The Icerigger Trilogy

Alan Dean Foster

Contents

Icerigger

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter III

Chapter IV

Chapter V

Chapter VI

Chapter VII

Chapter VIII

Chapter IX

Chapter X

Chapter XI

Chapter XII

Chapter XIII

Chapter XIV

Mission to Moulokin

Prologue

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter III

Chapter IV

Chapter V

Chapter VI

Chapter VII

Chapter VIII

Chapter IX

Chapter X

Chapter XI

Chapter XII

Chapter XIII

Chapter XIV

Chapter XV

Chapter XVI

Chapter XVII

Chapter XVIII

The Deluge Drivers

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter III

Chapter IV

Chapter V

Chapter VI

Chapter VII

Chapter VIII

Chapter IX

Chapter X

Chapter XI

Chapter XII

Chapter XIII

Chapter XIV

Chapter XV

A Biography of Alan Dean Foster

Icerigger

Book One of The Icerigger Trilogy

For

Carol Fran

Here’s proof of insanity in the family

Contents

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter III

Chapter IV

Chapter V

Chapter VI

Chapter VII

Chapter VIII

Chapter IX

Chapter X

Chapter XI

Chapter XII

Chapter XIII

Chapter XIV

I

THE MAN IN THE Antares bar-lounge didn’t quite bang his head on the curved star-ceiling on this, his fourth attempt. Or maybe it was his fifth. This failure came as a disappointment to a number of the luxurious lounge’s more vocal occupants.

When standing erect—a rare happenstance, of late—the fellow stood just under two meters tall. A haberdasher worth his salt would have estimated his mass at about two hundred kilos. This not counting the booze he’d been putting away at a prodigious rate. That he’d even managed to come close to the roof of the lounge and its simulacrum Terran sky was due in part to his considerable stature.

Starting from the far end of the lounge he’d make a mad elephant sprint toward the bar, leap onto the polished maplewood counter, and soar ceilingward from that deep-grained launch pad. A reach, stretch, grab, and down he’d come in a spectacular displacement of plastic bottles, glasses, and swizzle sticks. Whereupon he’d fight off the angry flailings of the robot bartender, now on the verge of electron psychosis, stagger between the tables, and try again.

Now he struggled to his feet, downed another slug of whatever it was he was currently drinking, and stumbled toward his launch point. His elegantly clad, youngish cheering section spurred him along. Among this group, the sporting blood was up. Bets continued to be exchanged. Would he finally kill himself by falling on his swozzled skull this fifth (or sixth) time? Or would he simply knock himself out by successfully cracking it against the roof?

Three-dimensional cumulus clouds, fat and fleecy, drifted across the dome. For all their apparent reality they were only clever projections on treated duralloy. Still, while this kangaroo-brother’s head was clearly solid bone, in any conjunction of the two the gentle clouds would surely win out.

There was a stir at the back of the room. Bobbing like emerald corks among the laughing, applauding gamblers and the outraged but intrigued patrons were the first mate and two sub-engineers of the Antares. For the last fifteen minutes their prime objective in life had been to bring down this galloping, great, aged simian with as little damage to self and company property as possible. So far their efforts had come to zilch. And they were beginning to draw a few laughs themselves.

Now the first mate, who was an educated man and spent most of his work time planning overdrive maneuvers and juggling the grav field of a small artificial sun-mass, didn’t think it was even a tiny bit funny. Matter of fact, he was just about fed up.

There was no point in re-checking the book, though. Company regs specifically forbade shooting a paying passenger, no matter how obnoxious. Other methods had so far met with abject failure. One of the sub-engineers had already taken a steel-like straight-arming from the hurtling acrobat. He wiped his lower lip and considered braining the anthropoid sot with a chair. He could always plead temporary insanity. Pension or no pension.

“Spread out, boys, here he comes again.”

Waving a half-filled bottle of Uriah’s Heep and howling at the top of his astonishing lungs, the incipient Icarus started at the bar again, picking up speed with each step. With agility amazing for one so old and so soused, the man soared high and gained the top of the bar in a single bound.

Up he went, up, up, an arm outstretched for the ceiling. Barely he missed one of the floating pseudo-clouds. There followed a satisfying and by now familiar crash from the other side of the bar. Plasticine jugs and unbreakable glass joined in a rainbow-colored fountain and bounced to the floor. Money changed hands in the crowd.

After a lingering pause, the first mate decided on a new course. He would try reason. Besides, the fellow hadn’t gotten up yet. Perhaps he’d gone and croaked himself. That would save everyone a lot of trouble.

Gesturing to the sub-engineers, he tiptoed up to the badly scuffed maplewood and peered cautiously over the top.

No such luck.

True, the fellow was momentarily incapacitated, having entangled himself in the now completely inoperable mechbar. But he was snorting and mumbling with dismaying energy.

“Sir, I appeal to your moral sense. Public drunkenness is bad enough. Eliminating our evening bar business, not to mention the bar, is worse. But your refusal to heed the admonitions of a ship’s crew in free space is insulting. What have we done to offend you?”

After a short search in the region of the floor, the man seemed to find his feet. Staggering more or less upright, he put two huge fists on the bar and leaned forward.

“Offend me? OFFEND ME!”

The mate shrank from that spiritual effluvia and tactfully turned his head to one side. It was pure self-defense. Surely they could put the man away! He was obviously flammable and constituted a real danger to the ship.

The eyes waggled until they came to rest on the bottle gripped tightly in one paw. He drained half the remainder.

“Offend me!” he blurted again. “Listen, you unmentionable hazard to navigation, that piddle-pot swine over there,” and he jabbed a great knobby finger in the direction of an especially smug-looking young gambler, “that piece of plith-seed laid claim to a greater knowledge of posigravity than I. Than me. ME! Can you fancy that?”

“I’m not sure,” the mate replied. He was experiencing some difficulty in following the other’s train of thought. Maybe the local change in the atmosphere had something to do with it. The two sub-engineers were edging around to one side of the bar. If he could keep this creature talking …

“Sexactusly,” the man said, then belched. “So we are engaged in a scientific experiment to settle the matter once and fer all. You ain’t one of them anti-empiricists, is you, bub?”

“Good lord, no,” the mate admitted truthfully enough.

“Yeh. Well, we calculated a bit of the ship’s field, see? An’ according to my calculations, I ought to be able to touch the roof, there.”

“That one over our heads?”

“Yeh, that’s the one. You ain’t so stupid as you look, matey. Now you unnerstand what I’m doing, eh?”

“Of course.” The sub-engineers were not quite in position yet. “Still, while I’m sure you know your computations, that young chap you pointed out is the son of a well-known yachtsman and something of an interplanetary sprinter himself. He just might know what he’s talking about.”

He stared across at the exploding shock of white hair, a virgin corona; at the great hooked beak of a nose, chin like a hatchet-head, oil-black eyes under break-wave brows, and the gold ring in the right ear. The hair on the man’s bare arms, though, was blond. And there were fewer wrinkles in that tanned face than you would suppose at first glance. The ones that were there, though, were really canyon wrinkles, genuine gully-gapers. No question but that the nose had come first, like Bergerac’s, and the face had been constructed around it, bits and scraps sewn on here and there. The wrinkles fell neatly in place, like seams in leather.

“I’m not sure, however,” continued the mate, “who you are.” And the court will want to know, too, he thought

For a moment he thought the other might be having an attack. Still clenching the bottle in one hand, the man shook his fist at the first mate and at the whole lounge in general.

“By the Heavenly Hosts and the whole Horse’s Head, I’m Skua September, be who! In the manner of men and all other beings I can out-drink, out-fight, out-fly, out-sleep, out-eat, out-whore, out-run, out-talk, out-shout and out-love any man in this end of the Spiral Arm!”

