the night watch by rembrandt

the night watch by rembrandt
The Jewel Casket
The Kitchen Maid
The Lady of Shalott
To conserve power—and also to avoid the steady stream of complaints from histaller companion—Artoo Detoo had shut down all exterior functions. He lay inertamong a pile of secondary parts, sublimely unconcerned at the moment as to their fate. "Will this never end?" Threepio was moaning as another violent jolt roughlyjostled the inhabitants of the prison. He had already formulated and discarded half ahundred horrible ends. He was certain only that their eventual disposition was sureto be worse than anything he could imagine. Then, quite without warning, something more unsettling than even the mostbattering bump took place. The sandcrawler's whine died, and the vehicle came to ahalt—almost as if in response to Threepio's query. A nervous buzz rose from thosemechanicals who still retained a semblance of sentience as they speculated on theirpresent location and probable fate. At least Threepio was no longer ignorant of his captors or of their likely motives.Local captives had explained the nature of the quasi-human mechanic migrants, thejawas. Traveling in their enormous mobile fortress-homes, they scoured the mostinhospitable regions of Tatooine in search of valuable minerals—and salvageablemachinery. They had never been seen outside of their protective cloaks andsandmasks, so no one knew exactly what they looked like. But they were reputed tobe extraordinarily ugly. Threepio did not have to be convinced. Leaning over his still-motionless companion, he began a steady shaking of thebarrel-like torso. Epidermal sensors were activated on the Artoo unit, and the lightson the front side of the little robot began a sequential awakening. "Wake up, wake up," Threepio urged. "We've stopped someplace." Likeseveral of the other, more imaginative robots, his eyes were warily scanning metalwalls, expecting a hidden panel to slide aside at any moment and a giant mechanicalarm to come probing and fumbling for him.