“I hadn’t thought of that. I’ve been out of sales for too long.” Ethan considered, finally said, “Maybe we should try to keep her off even at the risk of insulting T’hos?”
September shook his head. “Too late for that. Besides, anybody that clever—if she is that clever and I’m not reading motives into her actions that weren’t there—could be a definite asset on a trip like this. I just can’t escape the feeling she was smiling inside all the while she was arguing with Ta-hoding.”
Exasperation colored Ethan’s response. “Skua, make up your mind! Do you want her off the ship or not?”
“I really don’t know, young feller-me-lad, and that’s the truth. Hard enough to know what to make of an enigma when it’s human.”
Ethan walked off, shaking his head in frustration. September continued to stare into the crowd until what really troubled him finally struck home.
Feloursine or not, he was startled to realize; Grurwelk Seesfar was a lot like him.
As the Slanderscree departed Poyolavomaar and turned south toward the equator, Ethan saw little of Grurwelk Seesfar. When not counseling Ta-hoding about ice conditions and weather, she remained below in her hammock, quiet and unobtrusive. It would be easy, he mused, to forget she was aboard, so little did she show herself on deck. Perhaps that was what she wanted.
The great ice sheet slipped beneath the Slanderscree’s runners. Uninhabited islands poked their heads through the white pavement off to starboard while great fields of pika-pedan, pike-pina’s giant relative, dominated the western horizon. Though stories of iceships becoming trapped in such fields were a staple of sailor lore, such tragedies were rare in reality. That didn’t keep Ta-hoding from giving the forest of towering succulents a wide berth wherever possible.
Four-legged furry crunilites scurried the length of the growths, nibbling at the soft sides, while a pair of Oroes drifted from the crown of one stalk to another, the sacs on their backs fully inflated.
It was instructive to view the fauna of the pika-pedan forest—from a distance. He hadn’t forgotten, never would forget, the day when he’d nearly been dragged beneath the ice and consumed by a kossief during their journey to distant Moulokin. The ice sheet was home to all manner of creatures in addition to the far-ranging root system of the pika-pina and pika-pedan.
Each night Ta-hoding would park the icerigger with its stern facing into the west wind, the ice anchors would be set out, and all but the night watch would settle into a deep, unbroken sleep. Cheela Hwang and her companions slept as soundly as the Slanderscree’s crew. The cold itself was exhausting.
Ethan didn’t know what woke him. His breath was a distinct, pale cloud in the moonlit air of the cabin. Here near Tran-ky-ky’s equator the nighttime temperature fell no farther than a mere forty or fifty below. He looked around in the dark and tried to remember what had disturbed his sleep. His survival suit lay nearby. Some of the scientists chose to sleep in their suits, but he and September had long since abandoned the practice. They slept instead beneath small mountains of thick furs. Besides being more comfortable, it gave the suits a chance to air out.
As a precaution he reached out and touched a contact on the suit’s sleeve to prewarm the interior. At the same time the sensation was repeated: movement. There shouldn’t be any movement. Multiple ice anchors locked the icerigger in place and if anything it was unusually calm outside. Sudden gales were not unknown at night, but this was different. He had experience of wind-induced motion and this wasn’t it.
A third time and he was sure. Not movement to port or starboard, bow or stern. More like a settling sensation.
“Skua? Skua, wake up.”
Across from his bed a massive form stirred beneath an avalanche of blankets. “Hy—what?”
“We’re moving, Skua. The ship has moved. Several times.”
“So what? Everything on this world moves. The wind sees to that.”
“No, this is different. It’s more like—” The Slanderscree shuddered again. A moment of uncertainty until the motion ceased, then September rolled over to peer across at his companion. White hair gleamed in the moonlight.
“Now that did not feel proper, feller-me-lad. Damn if I don’t think you’re right, but something else ain’t.”
“I don’t understand. If something’s wrong, the night watch should have sounded a warning by how.”
“If it still can.” September reached out to flip the prewarm on his own survival suit. Meanwhile Ethan took a deep breath and slid out from beneath the mass of furs. The cold stung his naked body and then he was secure inside his suit. He snapped down the visor and sealed it to the collar. The suit’s thermostat immediately began to raise the temperature inside the garment to a comfortable level.
The two men quickly discovered that Ethan was neither the first nor the only one who’d been awakened by the peculiar motion. The corridor outside their cabin was packed with crewmembers, recruits from Poyolavomaar, and others. He watched Elfa Kurdagh-Vlata moving toward the gangway while struggling to don a hessavar-hide vest. Even here near the equator the nighttime temperatures were still a bit brisk for an acclimated Tran.
As Ethan tried to catch up to her the ship shook again, violently this time. Sailors spread their arms to brace themselves against the corridor’s walls. Ethan stumbled, was caught by September on his way to the floor.
“Bad and getting worse.” The giant’s expression was grim as he stared toward the gangway. “Something’s happening outside and we’d damn well better find out what in a hurry.”
Natural phenomenon or otherwise, the daughter of the Landgrave of Sofold was prepared. She drew her sword as she mounted the gangway. Sailors parted to make way for the skypeople following her while those Tran not previously awakened began to stumble sleepily out of their beds and hammocks.
Elfa and Ethan emerged on deck simultaneously, side by side. With both of Tran-ky-ky’s moons up, there was ample light to see by. Ice glistened, stark and barren beneath the unwinking moons. The wind blew steadily if un-spectacularly from the east. Ethan estimated its velocity at no more than twenty or thirty kph, not near enough to shake a well-anchored vessel.
Hunnar crowded close behind them. “Check the anchors first thing.” Ta-hoding had yet to put in an appearance and his evaluation of the situation was the one Ethan most wanted to hear.
