Part 10 (2/2)
But when full sail had been put out, the worst fears of the experienced icemen were realized.
”We're not moving,” Ethan observed, concerned. He turned to the captain. ”What's wrong?”
”I worried much on this, friend Ethan.” Tahoding's expression was glummer than usual. ”We had no choice, though. The runner had to be repaired.”
”Of course it did.” Ethan indicated the gently bil-lowing sails low on the masts, the gustily taut ones higher up, above the roof of the forest. ”You mean, we don't have the momentum necessary to get us started?”
He saw the problem now. While the _Slanderscree_ was traveling at a respectable speed, she had enough energy to plow easily through the soft pikapedan. But once stopped, with the thick green pseudo-pods prac-tically growing over the railings, she couldn't get moving.
”So what can we do about it?”
”We cannot back up,” said Tahoding solemnly, gesturing behind them. ”The pikapedan has grown too tall and thick behind us while we have waited here.”
”What about sending out a crew with axes and swords to cut a clear path ahead of us?”
”We may have to try precisely that, friend Ethan. But I wish I could think of another way. By the time our people could cut a path wide enough for the s.h.i.+p, a decent distance ahead of us, the pikapedan they first felled would be growing up stiff behind them.
”However,” he said, executing a Tran gesture indicative of hopelessness mixed with resignation, ”I con-fess I see nothing else to be done.” He waddled off to give instructions to Hunnar.
Everyone not immediately concerned with the op-eration of the icerigger was sent over the side and was soon frantically hacking away at the forest ahead of the s.h.i.+p with axes, kitchen cleavers, anything that would cut. The huge stalks fell easily, squirting water and sap over the frenzied group of foresters, who knew they were racing against the growing time of the stumps behind them.
Even Ethan, using his sword, could cut down a ten-meter tall column of pikapedan in ten minutes or so, though the constant swinging was wearying to muscles not used to such activity. To provide a path expansive enough for a s.h.i.+p the size of the _Slanderscree_, it was necessary to fell a great many pikapedan. They couldn't stop. When the pikapedan behind them reached underbelly deck level of four meters, they would have to retreat and try to break out as best they could.
As it turned out, they had to quit before they wanted to.
All eyes, on board and in the work party, went to the mainmast observation basket, whose wicker-enclosed lookout was screaming while pointing fran-tically to the east.
_”Stavanzer!”_ ”How far?” roared Tahoding, cupping thick paws to his lips.
”Twenty, maybe thirty kijat,” the reply came back from the lookout.
”Coming this way?”
”It is difficult to tell, Captain, at this distance.”
”How many?”
”Again hard to tell. I am sure of only one.” A pause, then, ”Still only one.”
There was no need to give the order to abandon cutting and return to the s.h.i.+p. At the news of a sta-vanzer in the vicinity, a retreat to the raft was a mat-ter of instinct, not debate. Everyone was chivaning or running through the maze of felled pikapedan stalks without having to be told.
”What now, Captain?” Ethan asked Tahoding when he'd made his breathless way back to the helmdeck.
EerMeesach was standing at the railing, peering forward out of old eyes. ”To most it hints of death's proximity, friend Ethan. But it could also be our salvation.”
”How can that be?”
”Consider if the thundereater pa.s.ses close to us, Ethan. You know how the stavanzer travels by push-ing itself across the ice. In so doing it smoothes every-thing in its path as flat as a metalworker's forge.”
”I see. So we can go out the way it comes in?”
”More than that, friend Ethan.” Tahoding, over-hearing, elaborated. ”Once we build up enough speed traveling back down the thundereater's trail, we can then turn the s.h.i.+p and continue in any direction we wish.”
”It is the building up of enough speed that is critical,” EerMeesach finished.
”Kinetic energy,” Ethan murmured, and then had to try and explain the unfamiliar-sounding Terranglo term in Trannish.
”It will be not easy.” Tahoding was talking as much to himself as to his listeners. ”Even if we do pa.s.s successfully into the trail, there are other dangers to be considered.” Ethan didn't press him for an explanation.
