The temperature on the surface of Hoth had 0dropped. But despite the frigid air, the Imperial Probe Droid continued its leisurely drift above the snow-swept fields and hills, its extended sensors still reaching in all directions for life signs.
The robot’s heat sensors suddenly reacted. It had found a heat source in the vicinity, and warmth was a good indication of life. The head swiveled on its axis, the sensitive eyelike blisters noting the direction from which the heat source originated. Automatically the probe robot adjusted its speed and began to move at maximum velocity over the icy fields.
The insectlike machine slowed only when it neared a mound of snow bigger than the probe droid itself. The robot’s scanners made note of the mound’s size—nearly one-point-eight meters in height and an enormous six meters long. But the mound’s size was of only secondary importance. What was truly astounding, if a surveillance machine could ever be astounded, was the amount of heat radiating from beneath the mound. The creature under that snowy hill must surely be well protected against the cold.
A thin blue-white beam of light shot from one of the probe robot’s appendages, its intense heat boring into the white mound and scattering gleaming snow flecks in all directions.
The mound began to shiver, then to quake. Whatever existed beneath it was deeply irritated by the robot’s probing laser beam. Snow began to fall away from the mound in sizable clumps when, at one end, two eyes showed through the mass of white.
Huge yellow eyes peered like twin points of fire at the mechanical creature that continued to blast away with its painful beams. The eyes burned with primeval hatred for the thing that had interrupted its slumber.
The mound shook again, with a roar that nearly destroyed the probe droid’s auditory sensors. It zoomed back several meters, widening the space between it and the creature. The droid had never before encountered a Wampa Ice Creature. its computers advised that the beast be dealt with expeditiously.
The droid made an internal adjustment to regulate the potency of its laser beam.
Less than a moment later the beam was at maximum intensity. The machine aimed the laser at the creature, enveloping it in a great flaming and smoking cloud.
Seconds later the few remaining particles of the Wampa were swept away by the icy winds.
The smoke disappeared, leaving behind no physical evidence—save for a large depression in the snow—that an Ice Creature had ever been there.
But its existence had been properly recorded in the memory of the probe droid, which was already continued on its programmed mission.