User:ThrawnChiss7/stuff

• "At that time the galaxy's dark age had ended, the Sith had been defeated and driven into hiding, and a true republic had emerged from the ashes. With a member of House Valurum as supreme chancellor, a pan-galactic senate had been created, and the military had been disbanded. Revitilzed, the populations of the Core Worlds, ravenous for new resources and not above exploiting every oppurtunity to enhance the quality of their lives, where eager to expand their reach" - Tarkin
• "The last great conflict, having been been waged for the soul of civilization itself, was a descive war fought between the Jedi Order and the Sith Lords. The Republic victory was so complete that it reinvented itself, resettling its capital on Coruscant after a devastating ouster. History reset its chrono on this date, and from that moment, the modern Galactic Republic was born. - Star Wars Propaganda: A History of Persuasive Art in the Galaxy
• "Though they nearly succeeded in conquering the Republic, in-fighting accelerated the order's demise, and the Sith are defeated by the Jedi Order." The Star Wars Book
• "Save for Sidious, no sentient being in close to five thousand years had set foot in the shrine." Tarkin]
• Era of conflict

5000 bsw4 "An era of great conflict against the Jedi begins, including the battle of Malachore"

Andor

• Sectorists
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• "Sep", "separatist"

Tarkin

• Berch Teller's rebel cell

Thrawn

• Batonn insurgents

Rebels

• Massassi Group
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• Lothal resistance group
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Other

• Bail Organa's resistance movement
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• Alien
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Units and body parts

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• body parts
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Semi dub articles/articles to watch out for

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• Ground warfare

In this article, I will attempt to outline in as meticulous detail as possible the convoluted continuity involving the three Rebel Alliance GR-75 medium transports Thon's Orchard, Dutyfree, and Bright Hope in regards to their evacuation from the planet Hoth during the Battle of Hoth. I do this with the purpose of collating all information in a single place for efficient reference and raising awareness of this inconsistent continuity in the hopes it may all one day be officially reconciled. At the conclusion of this article, I will present a logical and well-reasoned explanation for how all of this information may be reconciled for official Wookieepedia documentation purposes using only the canon sources available to us. Note that this article focuses primarily on the evolution of the Thon's Orchard and the Dutyfree, with the Bright Hope's details mentioned last.

I would be remiss without giving due credit to my colleague Cavalier One, who helped me tremendously in figuring all of this out.

The problem

More than a half-dozen sources are wildly inconsistent regarding which Rebel pilots escort and pilot the transports Thon's Orchard, Dutyfree, and Bright Hope during the evacuation of Echo Base in the Battle of Hoth.

History

The Empire Strikes Back radio drama and script

• Tarrin pilots Thon's Orchard (transport unnamed)
• Luke and Wedge escort Thon's Orchard (transport unnamed)

Continuity: Brian Daley's The Empire Strikes Back radio drama (1983) first detailed a scene in which Luke Skywalker and Wedge Antilles escort an unnamed Rebel transport, piloted by a character named Tarrin, away from Hoth at the end of the battle. Wedge notes to Luke that they are the "last evacuation group." As they depart Hoth, Tarrin worryingly mentions over comlink that he's picked up two Star Destroyers on his scopes, but Wedge assures him that the Imperial ships are too far off to give them trouble. Wedge and Tarrin then safely make the jump to hyperspace while Luke goes off to Dagobah.

Interestingly, the radio drama's original script (first published in 1995 as The Empire Strikes Back: The National Public Radio Dramatization) initially called for this scene to be more dramatic. Luke, Wedge, and Tarrin's transport encounter a single Star Destroyer directly in their flight path. Luke orders Wedge to pull up next to him underneath the transport so that they will appear as a single blip on the Imperials' radar. Once they're close enough, Luke orders Wedge to fire a proton torpedo at the Star Destroyer, a surprise attack that causes enough damage to the Imperial ship to allow Wedge and Tarrin to escape into hyperspace. Luke then goes off to Dagobah.

Analysis: Although the radio drama and the script contradict each other, we can safely assume that the dramatization itself supersedes the script in continuity, much like a film supersedes its novelization.

