Alan Foster: The Icerigger Trilogy

“Set explosion?” prodded Ethan. But Walther had obviously said all he intended to for now. He lapsed into glum silence and slid further back into his corner.

“Probably a fair-sized bomb, set to go off after we’d left the Antares ,” commented Colette professionally. “Since no alarms went off when we entered the lifeboat or sealed from the ship, I assume they took care of that earlier. Obviously the bomb was a cover maneuver, designed to convince rescuers that anyone in that section of the ship had been vaporized—especially father and myself.”

“I see,” nodded Ethan. “That way everyone would assume you two were dead… until these two were safely away and ready to put their demands. And no pursuit. Very clever. Of course, anyone walking that section of the ship when the bomb happened to go off would just be plain out of luck.” He glared at Walther, who ignored him.

“That’s about it,” continued Colette. “But with all the hemming and hawing, they blew their timetable and didn’t quite get away in time. Wouldn’t have gotten away at all if Father hadn’t…” She shrugged.

“You ought to thank him for saving your life,” Ethan said reprovingly.

She gave him another withering stare. “What life? Got any idea what it’s like to be rich, Mr. Fortune? It’s great. But to be rich and laughed at…”

“Why don’t you re—?” He bit his tongue. But she noticed.

“Reduce? Can’t. Glandular—irreversible, the docs say.” She turned away irritably. “Oh, go freeze yourself!”

“Listen,” put in Walther, sticking his head out into the light. “Regardless of what you think, we planned it so nobody would get caught in that blowup. That’s the only reason I didn’t shoot you, and you, the minute you stuck your faces into that lifeboat bay. If a search team found your body, or his, or bits and pieces, then they’d start wondering just maybe why there was no sign of theirs,” he indicated the du Kanes. “A small chance, but Kotabit and the others wanted to be sure. Yeah, good and sure! And now,” he concluded with acidic finality, “we’ll all freeze good and surely dead.”

“I’m not thrilled about dying in your company, chum,” said Ethan with as much toughness as he could muster, which wasn’t much. “And I sure don’t plan to. Anybody think of checking the boat tridee?” He didn’t have to ask if it was in working order.

Colette du Kane was shaking her head slowly. “Just scrap. That’s what September told us, anyhow. I wouldn’t know about such things myself, but I’m inclined to believe him.”

“It certainly seems that we have nothing capable of even rudimentary communication,” agreed Williams heavily. “Let alone something that can transmit a continental distance.”

“I venture to say that, being on a starship, no one had a personal comm unit on them anyway.” He glanced upward. “On a world like this there's likely to be only a single weather satellite. It would be stationed above the outpost, in a fixed orbit.” A gesture indicated the ruined lifeboat. “In a few days this is likely to be covered with snow and ice and invisible even to a high-resolution satellite scan.”

Briefly, then, they were stuck.

Less briefly, they were stranded on a barely known world, thousands of kilometers from its only humanx settlement, in weather that would make a corpulent walrus dive for his winter woolies. And the only people they could inform of their predicament were each other.

Worse, unless by a very long, long chance someone had seen the boat tumbling toward the surface, no one would come looking for them, no one would believe they were alive. Including Walther’s partners, who’d be expecting him a few kilometers from the town.

Ethan didn’t mind frozen food—but he wasn’t ready to become some!

Thinking it over, he had to confess that his prospects for the immediate future were anything but heartwarming. Or anything warming. On the other hand, he never made a sale by sitting on his duff and waiting for the customer to come to him. At least moving around would keep his blood from getting any funny ideas about going on strike.

He scrambled to his feet. The hood fit loosely over his head but the goggles and shield were adjustable and snugged down tight.

“Where do you think you’re going?” asked Colette.

“Outside, to have a look at the neighborhood. And to see if there’s a store around that sells electric beds.”

He snapped the top snap on the coat, tried to tighten the floppy hood and failed. Flip went the goggles. Things immediately grew darker. He had to fumble twice before he got a hand on the door latch. Turn and push—so.

It didn’t budge—so.

He shoved again. “Stuck.”

“Oh deity!” she began, “save us from such awesome, overwhelming, analytic…!”

That was another good reason for getting outside. The door received a good swift kick and a couple of choice curses. Either the kick knocked it free, or maybe the curses had a warming effect on the frozen joints. In any case, it popped open a few centimeters. From there it moved, reluctantly, on its bearings.

He shut the door carefully behind him and turned. Making sure of his footing—the snow could have covered all kinds of holes—he started down the center aisle of the ship. Cold flakes crunched under his feet. It sounded as though he was walking on glass. The wind moaned and howled through the torn metal. His breath formed a tiny cumulus cloud, a small shadow of life that stayed just ahead of him.

He could feel his lungs expanding and contracting. They seemed pitifully tiny in the frozen air. Each breath was painful, full of bee-stings and wire-wool.

The center aisle was tilted downward. Nose down, the shuttle had come to an abrupt halt.

Then he did what might have been considered by some a foolish thing. But he was a purveyor of cultured gee-gaws, not a planetary scout. And his taped information said nothing against it. So he knelt and scooped up a small ball of snow. It certainly looked like regular, old-fashioned, smack-in-the-face type snow. It caught the light like snow.

He brought it to his mouth, felt a sudden momentary chill greater than the air. It dissolved in the oral furnace, went down, stayed down. Plain old usual terran-type H 2O snow. He knew from the recordings that Tran-ky-ky’s atmosphere was practically Terra-normal. What he did not consider was the possibility that the snow might contain acquired traces of toxic elements.

But it didn’t, and nothing happened. The snow and his stomach got along just fine.

By way of experiment, he raised his goggles just a smidgin. It was a short experiment. He had to blink away a couple of freezing tears before sliding the dark glass back into place. The glare was fierce and, unyielding. With the goggles, everything showed as clearly as before, but he could look at the snow without having his optic pathways turned to mush.

He reflected that a man caught here without goggles could go blind without even being aware the process was going on. It was far more deceptive than night blindness. Being caught in the light, it seemed, was worse than being caught in the dark.

A slick part of the floor and he slipped, had to catch himself with his gloved hands. For a minute he didn’t move, just stood, caught his breath. Watch it, stupid! This was no place to twist an ankle.

He reached the end of the aisle. A fast glance back to the total destruction in the passenger compartment, and then he turned to look into the pilot’s cubby. The door had been bent inward like the lip of a can. The shuttle’s nose was buried. The lensless ports were filled with a mixture of loose earth and snow. It poured into the small forecabin, oozing over the panel and instrumentation.