Alan Foster - The Icerigger Trilogy

“What about bringing in the anchors and letting the wind take us where it will?” the third mate wondered.

Hunnar shook his head doubtfully. “Too late now, if what Ethan says is true. With even one runner sunk beneath the surface the wind would not move us from this place. If we were to set our sails and catch the wind it surely would snap that runner’s brace.”

“What we have to do,” September said, “is convince it that we’re more trouble than we’re worth.” He glanced at Blanchard. “Don’t suppose you or any of your friends smuggled along an illegal beamer or needler?”

“You know the restrictions on importing advanced weaponry to a primitive world.” Blanchard sounded disappointed. “I wish in this case one of us had disregarded them.” He was eyeing the rail where one of the shan-kossief’s tentacles was probing the deck in search of something else worth grabbing. The short length September had amputated lay motionless off to one side.

Ethan brushed ice particles from his suit. “Should’ve brought along some kind of gun anyhow and damn the regulations.”

September patted him on the shoulder. “Probably don’t matter anyways, young feller-me-lad. I’m getting the feeling that to budge our submerged brother you’d need a cannon at least. Besides which you’d have to melt through the ice to get at it and melting’s what we’re trying to stop.” The icerigger gave another lurch as it settled lower.

“Why not threaten it with your moral superiority?”

Ethan glanced sharply at Grurwelk Seesfar, thought of a response, but turned back instead to confer with September.

“Wishing for guns isn’t going to get us out of this. We’ll have to make use of what we have.” He plucked at his wrist. “We have our survival suits. What else?” He looked over at Hwang. “You brought instruments along. What kind?”

The scientists looked at each other and ran through the inventory of devices, regulations had permitted them to bring on the expedition. Ethan wasn’t encouraged. Sensors for determining the rate of glacial advance or sampling humidity weren’t likely to be of much use against a carnivore the size of the Slanderscree. The research team had devices for measuring the varying intensity of Tran-ky-ky’s magnetic field, for recording tremors, for analyzing its intense and worldwide aurora, for on the spot chemical analysis, and for collecting and cataloging samples both organic and inorganic. All were useless.

He looked to Milliken Williams, but this was one crisis where the teacher’s basic knowledge could not help them. “I’ve made gunpowder twice, but there’s nothing here to work with: no nitrates, no sulfur, nothing. Only ice.”

“Maybe there’s some way to use the ice against it.”

“Sure there is, feller-me-lad,” said September sourly. “We could mix it up a gigantic cocktail and get it dead drunk.”

“Hey, that’s a thought.”

The giant’s eyes widened. “For a moron, maybe. We’d need a ship full of alcohol just to daze something that size.”

“I didn’t mean that,” Ethan said, thinking hard. “I meant that there might be something we could feed it that would upset its metabolism. We’re stocked to bursting with supplies. Maybe there’s something in stores that could poison it.”

A hurried inventory was taken but the results were discouraging. Most of the food the shan-kossief would gratefully consume and hope for more. Some strong spices might have done something but they were stocked in small quantities. What they needed was a couple of barrels of pepper, or the local equivalent.

“We didn’t just bring instruments,” Cheela Hwang reminded her companions after the feeding idea had been discarded. “Besides our survival suits we have knives and other tools.”

“What about the stove?” Jacalan looked excited. “How could we use that?”

September let out a snort of derision. “Easy. We’ll plop it in the pot and set the old dear up to boil.”

“No, Almera’s got an idea.” Hwang displayed about as much enthusiasm as she was capable of. “The stove runs off a thermocouple fuel cell that can put out a lot of juice. It’s designed to cook enough for a dozen people at one time. What if we locked it on its maximum setting and someone got the creature to ingest it?”

Ethan hunted for the flaw in her reasoning. “It still might not put out enough heat to injure this thing, much less kill it.”

“We don’t have to do either,” she argued. “All we want is for it to leave us alone. To become discouraged, as you said earlier.” The ship lurched to port and people fought to keep their balance.

Ethan looked to Hunnar. “What do you think?”

“It would depend how much heat this machine emits. Remember that the shan-kossief generates much heat itself. It might not notice the difference.”

“It should notice this.” Hwang was adamant. “This is a tough piece of equipment, designed to function under difficult conditions. It should survive long enough to draw attention to itself even in something’s belly.”

“I have no better idea. We might try your idea, friend Hwang.” The knight glanced toward the gangway. “Bring it forth, then, and let us see what it may do.”

Moware and Jacalan hurried below. Meanwhile Ta-hoding instructed the ship’s cook to bring up the biggest carcass in the icerigger’s stock.

The stove wasn’t much larger than a computer storage block with a square heat plate sealed on top. After some discussion, Jacalan set the controls and the doubts of the Tran were dispelled by the intense heat the device generated. On maximum setting you couldn’t bring your hands within half a dozen centimeters of the cooking surface without burning them.

The stove was inserted in the carcass and the opening sewn shut. Ethan, September, and Hunnar dragged it to the rail.

“Carefully go here, feller-me-lad,” September whispered as something moved in the moonlight below. “Now!”

They heaved it over the side. It struck the looming tentacle and bounced away. For a moment they were afraid the carcass would roll across the ice and be ignored.

But the shan-kossief was more sensitive than that. Noting the presence of something edible, it began to melt the ice beneath the carcass, which vanished into a puddle even as Ethan and his companions looked on. They retreated from the edge lest they follow the butchered corpse into oblivion.

No one spoke. A few looks of despair crossed faces when time passed and the ship shuddered anew.

“It didn’t work,” Ethan mumbled. “We’re going to have to think of something else.”

“I don’t understand.” Blanchard was shaking his head in puzzlement. “On a world like this a few hundred degrees should feel like thousands.”

“Not in haste.” Ta-hoding wasn’t looking at them. He was listening, listening and perhaps employing senses only someone who’d spent a lifetime sailing the ice sheet possessed. Again the Slanderscree quivered.

“Ethan is right,” said Hunnar. “It is not working.”

“Something is. Be calm, relax, and feel the ship.”

Hunnar frowned, then slumped slightly. Once more the icerigger shook. Ethan stared at one, then the other, until he couldn’t stand the silence any longer.

“Would one of you please tell me what’s going on?”

“The last few times the ship moved it was not from settling,” Ta-hoding told him without shifting his gaze from the ice beyond. “I am sure of it. I know this ship’s balance as well as I do my own, maybe more so.” As he finished, the Slanderscree was wrenched violently—but to the side, not downward.

Ethan and the others made a cautious concerted rush to the rail. No tentacles rose to the attack. A glance showed that in the subarctic night air the water which had been sucking at the port bow runner was already refreezing, the ice sheet re-forming around the duralloy. Hal Semkin, Hwang’s assistant, produced a small flashlight and played the powerful beam over the surface below. It was likewise refreezing. There were no visible weak spots for tentacles to burst through.