September seemed more than willing to continue this catalogue of dubious attributes till the millennium. The tirade, however, was interrupted by a belch of such brontosaurian proportions that it momentarily rattled everyone in the lounge.

At that point the two lesser ratings both hit him from behind and the resultant menage à trois crashed to the floor in front of the bar. One of them snatched up a bottle full of mould-gold something or other and hefted it over his head. But the first mate extended a restraining arm.

“No need, Evers. He’s out cold.”

There was silence for the first time in quite a while. It was broken by a single pair of hands, clapping politely. The mate turned to the yachtsman’s son, who was applauding them all … whether respectfully or sardonically, he couldn’t tell.

“Bravo,” trilled the playboy.

Not a creature was stirring, not even a mus musculus.

The sentiment was proper but the subject inappropriate, thought Ethan Frome Fortune as he moseyed toward the rear of the passenger’s blister. Mice and rats had not been able to handle the exigencies of interstellar flight. Oh, they could get on board shuttles and from there to a ship, and they’d been a problem at first.

Then someone got the bright idea of turning off the posigrav field for half an hour in the passenger sections. One man with a net swam around collecting the badly befuddled vermin and that was sufficient for pest control till next port of call.

It was just as well, Ethan mused wryly. If said rodentia had been able to make the adaptation, the company might have stuck him with mousetraps to peddle.

As a moderately successful luxury goods salesman for the House of Malaika, his stock ran more to jeweled knick-knacks, perfumes, and intricately wrought, expensively priced mechanical gadgetry. Jeweled mousetraps would not be a prime seller.

He passed a small observation port, paused to look at the planet pirouetting heavily below. Such ports were less frequent at this rearmost end of the passenger’s compartment, but then, so were passengers. He was tired of idiot small talk and there were no bulk sales to be made with this bunch.

Most of Tran-ky-ky still swam in darkness. Probably coincidence that nightside happened to fall on the ship as it orbited in sleep period. Ethan seemed to be the only non-crew member up and about.

Tomorrow, slim as chances for business seemed from the tapes, he’d take the shuttle down. That would mean enduring the usual gaggle of tourists. Oh well, shoving was all a part of existence, no matter which law you indexed it under.

Tran-ky-ky was a figurative whistle-stop on the Antares’ run. The giant interstellar transport would remain a day or two in the planet’s vicinity. Most of that time would be spent transferring down cargo for the single humanx outpost on the forbidding surface.

The fact that the outpost was Terranglo-named didn’t necessarily mean the world had been discovered by humans. It could have been a mixed crew or all thranx. The former seemed more likely, though. No tidy-minded thranx would be likely to name a Commonwealth outpost “Brass Monkey.” Besides, the heat-loving insects would consider the globe beneath a choice slice of icy hell.

What little of the planet sat in sunlight formed a bright, almost painfully white crescent at its edge. Mestaped information on the dark sphere floated to the surface of his mind.

Tran-ky-ky lay on the fringes of humanx settlement and was a recently discovered world. Among other more significant things, that made it fresh territory for eager types like himself. However, it was not classified as a potential colony.

While humans could live on it, as they did after a fashion in Brass Monkey, it was far from hospitable. No New Riviera, this! Besides, it was classed 4-B. That meant it was inhabited by a native race of fair intellectual potential living at a pre-steam level of technology and probably lower.

Topographically, the planet boasted a few small continents, large islands, really, and thousands of small ones. Some were reasonably level, like Brass Monkey’s Arsudun, others precipitous and tectonic in origin. All lay scattered about the planet’s shallow seas, which were permanently frozen to depths as great as three kilometers in some places and barely ten meters in others.

Gravity .92 T-standard, day about twenty ts hours, distance from sun—too much. This charming resort world, he thought sardonically, reached a positively balmy three degrees centigrade at the equator. A heat wave in Brass Monkey. Temp averaged around minus fifteen and dropped to an absurd minus ninety some nights.

Moving away from the equator, things began to get chilly.

Oh yes, a charming stopover on our tour of the frayed, flayed edges of civilization, yes! Other salesmen were assigned tours of territories like the twin pleasure worlds of Balthazzar and Beersheba, or even Terra itself. Ethan Fortune? Always his back to the warm inner worlds of the Commonwealth, always his profit margin poking hesitantly, narrowly, thinly, among empty places in strange spaces. Nuts!

Oh, there were some minor compensations. For example, he made a very good living.

And he was still the insane side of thirty. Doubtless any day now someone in the home office would take note of his incredible, astonishing record under impossible conditions. Then maybe he’d be handed something better suited to his exceptional talents. Like marketing jewelust lingerie to the famed ecdysiasts of Loser’s World, or to freshly-minted debutantes on New Paris.

He blinked, turned from the almost hypnotic white sickle, and tried to concentrate on more prosaic considerations. Like how he was going to explain the workings of an Asandus portable deluxe catalytic heater to the locals. Mestape gave him a working knowledge of the language—he always prepared for each new world as thoroughly as possible—but offered little in the way of crucial tidbits like local customs and trading nuances. Tran-ky-ky was too new for recordings to be available on anything but basic facts. Anthropological studies would have to come later. So his range would be limited.

At least he had one item he should be able to unload completely on the natives. The Asandus line was made on Amropolous and was a marvel of power and miniaturization. One of the pocket-sized heaters could maintain a fair-sized room at sunbathing temperature even in trannish climate. Since the natives were adapted to extreme cold, an Asandus ought to last almost indefinitely. Just keep the heat up to zero and let grandpaw and the kiddies luxuriate.

Without some such device, and with winds up to 300k producing a really ridiculous chill factor, a human caught unprotected on the surface of Tran-ky-ky for even a few minutes would be good for nothing but snow sculpture afterward.

Come to think of it, there’d probably be a few humans in the settlement who’d be glad of a little luxury heater they could pack along in their scooters. They couldn’t see his class of merchandise too often out here. Now if he could only keep his hands from shaking while he set the burner up …

His mind was already well into a sales pitch of heroic proportions when he turned the corner to the personal baggage area and came upon a tableau that was all very wrong.

Five humans were clustered around a lifeboat port. Said port was open. Very, very wrong. Had a lifeboat drill begun while he’d had a lapse of deafness? He could hear his heart beating. Well, ears fine, but message from eyes still wrongo.

Ah yes, it was definitely the eyes. Two of the men were waving lasers about with drunken nonchalance.

One of the gun-wielders, a short ferret-faced chap with a bad case of the digifits, kept his laser more or less focused on an older man attempting to put up a bold front. That worthy was clad in an exquisitely cut suit of snappy emeraldine laid over a ruffled shirt of deep azure. To the left of this nattily-attired sexagenarian, a mousey-looking little guy was eyeing the gun almost as if he was considering tackling its owner.

The other gunman was a huge chunk of brown with flat face, rainbow-hued teeth, and formidable biceps. Right now he was trying to control his laser and subdue a package of squalling, scratching femininity that was apparently human. Apparently, because it seemed to have eight legs and twelve arms, all pinwheeling at once. The curses that issued from somewhere within the bundle, though, were undeniably Terranglo.

Ethan caught a few and blushed. Her handler was cursing also, a basso profundo—or profano—counterpoint to the girl. Ethan wondered what she looked like. She was moving so much he couldn’t tell.

His attention was drawn back to weasel-face, who was talking to the older man.

“I’m not going to tell you again, du Kane! You want us to knock you out?” The hand holding the beamer was shaking slightly. “Get in that boat, now!” A nervous glance at one wrist. Both gunmen ignored their other prisoner.