They moved away from the hatch. Soldiers and sailors emerged from the opening in a steady stream, spreading out in several directions.
“All clear off the bow!” came a shout.
“All clear to starboard!”
“All clear to—” The cry was cut off abruptly as something like a flexible pine tree reached over the Slanderscree’s railing to pluck the unfortunate sailor off the deck as easily as Ethan would have removed an olive from a martini. It was followed by a second gargantuan limb, then a third.
“Shan-kossief!” screamed one of the sailors as he joined his companions in a mad dash for the open hatchway. Hunnar managed to slow the panic by pointing out that no matter how far they stretched, the huge tentacles or whatever they were could reach no more than a meter or so beyond the railing. If you stayed clear of the ship’s flanks, you were safe. Warily, the sailors began to spread out again, keeping to the center of the deck. The tentacles would vanish, then reappear farther along the portside in hopes of grabbing another victim, but Hunnar was right: their range and reach were limited.
Ethan knew what a kossief was from personal experience: an ice worm, a carnivore with a tubular body that lived within the ice sheet itself. It traveled by melting the ice in front of it, digging a continuous tunnel until it sensed prey somewhere on the surface. Then it would stealthily melt its way up beneath its intended victim, strike and grab with long tentacles, and drag its struggling meal down into its lair. Expelling water from its own body, it would reform the ice sheet and settle down to consume its food in an icy cocoon. That was a kossief. What was a shan-kossief?
In Tran “shan” meant vario
usly “big,” “huge,” and “too-vast-to-be-imagined.” As he tried to decide which interpretation would best apply, the ship shuddered anew. There was that settling sensation again.
It didn’t take an expert on local fauna to hypothesize what was happening. If the shan-kossief’s method of acquiring prey was similar to that of its smaller namesake—Ethan shivered, and not from the cold. What would a monster like that think of the icerigger? It must be very confused. Here was prey the size of a small stavanzer. Edible prey, if the unlucky night guard had gone to the fate Ethan imagined. Yet most of it was inorganic and inedible. Probably the carnivore could sense the other warm, edible lifeforms aboard. It couldn’t get at them, and the ship was probably too strong for it to tear apart. What else would it do but attempt to employ its instinctive method of obtaining food?
Not enough to guess. Before they could implement defensive reactions, they had to be certain. He started slowly toward the portside rail.
Elfa put a restraining paw on his shoulder. “You cannot. It will take you as well.”
“Not if I keep down and don’t expose myself,” he told her without much conviction.
“Ethan is right.” Hunnar moved up to join them. “We must know what is happening. I will go.”
“No. I’m a lot smaller and maybe my suit will shield my body heat from its receptors.” Hunnar thought this over, then nodded reluctantly and retreated to rejoin the rest of the onlookers.
Ethan went down on his hands and knees and resumed his, approach to the railing. The anxious murmurings of both Tran and humans filled his ears, Hwang and her companions had joined the Tran on deck and were bombarding September and Hunnar with questions neither could answer.
He bumped his head against the wood. Nothing reached over the rail to grab him. Carefully he sat back on his haunches and began to straighten. His gloved hands reached over the top of the barrier. A moment later he found himself staring over the side.
Initially it seemed nothing was amiss. Then he leaned out over the edge and saw that the portside bow runner was half gone. Water lapped at the brace that secured it to the underside of the ship. The long pool was spreading slowly beneath the Slanderscree. If the shan-kossief was big enough, it could conceivably drag the entire vessel beneath the surface where it would proceed to pick them off as efficiently as an anteater would glean a termite nest.
Something beneath the ice caught his attention. He found himself staring in fascination at a set of immense phosphorescent eyes. Beneath them lay the faint outline of a hollow space wide enough to swallow a skimmer. The ice sheet was a window through which he could peer into the frozen depths. The eyes were hypnotic and complex, not the light-sensing organs of a primitive invertebrate.
A rubbery cable shot out of the ice to snake itself around his right arm.
He’d leaned out a little too far, made himself a little too obvious. He tried to brace himself against the railing and the wood creaked. His arm felt like it was being torn from its socket. The pressure was irresistible. He felt himself being dragged up and over the side. Then he fell back onto the deck and Skua was standing over him, clutching the monster axe an admiring Tran smith had fashioned for him.
“Better than a beamer for this kind of work.” With his free hand he reached down, grabbed Ethan by the collar of his survival suit, and began dragging him back amidships. He didn’t let go until they were back with the others.
“Can you stand?”
“That’s not the problem.” Ethan straightened, winced, and leaned to his right as he felt gingerly the place where bones and muscles came together to form a limb. “I think I might’ve dislocated my shoulder.”
“Lucky you didn’t dislocate your skull, leaning over the side like that.” Ethan was surrounded by a circle of concerned faces, most of them alien.
“It’s trying to melt the ice out from beneath us. That’s why we keep shaking. Every time another few centimeters of ice is dissolved we settle deeper. The portside bow runner’s already half under.”
Hunnar growled. “It will exhaust itself, I think. It would take days to melt enough ice to swallow the whole ship.”
“Evidently,” September said dryly, “it thinks we’re worth the effort. Probably thinks the Slanderscree’s a giant cookie box.”
“We have some time, then, but we’d better do something fast,” Ethan commented. “All this shifting and settling might break one of the runners off and we’re a long ways from repair facilities.”
“What can we do?” Hunnar asked. “If we approach the rail, far less go over the side to attack it on the ice, it will take us one at a time. Nor are crossbows and spears likely to hurt it, even if we could force it up from beneath the ice, which we cannot.”
“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 r
esults 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.