Galaxy Guide 3: The Empire Strikes Back, first edition

• Tarrin pilots Thon's Orchard (transport unnamed)
• Wedge and Hobbie/Janson escort Thon's Orchard (transport unnamed)

Continuity: Michael Stern's Galaxy Guide 3: The Empire Strikes Back (1989) was the next source to detail a similar scene. The short narrative Running the Gauntlet, presented as "an excerpt from the personal memoirs of Wedge Antilles," tells of how pilots Wedge, Hobbie, and Janson escort an unnamed transport piloted by an unnamed captain past the Imperial blockade using a tactic clearly inspired from The Empire Strikes Back radio drama script. In this story, Wedge pilots an X-wing while Hobbie pilots a Y-wing with Janson as his rear gunner. Their two-seated Y-wing corresponds to the BTL-S3 Y-wing model.

With the transport and its fighter escort quickly approaching a Star Destroyer, which sits directly in their escape lane, Wedge realizes he needs a radical tactic, called the Tallon split, to get them through. He pulls his X-wing directly in behind Hobbie's Y-wing so that the Star Destroyer's targeting computer will register them as one vessel. At the right moment, the fighters break apart, too quickly for the Star Destroyer to track both ships simultaneously. This leaves a window for Wedge to knock out one of the Star Destroyer's sensor globes, allowing the transport to escape safely into hyperspace. As Wedge enters hyperspace himself, he thinks he hears Luke's voice saying, "Good shooting, Wedge."

Running the Gauntlet was later reprinted verbatim in The Movie Trilogy Sourcebook (1993).

Analysis: By this point, in 1989, we already have two major continuity errors:

1) In the radio drama, Luke, Wedge, and Tarrin escape Hoth without incident. But in Galaxy Guide 3, Wedge and Hobbie/Janson utilize the Tallon split to help the unnamed transport make it through, and it would seem that Luke is not part of this flight group. In addition, in the radio drama script (despite not yet being published), Luke comes up with the Tallon split-like tactic, not Wedge.

2) The second error involves Wedge's and Janson's personal histories in the aftermath of the Battle of Hoth. In the Marvel comic Star Wars 78: Hoth Stuff! (1983), Wedge and Janson are stranded on Hoth for months after the battle, with Janson eventually dying. But in Galaxy Guide 3, both escape the planet safely. However, the 2003 roleplaying article Hoth: Under the Ice retconned most of the Marvel story's events into a tall tale that Wedge and Janson use to play tricks on new recruits.

The Essential Guide to Characters

• Tarrin pilots Thon's Orchard (transport unnamed)
• Luke, Wedge, and Janson escort Thon's Orchard (transport unnamed)

Continuity: Andy Mangels' The Essential Guide to Characters (1995) makes the first attempt to reconcile these conflicting sources. In the book's "Wedge Antilles" section, Mangels explains how Wedge and Janson help escort one of the last transports, piloted by Tarrin, from Echo Base: Using the Tallon split, in conjunction with a surprise attack from Luke underneath the transport, all parties escape the fire from an orbiting Star Destroyer. In this version, Luke and Wedge pilot X-wings, while Janson pilots a Y-wing. But this contradicts Galaxy Guide 3, which states that Janson rides as the gunner in the Y-wing piloted by Hobbie.

Analysis: In attempting to reconcile these sources, Mangels opted to combine details from The Empire Strikes Back radio drama script (which was published a few months prior to his own book) with the story Running the Gauntlet from Galaxy Guide 3. This served to identify Tarrin as the unnamed transport captain from Running the Gauntlet. But at the same time, it replaced Hobbie with Janson as the Y-wing pilot. By this point, we may begin to consider whether to treat the radio drama's version as being overridden in light of The Essential Guide to Characters.

Galaxy Guide 3: The Empire Strikes Back, Second Edition

• Tarrin pilots Thon's Orchard
• Wedge and Hobbie/Janson escort Thon's Orchard

Continuity: Pablo Hidalgo performed a major expansion/rewrite on Michael Stern's original Galaxy Guide 3 text with the release of Galaxy Guide 3: The Empire Strikes Back, Second Edition (1996). The second edition reprinted Running the Gauntlet but notably altered the text to identify the transport pilot as Tarrin Datch and the transport as the Thon's Orchard. Hidalgo describes the Thon's Orchard as "the ship that was to be Leia Organa's transport" from The Empire Strikes Back and also as "one of the last transports off Hoth. With Wedge and Hobbie flying escort, Tarrin escaped to rejoin the fleet at the rendezvous point." He also notes that Rebel historian Voren Na'al escapes Hoth aboard the Thon's Orchard.

Analysis: Hidalgo's Galaxy Guide 3 was the first source to identify Tarrin's transport by name but reinforces Wedge and Hobbie/Janson flying escort without mentioning Luke. Nevertheless, we can still reconcile Hidalgo's text with The Essential Guide to Characters to say, at this point, that Luke, Wedge, and Hobbie/Janson fly escort for Tarrin's ship, the Thon's Orchard.