“Well, now, I don’t know … I’d like to oblige you, but it’s so hard to remember what the right thing to do is, anymore. Maybe I’d better wait …”

Weasel-face threw up his hands and looked to heaven for help—not caring that its position in the universe was only relevant to the temporary set of the ship.

The big man said “Ow!”, in no uncertain terms. He promptly dumped the girl to the floor. She rolled over from the ungentle landing and sat up slowly. Her curses diminished in volume but not originality. Ethan slumped a little. She weighed at least two hundred pounds and she was not especially tall.

“Bit me,” said the big man unnecessarily. He sucked at the injured member. “Listen now, du Kane. We’re running out of time. It’s out of our hands, see? First this shrimp shows up,” he indicated mousey, still watching attentively, “and now you’ve got to be obstinate. Won’t do you any good.”

“Well, I don’t know …” du Kane said hesitantly. His eyes moved to the girl.

“You stay put, father.” She looked up at the big man and Ethan noticed that that plump face had two startlingly green eyes peering out of it. “If you hit my father, you’ll likely kill him … he’s an old man. Give this idiocy up. I’ll see to it that you’re not shot out of hand, at least. And father won’t press charges. He’s too busy to bother with your variety of scum.”

Du Kane! Well, that placed him and the girl … mighty calculating type, her … gambling on her father’s frailty like that. Hellespont du Kane was chairman of the Board of Kurita-Kinoshita Ltd. Among other things, they made the drives for interstellar ships. To say he was wealthy was to say the planet below tended away from the tropic. No doubt here was a man of whom it could be said, he really was made of money.

A good salesman, Ethan rapidly summarized the situation by categorizing the players. Two kidnappers, two kidnappees, and one trapped innocent bystander. He wondered why they didn’t shoot the little fellow.

The question was now of more than academic concern because the big man with the sore thumb was staring right at him. It occurred to Ethan as he stared down the muzzle of the beamer that he’d spent a little too much time gaping and far too little in disappearing. He took a step backward.

“Just on my way to luggage bay three … sorry to interr—”

“Hold it right there, flotsam.” The big man turned to his partner. “What now, Walther?”

“Rama, not another one! Is everyone on this ship nocturnal?” Another glance wristward. “We’ve got to get out of here! Take him along, for now. Whitting expressly said not to leave any scraps, Kotabit.”

Ethan didn’t like being referred to as a “scrap.” It sounded downright threatening. Right now, however, he was stuck.

“Get over there, you,” ordered Walther, gesturing toward the other captives with his beamer.

“Listen, really, I can’t join you. I’ve got a very important sales conference in half an hour and …”

Walther melted a small hole in the deck between Ethan’s feet. Ethan promptly walked fast, stood next to the little man on du Kane’s left. The man seemed to be adjusting a contact lens.

“Is this really a kidnapping?” he whispered as the two gunmen conferred among themselves.

“I’m afraid so, friend.” His accent was soft, the words precise. “We are now technically accessories to a capital crime.” He sounded very like a schoolteacher instructing his students.

“I’m afraid you’ve got things confused,” Ethan corrected. “An accessory is someone who aids or abets the crime. You and I are victims, not accessories.”

“It’s all a matter of viewpoint, you know.”

“Everyone, get in the boat!” Walther bawled, not caring anymore if anyone heard.

“Why not just knock ’em all out?” queried Kotabit.

“You heard, fatso … dangerous. Especially goin’ down.”

Colette du Kane was staring at Ethan. Maybe that name fitted her as a child, but now … well, something like “Hilda” might have been more apropos. Those remarkable eyes chilled him. She didn’t smile.

“Why didn’t you go for help, whoever you are?”

“I just walked in and I wasn’t sure right away what …”

“You weren’t sure? Oh, never mind.” She sighed and looked resigned. “I suppose I shouldn’t have expected otherwise.”

He would have given her an argument except for the awkward fact that she was absolutely right. He’d really overdone his watch.

“Why aren’t you beautiful?” he said idiotically. “Damsels in distress are always beautiful.” He smiled, intending it as a joke, but she saw it otherwise. Those eyes came around sharply, then the whole body sagged, quivering, bloated.

“Now you listen,” growled Kotabit. His voice was steadier, more self-assured than that of his companion, even though the smaller man seemed to be in charge.

“If I were to cut off your daughter’s legs, say, starting at the big toe and working slowly upward, I don’t think it would inconvenience our plans. Does that convince you?”

“Ignore him, father,” said Colette. “He’s bluffing.”

“Dear me …!” The old man, for all his billions, was a pitiful aged sack of indecision. Then something seemed to rise out of his mind and into his tone. He stood straighter and spat once at Kotabit. The big man dodged it easily, his watchfulness undiminished. Du Kane seemed pleased with himself. He turned and entered the tiny flexible lock leading into the lifeboat.

Ethan thought of taking a swipe at Walther’s gun, but Kotabit showed no signs of the other’s jerkiness. While his death might complicate their scheme, Ethan entertained no illusions about what the other would do if he charged either of them. He followed the small man with the contacts into the boat.

“My name’s Williams, by the way … Milliken Williams,” offered the latter conversationally, as he entered the lock ahead of Ethan. “I teach school. Upper matriculation.”

“Ethan Fortune. I’m a salesman.” He glanced back at the girl. She was followed too closely by the two gunmen. Thoughts of shutting the lifeboat door in their faces had occurred to him, but they pressed too close.

It was dark in the lifeboat. The only light came from the fore instrument panel, which was always kept on. Neither of the two gunmen made any effort to turn on the boat lights. Obviously they were afraid of triggering a telltale in the control bubble. He considered hitting the switch regardless of consequences, but was balked by one fact. He’d never been on a lifeboat except during drill and wouldn’t know the interior light toggle from the self-destruct switch.

So they stumbled around in near-night, strapping themselves into the couches at threatening words from the gunmen. There were twenty seats, in addition to the two pilots’ couches forward. Walther was already in one, doing unseen things to the main console. Kotabit was lazily strapping himself into the other. He’d swiveled his couch around to watch the rest of them. Ethan didn’t feel like testing the other’s night vision.

There was no warning siren when the boat door snapped shut. That, at least, had been cut in advance to prevent warning the ship’s computer. It seemed certain they’d be noticed as soon as the boat left the ship’s hull, but Ethan was no engineer and couldn’t be certain.

Walther was muttering something that sounded like, “… set enough apart… hope …”

“Better strap in tight, everybody,” Ethan advised the others. “I don’t think we’ll be setting down at the regular port.”

“Brilliant!” Colette du Kane’s voice was as easily defined as her shape.

“And it will probably be rough,” he concluded lamely.

“Two Einsteinian deductions in a row. Father, I don’t think we’ve a thing to worry about. Not with a genius of this peasant’s caliber along. Next he’ll astound us with the knowledge that these two megalocephalic proteinoids mean us no good.”

“Listen,” Ethan began, trying to locate her in the dark. His eyes were growing accustomed to the dim light. How Walther could manipulate the controls in it he couldn’t imagine. They must have rehearsed this a hundred times.

“I’m still not entirely sure what’s going on here. Along I come intending to inspect my samples, minding my own business, and your little family problem has to intrude.”

“I hypothesize a ransom attempt,” said the elder du Kane. “As these thersitical traducers are no doubt aware, I am not without resources.”

“Watch your mouth,” blurted the hulking Kotabit, not quite sure what to make of the manufacturer’s charge.

“I am sorry you and Mr. Williams had to be drawn into this. Clearly those two did not expect to be interrupted at this hour.”

“I’m sorry too,” said Ethan feelingly. A low vibration passed through the little vessel, then another. Soon there was a continuous, steady thrumming at their backs.