”We must make a decision. We do have a choice.” He gestured within an arm toward the bow, his dan momentarily billowing with wind. ”We have cut a path a kijat or two ahead of us. We can reset sail and make a run at the forest wall. If that fails, we will then have no room to maneuver, and it will be most difficult to try and back up for another run. Also, I should like to keep that option open, should the thundereater swerve and bear down on us.”
”Seems pretty obvious to me what we do,” said a new voice. September mounted to the helmdeck.
”We wait and try to slip in behind it.”
Tahoding's gaze traveled around the little knot of decision-makers. His usual jollity was absent now.
He was all business. ”It's settled, then,” and he moved to the railing to issue instructions.
Twenty minutes of waiting followed the final prepa-rations. All sailors were at their posts, knights and squires ready to a.s.sist when and where they could. The quns had vanished into their holes, and a last meworlf battered itself like a crazed mechanical toy against the stalks as it sought to race out of the area.
Presently, a deeper sound rose above the windchoir, a periodic breathy grumble like a KKdrive slipping past lightspeed. From his single previous en-counter, Ethan knew the noise was caused by the stavanzer's method of locomotion. Expelling air through a pair of downward-facing nozzles set in its lower back, it could also pull itself slowly forward across the ice on its lubricated belly by means of the two downthrust tucks protruding from its upper jaw- though that rubbery formation could hardly be called a jaw.
The rumble grew deeper. The _Slanderscree_ quivered steadily as the ice beneath it shook to the rhythm of a monstrous metabolism.
Ethan experienced an unlikely urge to climb into the rigging, to get above the wavering crowns of pikapedan so he could see. But he stayed where he was, out of the sailors' way.
Murmurs drifted down from those in the highest spars, their eyes focused on something unseen. Their companions hushed them. Ethan let his gaze travel forward.
At the far end of the crude pathway they'd so laboriously hacked from the rusty forest a great ma.s.s slid into view. It stood perhaps twelve meters above the ice, a black maw inhaling felled pikapedan with Jobian patience as the h.o.r.n.y lower lip/jaw sliced off the nutrient-rich stalks flush with the ice.
Once, the upper jaw lifted and the huge tusks came slamming down into the ice hard enough to make the kijatdistant _Slanderscree_ rock unsteadily. Ice, roots, protein-rich nodules were vacuumed indiscriminately into the Pit: proteins and nodules and bulk to be con-verted into fuel and cells, ice to be melted and flushed throughout the vast metabolic engine.
Tearing unconcernedly into the wall of fresh pikapedan ahead of it, the ma.s.sive head vanished from sight. Like an ancient s...o...b..und train, the dark gray bulk slid across their path. Parasites and other growths of respectable size formed a fantastic foliage of their own on the leviathan's sides and back, a private jun-gle none dared explore. The fluctuating howl from the intake and expulsion of air was deafening now.
Fortunately, the thundereaters had poor vision and poor hearing. They had no need for these faculties, having nothing to be alert against. The beast slid past, its blunt tail-end vanis.h.i.+ng in quest of body and skull, without taking any notice of the _Slanderscree_ or its anxiously silent crew.
It was gone, though they could still hear it eating its endless meal as it moved steadily off to the west.
Difficult as it was to be objective when confronted with so overpoweringly grand an example of nature's diversity, Ethan estimated its length at somewhere be-tween seventy and eighty meters. A mature specimen, but from what he'd been told, not an exceptionally large one. He'd seen bigger himself. He doubted this one weighed more than two hundred fifty tons.
They should have waited another half hour, to be safe, before getting under way, but the sailors were growing restless. Fear that the thundereater would perhaps change its path (they were notoriously un-predictable in their habits) and charge down upon them poisoned the sailors' blood with fear. Finally, even the patient Tahoding could stand the waiting no longer.
”All sail on, snap to the windwhips!”
The ice anchors had long since been hauled in. Ponderously, but with far more grace than the thundereater, the _Slanderscree_ began to move for-ward. s.h.i.+p's bones groaned as the five duralloy run-ners broke clear their slight acc.u.mulations of drifted snow and ice.
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