商业托福阅读：星球大战第二章(5)
Most of them are only myths. This twice removed friend could be an imperial agent.You’d end up on Kessel, or worse. If rebel outposts were so easy to find, the Empire would have wiped them out years ago." "I know it’s a long shot," Biggs admitted reluctantly. "If I don’t contact them, then"—a peculiar light came into Biggs’s eyes, a conglomeration of newfound maturity and…something else—"I’ll do what I can, on my own." He stared intensely at his friend. "Luke, I’m not going to wait for the Empire to conscript me into its service. In spite of what you hear over the official information channels, the rebellion is growing, spreading. And I want to be on the right side— the side I believe in." His voice altered unpleasantly, and Luke wondered what he saw in his mind’s eye.
"You should have heard some of the stories I’ve heard, Luke, learned of some of the outrages I’ve learned about. The Empire may have been great and beautiful once, but the people in charge now—" He shook his head sharply. "It’s rotten, Luke, rotten." "And I can’t do a damn thing," Luke muttered morosely. "I’m stuck here." He kicked futilely at the ever-present sand of Anchorhead.
"I though you were going to enter the Academy soon," Biggs observed. "If that’s so, then you’ll have your chance to get off this sandpile." Luke snorted derisively. "Not likely. I had to withdraw my application." He looked away, unable to meet his friend’s disbelieving stare. "I had to. There’s been a lot of unrest among the sandpeople since you left, Biggs. They’ve even raided the outskirts of Anchorhead." Biggs shook his head, disregarding the excuse. "Your uncle could hold off a whole colony of raiders with one blaster." "From the house, sure," Luke agreed, "but Uncle Owen’s finally got enough vaporators installed and running to make the farm pay off big. But he can’t guard all that land by himself, and he says he needs me for one more season. I can’t run out on him now." Biggs sighed sadly. "I feel for you, Luke. Someday you’re going to have to learn to separate what seems to be important from what really is important." He gestured around them.
"What good is all your uncle’s work if it’s taken over by the Empire? I’ve heard that they’re starting to imperialize commerce in all the outlying systems. It won’t be long before your uncle and everyone else on Tatooine are just tenants slaving for the greater glory of the Empire." "That couldn’t happen here," Luke objected with a confidence he didn’t quite feel. "You’ve said it yourself—the Empire won’t bother with this rock." "Things change, Luke. Only the threat is completely removed—well, there are two things men have never been able to satisfy; their curiosity and their greed.
There isn’t much the high Imperial bureaucrats are curious about." Both men stood silent. A sandwhirl traversed the street in silent majesty, collapsing against a wall to send newborn baby zephyrs in all directions.
"I wish I was going with you," Luke finally murmured. He glanced up. "Will you be around long?" "No. As a matter of fact, I’m leaving in the morning to rendezvous with the Ecliptic." "Then I guess...I won’t seeing you again." "Maybe someday," Biggs declared. He brightened, grinning that disarming grin.
"I’ll keep a look out for you, brother. Try not to run into any canyon walls in the meantime." "I’ll be at the Academy the season after," Luke insisted, more to encourage himself than Biggs. "After that, who knows where I’ll end up?" He sounded determined. "I won’t be drafted into the starfleet, that’s for sure. Tale care of yourself. You’ll…always be the best friend I’ve got." There was no need for a handshake. These two had long since passed beyond that.
"So long, then, Luke," Biggs said simply. He turned and reentered the power station.
Luke watched him disappear through the door, his own thoughts as chaotic and frenetic as one of Tatooine’s spontaneous dust storms.
There were any numbers of extraordinary features unique to Tatooine’s surface.
商业托福阅读：星球大战第二章(5)
Outstanding among them were the mysterious mists, which rose regularly from the ground at the points where desert sands washed up against unyielding cliffs and mesas.Fog in a steaming desert seemed as out of place as cactus on a glacier, but it existed nonetheless. Meteorologists and geologists argued its origin among themselves, muttering hard-to-believe theories about water suspended in sandstone veins beneath the sand and incomprehensible chemical reactions which made water rise when the ground cooled, then fall underground again with the double sunrise. It was all very backward and very real.
