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 ravishing 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 shipwrecked 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 ships 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 relationships 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 ship: 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 ship.

Ethan slid back the face mask of his survival suit without shifting 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 shield 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 shipwreck 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 shiver-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 ship. 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 ship. 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 ship'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 ships 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 friendship over that potentially explosive situation. The problem would crop up again when the royal offspring awoke.

Ethan had made his feelings in the matter known to Elfa. But that hadn't discouraged her from attempting to change his mind. If she would sleep just a few days longer, he would be off the planet and spared the problem of dealing with her personally. That would be just as well, because despite his declared feelings, there was an unavoidable feline animalness about Elfa that?

Using information relayed from the masthead look-outs and the bowsprit pointer, Tahoding skillfully directed the _Slanderscree_ toward an open dock pro-truding from the harbor sh.o.r.eline. The dock was sim-ply a wooden road built out onto the ice. Its pilings were necessary to raise it to iceship deck level, not to keep it above the frozen water.

Smaller ice boats were beginning to cl.u.s.ter curiously around the _Slanderscree_. They complicated the task of maneuvering the colossal ship up to the dock. But Arsudun owned a wide harbor, much wider than the _Slanderscree's_ home port of Wannome. Tahoding did a masterful job of maneuvering around and through the curious locals.

A few awed sightseers were warned off by the icerigger's crew. Their stupefied amazement was justified, Ethan knew. The _Slanderscree_ was likely twice the size of any ice ship they had ever seen.

No doubt the crowd gathering on the sh.o.r.e included admiring shipwrights and envious merchants.

They would be hard to keep off the ship, once it docked. Their natural curiosity would impel them to inspect the strange rigging arrangement, a modification of ancient Terran water clippers adapted by Williams for Tran-ky-ky's ice oceans. Surely they would clamber all over the five ma.s.sive duralloy runners on which the icerigger rode. Metal was a scarce commodity on Tran-ky-ky. The other, smaller ice ships Ethan had seen were outfitted with runners of wood and, more rarely, of bone or stone.

Some of the ship's sailors cursed when the docking crew was slow to help them. The dockworkers too were dazed by the size of the _Slanderscree_. Mates had to direct their men to jump over the railings and down to the dock to man the cables and braces themselves, but once the process of tying up had begun, the land crew swung into action and began to help.

It was a tricky process. The _Slanderscree_ was nearly three times the length of her dock, and no other docks in view were longer. There was no need for them. Ships the size of the _Slanderscree_ simply did not exist on all of Tran-ky-ky.

Tahoding, however, was prepared to cope. As soon as his vessel's bow was secured he ordered the stern ice anchors released. They locked in place and would keep the huge vessel from swinging tail-first with the steady aft wind.

Wind, wind and cold. Ethan slid the protective face mask back down over his goggles to shield his deli-cate human flesh. The lee of an island or indoors were the only places you were out of the wind on Tran-ky-ky. It blew here the way the sun shone on paradisical New Riviera or on one of the thranx worlds such as Amropolous or Hivehom. It blew steadily, varying but never wholly ceasing, across the empty places and frozen seas. It blew steadily down the strait against his back now, sucked inward by the rising, slightly warmer air above the island.

A few clouds scudded in puffy formation across a sky of cobalt blue. Ethan turned his gaze as he moved forward. Grizzled and goggled, a seamed face turned to look back and down at him, to smile with teeth white as chips of the harbor around them.

"Upon my word, young feller-me-lad, if we haven't gone and made it in one piece!" Skua September rubbed one side of a nose as big in proportion to its face as the ship's bowsprit was to the hull. He turned away to study the town, its winding icepaths forming shiny ribbons between the buildings, the busy Tran walking or chivaning along them. The locals who didn't stop to gawk at the icerigger held their arms out-stretched parallel to the street, the wind filling their membranous dan and scooting them along effortlessly. Smoke curled skyward from a thousand chimneys. Multistoried gambreled structures swelled haphazardly up the gentle island slope until they crested against the stark gray bulk of a substantial castle.

While Arsudun seemed to contain a population considerably larger than Wannome, Ethan noted with interest the smaller size of the castle. Its diminutive proportions bespoke either the relative impecuniosity of the local government or the becoming modesty of its Landgrave.

Sir Hunnar offered a third possibility. "It looks not more than a dozen years old, Sir Ethan? Ethan.

And it appears unusually well built." Hunnar clam-bered awkwardly over the railing and down the boarding ladder. He relaxed visibly when he was able to step onto the icepath covering the center portion of the dock. Like all Tran, he was much more at home on the ice than on any unslick solid surface.

Ethan and Skua joined the knight and his two squires, SuaxusdalJagger and Budjir. The latter were discussing the town and the a.s.sembled crowd in sus-picious mutters. They kept their arms tight at their sides, lest a gust of wind catch their dan and send them unexpectedly rocketing forward.

A voice called from the ship to the landing party. Squinting reflexively into the wind, although the suit mask kept his eyes safe, Ethan made out a rotund, survival-suited figure waving down at them from the bow.

"When you get to the port, use the number twenty-two double R if the authorities give you any trouble!" The voice was crisp, insistent, yet feminine for all its controlled power. Colette du Kane paused to murmur something to the wavering figure alongside her, then put an arm around her father to support him.

"That's our family code. Any processor unit will recognize it instantly, Ethan. From a personal cardmeter to a Church ident. It will give us priority booking on the next shuttle off here and cut through any red tape."

"Twenty-two double R, okay." Ethan hesitated when she seemed about to add something else, but then her father bent over suddenly and she had to at-tend to him. They couldn't hear anything, but the fig-ure's movements hinted at wracking, heaving coughs.