As a side inconsistency, M. Shayne Bell's short story Of Possible Futures: The Tale of Zuckuss and 4-LOM from Tales of the Bounty Hunters, published five months after Hidalgo's Galaxy Guide 3, changed Leia's transport to the Bright Hope, the final transport to leave Hoth, which is destroyed during its blockade run. The Bright Hope has remained Leia's would-be transport ever since.

X-Wing: Isard's Revenge

• Tarrin pilots Dutyfree
• Luke and Wedge escort Dutyfree

Continuity: Michael Stackpole's novel X-Wing: Isard's Revenge (1999) threw a monolithic-sized monkey wrench into this whole thing. Isard's Revenge stands as the origin of the primary inconsistency between the Thon's Orchard and the Dutyfree. In Stackpole's story, Wedge runs into one Areta Bell years after the Battle of Hoth and recognizes her from the battle:

Analysis: Why Stackpole changed Tarrin's transport from Thon's Orchard to the Dutyfree is anyone's guess, but it calls everything into question. At this point, nothing regarding any of the backstory of Tarrin's transport is clear. Is the Thon's Orchard now the Dutyfree? Are they separate ships? If nothing else, it reinforces that Luke and Wedge fly escort together.

Inside the Worlds of Star Wars Trilogy

• Luke and Wedge escort Dutyfree
• Wedge, Hobbie, and Janson escort Bright Hope

Continuity: James Luceno's giant reference book Inside the Worlds of Star Wars Trilogy (2004) does the tremendous service of partially clearing up the identities of these three transports. Nothing since The Essential Guide to Characters has done more to reconcile the conflicting sources. In a fold-out Echo Base cross-section map, Luceno's book illustrates four transports stationed in Echo Base at the beginning of the Battle of Hoth, three of which are identified as Thon's Orchard, Dutyfree, and Bright Hope. Call-outs on the map identify the Dutyfree as "escorted offplanet by Luke Skywalker and Wedge Antilles" and the Bright Hope as the "last transport to leave the base," reinforcing both Isard's Revenge and Tales of the Bounty Hunters, respectively.

The book also states that "the final transport, Bright Hope, lifts off with the aid of starfighter pilots Wedge, Hobbie, and Janson." This caption accompanies a film still from The Empire Strikes Back, identifying the transport in that shot as the Bright Hope.

The Inside the Worlds Echo Base map was later reprinted verbatim in Star Wars: Complete Locations (2005).

Analysis: Luceno definitively establishes all three of these transports as separate ships, despite the increasing continuity inconsistencies surrounding them. Although Luceno reinforced Stackpole's story by stating that Luke and Wedge escort the Dutyfree, Inside the Worlds makes no mention of Tarrin or gives any indication as to what goes on with the Thon's Orchard. Another huge clue not to be overlooked here is the positioning of the three transports within the hangar: Of the thirty GR-75 medium transports within Echo Base, these three are clearly positioned furthest away from the South Ridge evacuation launch site, meaning they are ostensibly the last three transports to evacuate. This is a crucial detail that will ultimately help solve this mess. Based on their order of positioning (the Bright Hope, in particular), we can safely deduce their order of departure: Thon's Orchard, Dutyfree, and, finally, Bright Hope.

Inside the Worlds is also the first source to directly state that Wedge escorts two transports: the Dutyfree and the Bright Hope. This opens up a floodgate of possibilities for reconciling all of these sources.

The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia

• Tarrin pilots Dutyfree

Continuity: Bob Vitas' The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia reinforces Stackpole's version of events from Isard's Revenge. Under the book's character entry for Tarrin Datch, CSWE states that Tarrin piloted the Dutyfree, "one of the last Rebel transports to flee Hoth." The book makes no mention of the Thon's Orchard anywhere.

Analysis: CSWE does little more than to repeat the Isard's Revenge information without daring to tackle the Thon's Orchard situation. It does, however, effectively confirm that the Dutyfree's positioning in Echo Base from Inside the Worlds corresponds to its order of departure.

Rogues Gallery: Clearance for Immediate Launch, Star Wars Insider 146

• Tarrin pilots Thon's Orchard

Continuity: The 2013 Rogues Gallery department from Star Wars Insider 146 is, to date, the most recent source to provide insight into this continuity mess. Under the character heading for Tarrin Datch, Rogues Gallery states that "Datch was able to pilot the GR-75 Medium Transport, Thon's Orchard, past the Imperial blockade."