Neither the mist nor the alien moans of nocturnal desert dwellers troubled Artoo Detoo, however, as he made his careful way up the rocky arroyo, hunting for the easiest pathway to the mesa top. His squarish, broad footpads made clicking sounds loud in the evening light as sand underfoot gave way gradually to gravel.
For a moment, he paused. He seemed to detect a noise—like metal on rock— ahead of him, instead of rock on rock. The sound wasn’t repeated, though, and he quickly resumed his ambling ascent.</p>
Up the arroyo, too far up to be seen from below, a pebble trickled loose from the stone wall. The tiny figure, which had accidentally dislodged the pebble, retreated mouse-like into shadow. Two glowing points of light showed under overlapping folds of brown cape a meter from the narrowing canyon wall.
Only the reaction of the unsuspecting robot indicated the presence of the whining beam as it struck him. For a moment Artoo Detoo fluoresced eerily in the dimming light. There was a single short electronic squeak. Then the tripodal support unbalanced and the tiny automation toppled over onto its back, the lights on its front blinking on and off erratically from the effects of the paralyzing beam.
Three travesties of men scurried out from behind concealing boulders. Their motions were more indicative of rodent than humankind, and they stood little taller than the Artoo unit. When they saw that the single burst of enervation energy had immobilized the robot, they holstered their peculiar weapons. Nevertheless, they approached the listless machine cautiously, with the trepidation of hereditary cowards.
Their cloaks were thickly coated with dust and sand. Unhealthy red-yellow pupils glowed catlike from the depths of their hoods as they studied their captive.
The jawas conversed in low guttural croaks and scrambled analogs of human speech..
If, as anthropologists hypothesized, they had ever been human, they had long since degenerated past anything resembling the human race.
Several more jawas appeared. Together, they succeeded in alternately hoisting and dragging the robot back down the arroyo.
At the bottom of canyon—like some monstrous prehistoric beast—was a sandcrawler as enormous as its owners and operators were tiny. Several dozen meters high, the vehicle towered above the ground on multiple treads that were taller than a tall man. Its metal epidermis was battered and pitted from with-standing untold sandstorms.
On reaching the crawler, the jawas resumed jabbering among themselves.
Artoo Detoo could hear them but failed to comprehend anything. He need not have been embarrassed at his failure. If they so wished, only jawas could understand other jawas, for they employed a randomly variable language that drove linguists mad.
One of them removed a small disk from a belt pouch and sealed it to the Artoo unit’s flank. A large tube protruded from one side of the gargantuan vehicle. They rolled him over to it and then moved clear. There was a brief moan, the whoosh of powerful vacuum, and the small robot was sucked into the bowels of the sandcrawler as neatly as a pea up a straw. This part of the job completed, the jawas engaged in another bout of jabbering, following which they scurried into the crawler via tubes and ladders, for all the world like a nest of mice returning to their holes.
None too gently, the suction tube deposited Artoo in a small cubical. In addition to varied piles of broken instruments and outright scrap, a dozen or so robots of differing shapes and sizes populated the prison. A few were locked in electronic conversation. Others muddled aimlessly about. But when Artoo tumbled into the chamber, one voice burst out in surprise.
商业托福阅读：星球大战第二章(5)
"Artoo Detoo—it’s you, it’s you!" called an excited Threepio from the near darkness. He made his way over to the still immobilized repair unit and embraced it most unmechanically. Spotting the small disk sealed onto Artoo’s side, Threepio turned his gaze thoughtfully down to his own chest, where a similar device had likewise been attached.Massive gears, poorly lubricated, started to move. With a groaning and grinding, the monster sandcrawler turned and lumbered with relentless patience into the desert night.</p>
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