The beauty was replaced by a shattering reality as the huge ship smashed down onto the ice sheet.
Ethan winced as it struck. Most everyone did. The hull held as the icerigger bounced once, struck again, and slewed sideways. Sharp pinging sounds rose above the wind as several spars as thick as a man’s leg were snapped off and went flying over the bow, carrying their sails with them. The loss actually helped to slow the ship.
Hunnar and Elfa were already chivaning down the far side of the ridge like a pair of champion skiers. The chivless humans followed more slowly, slipping and sliding in their boots.
The soldiers who’d been waiting on the ice were scrambling up the Slanderscree’s boarding ladders to assist the dazed sailors, many of whom had been knocked unconscious by the force of the ship’s touchdown. When Ethan stepped onto the deck, Hunnar’s troops were already working to bring order out of chaos.
Snapped rigging and torn sails littered the deck. The broken spars dangling forlornly from the bowsprit were a bigger problem, but the icerigger could sail without them. Thanks to the extra bracing and rigging Ta-hoding had laid on, the three mainmasts had held, though one swayed dangerously in its braces.
The captain greeted them with shining eyes. He held a thick cloth to his nostrils. It was stained red, but Ta-hoding didn’t seem to notice it. Nor did he mention a newly acquired limp.
“Is that what it is like to ride one of your sky ships, friend Ethan? A glorious experience, if painful. The ship”—and he looked around proudly as he spoke—“survived better than her crew.”
September looked on approvingly. “She seems to have taken the concussion very well.” Blood stained cabin walls and decking. A couple of sailors were going to need rest and repair, but most had suffered nothing more serious than bruises and contusions.
Third Mate Kilpit came running to join them. His left arm hung loosely at his side but he saluted briskly with the other. “Starboard bow runner is almost broken through at the bracing. Portside bow appears to be all right, as do the stern runners and the rudder. As you predicted, Captain, the front third of the ship took most of the impact.”
“How bad is the brace?”
“To fix it properly requires the services of a shipyard, but”—he hesitated—“if we use enough cable I think we can secure it temporarily. I would not advise trying any sharp maneuvers to starboard.”
“We won’t,” Ta-hoding assured him. “Gather a repair team and set to work.” He glanced back over the ridge and eastward, toward the oncoming storm. “We need to be moving again as soon as possible. The brace will hold. We are not preparing for a fight. There is nothing to battle here save our own injuries and the weather. When we are safely away southward we will talk and remember this moment, but not now.” The mate saluted again and jumped down to the main deck, gathering his work crew around him as he headed toward the bow.
“I thought when last I looked that the rifs was turning somewhat to the north,” Hunnar said.
“I noticed that also. It could as quickly turn south.” Ta-hoding’s gaze and his thoughts were roving the damaged foremast.
Everyone pitched in to help with the repairs, including Hwang’s group. They knew nothing about sailing craft but any extra hand was eagerly accepted for fetching and carrying, even if that hand was devoid of fur. The ship was under way again far sooner than anyone dared hope.
They didn’t escape the rifs entirely. Its southern edge caught them long after the pressure ridge had fallen out of sight astern. Somehow the damaged starboard bow runner held, wrapped in enough tough pika-pina rope to rig another whole ship. Bandaged and limping, they used the rifs kiss to increase their speed as they fled southward.
The rifs gale was exceeded only by the windiness of those sailors who had actually guided the Slanderscree up and over the Bent Ocean. The altitude it had reached and the distance it had traveled through the air increased with each retelling of the experience. For a few wondrous seconds they had flown just like the skypeople, and in a craft of their own manufacture. Ethan listened to the enthusiastic recitations and smiled. If their union continued to expand and solidify, someday soon these Tran would be permitted to fly skimmers of their own, then aircraft. Eventually they would find themselves traveling from their world to others aboard massive KK-drive starships. He wondered if it would mean an end to their enthusiasm. To be technologically advanced is to become jaded, he told himself.