“They’ll find us once we’re down,” he continued, trying to encourage the other. “It shouldn’t be hard to plot our descent.”

“I would concur, young man, except the thoroughness which our vile companions have displayed thus far …”

There was a lurch and Ethan found himself rapidly becoming lighter. They’d detached from the ship and were moving out of its passenger field.

“We’ve left the ship,” he began. A familiar tone interrupted him.

“Oh god, I am amazed once again!” Colette said with mock piety.

“Well, you go ahead and interpret everything for yourself, then!” Ethan replied peevishly. “Nothing’s likely to happen until we’re ready for setdown.”

He was wrong, of course.

In fact, several unlikely things happened right away.

Something hit the boat a giant hammerblow on its side, set it tumbling crazily. Ethan got a fast glimpse of the planet running all around the circumference of a port, much too fast. Colette started screaming. Forward, Walther was cursing and groaning as he worked the controls, yelling about the time he no longer had and the time he’d wasted.

Another sickening lunge brought the sunlit Antares into view. It was far off and receding rapidly. But not so rapidly that Ethan couldn’t make out the gaping hole in its near side.

He turned back to the interior of the boat. All of a sudden there seemed to be a fifth figure in the passenger section. It was not strapped in and lurched about drunkenly back near the storage section. For a moment Ethan thought his eyes hadn’t become properly adapted.

The boat rolled insanely and Walther yelled helplessly. Williams shouted “Oh my!” And this strange rearward apparition bellowed in slurred Terranglo, “A joke is a joke, but by all the Black Holes and Purpling Prominences, enough is enough!”

At that point Ethan’s eyes unadjusted to the darkness and everything else.

II

HE WAS INDISPUTABLY DEAD, frozen alive. He shivered.

Wait a minute. If he was dead he shouldn’t have been able to shiver. To make sure, he shivered again. His body jerked, once, twice. It occurred to him that there was an external source behind the jerks. Blinking, he turned his head. The ebony face of Milliken Williams stared down at him.

“How are you feeling, my dear Fortune?” he inquired solicitously. Ethan noticed that the schoolteacher was wearing a thick coat of some heavy brown material. It had orange patching and was puffed in spots, but looked warm.

He rolled over and sat up. The effort made him dizzy and it took another minute for his eyes to focus. Immediately he noticed that he was clad in a similar garment, that it extended well below his knees, and that it was at least two sizes too large for him.

Williams offered him a cup of black coffee. It steamed ferociously. Ethan took it in the coat-gloves and downed half the boiling liquid in two gulps. At the moment he didn’t care if he vulcanized his esophagus. Something at his back seemed willing to support his weight, so he leaned back, sighed deeply, and inspected his surroundings.

The du Kanes sat across from him. They wore the same brown-orange overcoats, only theirs fit. The elder du Kane poked thoughtfully at a tin of something in front of him. A wisp of steam floated from it. Selecting from the contents, he popped something into his mouth, frowned, swallowed, and resumed his poking. His daughter sat to one side, leaning on one arm and glaring at nothing in particular.

They were sitting in a small room of some sort. The floor was covered here and there with a thin coating of white. Even to his dazed mind it was obviously snow or some other frozen liquid. He knew they were on the surface. The temperature told him that. A questioning glance at Williams.

“We’re in the rear storage compartment of the lifeboat. It stayed fairly airtight.”

Fairly was right, for air was clearly coming from around the edges of the single door. The metal walls were badly dented, especially the rearmost section leading to the engines. He finished the coffee and crawled to the access door. Door and wall leaned inward at the top. There was a single small window three-quarters of the way up.

Standing, he peered out the glassite, not caring that he was cutting off most of the light to the little compartment. Colette offered a suitably cutting comment of this lack of consideration, but Ethan was too engrossed in the view from the little port to pay any attention to her.

He was staring down the center aisle of what had been the shuttle’s passenger compartment. Huge gaping holes showed sky where the roof had been. A waterfall of brilliant blindingly clear sunlight filtered into the hull. He became aware of the goggles and face shield built into the hood of the coat he was wearing. More than half of the acceleration couches had been torn or twisted off their mounts.

Turning his head and craning his neck, he could see that the right side of the vessel had been badly pitted. The left side was ripped open along half its length, a single metal-shredding gouge. He was no mechanic, but even a mechanical idiot could see they’d be flying a new ship before they’d be repairing this one. Right now, his expense account was the worthier vehicle.

A light dusting of snow covered the floor of the cabin and many of the tumbled seats, especially on the torn left side. The airbrushed whiteness muted the rented duralloy and convulsed floor. Here and there amidst the snow, shards of fractured glassite threw crippled rainbows about the interior. If a single viewport had survived intact, it was out of his line of sight.

Maybe he overdid the straining and turning. In any case, the dizziness returned. Bracing his back against the door, he sat down carefully, put his head in his hands until it cleared.

“Are you all right, Mr. Fortune?” Williams inquired again. His face showed concern.

“Yes … just a little queasy there for a moment.” He blinked. “It’s okay now, I think.” Pause. “Although all of a sudden it seems I can’t see too well.”

“You were staring out the port too long without protection,” surmised Williams. “I expect it will pass quickly enough. Don’t worry. It has nothing to do with your head injury.”

“That supposed to be encouraging news?” He could feel the lump at the back of his skull. At least it was intact. His skull, not the lump. By rights it ought to have as many holes in it as the boat’s hull.

“You should use those.” The teacher pointed at the goggles resting high on Ethan’s forehead. “To prevent snow blindness,” he added unnecessarily.

“Thought of everything, didn’t they?” Ethan grunted. He shivered again. “Any idea what the temperature is?”

“I’d guess about twenty below zero, centigrade,” Williams replied, as though it were the most natural thing in the world. “And I believe it’s dropping a bit. But you can tell for yourself. There’s a thermometer built into your left cuff.” He grinned slightly.

Sure enough, a tiny circular thermometer was sewn into the fabric, just behind the end of the glove. At first he thought the teacher must be mistaken. The red line seemed almost all the way around the dial. Then he noticed that the highest reading on the meter was the freezing point of water. From there it went down, not up. This was impressive for what it implied, not what it read.

Something very funny occurred to him. He laughed. In fact, he roared. It did not seem amusing, nor particularly natural, to the others. They watched him a mite apprehensively, especially du Kane. Colette looked as though she’d been expecting something of the sort all along. He forced himself to stop when he found that the tears were freezing on his cheeks.

Then he noticed the way everyone was looking at him.

“No, I haven’t gone crazy. It just struck me that among my trade goods on board the Antares I have an even four dozen Asandus portable deluxe model catalytic heaters. For trading to the poor backward natives, you know. I’d trade my grandmother for one of ’em right now.”

“If wishes were fishes we’d never want for food,” said Williams philosophically. “Russell … twentieth-century English philosopher.”

Ethan nodded, drew a snow spiral on the floor with one finger … real leather in those gloves, he noticed. A thought occurred to him as he surveyed the little group. His mind was running a few paces behind his eyes, still.

“Speaking of the Antares, there was something very wrong with it when we blasted free. Yes, a hole, back of the passenger blister! I saw it as we tumbled.”

“Very wrong and much too blasted,” echoed a nervous, vaguely familiar voice from a dark back corner. A small, morose figure edged out into the dim light. Its right arm was crooked up in a makeshift sling and there was an ugly scar healing slowly on one cheek.

“You sure got a way with words, chum,” it finished.

“Hey, I remember you, all right,” said Ethan with certainty. “Your name is … let’s see … the other guy called you ‘Walther.’ The big guy.” He tried to see behind the other into the furthest recesses of the compartment “Speaking of the big guy …”

“The bigger guy … September … did him in,” informed Colette du Kane. “Console lighting went out, but I’m sure it was him. It sure wasn’t y—” She checked herself. “I wonder where he came from?”

