Part 1 (1/2)
Ice Rigger.
Mission to Moulokin.
by Alan Dean Foster.
*PROLOGUE*.
It all began with a bungled kidnapping.
The two men who'd attempted to abduct the wealthy h.e.l.lespont du Kane and his daughter Colette from the KKdrive liner orbiting the ice world of Tran-ky-ky had been forced to take along two witnesses, a diminutive schoolteacher named Milliken Williams and a salesman, Ethan Fortune.
They hadn't counted on the additional presence of the white haired giant who'd been sleeping off a drunk in the back of their intended escape lifeboat. Skua September had not taken politely to being abducted. His resultant action caused the lifeboat to crash thou-sands of windswept kilometers from the only human settlement on the frozen planet below. Those actions also caused the death of one kidnapper and the immo-bilization of the other.
Crossing the perpetually frozen oceans of Tran-ky-ky, with their subfreezing temperatures and unceasing winds, seemed impossible until a party of curious locals from the native city-state of Wannome reached them. Cautious and wary at first, human and Tran soon became friends, aided by the actions of one re-markable young Tran, the knight Hunnar Redbeard.
The arrival of the humans and their lifeboat of rare metal on metal-poor Tran-ky-ky served Redbeard well. It enabled him to use it as a sign that Wannome and its island of Sofold should resist the coming dep-redations of Sagyanak the Death and her Horde. Such wandering tribes of nomadic barbarians, whole cities living on their icerafts, periodically visited the perma-nent towns and city-states of Tran-ky-ky demanding tribute and ravis.h.i.+ng all who dared refuse payment.
With the aid of crossbows and one other critical invention concocted by the teacher Williams and the local court wizard, Malmeevyn EerMeesach, the Horde was defeated utterly. Then reluctantly, Torsk KurdaghVlata, Landgrave and ruler of Wannome, agreed to keep his promise to help the s.h.i.+pwrecked humans reach the Commonwealth outpost of Bra.s.s Monkey.
Using duralloy metal from the ruined lifeboat to provide unbreakable ice runners, and employing de-signs adapted from the ancient clipper s.h.i.+ps of Terra's seas, a huge raft rigged for ice running was constructed: the _Slanderscree_.
With Sir Hunnar and a crew of Tran sailors, the survivors set out on the dangerous, lengthy journey.
They surmounted the threats posed by the remnants of the Horde, perilous local fauna such as guttorbyn and rampaging stavanzers-some the size of small s.p.a.ce-craft, a monastery of religious fanatics and the explo-sion of a gigantic volcano.
More troublesome to Ethan were his relations.h.i.+ps with Elfa KurdaghVlata, the daughter of the Land-grave who had stowed away aboard the _Slanderscree_, and with the affectionate but sarcastic and domineer-ing Colette du Kane.
None of which prevented the _Slanderscree_ from reaching the island of Arsudun, its human outpost and shuttleport of Bra.s.s Monkey, where they hoped they would find immediate transportation off the h.e.l.lishly cold, windswept world of Tran-ky-ky - ---.
*I*
Ethan Frome Fortune leaned over the wooden railing and screamed. The wind mangled his words.
Below the railing, the tiny two-man ice boat strained to maneuver close to the side of the racing icerigger. One of the men inside leaned out an open window to shout querulously up at Ethan, who then cupped both hands to the diaphragm of his thermal survival suit and tried to make himself understood. ”I said, we're from Sofold. Sofold!”
Spreading both arms, the man in the boat shook his head to show he still couldn't understand. Then he had to use both hands to clutch at the window edge as the little craft swerved sharply to avoid one of the _Slanderscree's_ huge duralloy runners.
Five curving metal skates supported the great ice s.h.i.+p: two nearly forward, two nearly aft where the arrowhead-shaped vessel's beam was widest, and a last at the pointed stern. Each towered nearly four meters, large enough to slice the cautious patrol boat in two if its driver wasn't careful or quick enough to stay out of the path of the two-hundred-meter ice s.h.i.+p.