Eventually they outran the rifs, though not the crew’s enthusiasm for reliving that glorious flight. The soldiers who had crossed the pressure ridge on foot began to grumble and a few fights broke out. No one took any notice of this. The Tran were a naturally combative lot. Betting on the outcome of various fights helped to pass the time.
Days became weeks. The change in the climate was almost imperceptible at first, but before long everyone was commenting on it. As they sailed steadily south from the equator it grew warmer instead of cooler. The hundred-meter high cliffs of the continental plateau were still out of range when the Tran began to divest themselves of their clothing.
Outer furs went first, followed by hessavar-hide armor, then rough pika-pina fabric vests and undergarments. Soon the Slanderscree sailed on manned by a crew of naked Tran, bare save for their short brown or gray fur. As the temperature continued to climb Ethan found himself wondering how long it would be before he and his companions joined them. Of course, while the climate had turned outrageously hot for the Tran the thermometers still sat below the freezing mark. Not yet shorts and bare chest weather. Yet as they continued due south the temperature gauges continued their inexorable climb toward zero.
By now the Tran were not merely uncomfortable, they were suffering visibly. There was talk of trimming fur as short as possible, an unheard of aberration made necessary by the soaring temperature. A hasty vote indicated that no one was bad off enough yet to suffer the indignity of being shaved.
The humans commiserated as best they could, but silently they were delighted. It was possible to move about inside the ship clad only in long undergarments, and to stand on deck with hoods retracted.
Once before, Ethan, Milliken, and September had encountered similar temperatures. In the land of the Golden Saia lived an isolated group of pre-ice age Tran whose bodies had never been forced to readapt to the onset of frigid weather. They clung to territory warmed by permanent hot springs. Perhaps they were sailing toward a similar region, he thought, since extensive volcanism was still the most credible explanation for the inexplicable climatological shift Hwang and her colleagues associated with this region.
Five days later they encountered something which had not been seen on Tran-ky-ky in forty millennia.
The lookout who detected the phenomenon raced down the rigging, gestured voicelessly and wide-eyed toward the bow, and vanished below deck before anyone could ask her what she’d seen. Third Mate Kilpit tried to run the woman down to reprimand her for making such an inadequate report, but couldn’t find her. By then the phenomenon was visible to those on deck, many of whom were tempted to follow the lookout, Kilpit among them. As a ship’s mate he was not allowed to succumb to personal fears. Shaking, he made his report to the captain.
Not all reacted to the discovery by panicking. A few were defiant, others simply curious. With Milliken Williams to provide reassurance, Ta-hoding managed to calm his people with an explanation. They drifted back to their stations, muttering nervously under their breath as they regarded a childhood nightmare come to life.
Open ocean.
Well, not quite that, though that was what it looked like to the uneasy Tran. A layer of water, liquid water, the kind of water that was only encountered in its free form on Tran-ky-ky in homes and galleys where fire was present, covered the surface of the ice sheet. Though less than a centimeter deep, it was more than enough to rattle the collective Tran psyche. Ethan checked one of his suit gauges. The temperature here read just slightly above freezing.
The icerigger’s bow runners were now
throwing up watery roostertails instead of ice particles as the ship cut through the liquid layer. Suddenly the Slanderscree resembled a seagoing hydrofoil.
The sailors began to relax when it was apparent they weren’t going to plunge into the inside of the world. The depth of the watery layer remained constant. Williams and Hwang’s people were at pains to reassure their Tran companions that the hundred-meter thick ice sheet wasn’t about to vanish beneath them.
It better not, Ethan knew. The Slanderscree was no boat. Its seams were caulked to keep out the wind, but they weren’t waterproof. If it fell into deep water, the caulking wouldn’t hold for more than a few minutes. Then the graceful craft, so solid and steady on the ice, would sink like a rock. Ethan wasn’t sure there was a word for float in the Tran language.
