“Needless to say, it’s not a flowering plant.”
“I can believe that,” asserted September. “No self-respecting bee would be caught dead on this world.” He took one of the thick sprigs awkwardly in one mittened hand, stared at it with interest.
“High in protein, you say? That’s good. We’re going to need all the rough fuel we can manage if and when we run out of supplies.” He bit off the stalk halfway down, chewed reflectively.
“Not as bad as some,” he said after a moment. “Long way from spinach salad, but better than dandelions.”
“Dandelions?”
“Never mind, feller-me-lad. We’re not likely to run across any.” He swallowed, popped the remaining half in his mouth and finished that also.
“Tough skinned, and it’s got a consistency like old shoe. But the taste is kind of interesting. Sweetish, but bland. Parsley and not celery. If we had the fixings, a good dressing might make this stuff almost civilized. I don’t suppose we’ve got any vinegar?”
“No, unless you count du Kane’s daughter.” Ethan snorted, “I think some of those other plants on the island are supposed to be edible too, but I don’t recall for sure. It’s hard to trust mestaped information on only a single sitting. I was more concerned with the local monetary system and rules of barter, I’m afraid. But pika-pina, I remember that.”
“How about animals? I’d be willing to try a steak.”
“I can’t seem to remember the section on fauna at all.” Ethan’s forehead wrinkled as he poked at his memory. ‘There are animals, though. And fish, of a sort. I do remember that the fish are edible. Supposed to be extremely tasty, too. They’ve evolved a low-oxygen metabolism that enables them to survive beneath the surface.”
“Fish, hummm? I’d even prefer that to a steak.”
“There is the problem,” Ethan reminded him, “of getting at them through eight or nine meters of ice, at the minimum.”
“Oh,” said September, the great beak dipping a little. He looked crestfallen. “I’d forgotten that little detail.”
“What do you suggest we do now?” asked Ethan. It was all very well and good to be able to dish out interesting facts about the planet, quite another to propose immediate application.
“First thing, we’ve got to start preparing for the night as best we can. I’m not afraid of getting to sleep here. But I want to do it with some assurance I’m going to wake up. If we can get through the night without too much trouble, maybe tomorrow we can see about rigging up some sort of sled and improvising navigational gear.
“Our friendly kidnappers might have had local charts, though I doubt it. Depends where we came down. I got a look at the beacon lock just before we hit and we were so far off it barely registered. No, the settlement’s definitely not around the corner. But charts are a possibility. Remember to ask our surviving poorslip about ’em.”
“Think he’ll cooperate?”
“Why not, young feller-me-lad? He’s a candidate for the big deep-freeze, too. Meanwhile, dig into that mestaped knowledge of yours and see if you can position Arsudun with respect to any major landmarks or outstanding surface features.
“Me, I’m going to think about keeping warm tonight. I’d rather not build a fire inside our compartment. Close quarters. But I don’t see a way around it. I suppose we should be thankful we ran up against a wood supply, of sorts. If we’d come to rest in the middle of this,” he indicated the endless ice-ocean, “we’d really be in trouble.”
It occurred to Ethan that nothing on the shuttle was burnable. Naturally not. Nor was the packaging for the self-heating meals, nor the padding in the acceleration couches. Patrick O’Morion himself couldn’t have made a fire with the materials available on the shuttle. You might start a fire with the heater from some of the emergency rations, but you still had to have something to burn.
A man would be better off back on old Terra, in the days when transportation was made of organic wood and burned organic residue for fuel, too.
September gestured at the island. “We can cut trees with the beamer. I hope they’re not too full of sap or we’ll never get ’em to burn. Wonder what they use to keep it from freezing?”
The mention of freezing made Ethan take another look at the sun. He was alarmed to see how far it had dropped. With it went a good deal of the day-heat—no, you couldn’t rightly call it heat—of the more manageable cold. He recalled that the day here was about two hours shorter than Terra’s, or ship-time.
The door to the storage compartment opened with a squeaky protest Colette du Kane stuck her head out into the wind. A big badger or woodchuck checking out of hibernation, Ethan thought. He was angry at himself—what had she done to him? But he couldn’t keep thinking along those lines.
I can’t help myself!, he thought in silent apology. She wasn’t psychic, and didn’t look over at him. Instead, her gaze seemed intent on the drowsing sky.
“Find anything?” she asked. The question was directed past Ethan’s right ear. He shouldn’t have resented it, but he did.
“Some trees. But it’d be rough cutting ’em now.”
“Come on, Skua,” blurted Ethan unthinkingly. “Let’s take a whack at those trees. Give me the beamer.”
“Thought you didn’t want to bother with it,” said the big man, surprised.
“I changed my mind. I’ll cut and you carry … and don’t do that!” September’s hand paused in mid-air. “Another friendly pat on the back from you and I won’t even be in condition to lift this.” He took the beamer and held it tightly in one gloved hand.
“All right, Ethan. I’d like to get a decent cord cut soon as possible. Before it gets much darker, anyway. Or windier,” he concluded, hiking multiple collars higher on his neck.
