Everything You Ever Wanted to Know
About the
Glove of Darth Vader, but Were
Afraid to Ask
The
Glove of
Darth Vader, Chapter Five:
Captain Dunwell's Discovery
By
Trioculus, meanwhile, has arrived from Kessel in an Imperial strike cruiser "modified to travel both in outer space and undersea." I can't help but wonder what would happen if you flew a regular Imperial strike cruiser undersea (would it clog the intake manifolds? Sink to the bottom? Leak?), and what modifications are required to make an Imperial strike cruiser suitable for undersea travel. By the way, this Imperial strike cruiser probably belongs to Hissa. If it is, it’s likely that it’s the Imperial Moffship (no, I’m not kidding). In later books, Hissa's strike cruiser is referred to alternately as "Hissa's strike cruiser" and "the Imperial Moffship."
Once at Dunwell's Whaladon Processing Center (WPC), Grand Moff Hissa informs Trioculus that Dunwell plans to great him with a thirty laser-cannon salute and a military procession. Unfortunately, Trioculus declines the offer ("If I had wanted to be noticed, I would have asked for a parade, not a private meeting."), which leaves us wondering how Dunwell would have managed a thirty laser-cannon salute without breaching the airtight WPC, and imagining several hundred Aqualish Whaladon hunters marching in tight formation. It would certainly have been a sight to see (or sea, if Dunwell had shot thirty holes in the ceiling of the parade room).
As the (modified) Imperial Strike cruiser approaches, Hissa spots Dunwell's new Whaladon-hunting submarine, and points out several features of said machine to Trioculus. It sucks, you see. No, really, it has whirlpool generators (sort of like in the hot tub in Han’s skyhouse, only bigger) powered by an antimatter furnace. The whirlpools suck the Whaladons into holding tanks. Hissa is very interested in all this. Apparently Hissa is a big fan of Whaladon hunting submersibles. Either that, or he has a share in Dunwell's outfit (which actually wouldn't be surprising).
Dunwell meets Trioculus at the docking bay ("GRONGGGG!" goes the docking bay door), where Dunwell himself greets the new Emperor. How does he greet him? I'll tell you. These are his exact words:
"Lord Trioculus, a most Imperial welcome to you."
I can only speculate what, say, the X-wing Wraith Squadron would make of this turn of phrase:
"Lady Notsil, a most New Republican welcome to you."
"Thank you, Lord Loran. And a Black Sunny day to you."
"I say, fellows, I'm having a positively Centralic morning today."
Ahem. Trioculus doesn't like the way Dunwell seems to be staring at him—why, it's almost as though he was repulsed by that third eye (no, really, you think?). Dunwell offers up a few pleasantries, but Trioculus insists on knowing what this Astonishing Discovery (music) is. Surely Emperor Trioculus has some idea already. Surely you, as the readers, must know what it is—the book ain't called The Glove of Darth Vader for nothing.
Dunwell leads Hissa and Trioculus to his office ("...just a little farther..."), past huge work areas where Aqualish butcher the captured Whaladons. This is actually shown in gory detail in the accompanying illustration. When you consider that the Whaladons are actually a sentient species, this is one of the more sickening sights of the EU, and fairly graphic for a kids book.
They arrive at Dunwell's office—where the good captain reveals that he has discovered debris from an explosion. He brought back a few pieces, and had them analyzed by an engineer. It was from the (dun dun dun) Death Star II! Even Dunwell was surprised—Endor is on the other side of the galaxy from Mon Calamari. So how did this wreckage end up marring the beauty of the Calamarian oceans?
Hissa has a ready explanation:
"The intense gravity of black holes and other interstellar forces cause warps, folds, and buckles in space...Asteroids and spaceships have tumbled into these space warps and have suddenly reappeared millions of miles away. The same thing must have happened to this debris from the Imperial Death Star."
Apparently, Hissa always wanted
to be an evil
astrophysicist
when he grew up—he's quite the black hole enthusiast.
But then, when you live on Kessel, there's
not a lot to do on Saturday nights except go out and look at the black
holes.
Still,
Hissa's theory is quite correct. There is
a black hole near Endor called the Endor Gate1; and it was
this spatial anomaly that allowed the
debris to travel this far.
But Trioculus has no time for theories. He orders Dunwell to tell them more about what he found. The Emperor stares at the captain with his third eye, sending out hypnotic waves—no, really!
He opens a drawer and pulls the negatives out (either Dunwell is a big fan of hard copy, or he's short on datapads). The suspense starts to build as Dunwell sorts through them one by one... The x-rays reveal—a kidney stone!
No, seriously:
"Shutting his two lower eyes, Trioculus stared at the image with his third eye. The spot that Captain Dunwell was touching showed an object that seemed to have five fingers."
Oh my goodness—five fingers? Whatever could it be?
"Was it a hand? Or a glove?"
Oooh, which is it, which is it?!
"No human hand could have survived the heat of the Death Star explosion, he thought. And only one glove was known to be totally indestructible."