They turned, started for the town. Hunnar and the squires kept their speed down to a crawl to keep from outdistancing the humans. They were nearly reduced to walking.

"Strong woman," September murmured easily. Hun-nar spoke to a local who directed them to the left. Following the harbor, they turned in that direction.

"Yes, she is," Ethan agreed. "But she tends to be a bit domineering."

"Why fella-me-lad, what do you expect from a scion of one of the merchant families? 'Course, it ain't fer me to say. You're the one she proposed to, not me."

"I know, Skua. But I respect your opinion. What do you think I should do?"

"You want the opinion of a wanted man." Septem-ber grinned broadly. Then the smile vanished and Sep-tember became unexpectedly, unnaturally solemn.

"Lad, you can ask my advice where fighting is concerned, hand-to-hand, ship-to-ship, machine-to-machine. You can ask where politics are concerned, or religion, or food or drink. You can ask my advice on any hundred matters, any thousand, and though I don't know amoeba-spit about half that many I'd still venture you a reply.

"But," and here he looked at Ethan so sharply, so furiously intent that the salesman missed a nervous step, "don't ask my advice where women are con-cerned because I've had worse luck with them than fighting or politics or any of the thousand others. No, feller-me-lad," he continued, some of his perpetual good humor returning, "that's a choice you'll have to make for yourself.

"I _will_ tell you this: never confuse physical form and beauty with the capacity for pa.s.sion. That's a mis-take far too many men make. Beauty ain't skin deep? it goes a d.a.m.n sight deeper.

"Now let's hurry up the pace a bit. Sir Hunnar and his boys are practically fallin' asleep trying to hang back with us, and I'm as anxious as you are to get to the port?"

They topped a slight rise. Below and just ahead lay the humanx community of Bra.s.s Monkey. At the mo-ment, Ethan had eyes only for three concave depres-sions scooped from the frozen ground and neatly lined with opaque, icefree metal. Shuttleboat pits. Just their metal linings, those three perfect bowls, contained a fortune in Tran terms, yet none of them seemed dis-turbed or in any way vandalized. Of course, he re-minded himself, that might be due to the fact that the Tran didn't possess tools strong enough to cut through duralloy or metalceramic crystalloids.

Aligned in one of the pits was a small metal shape that bore a remarkable resemblance to the _Slanderscree_, save for the absence of masts and its more aero-dynamic design. The little boat made Ethan's stomach flip. He could be on it very soon.

An enormous wall of frozen earth and blocks of ice and snow had been heaped up east of the commu-nity to shelter it from the steady wind off the harbor. The port buildings lay close by the near end of the harbor, and the group started down toward an L-shaped, two-story edifice. Two glowing signs shone in recesses above the snow-free main entrance. One read: _Bra.s.s Monkey - TRAN-KY-KY administration_ . In jagged local script below it were words translating roughly as sky outlander's place.

An intermittent stream of bundled humans and an occasional Tran were presenting themselves at that entrance. Gla.s.s-alloy windows, thick enough to be used in starships, offered the building's inhabitants views of the frozen world outside. Ethan could see in. Some thing was keeping the inside of such windows free from condensation.

"What do we here, Ethan?" Hunnar sounded un-certain. No doubt he was wondering if the strange hu-mans in this place would have icepaths within their structures or if he would be forced to walk any dis-tance.

"We have to book pa.s.sage off your world. Back to our homes."

"Your homes," Hunnar echoed. "Of course." The knight's tone indicated a contradictory meaning.

Ethan understood the language well enough now to discern such nuances. Hunnar was expressing sorrow at their imminent departure and at the same time, a profound grat.i.tude. Or maybe he was just thinking of the sleep-ing Elfa KurdaghVlata back on the _Slanderscree_.

Once more Ethan thought to rea.s.sure Hunnar that he had nothing to worry about in the way of com-pet.i.tion for the favors of the Landgrave's daughter. But booking pa.s.sage should provide sufficient reas-surance.

There was an icepath ramp leading to the entrance, bordered by smooth metal for human use. It was grooved for traction despite the present absence of ice. Two sets of doors barred the way in.

They pa.s.sed the first easily enough, despite the rise in temperature. But when they pa.s.sed the second set and entered the building proper, Sir Hunnar reeled and the moody Suaxus nearly fell. The cause was immediately apparent. The Tran liked to maintain the temperature in their dwellings perhaps five degrees above freezing. The temperature inside the building, set for the human optimum, was devastatingly higher.

It was then that Ethan noticed there were no Tran inside the building itself. Those they had seen entering had stopped in the area enclosed by the two sets of doors, a small lobby lined with windows.

There, Tran exchanged packages or held conversations with humans at windows installed for the purpose. The area was kept cool there for them, and tolerably warm for the humans behind the windows.

Even so, the Tran there concluded their business hurriedly to rush out into the comforting arctic air outside.

"With- your permission, friend Ethan, friend Skua?" Hunnar staggered erect. Without waiting for Ethan's acknowledgment, the knight and his two companions turned and stumbled outside. Through the transparent doors, Ethan could see Suaxus sit down hard, holding his head with both hands, while Hunnar and Budjir gulped deep icy breaths and ministered to him.

"I can see where they'd get heat stroke quick enough in here." September was rapidly divesting himself of his hessavar furs. Ethan didn't have that problem. He simply slid back his face mask and goggles, plus the hood of his survival suit. The suit itself automatically adjusted for the warmer air inside the building, the suit material being naturally thermosensitive.