Ethan thought back, recalled the ghostly, cursing apparition that had risen in the cabin behind him just before he lost consciousness.

“I think I know who you mean. Scared me half out of the wits I had left … his popping up in the middle of everything like that.”

“It certainly was interesting,” began du Kane. “I remember a time when—”

“Be quiet and eat your food, father,” said Colette. Ethan looked more closely at the girl, who looked like a pink Buddha in her survival suit. Who was chairman of what, here?

She returned her gaze to Ethan. It was a frank, open, un-compromising stare. Sizing him up. No no … that was supposed to be his prerogative. He turned away and she must have sensed his nervousness.

“You got the hardest knock of us all, I think, Mr. Fortune,” she said consolingly. Ethan knew she was deliberately trying to make him feel better. But the knot at the back of his head conceded the truth of her comment.

“He had a gun?” Ethan asked her. Her reply was coldly matter-of-fact.

“No, as a matter of fact, I think he broke his neck. Neat job.”

“Oh,” said Ethan. “Look, I want to apologize for calling you f … I mean, for what I said back there.”

“Skip it,” she muttered softly. “I’m used to it.” And that, he reflected, was the first obvious untruth she’d uttered.

Du Kane seemed to sense the awkwardness. He cleared it away nicely. “You’re wearing the dead chap’s coat, I believe.”

“Doesn’t fit very well, does it?” Ethan murmured absently. He held up his arms. If he wasn’t careful he could lose the gloves. But his funny looks didn’t bother him. It was warm. Though not as warm as Colette du Kane probably was. He glanced around.

“Where is this guy … uh …”

“September. Skua September,” supplied Williams.

“Yeah, him.”

Colette gestured loosely in the direction of the door. “After we discovered that this compartment was still fairly intact … he carried you in, by the way … it seemed the natural place to take refuge. Conserve body heat, get out of this wind. The emergency boat rations are in this twisted locker behind me. I’m glad to say they survived, by and large. He had a bite to eat and disappeared outside. That was some time ago. He hasn’t come back.”

“Quiet sort,” put in du Kane. Food dripped from his mouth and he suddenly mopped at it embarrassedly.

“I expect he’ll be all right,” put in Williams. “He took one of the two beamers with him. I,” he continued, holding up the little weapon, “have the other. He suggested I use it to discourage any antisocial actions left in our nemesis, here.” He indicated the sullen Walther.

The latter eyed the gun, a bit wistfully, Ethan thought. “Huh! Fat lot of good it’d do me, too!” He shivered. Apparently he was even colder than Ethan. Several bunched-up shirts, plus an emergency thermal poncho from the lifeboat’s stores gave him a squat look, like a fat frog. But the poncho hadn’t been designed with temperatures like this in mind and the little hood was having a hard time of it. Well, that was just too bad.

Ethan considered the clothes worn by du Kane and his daughter. They fitted almost perfectly, as if they’d been made to order in a thranx tailor-shop. Which they might have been. Clearly the kidnappers wouldn’t want their charges to freeze to death. Williams, then, was probably wearing Walther’s fur. He’d already noted the grisly origin of his own.

Well, if someone was destined to freeze to death, he had no compunctions about nominating the ugly little man with the busted wing. When he thought of the commissions this little detour was going to cost him …

Wait a minute. If he was wearing the dead Kotabit’s jacket, and Williams was using Walther’s, and the du Kanes had their own—then that meant the odd Mr. September was prowling around outside somewhere without a coat. Unless the kidnappers had carried extras, and that didn’t seem likely. Well, that was September’s problem. Just now there were other items uppermost in his mind.

“Any idea,” he asked Williams, “where we are?” It was Walther who replied, however.

“We were supposed to land,” he began bitterly, “about 200 kilometers southeast of Brass Monkey. The rendezvous was all arranged. Thanks to several damn delays though, and some bad fusing, we got caught in the explosion we set in the Antares. Chewed hell out of our navigational capacity. I can’t be sure, the way all those instruments were whining, with a busted ’puter, but I’ll bet we’re halfway around the planet. And if you want to buy my chances of getting out of this, you can have ’em for a ’Sime.”

“Set explosion?” prodded Ethan. But Walther had obviously said all he intended to for now. He lapsed into glum silence and slid further back into his corner.

“Probably a fair-sized bomb, set to go off after we’d left the Antares,” commented Colette professionally. “Since no alarms went off when we entered the lifeboat or sealed from the ship, I assume they took care of that earlier. Obviously the bomb was a cover maneuver, designed to convince rescuers that anyone in that section of the ship had been vaporized—especially father and myself.”

“I see,” nodded Ethan. “That way everyone would assume you two were dead … until these two were safely away and ready to put their demands. And no pursuit. Very clever. Of course, anyone walking that section of the ship when the bomb happened to go off would just be plain out of luck.” He glared at Walther, who ignored him.

“That’s about it,” continued Colette. “But with all the hemming and hawing, they blew their timetable and didn’t quite get away in time. Wouldn’t have gotten away at all if Father hadn’t …” She shrugged.

“You ought to thank him for saving your life,” Ethan said reprovingly.

She gave him another withering stare. “What life? Got any idea what it’s like to be rich, Mr. Fortune? It’s great. But to be rich and laughed at …”

“Why don’t you re—?” He bit his tongue. But she noticed.

“Reduce? Can’t. Glandular—irreversible, the docs say.” She turned away irritably. “Oh, go freeze yourself!”

“Listen,” put in Walther, sticking his head out into the light. “Regardless of what you think, we planned it so nobody would get caught in that blowup. That’s the only reason I didn’t shoot you, and you, the minute you stuck your faces into that lifeboat bay. If a search team found your body, or his, or bits and pieces, then they’d start wondering just maybe why there was no sign of theirs,” he indicated the du Kanes. “A small chance, but Kotabit and the others wanted to be sure. Yeah, good and sure! And now,” he concluded with acidic finality, “we’ll all freeze good and surely dead.”

“I’m not thrilled about dying in your company, chum,” said Ethan with as much toughness as he could muster, which wasn’t much. “And I sure don’t plan to. Anybody think of checking the boat tridee?” He didn’t have to ask if it was in working order.

Colette du Kane was shaking her head slowly. “Just scrap. That’s what September told us, anyhow. I wouldn’t know about such things myself, but I’m inclined to believe him.”

“It certainly seems that we have nothing capable of even rudimentary communication,” agreed Williams heavily. “Let alone something that can transmit a continental distance.”

“I venture to say that, being on a starship, no one had a personal comm unit on them anyway.” He glanced upward. “On a world like this there's likely to be only a single weather satellite. It would be stationed above the outpost, in a fixed orbit.” A gesture indicated the ruined lifeboat. “In a few days this is likely to be covered with snow and ice and invisible even to a high-resolution satellite scan.”

Briefly, then, they were stuck.

Less briefly, they were stranded on a barely known world, thousands of kilometers from its only humanx settlement, in weather that would make a corpulent walrus dive for his winter woolies. And the only people they could inform of their predicament were each other.

Worse, unless by a very long, long chance someone had seen the boat tumbling toward the surface, no one would come looking for them, no one would believe they were alive. Including Walther’s partners, who’d be expecting him a few kilometers from the town.

Ethan didn’t mind frozen food—but he wasn’t ready to become some!

Thinking it over, he had to confess that his prospects for the immediate future were anything but heartwarming. Or anything warming. On the other hand, he never made a sale by sitting on his duff and waiting for the customer to come to him. At least moving around would keep his blood from getting any funny ideas about going on strike.