As they sailed on southward, all eyes were alert for signs of volcanism. There were heavy clouds clinging to the south horizon, but no plumes of smoke or towering cones. Blanchard’s readings indicated that the sea floor lay an average of five hundred meters beneath the icerigger’s runners, so the possibility of subsurface heating was ruled out. In any case, oceanic volcanoes would melt the ice from below, not from the top.
And still the temperature rose, albeit reluctantly, as they continued south by southeast. In places the ship sliced through water six centimeters deep, though that was the maximum depth they encountered.
“The effect feeds off itself,” Snyek explained. “Only the circulation of subsurface currents driven by the planet’s internal heat and external gravitational forces keeps the sea from freezing solid all the way to the abyssal plain, but if the ice sheet should ever melt all the way through, then the melting would greatly accelerate because the air temperature here has risen, or been driven, above freezing. Warm air would interact with the warmer water below the ice to expand any opening in the sheet.”
“Ice corpse,” muttered one of the Tran who’d been listening to this translated explanation.
“It’s just a localized phenomenon,” Ethan explained. “There’s no need to panic.”
“Who is panicking?” Seesfar turned to the taller sailors. “Will you get back to your jobs or do I have to do them for you?”
Grumbling, the group of Tran moved off, still talking to themselves.
“Thanks,” Ethan told her.
She glanced sharply back at him. “Thank me not. Just find my mate.” She stalked off in the wake of the others. Stalked or stomped or marched, Ethan mused, there was tenseness even in her stride. A bomb ready to go off at any moment. He hoped he wasn’t in the vicinity when that happened.
Hunnar whispered in Ethan’s ear. “ ’Tis becoming more and more difficult to keep even the most loyal sailors in line.” He nodded over the side. “This is a thing never before seen. They listen to the explanations of friend Williams and his companions, but in their hearts they believe this water to be the work of devils and demons.”
“They know the Slanderscree and our tools aren’t the work of supernatural forces. They know about science.”
“The ship is real to them. It is something in the world. This melting of the ice is something that affects the whole world. It is not easy for them to nod understanding. How would you feel if the solid land beneath your feet were to suddenly reach up and grab you by the ankles? That is what water does if you try to chivan through it.”
“I hadn’t thought of it that way.” The Slanderscree’s runners could cut through six centimeters of water with ease, but an individual Tran trying to travel across such a surface would have trouble. It would be the equivalent of a human trying to run through mud. He tried to imagine what it would be like to be walking down a concrete path only to suddenly see his feet sink into the ground.
“There are only natural forces at work here. There’s no danger.”
“Tell that to the crew.” Hunnar nodded toward the busy deck. “These are but simple sailors and fighters, gatherers of pika-pina, workers in wood and stone. They are the bravest Wannome and Poyolavomaar can produce. Think what the reaction would be among the general population should this aberration spread to the homelands. There would be as much panic as though the sun had not risen.”
“They’ll be all right.” Ethan tried to sound confident.
“They will have to be,” the knight agreed.
VIII
THE CLIFFS OF THE southern continent were still out of sight over the horizon when the mainmast lookout let out a cry of “Guttorbyn!”
Soldiers scrambled tiredly to arm their crossbows while others picked up spears and bows. They had dealt with attacks by flying carnivores often enough to become bored with the routine. The spearmen would hold off any of the large meat-eaters which came close while the crossbowmen reloaded and picked the attackers out of the sky one at a time.
Considering how many of the large flying carnivores they’d slain while defending the ship this past year and more it was a pity they weren’t better to eat, Ethan reflected as he picked up the sword which had been a gift to him from the whole crew. Skua September joined him, his oversize war axe held loosely in one fist.
When the lookout reported he could see only one of the flying creatures coming toward the ship, half the defenders put their weapons aside and returned to their work. Those still armed argued over who would be permitted to shoot first. It was not a decision to be made lightly. There could be no indiscriminate firing. Crossbow bolts were tipped with metal, and metal was too precious to waste.