Analysis: So, we've come full circle. After nearly fifteen years, we're back to Tarrin piloting his originally-named transport from Hidalgo's Galaxy Guide 3, the Thon's Orchard. The most important element of this Insider article to take into consideration is that its information was directly approved by Leland Chee, Keeper of the Holocron for the Lucasfilm Story Group, which determines all Star Wars canon. We can safely take that to mean that Tarrin does not pilot the Dutyfree, and that that particular information from Isard's Revenge and The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia is in error.

But this Insider article does not clear up the nagging mess of which pilots escort which transports. Fortunately, we can piece that together for ourselves with a host of indirect supplementary sources.

Resolution

The answer

In reconciling sources, we do the best job we can to find a logical way to make every piece of the puzzle fit. That means piecing together disjointed bits of continuity that don't necessarily contradict each other to paint the overall picture of a scene. Let's start with what we do know...

• Tarrin pilots the Thon's Orchard, according to Insider 146
• Wedge escorts the Dutyfree and the Bright Hope, according to Inside the Worlds
• Luke escorts the Dutyfree, according to Inside the Worlds and Isard's Revenge
• Hobbie and Janson escort the Bright Hope, according to Inside the Worlds
• Prior to the Isard's Revenge continuity disaster, Luke, Wedge, and Hobbie/Janson escort the Thon's Orchard, according to our reconciling of Galaxy Guide 3, Second Edition and The Essential Guide to Characters

Given that we now know that Tarrin pilots the Thon's Orchard, according to the highest authority on LFL canon, we can safely make the claim that the original reconciled events of Galaxy Guide 3/The Essential Guide to Characters are now canon. So, with that as our starting point, we begin to look at how we can piece together everything that has come since then. This is where we start analyzing secondary sources to see what supports our reconciling efforts...

The Bright Hope, the last transport to leave, was escorted by six X-wing fighters, according to Tales of the Bounty Hunters. The Official Star Wars Fact File 12 confirms that these six X-wing pilots were snowspeeder pilots fresh from the battle. So, who were these six pilots? They were, at least, Tarn Mison, according to the Star Wars Customizable Card Game; Wedge, according to Inside the Worlds; Hobbie, according to Inside the Worlds; and Janson, according to Inside the Worlds. However, a problem arises with Hobbie and Janson, because it's not clear what fighter type they were in. Considering our Galaxy Guide 3/The Essential Guide to Characters reconcile, Hobbie and Janson rode in the same Y-wing, which would not count toward the six X-wings. But Inside the Worlds strongly infers that they piloted individual X-wings while escorting the Bright Hope.

This next piece of evidence is the linchpin that makes this whole thing work. In the level "Battlefield Hoth" from the video game Star Wars: Rogue Squadron III: Rebel Strike (2003), the player, as Luke, must escort the last three transports from the base as they leave Hoth. These three transports leave at the same time. The game's official strategy guide also confirms these are the last three ships: "The last three transports are attempting to leave Echo Base, but large squads of TIEs are making it difficult." We know who the last three transports are, don't we? Thanks to James Luceno and Inside the Worlds, they are the Thon's Orchard, the Dutyfree, and the Bright Hope. That means Luke (and other NPC X-wings from that level) escorts all three of them.

With this understanding, it's now a simple matter of combining everything we already know: Luke and Wedge fly escort together, according to Inside the Worlds and Isard's Revenge. Wedge, Hobbie, and Janson fly escort together, according to Inside the Worlds. And considering our Galaxy Guide 3/The Essential Guide to Characters reconcile, they all fly escort together anyway. That means all pilots and all transports leave at the same time. So, Luke, Wedge, Hobbie, Janson, and Tarn Mison must therefore all escort the Thon's Orchard, Dutyfree, and Bright Hope together at once.

This fits because: a) We know that at some point late in the battle, the transports started lifting off two at a time. This is directly supported by film dialogue between General Carlist Rieekan and Leia (see the header quote at top of this article). b) The Bright Hope lifts off with other transports as a group, according to the Bright Hope card from Star Wars: The Card Game. c) Hobbie and Janson, in their two-seated Y-wing, escort multiple transports, according to Shadows of the Empire Sourcebook. And d) The Rogue Squadron III level only has the player escort the transports up to a certain point in Hoth's atmosphere before the level ends. You don't actually reach space, where the Imperial blockade awaits, at which point Galaxy Guide 3/The Essential Guide to Characters, Tales of the Bounty Hunters, and Isard's Revenge may take over with their respective details for each transport: The Thon's Orchard and Dutyfree escape, while the Bright Hope is destroyed.

