Alan Foster: The Icerigger Trilogy

September seemed more than willing to continue this catalogue of dubious attributes till the millennium. The tirade, however, was interrupted by a belch of such brontosaurian proportions that it momentarily rattled everyone in the lounge.

At that point the two lesser ratings both hit him from behind and the resultant menage à trois crashed to the floor in front of the bar. One of them snatched up a bottle full of mould-gold something or other and hefted it over his head. But the first mate extended a restraining arm.

“No need, Evers. He’s out cold.”

There was silence for the first time in quite a while. It was broken by a single pair of hands, clapping politely. The mate turned to the yachtsman’s son, who was applauding them all… whether respectfully or sardonically, he couldn’t tell.

“Bravo,” trilled the playboy.

Not a creature was stirring, not even a mus musculus.

The sentiment was proper but the subject inappropriate, thought Ethan Frome Fortune as he moseyed toward the rear of the passenger’s blister. Mice and rats had not been able to handle the exigencies of interstellar flight. Oh, they could get on board shuttles and from there to a ship, and they’d been a problem at first.

Then someone got the bright idea of turning off the posigrav field for half an hour in the passenger sections. One man with a net swam around collecting the badly befuddled vermin and that was sufficient for pest control till next port of call.

It was just as well, Ethan mused wryly. If said rodentia had been able to make the adaptation, the company might have stuck him with mousetraps to peddle.

As a moderately successful luxury goods salesman for the House of Malaika, his stock ran more to jeweled knick-knacks, perfumes, and intricately wrought, expensively priced mechanical gadgetry. Jeweled mousetraps would not be a prime seller.

He passed a small observation port, paused to look at the planet pirouetting heavily below. Such ports were less frequent at this rearmost end of the passenger’s compartment, but then, so were passengers. He was tired of idiot small talk and there were no bulk sales to be made with this bunch.

Most of Tran-ky-ky still swam in darkness. Probably coincidence that nightside happened to fall on the ship as it orbited in sleep period. Ethan seemed to be the only non-crew member up and about.

Tomorrow, slim as chances for business seemed from the tapes, he’d take the shuttle down. That would mean enduring the usual gaggle of tourists. Oh well, shoving was all a part of existence, no matter which law you indexed it under.

Tran-ky-ky was a figurative whistle-stop on the Antares’ run. The giant interstellar transport would remain a day or two in the planet’s vicinity. Most of that time would be spent transferring down cargo for the single humanx outpost on the forbidding surface.

The fact that the outpost was Terranglo-named didn’t necessarily mean the world had been discovered by humans. It could have been a mixed crew or all thranx. The former seemed more likely, though. No tidy-minded thranx would be likely to name a Commonwealth outpost “Brass Monkey.” Besides, the heat-loving insects would consider the globe beneath a choice slice of icy hell.

What little of the planet sat in sunlight formed a bright, almost painfully white crescent at its edge. Mestaped information on the dark sphere floated to the surface of his mind.

Tran-ky-ky lay on the fringes of humanx settlement and was a recently discovered world. Among other more significant things, that made it fresh territory for eager types like himself. However, it was not classified as a potential colony.

While humans could live on it, as they did after a fashion in Brass Monkey, it was far from hospitable. No New Riviera, this! Besides, it was classed 4-B. That meant it was inhabited by a native race of fair intellectual potential living at a pre-steam level of technology and probably lower.

Topographically, the planet boasted a few small continents, large islands, really, and thousands of small ones. Some were reasonably level, like Brass Monkey’s Arsudun, others precipitous and tectonic in origin. All lay scattered about the planet’s shallow seas, which were permanently frozen to depths as great as three kilometers in some places and barely ten meters in others.

Gravity .92 T-standard, day about twenty ts hours, distance from sun—too much. This charming resort world, he thought sardonically, reached a positively balmy three degrees centigrade at the equator. A heat wave in Brass Monkey. Temp averaged around minus fifteen and dropped to an absurd minus ninety some nights.

Moving away from the equator, things began to get chilly.

Oh yes, a charming stopover on our tour of the frayed, flayed edges of civilization, yes! Other salesmen were assigned tours of territories like the twin pleasure worlds of Balthazzar and Beersheba, or even Terra itself. Ethan Fortune? Always his back to the warm inner worlds of the Commonwealth, always his profit margin poking hesitantly, narrowly, thinly, among empty places in strange spaces. Nuts!

Oh, there were some minor compensations. For example, he made a very good living.

And he was still the insane side of thirty. Doubtless any day now someone in the home office would take note of his incredible, astonishing record under impossible conditions. Then maybe he’d be handed something better suited to his exceptional talents. Like marketing jewelust lingerie to the famed ecdysiasts of Loser’s World, or to freshly-minted debutantes on New Paris.

He blinked, turned from the almost hypnotic white sickle, and tried to concentrate on more prosaic considerations. Like how he was going to explain the workings of an Asandus portable deluxe catalytic heater to the locals. Mestape gave him a working knowledge of the language—he always prepared for each new world as thoroughly as possible—but offered little in the way of crucial tidbits like local customs and trading nuances. Tran-ky-ky was too new for recordings to be available on anything but basic facts. Anthropological studies would have to come later. So his range would be limited.

At least he had one item he should be able to unload completely on the natives. The Asandus line was made on Amropolous and was a marvel of power and miniaturization. One of the pocket-sized heaters could maintain a fair-sized room at sunbathing temperature even in trannish climate. Since the natives were adapted to extreme cold, an Asandus ought to last almost indefinitely. Just keep the heat up to zero and let grandpaw and the kiddies luxuriate.

Without some such device, and with winds up to 300k producing a really ridiculous chill factor, a human caught unprotected on the surface of Tran-ky-ky for even a few minutes would be good for nothing but snow sculpture afterward.

Come to think of it, there’d probably be a few humans in the settlement who’d be glad of a little luxury heater they could pack along in their scooters. They couldn’t see his class of merchandise too often out here. Now if he could only keep his hands from shaking while he set the burner up…

His mind was already well into a sales pitch of heroic proportions when he turned the corner to the personal baggage area and came upon a tableau that was all very wrong.

Five humans were clustered around a lifeboat port. Said port was open. Very, very wrong. Had a lifeboat drill begun while he’d had a lapse of deafness? He could hear his heart beating. Well, ears fine, but message from eyes still wrongo.

Ah yes, it was definitely the eyes. Two of the men were waving lasers about with drunken nonchalance.

One of the gun-wielders, a short ferret-faced chap with a bad case of the digifits, kept his laser more or less focused on an older man attempting to put up a bold front. That worthy was clad in an exquisitely cut suit of snappy emeraldine laid over a ruffled shirt of deep azure. To the left of this nattily-attired sexagenarian, a mousey-looking little guy was eyeing the gun almost as if he was considering tackling its owner.