They turned to leave the ruined boat. Colette watched them thoughtfully until they disappeared. Then she shook her head and smiled ever so slightly before closing the door behind her.
The sun had vanished into a frozen grave and exchanged itself for a baleful icy eye of a moon by the time they pushed into the small metal room. Ethan was concentrating completely on not shaking himself to pieces. He was shivering so violently he could visualize bits and pieces of himself flying off and bouncing across the duralloy floor. A finger here, an eyeball there. At least they were out of that infernal wind. Only the protective face heaters set in the hood of his survival suit had kept his skin from freezing. How September had stood it he couldn’t imagine.
And it was going to get worse. Much worse.
Something bumped from behind and he managed to stumble out of the way as September staggered in behind him. The big man was buried under a huge load of wood, cut cleaner than the finest axe could manage.
Ethan shifted to one side, away from the door, and sank slowly to the floor. If he got out of this with all his component parts intact, he was going to take a nice, peaceful, warm desk job somewhere within the bureaucratic bowels of the organization and toast his tootsies in peace. The beamer he slung into a far corner.
Walther, who by now bore some resemblance to a trapdoor spider, pounced on the weapon in much that fashion. Immediately he whirled and made stabbing motions with it in September’s direction. That worthy was unconcernedly stacking the cut wood next to several empty food crates—all nonflammable plastic, of course.
“That wasn’t very bright of you, buddy,” the kidnapper said to Ethan, not taking his eyes off September. “Don’t you try anything either, sourpuss!” he warned Williams. The schoolteacher, however, hadn’t budged. Nor had Colette, nor her father.
Ethan edged back into the cartons, trying to find a warm spot and failing miserably. September had arranged some of the wood and smaller twigs on a pile of greenish-brown needles in the center of the floor. There were also a few clumps of what looked like dried lichen but probably weren’t.
Colette sat up thoughtfully, turned to her father.
“Father … your lighter.”
“Eh?” The old man looked confused,
then brightened. “Why, of course!”
He reached into a pocket inside his jacket and tossed something small and shiny to September.
“That should help, Mr. September. It’s not full, I’m afraid. No point in hoarding it. I can do without a smoke for awhile.” He smiled hopefully.
September flipped on the tiny, solid-fuel lighter—solid iridium filigree plating, Ethan noted.
“Thanks, du Kane.” The old man looked pleased. “This is better than using the heater from one of the food parcels, and easier.”
The small needles caught almost instantly, and Ethan reflected that there would be little need for much fire-proofing on this world. The wood spat and crackled like a Chinese holiday at first, but it was going to catch.
It would have been easier to gather pika-pina than cut trees, but that tough ground cover held far too much moisture to burn very well. It would have been like trying to light a wet sponge.
“You!” Walther began, having had about enough of this byplay. He was supposed to be in control of the situation, but no one was acting like it. It made him nervous. At first he listened to them all with puzzlement. Now he was mad.
“I’m going to blow your head off,” he grinned at September. “Drill a nice little hole right through your skull.”
September prodded the fire a little more, making sparks jump. He looked over at the door, shifted the blaze with his foot so that it drew on the breeze seeping in past the bent edges. Then he looked idly over at Walther.
“Not with that, you aren’t.”
“If you think you can bluff me …” the kidnapper quavered.
“Dry up, runt. Crawl back in your hole. Can’t you see I’m busy trying to keep you alive?”
Walther shook. His eyes widened and he clenched his teeth. His finger tensed on the hooked trigger.
“He’s going to shoot you,” said Colette calmly, “the poor sap.”
There was a tiny flicker of green at the tip of the beamer. Then nothing.
Walther glanced at it in disbelief, pulled the trigger again. This time the glow was hardly visible. On the third attempt, not even a hint of light came from the barrel.
With a little gasp that might have been fear or anguish, he dropped the useless weapon and scuttled back into the shadows, favoring his bad arm. The wide, now frightened eyes never left September.
It was quiet for a few minutes. Then September stirred the fire again.
“Calm down, Walther. While I’d cheerfully wring your chicken-neck and toss you next to your rigid compadre up forward, I’ve no intention of doing it just now. I’m tired and cold. I might feel differently tomorrow, or the next day. Fact is, I’d’ve done it earlier, but you’re such a pitiable excuse for a man it hardly seemed worth the exertion. So I only broke your arm. Now don’t bother me anymore.”
He settled himself next to the door and concentrated on stuffing several narrow strips of shredded seat-padding into the crack on the hinged side. The other crack he left unblocked, to circulate air both for them and the fire.
“Maybe we can keep a little of the wind out, anyhow,” he muttered half to himself.
Colette was rummaging among the other food cartons. She pulled one out and looked down at the label.
“Escalloped chicken.” She grunted. “Nice for us, but damned unprofitable. Give the condemned a hearty last meal. Somebody on this shipping line has a sense of humor.”
Ethan looked up in surprise. It was the closest thing she’d said to a joke since this’d happened to them. If it had a deeper meaning, it escaped him.
She started passing out the self-heating rations and he was so hungry he finished the first before he thought to look at the label.
September grunted as he continued to jam and press the recalcitrant material into the fissure. He looked over at Williams, huddled quietly to one side of the fire.
