Story so far....

Story so far....

Darth Vader chases and catches Princess Liea's ship to take back the stolen plans of the 'Death Star' but she manages to feed the plans in to R2D2 and send him out of her ship to fall on to Tatooine - a nearby planet.  Luke Skywalker who has lost his parents lives in Tatooine with his uncle and Aunt and he plans to be a farm boy one day... But the 2 Droids who fall from nowhere change his life plan..


Back to the story...

"What a forsaken place this is!" Threepio turned cautiously to look back at where the pod lay half buried in sand. His internal gyros were still unsteady from the rough landing. Landing! Mere application of the term unduly flattered his dull associate.

On the other hand, he supposed he ought to be grateful they had come down in one piece. Although, he mused as he studied the barren landscape, he still wasn't sure they were better off here than they would have been had they remained on the captured cruiser. High sandstone mesas dominated the skyline to one side. Every other direction showed only endless series of marching dunes like long yellow teeth stretching for kilometer on kilometer into the distance. Sand ocean blended into sky-glare until it was impossible to distinguish where one ended and the other began.

A faint cloud of minute dust particles rose in their wake as the two robots marched away from the pod. That vehicle, its intended function fully discharged, was now quite useless. Neither robot had been designed for pedal locomotion on this kind of terrain, so they had to fight their way across the unstable surface.

"We seem to have been made to suffer," Threepio moaned in self-pity. "It's a rotten existence." Something squeaked in his right leg and he winced. "I've got to rest before I fall apart. My internals still haven't recovered from that headlong crash you called a landing." He paused, but Artoo Detoo did not. The little automaton had performed a sharp turn and was now ambling slowly but steadily in the direction of the nearest outjut of mesa.

"Hey," Threepio yelled. Artoo ignored the call and continued striding. "Where do you think you're going?" Now Artoo paused, emitting a stream of electronic explanation as Threepio exhaustedly walked over to join him. "Well, I'm not going that way," Threepio declared when Artoo had concluded his explanation. "It's too rocky." He gestured in the direction they had been walking, at an angle away from the cliffs. "This way is much easier." A metal hand waved disparagingly at the high mesas. "What makes you think there are any settlements that way, anyhow?" A long whistle issued from the depths of Artoo. "Don't get technical with me," Threepio warned. "I've had just about enough of your decisions."

Artoo beeped once. "All right, go your way," Threepio announced grandly. "You'll be

sandlogged within a day, you nearsighted scrap pile." He gave the Artoo unit a contemptuous shove, sending the smaller robot tumbling down a slight dune.

As it struggled at the bottom to regain its feet, Threepio started off toward the blurred, glaring horizon, glancing back over his shoulder. "Don't let me catch you following me, begging for help," he warned, "because you won't get it."

Below the crest of the dune, the Artoo unit righted itself. It paused briefly to clean its single electronic eye with an auxiliary arm. Then it produced an electronic squeal which was almost, though not quite, a human expression of rage. Humming quietly to itself then, it turned and trudged off toward the sandstone ridges as if nothing had happened.

Several hours later a straining Threepio, his internal thermostat overloaded and edging dangerously toward overheat shutdown, struggled up the top of what he hoped was the last towering dune. Nearby, pillars and buttresses of bleached calcium, the bones of some enormous beast, formed an unpromising landmark. Reaching the crest of the dune, Threepio peered anxiously ahead. Instead of the hoped-for greenery of human civilization he saw only several dozen more dunes, identical in form and promise to the one he now stood upon. The farthest rose even higher than the one he presently surmounted.

Threepio turned and looked back toward the now far-off rocky plateau, which was beginning to grow indistinct with distance and heat distortion. "You malfunctioning little twerp," he muttered, unable even now to admit to himself that perhaps, just possibly, the Artoo unit might have been right. "This is all your fault. You tricked me into going this way, but you'll do no better." Nor would he if he didn't continue on. So he took a step forward and heard something grind dully within a leg joint. Sitting down in an electronic funk, he began picking sand from his encrusted joints. He could continue on his present course, he told himself. Or he could confess to an error in judgment and try to catch up again with Artoo Detoo. Neither prospect held much appeal for him. But there was a third choice. He could sit here, shining in the

sunlight, until his joints locked, his internals overheated, and the ultraviolet burned out his photoreceptors. He would become another monument to the destructive power of the binary, like the colossal organism whose picked corpse he had just encountered.

Already his receptors were beginning to go, he reflected. It seemed he saw something moving in the distance. Heat distortion, probably. No-no-it was definitely light on metal, and it was moving toward him. His hopes soared. Ignoring the warnings from his damaged leg, he rose and began waving frantically. It was, he saw now, definitely a vehicle, though of a type unfamiliar to him. But a vehicle it was, and that implied intelligence and technology. He neglected in his excitement to consider the possibility that it might not be of human origin.

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