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.
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.
责任编辑：mman