Ethan slid back the face mask of his survival suit without s.h.i.+fting the glare-reducing goggles he wore beneath and reflected on what he'd just yelled. From Sofold? He? He was a moderately successful salesman for the House of Malaika. Sofold was the home of Hunnar Redbeard and Balavere Longax and other Tran, natives of this frozen, harsh iceworld of Tran-ky-ky. From Sofold? Had he grown that acclimated to the unforgiving planet in the year and a half he and his companions had been marooned there?
Blowing ice scoured his burnished epidermis like a razor, and he turned to s.h.i.+eld the exposed skin. A glance at the thermometer set in the back of his left glove indicated the temperature a balmy -18 C. But then they were not too far from Tran-ky-ky's equator, where such tropical conditions could be expected.
A furry paw rested on his shoulder. Glancing around, Ethan found himself looking into the lionesque face of Sir Hunnar Redbeard. Hunnar had been leader of the first group of natives to encounter Ethan and his fellow s.h.i.+pwreck victims where they'd crashed, several thousand kilometers distant. Ethan studied the lightly clothed knight, envied his adaptation to a climate that could kill most unprotected humans in an hour.
The Tran bundled up in severe weather, but more temperate conditions allowed Sir Hunnar and his com-panions to shed their heavy hessavar furs for lighter attire, such as the hide vest and kilt the knight cur-rently wore. Although he stood only a few centimeters taller than Ethan, the Tran was nearly twice as broad, yet his semi-hollow bone structure reduced his weight to little more than that of an average man.
Slitted black pupils glared from yellow feline eyes; shards of jet set in cabochons of bright topaz. They were split by a broad, blunt muzzle which ended above the wide mouth. Pursed lips and twitched forward triangular ears combined to indicate curiosity. Hunnar's right _dan_, a tough membrane extending from wrist to hip, was partly open, bulging with the force of the wind, but he balanced easily on his _chiv_, the elongated claws which enabled any Tran to glide across ice more gracefully than the most talented hu-man skater.
While Hunnar's reddish beard and rust-toned fur caused him to stand out in a crowd of his steel-gray fellows, it was his inquiring personality and natural curiosity that raised him above them in Ethan's esti-mation.
”They want to know,” Ethan explained in Tran while gesturing at the small scout boat skittering along-side and below them, ”where we've come from. I told them, but I don't think they heard me.”
”Mayhap they heard you well, Sir Ethan, and sim-ply do not know of Sofold.”
”I told you to stop calling me sir, Hunnar.” The t.i.tles the Tran of Wannome city had bestowed on the humans after the defeat of Sagyanak's Horde still made him uncomfortable.
”Remember,” Hunnar continued blithely, ”until you and your companions landed near Sofold in your metal flying boat, we had neither seen nor heard of your race. Ignorance is a two-edged sword.” He waved a ma.s.sive arm at the scout boat. ”It would be surprising indeed if your people here in this nearby outpost you call Bra.s.s Monkey, the only one of its kind on my world, had heard of so distant a nation as Sofold.”
A cry from above and forward interrupted them. It came from the lookout's cage set atop the patriarchal tree which served now as the _Slanderscree's_ main-mast. Many months of living among the Tran had given Ethan the ability to rapidly translate the look-out's words. After half a day's careful travel down the frozen inlet from the vast ice ocean beyond, they were finally coming into the harbor of Arsudun, the Tran citystate where humanity maintained its s.h.i.+ver-ing outpost on this world.
Ethan and Hunnar stood on the helm deck. Other than the three masts, it was the highest point on the s.h.i.+p. Behind them, Captain Tahoding hurled rapid-fire directions at the two Tran wresting the great wheel connected to the duralloy runner which steered the _Slanderscree_. In accordance with the captain's or-ders, other Tran were manipulating the two huge air-foils at bow and stern to slow the icerigger still more.
Meanwhile the laborious and dangerous process of reefing in sails was proceeding rapidly. Ethan mar-veled how the Tran crew had mastered the rigging of the enormous ice s.h.i.+p. Only their claws and thick chiv enabled them to hold their footing on the icy spars above.
Though Hunnar slid easily over the icepath border-ing the s.h.i.+p's railings Ethan struggled to remain up-right as they moved forward for a better look. The helm deck reached as far as the broad end of the main arrowhead shape of the _Slanderscree_. Standing just above the m.u.f.fled screech of the port-aft runner, they could now look straight at the harbor, since from where they stood the icerigger narrowed to a point some hundred and seventy meters ahead.
