Alan Foster - The Icerigger Trilogy

The whole sky northeast of them lit up in a titanic eruption of fire and flaming gases. Lightning smashed every section of unbruised sky. A pillar of red-black smoke and ash sown with lightning billowed into the stratosphere. This time it was September who grabbed the megaphone and roared for everyone to hug the deck. A second later he was imitating a termite.

Nothing happened. The eruptions continued. An ominous lowing breeze swept over the ship, challenging the westwind. Then the full force of displaced air struck them as the giant volcano began to tear itself to pieces.

The maelstrom that came down on the raft made the Rifs seem like a spring zephyr. The Slanderscree exploded forward across the ice. But most of the super-tough sails held. Most of the rigging held. And the lashings on the great wheel held.

The borean monster fell to a simple cyclone. September crawled to the rail and raised his head into that skin-tearing gale. Then he rose to his full height, somehow keeping his balance in the gale.

“Sonuvabitch!” he howled, “what a ride!” Then his feet were blown out from under him and he had to wrap his arms around a shroud to keep from being swept off the deck.

Pity the lad couldn’t see this, he thought. Or mayhap better he doesn’t. The ozmidine? Melted, or pulverized to green dust, perhaps. Immortality was short. He looked across the planking. Colette was using her bulk to shield Ethan from some of the wind. On the other hand, he reflected, smiling, mining is work. A soft touch of a friend, now… that was much more civilized!

The Slanderscree shot southwestward at close to three hundred kilometers an hour.

The prop-jet hummed smoothly on the two-man ice-skimmer as it curved in its daily patrol out from the humanx settlement of Brass Monkey and headed up the frozen fjord.

The two men inside had grown accustomed to the icelocked world and its gruff, somber native populace. But they were completely unprepared for the gigantic raft, dozens of sails billowing, which rounded the entrance to the fjord and shot past them before they could waken to challenge it.

“Mother, did you see that?” exclaimed the pilot.

“How could I miss it, Marcel,” replied his copilot, “seeing as how it practically ran us down.” He was doing things to dashboard controls. “Take over your stick before we pile into a cliffside, will you?”

Abashed, Marcel did so. “Thought I’d seen every size and shape of ice-craft this backwater had to offer,” he mumbled.

“Moving like the proverbial bat out of hell,” the copilot agreed admiringly. “Somebody did a helluva job on that baby.” They swung the tiny skimmer around. The prop groaned at the strain.

“You’d better get on the comm, tell Docking and Receiving to expect that thing or someone’s liable to have a fit and take a shot at it. I want to meet the natives who built that.”

Marcel goosed the engine to a high whine. “I’ll have to call. For sure we’re not going to overhaul it.” He leaned to hit the comm switch and chuckled.

“You know… it’s funny, this glare and all… but that damn thing went by so fast I thought I saw a set of broad’s underwear flying astern in place of the usual native banner. Biggest pair I ever saw. Ain’t that a kick?” He bit another button and the screen over the angled windshield began to brighten.

“Aw, you’re batty.”

“Sure… all in the mind,” the pilot agreed.

The copilot looked thoughtful. “Then it’s all in mine, too, because I could swear I saw the same damn thing.”

The glance they exchanged was profound.

IT ALL BEGAN WITH a bungled kidnapping.

The two men who’d attempted to abduct the wealthy Hellespont du Kane and his daughter Colette from the KK-drive 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 thousands of wind-swept kilometers from the only human settlement on the frozen planet below. Those actions also caused the death of one kidnapper and the immobilization 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 remarkable 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 depredations of Sagyanak the Death and her Horde. Such wandering tribes of nomadic barbarians, whole cities living on their icerafts, periodically visited the permanent 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 Eer-Meesach, the Horde was defeated utterly. Then reluctantly, Torsk Kurdagh-Vlata, Landgrave and ruler of Wannome, agreed to keep his promise to help the shipwrecked humans reach the Commonwealth outpost of Brass Monkey.

Using duralloy metal from the ruined lifeboat to provide unbreakable ice runners, and employing designs 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 spacecraft, a monastery of religious fanatics and the explosion of a gigantic volcano.

More troublesome to Ethan were his relationships with Elfa Kurdagh-Vlata, the daughter of the Landgrave who had stowed away aboard the Slanderscree, and with the affectionate but sarcastic and domineering Colette du Kane.

None of which prevented the Slanderscree from reaching the island of Arsudun, its human outpost and shuttleport of Brass Monkey, where they hoped they would find immediate transportation off the hellishly cold, windswept world of Tran-ky-ky…

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.