He scrambled to his feet. The hood fit loosely over his head but the goggles and shield were adjustable and snugged down tight.

“Where do you think you’re going?” asked Colette.

“Outside, to have a look at the neighborhood. And to see if there’s a store around that sells electric beds.”

He snapped the top snap on the coat, tried to tighten the floppy hood and failed. Flip went the goggles. Things immediately grew darker. He had to fumble twice before he got a hand on the door latch. Turn and push—so.

It didn’t budge—so.

He shoved again. “Stuck.”

“Oh deity!” she began, “save us from such awesome, overwhelming, analytic …!”

That was another good reason for getting outside. The door received a good swift kick and a couple of choice curses. Either the kick knocked it free, or maybe the curses had a warming effect on the frozen joints. In any case, it popped open a few centimeters. From there it moved, reluctantly, on its bearings.

He shut the door carefully behind him and turned. Making sure of his footing—the snow could have covered all kinds of holes—he started down the center aisle of the ship. Cold flakes crunched under his feet. It sounded as though he was walking on glass. The wind moaned and howled through the torn metal. His breath formed a tiny cumulus cloud, a small shadow of life that stayed just ahead of him.

He could feel his lungs expanding and contracting. They seemed pitifully tiny in the frozen air. Each breath was painful, full of bee-stings and wire-wool.

The center aisle was tilted downward. Nose down, the shuttle had come to an abrupt halt.

Then he did what might have been considered by some a foolish thing. But he was a purveyor of cultured gee-gaws, not a planetary scout. And his taped information said nothing against it. So he knelt and scooped up a small ball of snow. It certainly looked like regular, old-fashioned, smack-in-the-face type snow. It caught the light like snow.

He brought it to his mouth, felt a sudden momentary chill greater than the air. It dissolved in the oral furnace, went down, stayed down. Plain old usual terran-type H_2O snow. He knew from the recordings that Tran-ky-ky’s atmosphere was practically Terra-normal. What he did not consider was the possibility that the snow might contain acquired traces of toxic elements.

But it didn’t, and nothing happened. The snow and his stomach got along just fine.

By way of experiment, he raised his goggles just a smidgin. It was a short experiment. He had to blink away a couple of freezing tears before sliding the dark glass back into place. The glare was fierce and, unyielding. With the goggles, everything showed as clearly as before, but he could look at the snow without having his optic pathways turned to mush.

He reflected that a man caught here without goggles could go blind without even being aware the process was going on. It was far more deceptive than night blindness. Being caught in the light, it seemed, was worse than being caught in the dark.

A slick part of the floor and he slipped, had to catch himself with his gloved hands. For a minute he didn’t move, just stood, caught his breath. Watch it, stupid! This was no place to twist an ankle.

He reached the end of the aisle. A fast glance back to the total destruction in the passenger compartment, and then he turned to look into the pilot’s cubby. The door had been bent inward like the lip of a can. The shuttle’s nose was buried. The lensless ports were filled with a mixture of loose earth and snow. It poured into the small forecabin, oozing over the panel and instrumentation.

What he could see of the mangled console and the precision switches made him wonder that the little kidnapper had been able to bring them down safely at all. As for the boat tridee, it was so battered he barely recognized it.

Turning to leave the cabin, he stumbled again. Once more he was lucky and didn’t hurt himself. But he was beginning to get mad. He turned with the intention of visiting a few suitable gripes on the twisted hunk of metal that had so cleverly insinuated itself between his legs. The gripe got as far as his lips, fizzled there when he saw the obstacle wasn’t metal.

It was twisted, however.

The body was nude, lightly dusted with snow, and had begun to turn a color that did not imply a state of advanced good health. The back was facing him. He’d apparently stumbled over the head.

Kneeling, he put a hand on the back of the motionless skull. It moved freely when he touched it. Too freely. Du Kane had been right.

He experienced a sudden, sickening urge to see if the eyes were open or closed, like in the tridee shows. He could close them gently if they were open, just like the fictional heroes. However, he opted for backing away carefully, without even checking.

Brushing the snow from his knees, he averted his eyes from the half-frozen corpse. Instead he tried to imagine how this September fellow could go rambling about outside the protection of the boat without one of the special coats. Then it occurred to him that he’d have a double set of clothing.

Nothing in the cabin looked operable, useful. However, if one took the extent of his engineering knowledge into account, this observation meant nothing. He left without touching anything. Slipping and sliding, he made his way to the gaping tear which dominated the left side of the boat. Torn insulation puffed out from the double walls. Bracing himself against it, he cautiously looked out.

The snow-dusted ground lay only a half-meter down. To the right he could see where the boat had burrowed its crumpled snout in what seemed to be a hill of good, solid earth. It didn’t look like much of a hill. Probably you could walk around it. But it had been high enough and solid enough to arrest the forward slide of the boat.

From the hill, what looked like stunted evergreens stuck their bristly crowns sunward. They hardly bent at all in the stiff gale. By now he was so numb he hardly felt the wind anymore. Needles shifted their position relative to the sun. A few flakes of snow scudded lazily from one pebble to a little hollow. The trunks of the trees were thick and looked solid as duralloy.

Much of the ground to the west and north of the land was covered by a greenish down. It looked like short, very thick grass. Turning and raising his head, he looked out into the west, toward the horizon. That supplied another interesting discovery.

It looked as though it had been drawn with a pen. The line dividing earth and sky was straight, flat, and altogether too sharp to be real. Human eyes expected something slightly blurred or wavering on most inhabited planets. Not here. You could grab that line and pluck it.

Overhead, the sky was a deep cerulean blue, pure as old pewter dishes. The even oil color was unsullied, the dome of heaven smooth as a baby’s bottom. It was utterly devoid of clouds, which was just as well. A cloud in that pit of ice-blue would immediately surrender its aspect of lightness and take on the character of solid white rock. A real cloud floating overhead would be upsetting.

With the exception of their tiny blot of dirt, there was nothing else in any direction but flat, sparkling, virgin ice, lightly dusted now with snow. Another bit of taped knowledge drifted upward to the surface. Mostly shallow seas, frozen solid. They were adrift on an ocean of ice.

The glare of the unchallenged sun on that unwavering sea would have been intolerable without the goggles.

He jumped down to the ground. Mildly worried that the snow might make things awkward, he was relieved to discover it was barely a centimeter deep. Inside the boat it had piled a little, forming tiny drifts.

He walked a few paces away from the ship. Looking back toward the tail he could make out a pair of deep grooves in the ice. They ran straight toward the southern horizon. He couldn’t see under the boat, but it had obviously skidded badly on setdown. The landing struts had probably been torn away or worn down to stubs. Then the boat itself slid who knew how many meters on its belly, until it had chanced to run up against this swept-together dustpile of dirt and rock.

A few steps brought him down to where the ground vanished. Brushing away the snow, he found that he could see for a few centimeters into the ice. There the ground sloped away beneath, to unknown frozen depths. The grass, he noticed, grew right out into the ice itself. It clustered thickly, but in a very orderly fashion. There was always a little space, however small, between each blade and its neighbor.

None of this told him how big the island—for such it had to be—was. The inside of his mouth was a frozen crust. Running his tongue along it was like caressing cardboard. With thoughts of circling the island, he took a step out onto the ice.

Another facet of Tran-ky-ky promptly introduced itself. Any man trying to walk normally without special equipment would soon find himself in closer contact with the surface.

Fortunately, he didn’t slide very far on the freezing ice. But he had to crawl back on his hands and knees. By the time he’d regained solid ground his palms and knees were thoroughly numbed.

The boat’s emergency supplies were designed mainly with median range humanx-type worlds in mind. Therefore, if anything they tended to lean more toward the upper register of the thermometer in supply execution.