Arsudun was a bubble-shaped harbor located at the end of the long strait leading from the ice ocean.
Like the ocean, the strait, and all other freestanding water on Tran-ky-ky, the harbor was frozen solid. It was a flat sheet of many shades of white, covered with a thin layer of snow and ice crystals. Where the snow had been blown away, grooves marked the routes other ice s.h.i.+ps had taken.
Ethan was eighteen standard Commonwealth months late arriving. Bra.s.s Monkey was just another stopover on the new territory he'd been a.s.signed to cover. But his involvement in an abortive kidnapping aboard the interstellar liner _Antares_ and the subse-quent crashlanding near Wannome, Hunnar's home city, had lengthened his stay considerably.
Arsudun was an island, larger than Sofold, probably smaller than some. As far as Ethan knew, Tran-ky-ky was a world of islands set like metamorphic hermits in a cl.u.s.ter of frozen oceans.
Somewhere nearby was the humanx settlement of Bra.s.s Monkey, with its shuttleport and promise of pa.s.sage off this inverted h.e.l.l of a world. Andrenalin-Arsudun? they went together. What a pleasure it would be to stop playing explorer and return to the simple, gentle business of purveying manufactured goods from warm world to warm world!
He wondered about his companions, fellow survi-vors. Excusing himself, he left Hunnar and went to find them, searching the deck before entering the two double-tiered cabins set forward of the helm.
The would-be kidnappers who had abducted him were now dead. The individual princ.i.p.ally responsible for their death was standing up forward, looking out over the bowsprit. Distance reduced even his impres-sive frame to a perpendicular spot of brown against the deck and the white ice ahead.
Of all of them, Skua September seemed most fitted for this world. Over two meters tall, ma.s.sing nearly two hundred kilos, with his biblical-prophet visage and flowing white hair offset by the gold ring in his right ear, he resembled something that had slid off the front of a glacier. There having been no survival suit on the _Antares'_ lifeboat large enough to fit him, he'd resorted to native clothing. In hessavar fur coat and cape and trousers he looked very much like one of the natives, his glare goggles notwithstanding.
In the lee of the fore cabin, Milliken Williams stood chatting with his spiritual and intellectual soul brother, the Tran wizard Malmeevyn EerMeesach. The di-minutive schoolteacher's manner was as dark and quiet as his coloring. September might be suited phys-ically to Tran-ky-ky, but Williams melded into it men-tally. There was more he could teach here than in any Commonwealth school, and more to learn than from any tape. Williams possessed a silent soul. If the weather was not to his liking, the tranquility of intel-lectual adventure surely was.
Somewhere in one of the two cabins slept h.e.l.lespont du Kane and his daughter Colette, the objects of the kidnapping. Colette was also the reason for Ethan's present personal distress. She had proposed marriage to him; recently, bluntly. Despite her gross physical appearance, Ethan was seriously considering the offer. The prospect of marrying one of the wealthiest young women in the Arm was sufficient to overcome such superficialities as a lack of physical beauty. She was supremely competent as an individual, too. Ethan knew she ran the du Kane financial empire during her father's periodic attacks of senility.
But one had to consider her acid tongue, capable of verbally slicing one into neat little fragments of shrunken ego. And hers was a very high-powered per-sonality, accustomed to manipulating corporation heads and ordering about Commonwealth representa-tives. Spending one's life with such an overpowering individual was something to be weighed carefully.
Somewhere below also slept the drugged Elfa KurdaghVlata, daughter of the Landgrave of Sofold, who was Hunnar's ruler/chief/king. The royal stow-away had snored through much of the dangerous and eventful voyage from Sofold, but when she awoke Ethan would have another problem to deal with.
Despite certain obvious differences in physiology, there were enough similarities between human and Tran for Elfa to have developed a distressing attrac-tion to Ethan, much to his discomfort. It had caused unspoken but obvious pain to Hunnar. Both he and Ethan had managed to lay a veneer of honest friends.h.i.+p over that potentially explosive situation. The problem would crop up again when the royal offspring awoke.