Alan Foster - The Icerigger Trilogy

As Ethan tried to catch up to her the ship shook again, violently this time. Sailors spread their arms to brace themselves against the corridor’s walls. Ethan stumbled, was caught by September on his way to the floor.

“Bad and getting worse.” The giant’s expression was grim as he stared toward the gangway. “Something’s happening outside and we’d damn well better find out what in a hurry.”

Natural phenomenon or otherwise, the daughter of the Landgrave of Sofold was prepared. She drew her sword as she mounted the gangway. Sailors parted to make way for the skypeople following her while those Tran not previously awakened began to stumble sleepily out of their beds and hammocks.

Elfa and Ethan emerged on deck simultaneously, side by side. With both of Tran-ky-ky’s moons up, there was ample light to see by. Ice glistened, stark and barren beneath the unwinking moons. The wind blew steadily if un-spectacularly from the east. Ethan estimated its velocity at no more than twenty or thirty kph, not near enough to shake a well-anchored vessel.

Hunnar crowded close behind them. “Check the anchors first thing.” Ta-hoding had yet to put in an appearance and his evaluation of the situation was the one Ethan most wanted to hear.

They moved away from the hatch. Soldiers and sailors emerged from the opening in a steady stream, spreading out in several directions.

“All clear off the bow!” came a shout.

“All clear to starboard!”

“All clear to—” The cry was cut off abruptly as something like a flexible pine tree reached over the Slanderscree ’s railing to pluck the unfortunate sailor off the deck as easily as Ethan would have removed an olive from a martini. It was followed by a second gargantuan limb, then a third.

“Shan-kossief!” screamed one of the sailors as he joined his companions in a mad dash for the open hatchway. Hunnar managed to slow the panic by pointing out that no matter how far they stretched, the huge tentacles or whatever they were could reach no more than a meter or so beyond the railing. If you stayed clear of the ship’s flanks, you were safe. Warily, the sailors began to spread out again, keeping to the center of the deck. The tentacles would vanish, then reappear farther along the portside in hopes of grabbing another victim, but Hunnar was right: their range and reach were limited.

Ethan knew what a kossief was from personal experience: an ice worm, a carnivore with a tubular body that lived within the ice sheet itself. It traveled by melting the ice in front of it, digging a continuous tunnel until it sensed prey somewhere on the surface. Then it would stealthily melt its way up beneath its intended victim, strike and grab with long tentacles, and drag its struggling meal down into its lair. Expelling water from its own body, it would reform the ice sheet and settle down to consume its food in an icy cocoon. That was a kossief. What was a shan-kossief?

In Tran “shan” meant variously “big,” “huge,” and “too-vast-to-be-imagined.” As he tried to decide which interpretation would best apply, the ship shuddered anew. There was that settling sensation again.

It didn’t take an expert on local fauna to hypothesize what was happening. If the shan-kossief’s method of acquiring prey was similar to that of its smaller namesake—Ethan shivered, and not from the cold. What would a monster like that think of the icerigger? It must be very confused. Here was prey the size of a small stavanzer. Edible prey, if the unlucky night guard had gone to the fate Ethan imagined. Yet most of it was inorganic and inedible. Probably the carnivore could sense the other warm, edible lifeforms aboard. It couldn’t get at them, and the ship was probably too strong for it to tear apart. What else would it do but attempt to employ its instinctive method of obtaining food?

Not enough to guess. Before they could implement defensive reactions, they had to be certain. He started slowly toward the portside rail.

Elfa put a restraining paw on his shoulder. “You cannot. It will take you as well.”

“Not if I keep down and don’t expose myself,” he told her without much conviction.

“Ethan is right.” Hunnar moved up to join them. “We must know what is happening. I will go.”

“No. I’m a lot smaller and maybe my suit will shield my body heat from its receptors.” Hunnar thought this over, then nodded reluctantly and retreated to rejoin the rest of the onlookers.

Ethan went down on his hands and knees and resumed his, approach to the railing. The anxious murmurings of both Tran and humans filled his ears, Hwang and her companions had joined the Tran on deck and were bombarding September and Hunnar with questions neither could answer.

He bumped his head against the wood. Nothing reached over the rail to grab him. Carefully he sat back on his haunches and began to straighten. His gloved hands reached over the top of the barrier. A moment later he found himself staring over the side.

Initially it seemed nothing was amiss. Then he leaned out over the edge and saw that the portside bow runner was half gone. Water lapped at the brace that secured it to the underside of the ship. The long pool was spreading slowly beneath the Slanderscree. If the shan-kossief was big enough, it could conceivably drag the entire vessel beneath the surface where it would proceed to pick them off as efficiently as an anteater would glean a termite nest.

Something beneath the ice caught his attention. He found himself staring in fascination at a set of immense phosphorescent eyes. Beneath them lay the faint outline of a hollow space wide enough to swallow a skimmer. The ice sheet was a window through which he could peer into the frozen depths. The eyes were hypnotic and complex, not the light-sensing organs of a primitive invertebrate.

A rubbery cable shot out of the ice to snake itself around his right arm.

He’d leaned out a little too far, made himself a little too obvious. He tried to brace himself against the railing and the wood creaked. His arm felt like it was being torn from its socket. The pressure was irresistible. He felt himself being dragged up and over the side. Then he fell back onto the deck and Skua was standing over him, clutching the monster axe an admiring Tran smith had fashioned for him.

“Better than a beamer for this kind of work.” With his free hand he reached down, grabbed Ethan by the collar of his survival suit, and began dragging him back amidships. He didn’t let go until they were back with the others.

“Can you stand?”

“That’s not the problem.” Ethan straightened, winced, and leaned to his right as he felt gingerly the place where bones and muscles came together to form a limb. “I think I might’ve dislocated my shoulder.”

“Lucky you didn’t dislocate your skull, leaning over the side like that.” Ethan was surrounded by a circle of concerned faces, most of them alien.

“It’s trying to melt the ice out from beneath us. That’s why we keep shaking. Every time another few centimeters of ice is dissolved we settle deeper. The portside bow runner’s already half under.”

Hunnar growled. “It will exhaust itself, I think. It would take days to melt enough ice to swallow the whole ship.”

“Evidently,” September said dryly, “it thinks we’re worth the effort. Probably thinks the Slanderscree ’s a giant cookie box.”

“We have some time, then, but we’d better do something fast,” Ethan commented. “All this shifting and settling might break one of the runners off and we’re a long ways from repair facilities.”

“What can we do?” Hunnar asked. “If we approach the rail, far less go over the side to attack it on the ice, it will take us one at a time. Nor are crossbows and spears likely to hurt it, even if we could force it up from beneath the ice, which we cannot.”