He didn’t believe ice skates had been included in the inventory.

As if to insure that he shouldn’t get any more comfortable than was necessary, the wind picked up and was now proceeding to cool things down a bit. The planet was clearly determined to freeze him solid and then blow away the remnant.

Tonight, when it first grew cold—the very concept of cold was taking on new meaning in Ethan’s mind—any real gust would add a chill factor that would make things very dangerous. They’d have to take care to prevent being thoroughly cubed—and not in the mathematical sense, either.

Without the relative shelter of the boat, of course, they’d probably freeze to death even with the special coats.

His vision was improving or the cold was starting to work its way into his brain. The horizon remained sharp as a paper cut on a fingertip. But now he thought he could make out what might be larger land masses far off in the distance. He couldn’t be certain.

For a moment he thought they might be imperfections in the material of the goggles. But when he moved his head, the distant objects stayed in the same places.

He turned to his right and froze. Figuratively, this time. Something else was visible off in the distance, coming around the side of the island. When he moved his head this time, though, the figure not only didn’t stay in the same place, it got larger.

As it came closer, it resolved into a fairly human figure. But there were discrepancies. The feet were bloated, distorted pads. It waved. Not having anything else to do, Ethan waved back. He stood up. If the thing weren’t human, he’d be better off meeting it in a stance more suitable for absenting oneself rapidly.

It was human, all right, although the figure was huge. The double set of clothing it wore made it seem even larger. That made Ethan think again of the coat he was wearing, designed for a much bigger man. That size man. He felt a little bit guilty.

At least September had snow goggles with him. The goggles gave him a faintly amphibious appearance. Ethan wondered if he looked as silly. Probably more so. If the man minded the intense chill he didn’t show it.

As he came closer the bloated feet explained themselves. Apparently September had ripped up one or two of the acceleration couches. The luron upholstery had been shaped into a pair of fat pads and strapped to his big dogs. It seemed the luron was sufficiently rough to give some purchase on the ice. Tough and long-lasting, the artificial material would not wear off no matter how rugged the surface. And the padding did more than just cushion his feet: it also put some crucial distance between them and the heat-sucking ice.

The improvised snow-shoes looked awkward, but as a method of temporary transportation it far exceeded sliding on one’s fundament.

Ethan took a closer look at the personage who’d saved or condemned them. Not exactly a giant, but damned large, bigger even than the recently deceased Kotabit. A good two meters up, broad in proportion.

He tried to take the other’s measure, failed, and was upset without immediately knowing why. After all, he wasn’t going to try and sell this guy anything. He took in the white hair, predator beak of a nose, and the incongruous gold earring. There was a deal of the old English lord about him, with a lot of Terran-Arabic. Bedouin stock, maybe.

September stopped, his breath coming in short heaves. A miniature fog-bank swirled about that scimitar proboscis. He extended a hand and grinned down at Ethan. The hand was sandwiched in between layers of torn seat-foam. Ethan stared at it.

“Not as good as those survival gloves you’ve got on, maybe, but it keeps a body warm … after a fashion. It’s hard to handle things, but then, I don’t expect to be doing much watch-making for a while.”

“That’s for sure.” Ethan grinned back and shook the hand. Or rather, allowed himself to be shaken by it. “You must be Skua September.”

“Better be,” the other replied, “or else someone badly fooled Mrs. September. Although she preferred a climate more on the toasty side.”

He stared over Ethan’s head into the distance. Slapping both hands together a couple of times, he blew intently between the layers of foam. His eyes never left the horizon while he spoke.

“How are you getting on, young feller? That was quite a swack you took. Couple of minutes there, I was afraid you weren’t going to come out of it. Be hard enough to rouse yourself here without piling a coma into the bargain.”

“Perchance to dream? No, a prolonged sleep certainly wouldn’t be a good idea, here,” Ethan agreed. “You’d never know quite when you finally froze. And I don’t want to miss that when it happens.”

September nodded. “Ought to be interesting at that. Wonder how a body’d freeze here. From the top down or the inside out?” He crossed arms and slapped opposite shoulders. “What do you know about this refrigerated habitat? I only took the standard general tourist mestape—language, highlights, so forth. So did the little fellow—Williams. I think he’ll be okay. Quiet. Not taciturn, just likes to keep to himself. And that unspeakable fermentation, Walther, can surely manage the local patois. Although I’d sooner remove his tongue before I’d let him do any translating. You?”

“Well I’m a salesman, and—”

September didn’t let him continue. “And so you’ve stuffed yourself as full of verbs and prepositional phrases and epiglottal stops as a grilled pepper! Excellent, young feller.”

Ethan shrugged. “It’s no more than anyone else in my position would have done. I also had a few general planetary recordings on native conditions—cultural stuff, flora and fauna, the like. Just business.”

“Or survival.” He gave Ethan a friendly pat on the back that made him cough even with thick padding to insulate the blow. “Fine foresight, lad. Exemplary! As of now, you’re in charge.”

“Huh?” Somehow Ethan got the feeling he’d missed an important paragraph or two in amongst the praise. “In charge of what?”

“Why, in charge of seeing our little party return safely to civilization, of course. Expedition’s got to have a leader. I hereby appoint myself your faithful deputy. When can we expect to come in sight of the nearest bar, commander?” Under the brows, there was a twinkle.

“Now wait a minute,” put in Ethan hastily. “I think you’ve formed some wrong ideas about me. I’m not the leader type. Anyway, what about you? You seem plenty competent. The way you handled that chap Kotabit—”

“Yes, well, that’s a nice ability to have certain times,” September agreed, studying his clumsy mittens, “but rather limited. Besides, he’s dead. That particular problem will not require further attention. Now, I have this tendency to get impatient with people and break heads when patting them would be more practical. Darned if I can figure out why, but they seem to feel threatened by me when I’ve but the kindest of intentions in mind.

“What is needed is a cool, reasonable hand experienced at working with people and changing quickly in unfamiliar situations without making folks feel threatened. Doesn’t it take all that to change in mid-pitch from one sales talk to another? Presence of mind and quick thought, lad.”

“Sure, but—”

“Persuasive without being overbearing. A diplomat.”

Ethan finally succeeded in stalling the unending enumeration of his virtues.

“Look, I’m not sure selling Poupée-de-Oui Scent No. 7 exactly qualifies me as a combination of Metternich and Amundsen.”

“But it’s helped you convince people that white is black and good for ’em. Here all you have do to is convince ’em white is white. Duck soup.”

“All right, all right. I accept.”

“Thought you would.”

“Only because you think it’s necessary. And only temporarily, mind.” He started fumbling with the catches on his jacket “Now as leader of this expedition, my first order, effective now, is that you put this suit on. It’s obviously built for someone constructed more along your lines. If there’s anything I despise, it’s waste, and I’m swimming in it.”

“Sorry, lad.” September put out a hand and halted the unsnapping. “You’re in charge, agreed. But this is still a free society, not a dictatorship. That means any decision ought to be ratified by a majority vote. Since you and I are the only ones present, it’s up to us. Well?”

“I vote for you to put this coat on.”

“And I vote for you to keep it. How much do you weigh?”

“Huh?” That was Ethan’s second use of that brilliant expletive in a few minutes. Ah, the dazzle of a rapier-sharp wit! He murmured a reply.

“I thought about that much,” said September. “You lose.”

“Look, you’ll make better use of it,” Ethan argued. “You’re more the explorer type than I am. I can manage without it.”

“No, you cannot manage without it,” September said sharply, not grinning. “And if this wind gets much worse,” he continued, turning into the rising breeze, “we’re all going to wish for a damnsight more in the way of clothes.”