“It’s a big one!” the lookout cried. “Biggest I ever saw!”
“Maybe it’s not a guttorbyn.” Ethan strained to pick out the airborne dot arrowing toward them. “I’m sure there are hundreds of lifeforms Hunnar and his people from Sofold have never encountered.”
“Strange sort of flyer.” September was leaning over the rail, trying to make out details. “There’s none of the swooping, arching flight you see in a guttorbyn. Coming in much too low, too.” If you were winged on Tran-ky-ky, you stayed a respectable distance above the ice sheet when airborne, out of the reach of shan-kossiefs and other subsurface ambuscaders.
“That’s no guttorbyn,” the giant murmured tightly, “but recognize it I do.”
Hunnar joined them. “Is that not one of your flying boats?”
“It’s a skimmer for sure. What the hell is a skimmer doing down here?”
“Maybe Trell left behind some partners we never found out about,” Ethan said, referring to the late, unlamented Resident Commissioner.
“Unlikely.” September was trying to pick out faces on the oncoming craft. “They would’ve turned themselves in by now. The body isn’t much use when the head’s been cut off.” He turned and bellowed toward the nearest hatch. A sailor obediently turned and raced below to inform the scientists.
Cheela Hwang was first on deck. Williams said the meteorologist slept less than four hours a night. Ethan forbore from asking the teacher how he’d happened to come by that bit of information.
By now the skimmer was flying parallel to the icerigger, close enough for those on board to make out individual shapes.
“Not one of ours,” Hwang said, “because there aren’t any of ours. Skimmers aren’t permitted at Brass Monkey. Too advanced for use among the natives.”
“Like beamers, which I wish we had.” September gestured. “They’re sliding closer. Doing the same thing we’re doing, I expect. Checking us over.”
“What about the government people?” Ethan asked her. “Could some department have one they’ve been using on the sly?”
Hwang shook her head impatiently. “Brass Monkey’s too small a community to hide something like that. If a skimmer were available, everybody would want to use it. You couldn’t keep it a secret. There are no aircraft, nothing bigger than the ice cycles you saw.”
“Could the Commonwealth have another outpost on Tran-ky-ky whose existence they’re deliberately keeping secret from everyone at Brass Monkey?”
“Governments can do anything, feller-me-lad,??
? September assured him, “but in this case I expect they’re innocent. This world’s too hostile a place to be playing such games.”
The skimmer wasn’t the only surprise. As it drew quite close to the icerigger, those on board were startled to see that there were no humans on the little craft. It was crewed and operated solely by Tran. This provoked a good bit of comment among the Slanderscree’s sailors. The reaction among members of the icerigger’s human contingent was a good deal stronger.
“Allowing locals the use of this type of technology is an imprisonable offense.” Moware was beside himself. “Just letting them see a skimmer is criminal. Letting them operate one …” He shook his head numbly, unable to countenance such egregious disregard for regulations.
“Someone trusts these Tran a lot!” was all September had to say.
Ethan noticed Grurwelk close by. “Those aren’t demons. They’re your own kind.”
She hardly glanced back at him. “Demons come in many shapes, skyman.”
By this time the skimmer had slid close enough for those on board the icerigger to make out individual details. The skimmer’s operators wore vests of leather strips and similar loose-lying kilts. All wore caps or helmets of dark leather decorated with bits of wood and metal straps. The latter were informative: They didn’t look like the crude iron work of the Tran. They threw back too much sunlight, a hint that they’d been machined. Of course, anyone renegade enough to provide the Tran with a skimmer wouldn’t hesitate to supply them with scraps of metal for decorative purposes.
Two of the flyers moved to the edge of the skimmer facing the Slanderscree and shouted. Ethan considered himself fluent but the words were unintelligible to him. Even Hunnar appeared to be having some trouble with the accent. Through gestures and repetition the skimmer’s occupants eventually got their point across.