jealous.

The huge dark man spread his hands wide and welcoming. He wasn’t so much growling now as making a kind of whirring sound, like a cloud of flying insects.

“He says Here’s your light. What now? Will you shoot me with your empty blaster?”


- Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor, Chapter 15