Loose ends

But we're still left with the nagging question of what ship(s) do Hobbie and Janson pilot? Two X-wings or a single Y-wing? This picture holds many clues. This is the aforementioned film still that Inside the Worlds uses to identify the Bright Hope lifting off, with the accompanying caption stating that Wedge, Hobbie, and Janson fly escort for it. In this picture, we see two X-wings already lifting off to escort the Bright Hope, while Luke and Wedge, who wishes Luke good luck in this scene, have yet to take off in their X-wings. In addition, we see at least four other straggling pilots still on the ground. That means, counting Luke and Wedge, there at least six pilots in total who have not yet taken off in this scene. Remember that six X-wing fighters escort the Bright Hope, so this picture leaves open the possibility that six X-wings escort the Bright Hope while Hobbie and Janson still fly their two-seated Y-wing.

And then we're left with the question of how to explain the in-universe inconsistency in Isard's Revenge? After all, the conversation between Wedge and Areta Bell tells us that she served as navigator on Tarrin's transport, the Dutyfree. But we now know that Tarrin piloted the Thon's Orchard. Recall that Running the Gauntlet from Galaxy Guide 3, which we can now safely treat as the canon version of events for Tarrin's transport, was "an excerpt from the personal memoirs of Wedge Antilles." Galaxy Guide 3 is written as in-universe documentation by Rebel historian Voren Na'al, and the book states that he wrote it while still at the Rebel rendezvous point, which corresponds to the immediate aftermath of the Battle of Hoth. It's unlikely that Wedge would have gotten the facts wrong in his personal memoirs so close to the actual events. Whereas Isard's Revenge is set in 9 ABY, six years after the Battle of Hoth, so it's entirely possible that war-weary Wedge is simply misremembering the exact details of the blockade run. And perhaps Bell, who is clearly relishing the fact that famed fellow Corellian Wedge Antilles even remembers her, is simply being polite by not correcting him.

To add one final continuity inconsistency to the mix, we have Ryder Windham's The Empire Strikes Back junior novelization (2004). Windham has Luke leaving Hoth without escorting any transports or running into any Imperial ships: "But as he entered space, he was surprised not to see even one of the Star Destroyers that had brought the Imperial soldiers to Hoth. He supposed it was possible the destroyers were on the other side of Hoth, beyond his visual range. And he hoped that the Rebel transports [...] had also escaped Hoth without difficulty." Given the proliferation of sources contradicting this, we just have to treat Windham's junior novel as the inconsistency that it is and ignore it.

Canon

The atom

• starship shields protected ships from "Dark particles"^[6]
• "radioactive fuel particles"^[6]
• "neutrino radiator grill"(on recusant)^[6]
• "active neutrino radiator and shield heat sinks" (on munifect)^[6]
• "Power systems cooling neutrino radiator grill" (on acclamator)^[6]
• "propellant is exited into high-energy subatomic particles in the ignition chamber"^[6]
• "Produce a cloud of high velociy subatomic particles" (protons)^[6]

Relativity

• see Time

Reactor

"magnetic confinement elements"^[6]

EMS

• "X- and gamma ray projector cluster" (on tri-fighter)^[6]
• "Electromagnetic sensor atennas" (on recusant)^[6]
• "Electromagnetic plates at nozzle bend thrust streams to steer ship" (on venator)^[6]
• "Electromagnetic thrust plates deflect exhaust stream for steering" (on First Order Snowspeeder^[7]
• "multi-frequency antenta" (no nebulon b)^[6]
• "mulit-spectral comm signal" (on palps desk on the ds2^[8]
• "forewards cosmic-ray detectors" (on executor)^[8]
• "high bandwidth"^[8]
• "Of course, the battle itself had provided some data. They had the enemy’s laser spectra and intensities, plus their overall missile blast profiles."^[9]
• "electromagnetic tensor fields">^[10]
• "electomag rails generate grav fields" (in the theed hangar)^[8]

Misc

"temperatures will rise to thousands of degrees"^[6] Force field (CVNE)

YT1300OWM 1 (C and L)

"Such sensors include devices used to collect and analyze data about light, radio, and other electromagnetic emmision; sound, motion, and vibration; gravitational, nuclear, and magnetic fields; heat, pressure, and trace chemicals; and even other sensors."

YT1300OWM 2 (C and ?)

"Ray shielding, also known as energy shielding, protects against stellar and magnetic radiation."