Ahh! The glove of Darth Vader! And it's just a short undersea journey away!
Soon Trioculus, Hissa, and Dunwell set off in the Whaladon-hunting submarine for the Valley of the Giant Oysters—yes, that's what it's called—and Trioculus is treated to another look at the sub's advanced technology. Not surprisingly, he smiles nastily.
"With so much advanced technology aboard, you'll have to make sure this ship is never captured by the Rebel Alliance."
"Have no fear of that, Lord Trioculus...If there's ever an undersea battle on Calamari, I'll destroy this ship myself before I'll ever let it fall into the hands of the Rebels."
Meanwhile, back in Aquarius, Luke and Ackbar analyze the data brought back from Kessel by the droids. They then hurry to the Calamarian office of SPIN. Since Mon Calamari is a major Republic world, it's not surprising that top-secret SPIN would have an office here; although later books in the series seem to indicate that the supposedly secret "SPIN" is just as much a household name as "zoochberry."
During the voyage, Ackbar explains that Captain Dunwell continues to hunt Whaladons, in spite of the efforts of the Mon Calamari to stop him.
Ackbar then explains how hunting the Whaladons affects the Calamarian ecology:
"The Whaladons eat the little plants, or plankton, that grow at the surface of our oceans...If those little plants spread and become too plentiful, as they breathe they could use up all the carbon dioxide in our atmosphere—the process of photosynthesis. Without carbon dioxide our planet would get much colder. You see, we need Whaladons to keep the amount of plankton in balance, or we Calamarians could wake up one day to find ourselves in an ice age!"
Now, the Valley of the Giant Oysters is not the same thing as the Knowledge Bank of Mon Calamari, which is a group of giant intelligent mollusks that organize and store information about the comings and goings in the oceans from a network of other sea creatures. See, not everything silly in Star Wars came from the Davids! The Knowledge Bank is located in a secret cove (relatively) closer to the surface, while the Giant Oysters lie in a valley deep beneath the sea. It's likely, though, that the Giant Oysters are in contact with the Knowledge Bank8.
Luke spots the debris field from the Death Star, and Ackbar asks if Artoo can examine a piece of metal and determine its atomic structure. Turns out he can. (With all of Artoo's gadgets, who's surprised here?) Ackbar decides to use the arm-scoop to grap the metal:
"Skillfully handling the control for the underwater arm-scoop, the admiral extended a long rod that had a metal claw at its end. The claw grabbed a small piece of scrap metal, then the rod was pulled back into their minisub. In a moment a narrow slot popped open on the floor near Luke's right boot, revealing the piece of metal that the arm-scoop had just pulled from the ocean."
One wonders about the symbolic significance of the slot opening on the floor near Luke's right boot. It would be much, much easier on the backs of the Mon Calamari if these slots opened in a bulkhead, so they wouldn't have to bend over to get them from the floor. And, the Davids are very careful to specify Luke's right boot, so this obviously has some deep and important symbolic meaning. The hole in the floor represents the instability of Mon Calamari—obviously foreshadowing the coming invasion of Mon Calamari in the Dark Empire series. The piece of Death Star represents a superweapon—Dark Empire’s World Devastators. The fact that this all takes place near Luke's right boot represents Luke commanding the Devastators—and the fact that he is at Palpatine's right side.
Either that, or it's a sure sign that the authors had an abnormal adolescence.
Artoo does a quick scan, and we find out that the metal is three percent phobium.
"'Phobium was mined by Emperor Palpatine on Gargon,' said Ackbar. "And there's only one thing I know of that he ever used it for: to coat the power core of the Death Star'"
This brings to mind an image Emperor Palpatine with a pick axe and mining helmet, single-handedly mining phobuim in the mining tunnels of Gargon, pushing it to Endor while whistling "Hi-Ho," and then using a paint brush and a window cleaner's rig to coat the gargantuan power core of the Death Star II with liquid phobium. Hey, if you want something done right...
As the Rebels realize the significance of this find, they spot an escape sub—pulling double duty as an exploration vehicle (Dunwell's too cheap to go for both)—speeding towards a large piece of wreckage.
Luke knows the glove must be here. He knows the new Emperor is in the sub, and is about to find the glove that could cement his control of the Empire!
Well, then, you'll have ten minutes to self destruct before you finish reading the book!
1 Insert your own Orson Scott
Card joke here.
2 Sadly, the Davids' other Star Wars book, Tom
Dunwell and His Portable X-Ray Scanner, never saw release.
3 Between the two of
them, Artoo and Threepio have been blasted, decapitated, disassembled,
dismembered, disposed, memory wiped, and shrunk during the course of
their adventures,
so this is nothing new to them.
5 Or rather, surf.
6 One of the jokes in these books is the long windedness of Ackbar; a personality trait that does not seem to have shown up in other sources.
7 It has certain a ring to it, doesn't it? "Valley of the Giant Oysters. Valley of the Giant Oysters!" Great stuff.
8As a side note, another mollusk known as the kresh is used by the Gungans of Naboo to store information.
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