Han drew the reins in, bringing the Tauntaun to an abrupt halt on the plain.
Solo could not be certain, but there seemed to be some sound other than the howling of the winds that whipped past him. He strained to look in the direction of the sound.
Then he spurred his Tauntaun, forcing it to gallop across the snow-swept field.
Luke could have been a corpse, food for the scavengers, by the time the light of dawn returned. But somehow he was still alive, though barely, and struggling to stay that way even with the night storms violently assaulting him. Luke painfully pulled himself upright from the snow, only to be blasted back down by the freezing gale.
As he fell he considered the irony of it all—a farm boy from Tatooine maturing to battle the Death Star, now perishing alone in a frozen alien wasteland.
It took all of Luke’s remaining strength to drag himself a half meter before finally collapsing, sinking into the ever-deepening drifts. "I can’t…" he said, though no one could hear his words.
But someone, though still unseen, had heard.
"You must." The words vibrated in Luke’s mind. "Luke, look at me!" Luke could not ignore that command. the power of those softly spoken words was too great.
With a great effort, Luke lifted his head and saw what he thought was a hallucination. In front of him, apparently unaffected by the cold and still clad only in the shabby robes he had worn in the hot desert of Tatooine, stood Ben Kenobi.
Luke wanted to call out to him, but he was speechless.
The apparition spoke with the same gentle authority Ben had always used with the young man. "You must survive, Luke." The young commander found the strength to move his lips again. "I’m cold…so cold…" You must go to the Dagobah system," the spectral figure of Ben Kenobi instructed. "You will learn from Yoda, the Jedi Master, the one who taught me." Luke listened, then reached to touch the ghostly figure. "Ben…Ben…" he groaned.