Legends

Plag1

"The game was called Collider because players placed bets on the types and spiraling paths of high-energy subatomic particles created as a result of collisions occurring within the accelerator table and the random firings of deviating electromagnets surrounding it. Due to the unpredictable nature of the collisions, the house enjoyed only a small advantage—where the accelerators weren’t rigged—but the Kubaz was overcoming the odds by betting solely on the particle paths rather than the particle categories. With the table accelerator humming to life and the Kubaz sliding some of his chits across the gambling grid, Plagueis stretched out cautiously with the Force, sensing intense concentration on the part of the Kubaz, and then an extraordinary surge of psychic energy. The Kubaz was using the Force—not to steer particles along certain paths but to dazzle the electromagnets and significantly reduce the number of paths the created particles were likely to take" (Plaguies)

DS1

The Horuz system had been scavenged for raw material; asteroids and comets were being harvested from both the inner and outer belts and broken into components of oxygen, hydrogen, iron, nickel, and other elements; (DS)

DS2

Flux, gauss, m-particle and graviton shifts? Even with his not-inconsiderable general knowledge, those technical details were but mildly interesting, at best (DS)

DS3

He knew that hypermatter existed only in hyperspace, that it was composed of tachyonic particles, and that charged tachyons, when constrained by the lower dimensions of realspace, produced near-limitless energy. How this "null-point energy" had become unstable he didn't know. He only knew it had been powerful enough to turn an ISD-II and its crew of thirty-seven thousand people into floating wisps of ionized gas in a microsecond. (DS)

DS4

"there are enough guns to turn you into subatomic particles" (DS)

DS5

"Well, let me enlighten you. Beams of coherent particles, such as electron, positrons, and the like, as well as amplified photon emissions, are often focused with large magnetic rings. Let us postulate that one could, in this fash" (DS)

DS6

There were surgeons who could separate the two and still sleep at night, but Uli was not one of them. And so he found himself standing near the bed of a grizzled old Wookiee construction chief who had been involved in a nasty decompression accident that had required a heart-lung transplant three days past. Despite the best sterile procedures, sometimes patients developed secondary infections, and something like that had apparently happened here. The usual antivirals, antiprions, and antibiotics had been ineffective thus far, and no pathogenic agents had been collected. Nevertheless, the old Wook had a fever, he was coughing, and his blood work showed a strange shift that wasn't bacterial, prional, or viral. The patient had an elevated eosinophil count, hyper to the level of Second-Stage HES. Naturally, Uli had called in more expert help, but the medical specialist had ruled out the usual trans-species suspects-it wasn't kozema, leukemia, asthma, autoimmune disease, or drugs. The only remaining possibilities were some kind of parasitic or protozoal infestation. But the QRI scans were clean, there were no telltale nanocam images, and nothing cultured out. Save for the elevated white cells, there weren't any other real indicators. If this wasn't some previously unknown form of nosocomial infection, the only other possibility seemed to be black magic. (DS)

DS7

Darth Vader stood on the bridge of his warship, staring out through the forward viewport at the kaleidoscopic chaos of hyperspace. The effect, even moving at the relatively stately speed of a Star Destroyer, was akin to tumbling down an endless tunnel of amorphous, whirling patterns of light-starlight and nebulae smeared into impressionistic blotches by the ship's superluminal speed. He knew that even experienced spacers and navy personnel often hesitated to look out at it. Standard operating procedure was to keep the thick slabs of transparisteel opaqued while traveling through the higher-dimensional universe. There was something profoundly wrong about hyperspace, composed as it was of more than the three spatial and one temporal dimensions that most sentient species were used to. Looking too long into hyperspace promised madness, so the stories went. He had never heard of anyone actually succumbing to "hyper-rapture," as it was called. Nevertheless, the legends persisted.

DS8

Things looked unremarkable. Stihl was in great shape for a man his age, better than most humans twenty years younger. Myoconduction, brain scan, EEG, MEG, dendrite function were within limits. Afferent/ efferent speeds were slightly better than normal; heart, lungs, kidneys, liver, spleen, pancreas, repro, bowels . . . Uli looked at the blood composition readout. Platelets fine, WBC normal spread, hematocrit, hemoglobin, all normal. Except-His midi-chlorian count was over five thousand per cell. Uli blinked. That was unusual. Normal human range was less than half that. He didn't know a lot about midi-chlorians; nobody did anymore-most of the research on the subject had been done at the Jedi academy by their own healers, and their records were not available for study.

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