The Icerigger Trilogy: Icerigger, Mission to Moulokin, and The Deluge Drivers (43 page)
Read The Icerigger Trilogy: Icerigger, Mission to Moulokin, and The Deluge Drivers Online
Authors: Alan Dean Foster
When it had died slightly, he shouted, “He … ah … bumped his head coming out of the tunnel.” He shoved the limp form at her. “Why don’t you take care of him?”
Colette backed away a step. “Me? I’m not a damned nurse. Let Williams or Eer-Meesach look after him.”
“Oh, just watch him for a minute, hey?”
She considered, chewing her lower lip. “Oh, all right, give him here.” September bent and passed the dead weight to Colette. She handled it easily and sat down next to the mast with him, studying his face. September grunted appreciatively.
They’d rounded the last spur of black earth and were leaving the volcano astern. The smoke now billowing from the cone was tinged with crimson and seemed to have grown greatly in volume.
There was a tremendous ear-shattering explosion, coupled with a moaning, ripping sound. The
Slanderscree
was lifted off the ice and slammed down a dozen meters on. A few spars cracked. Somehow, the runners held.
Tran were picking themselves up off the deck, some of them very slowly. One had been thrown from the rigging and was now a grotesque tangle of arms and legs near one hatch.
“Bedamned!” sputtered September, shaking the wrist he’d fallen on as he pulled himself off the planking. Ethan had come around just in time to get thrown into Colette. He bounced off.
“Green clay,” he mumbled, then looked confused. “There was something about green clay … but I’ve forgotten.”
“What happened to me?”
“You hit your head coming out of the tunnel,” supplied Colette. She gently but firmly moved him off her legs. “And I don’t know anything about any green clay.”
Ethan rubbed his jaw … funny place to fall on … and thought hard. He looked up at her and she was staring down at him strangely.
“Oh well … couldn’t have been very important,” he said.
“How would you like to be rich beyond your wildest dreams?”
“Huh?”
“Marry me.”
“I beg your pardon, Miss du Kane?”
“Under the circumstances, you may call me Colette. Well?”
“Wait a minute, Wait a minute.” He must still be dazed. “I didn’t even think you
liked
me … let alone loved me.”
Those startling green (green?) eyes stared down at him. “Who said anything about love? I’m asking you to marry me! You’re reasonably attractive, reasonably intelligent—and kinder than most. The only people who ask me to marry
them
are money-hunters. I can read the contempt in their eyes. There’s no contempt in yours. A little pity, but I’m used to that. Well?”
Ethan thought. “This is too fast and I’m still dazed. Let me … let me think it over. What would your father say?”
She gave him a twisted smile. “Father? Father’s been intermittently insane for the past four years.” She stood up and stared down at him from a great height. “Who do you think’s been running du Kane Enterprises for the last four years, Ethan Fortune?”
“Look to the mountain!” yelled a voice. Those who could staggered to the rail.
A kilometer or so up the side of the volcano, a huge fissure dozens of meters wide had cleft the mountainside like an ax-blow. A broad river of fiery red and yellow spilled from the gaping fissure, overflowing the edges of the break.
The amber stream gained the ice. Immediately a jet of superheated steam roared skywards, obscuring much of the peak from view.
“Quite a sight,” said September appreciatively. There was a loud yelp behind him.
Williams was absolutely terrified. He was flailing and gesturing as though he’d lost control of his arms.
“Easy, schoolmaster. What’s the matter? Spirits?”
“We’ve got to put on more sail!” he piped frantically. “Tell the crew to blow into them, if we must! We’ve got to … to get
away
from here!”
“Why?” September glanced behind them. “We’ve got a little wind with us now. At this rate we’ll be out of sight of the island before dark.”
“Not … not good enough!” panted the out-of-breath Williams.
“Now look, surely we’re in no danger from the lava. I’m no geologist, but …”
“Not the lava. Not the lava!” Williams was pleading. Ta-hoding had walked over and was now an interested listener. So was Hunnar.
“You don’t understand! The lava will melt the ice. And that fissure may have cracked the whole island. If the cold sea water beneath the ice reaches the core … the pressure … incalculable …” He subsided, out of breath.
“What does the small wizard mean?” asked Hunnar uncertainly. September rubbed the full crop of whiskers that now coated that jutting chin under his face shield.
“He says the mountain’s going to blow up, I think.”
“Blow-up?” Ta-hoding’s fat face was comical. His anxiety was not. “Blow-up?” he repeated stupidly. Then he whirled and began rattling off hysterical orders and commands. The deck of the
Slanderscree
became a madhouse.
The crew strove to mount every square centimeter of sail left in the lockers. They were even stringing it from rigging to hatch covers. Green-brown pika-pina sailcloth went up everywhere, until the
Slanderscree
resembled a moving island.
Nothing happened all the rest of that day, nor all night. They were still running rapidly to the southwest the next morning when it happened. The volcano was far astern and long out of sight. But they heard the rumble. There was a crackling.
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.
Book Two of
The Icerigger Trilogy
For Mike and Helen Green,
beloved Uncle and Aunt always,
and damn the indifferent genetics of it all …
Prologue
I
T 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.