“You handled yourself very well there, schoolmaster. I was kind of interested to see what you’d do.”
Williams acknowledged the compliment with a barely perceptible nod.
“I did not expect that Mr. Fortune would be so tired or foolish as to throw a useable weapon in the direction of that person. Therefore I assumed it must have burnt out or otherwise been rendered useless. This is a very nice fire you’ve made here.”
“Enjoy it and welcome, while it lasts,” September answered. “I think we’ve got enough wood to last the night, anyway. You did say the nights were shorter, young feller-me-lad?” Ethan nodded.
Ethan rolled over, trying to set himself as close to the flames as possible barring sudden immolation. He hadn’t found that warm spot. And if there was a soft piece of duralloy, that had escaped his notice as well.
Trouble was, there were six of them to crowd around the energetic but tiny fire. That meant you couldn’t get too much of you next to it. It was impossible to remain both polite and warm. So when one end of you was partly defrosted, the other was still in the figurative freezer. It was most disconcerting.
III
THEY DISPOSED OF THE packages by stacking them in the empty shipping carton and shoving it into a far corner. September was for taking all the garbage outside and tossing it to the winds. He wanted to keep their hideaway neat, as long as they were stuck in it.
By now, though, the gale outside had risen to brobdingnagian proportions. That wind carried quick, freezing death, despite the protection of their suits and face heaters. Outvoted four to one, the big man assented.
“Wish I knew more about these natives,” he muttered. Another log was sacrificed to the greedy flames. Huddled in their survival suits around the orange-red kinetic sculpture, they looked like so many frozen carcasses awaiting the butcher’s saw. But the wood continued to burn comfortingly, although sometimes the fire took on an eerie purple halo. A nice little pile of coals was growing beneath. Even the supporting duralloy seemed to be taking on a reddish tinge under the steady throb of flame.
“It’s not surprising we haven’t encountered any yet,” said Ethan. “For all we know, we might have come down in the middle of the biggest desert on the planet.”
“It’s all right, father,” Colette was murmuring to her sire. “Your flowers are being well taken care of … and International Lubricants of Goldin IV was up six points, last I looked.”
“You’d think they would have noticed the boat coming down,” September grunted. “As clear as this air is, we ought to have been visible for hundreds of kilometers.”
“We might have been seen,” Ethan conceded. “Even so, it might take days or weeks for the locals to organize an expedition to reach us. Assuming they are so inclined.”
“Still, we should post a watch,” said the big man.
“I haven’t taken anything but the basic mestapes,” Williams began, “but it seems to me that your natives, no matter what their makeup, wouldn’t be abroad on a night like this.” Another gust rattled the door, as though in support of the schoolmaster’s theory.
“This could be a tropical evening to them,” Ethan countered. “But if we’re as far away from the settlement as we seem to be, then the locals couldn’t be familiar with flying craft. We can’t tell how they might react. We might have come in over the local metropolis, too, and scared the populace half out of their wits. In which case they might declare this section of ice forever taboo, or the local equivalent. I’ve seen it happen before.”
“Let’s hope not,” said September fervently. “I’m beginning to think we’re going to need outside aid if we’re ever going to see the inside of a brandy snifter again. But that’s not why I think we should stand watch.
“And it has nothing to do with him.” He gestured at Walther. A thin whine from the kidnapper’s location was the only reply, a mouse of a snore. Already sound asleep.
“Although, as long as he entertains thoughts of attack, and as long as we still have one operational beamer”—he patted his vest pocket—“it would be a good idea if everyone didn’t drift off to slumberland all at once.
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“No, my main concern is keeping that fire going. If that goes, it’s liable to get downright chilly in here. And we might never wake up.”
“Quite so,” agreed Colette promptly.
“I usually remain awake late at night,” Williams informed them. “If no one objects, I would be pleased to take the first, uh, watch.”
“Very well … and I shall take the second,” volunteered Colette. “But you will have to excuse my father from such duties … he’s not up to it, I’m afraid.”
“But my dear …” the elder du Kane began. Colette kissed him perfunctorily on the forehead.
“Hush, old man. Lean on me.”
“But your mother would think—”
Colette’s eyes grew suddenly so wild that Ethan missed a breath. She looked about to scream, but instead her voice came out under airtight control—barely.
“Don’t mention that woman to me now,” she snapped out.
“But—”
“Don’t!” There was more than just a hint of warning in that voice. Ethan thought about putting a subtle question to her, took another look at those penetrating green orbs, and decided against butting in. Mind your own business, stupid! He rolled over twice, facing the fire.
It seemed he’d only just put his head down after concluding his two-hour watch when he was suddenly awakened. He was facing the fire a half-meter away. For a moment something very primitive deep inside him was badly startled. It did wake him quickly, though. He rolled over and found himself almost nose to nose with Williams.
The schoolteacher held fingers to lips. Ethan sat up slowly and stifled his questions. Across the glow of the fire he could see Colette du Kane. Her expression chased the rest of the sleep from his eyes. She was chewing on one set of knuckles. Her father was kneeling tensely next to her, an arm around her shoulders.