“Besides, if I am more the ‘explorer type,’ as you claim, I should be able to stand the cold better than you.”

“You’re contradicting yourself,” Ethan pointed out.

“Don’t be obtuse when I’m being illogical. Anyhow, that Kotabit fella was wearing special thermal underwear. It’s a mite snug in a few wrong places, but it keeps me fairly comfortable with this double layer of top gear. That Walther has it on also, no doubt. He’s not as cold as he makes out to be.

“Maybe it’s not as cozy as those special jackets, but I won’t freeze, feller-me-lad. A glass of good brandy, now, but …” He licked chapped lips wistfully. “You worry about yourself and not old Skua.”

“Just how old are you, anyway?” asked Ethan curiously, eyeing the long ropes of muscle that bulged the fabric. He hoped the other wouldn’t be offended.

He wasn’t. If the broad smile that creased his face was any indication, he was more tickled than anything else.

“I’m older than that pudgy pullet du Kane has for a daughter, and a bit younger than the moon. But about garments, again. All your survival suits are a dark brown. My own outer clothing is white. You stand out against this landscape like an old raisin in lemon cake frosting. Me, I’d just as soon be a little chillier and a mite less conspicuous. Old habit.

“Those recordings give you any way to judge how cold it’s likely to get tonight?”

Ethan squinted up to where the sun hung like a failed flare in one corner of the sky.

“If we came down anywhere on a line with the settlement, meaning on the equatorial belt, it will probably only drop to minus 30 or 40 tonight. You can add to that a steady wind of anything from 80 to 100 kph. We seem to have come down in a positive calm.”

“Absolutely sybaritic, hmmm?” September murmured. “Remind me to stay out of drafts.” He kicked at the scruffy thin snow. “Wonder if the du Kanes know anything?”

“I dunno,” replied Ethan. “They’re a funny pair. The old man seems pretty shaky for someone holding the reins of empire. And the girl …” Ethan’s expression wrinkled in confusion when he thought about Colette. “She seems competent enough … maybe even more than that. But she’s so full of bitterness and bile …”

“About her looks?” prompted September. Ethan nodded. “Too bad … all that credit and built like a marshmallow. Sinful, positively sinful.

“But she won’t be a burden on us, I don’t think, and on this world I wouldn’t mind a few extra kilos of insulation myself.” His thought changed abruptly. “Might be an idea to mount a watch tonight.”

He put both hands on either side of the hole and heaved himself up into the boat. Turning, he knelt and gave Ethan a hand up.

Ethan noticed a flash of dark brown forward as he was hauled aboard. He gestured toward the pilot’s compartment.

“What exactly happened? As we were coming down, I mean.”

“Ummm? Oh, that.” September gave a shrug. “It was bloody peculiar. See, I’d been drinking a tinge … not that I was drunk, you understand!”

“Perish the thought,” said Ethan placatingly.

“Yeah, well, I’d been sipping a little. And while it’s difficult to believe, it’s not entirely inconceivable that I might have gone just a teensy bit over my limit. Anyway, an assortment of misbegotten crewmen of indeterminate ancestry got it into their lighter-than-air skulls that I was acting in a manner not conducive to the general well-being of your usual milksop passenger. So they jumped me.

“Next thing I know, I’m thrown out of a sound sleep into near total darkness and zero-gee while a bunch of dwarf miners are using my skull for sinking an exploratory mine shaft. And to top it, I’m all tied up.

“Well, there were several possibilities. One, I was having the DT’s, which I haven’t run across in a long age, lad. Or maybe I was paddling through the great-grandfather of all hallucinatory hangovers. When it finally dawned on me that my misery had purely human causes, I was pretty upset.”

“I see,” said Ethan. “The crew tied you up and dumped you into the lifeboat to sleep it off.”

“Sure!” agreed September. “If they’d taken me to the brig, or whatever they use for a brig on those big luxury ships, they’d have had to get formal about things. Swear out affidavits, make out forms in triplicate. Much easier to chuck me into an empty lifeboat.

“At first I thought all the tumbling and jolting was a gag. But knocking about in freefall back in those seats hurt, dammit! Wasn’t a bit funny, no. Then it occurred to me that the boat had separated from the ship and was diving on an unscheduled jaunt dirtward. I don’t like kidnapping on principle. It’s worse when I’m the kidnapee.

“Pretty soon the boat is skipping through atmosphere like a rock on water. And none too gently, as you know. I wasn’t sure what was going on, but I hadn’t been consulted. So I broke loose and went forward to find out. Most of you had been slung around pretty bad. I don’t remember who was conscious and who wasn’t, but no one offered any advice.

“That fella in there,” he jerked a thumb in the direction of the pilot’s cubby, “was awful surprised to see me. First thing, he goes to pull a beamer on me. Now right away I know I’m not going to be able to reason with this bloke. So we had a bit of a tussle. Meanwhile that punk Walther can’t make up his mind whether to stick by his controls for the landing or pull his own beamer and help his partner.

“He ended up trying to do both and did neither very well. He did get his beamer out and he did get us down. The ship got broke and so did his arm. As for the other chap, I didn’t intend to kill him. It just happened. He was sure trying to kill me, though.”

He dug into a pocket, showed Ethan the other beamer. “Want it?”

“No thanks. I’d probably shoot myself in the foot. You keep it.”

“Okay.” September shoved it back into a fold of clothing. “If it really gets rough tonight we can heat one of the walls. I’d rather not do that, however. I don’t know how much of a charge is left in these things and we’ve no way of re-priming them.”

Ethan had handled beamers before, despite his refusal of this one. Business occasionally made it necessary. There were planets where the natives would decide in a stroke of primitive brilliance that the best bargain was to do away with the trader and confiscate his goods, thus apparently proving the old adage about getting something for nothing.

This time, however, the gun would prove more useful for warming his own backside instead of some ignorant savage’s. Better that September kept charge of it.

The latter broke into his reverie. “How about food?”

“You mean local? I don’t know. Don’t you think there’s enough in the ship?”

“A shuttle of this size is built to hold about twenty people,” informed September. “There are only six of us. But it’s presumed by the powers that be in their infinite wisdom that such ships as these will only be used to get from an uninhabitable ship to an inhabitable planet. Whereas we seem to have gone vice versa, what? So I wouldn’t count on finding more than a couple of weeks concentrated survival rations back in there, with plenty of vitamin pills.

“That ought to give us enough food for about four terran-length months. Longer, if we husband the stuff. That’s assuming,” he added, “that everything came through the landing in edible condition. At least we don’t have to worry much about spoilage. Not in this climate.”

There was a question Ethan had put off asking long enough.

“What do you think of our chances?”

September looked thoughtful. “Two weeks plus concentrated food for twenty people will mass a fair amount. We’ve got to find a way to transport it. And also a better way to get around on this frozen cue-ball than this.” He indicated the makeshift ice-shoes. “That would be a beginning.

“Then we’d have to find a way to keep warm during really cold nights, and to block off this damnable wind. We have to figure a method of determining where we are now, where Brass Monkey is, and how to draw a straight line between the two we can stay glued to.

“Assuming we can do all that, we might make it in four months. But I wouldn’t lay a tenth-credit on it. Could take a year, too. That’s why I’m curious about local foods.”

“Well,” Ethan tried to remember details from the recordings that were not pertinent to salesmanship, “there’s that.”

He hopped onto the ice and walked over to the island. There he stooped, plucked a few blades of the “grass” from the frozen surface. He had to pull hard, several times. Even then it came up with the greatest reluctance.

The thick stem, or leaf, or whatever it was, grew no longer than ten centimeters. The further out onto the ice it grew, the shorter the stems. It wasn’t a sharp-edged blade, like terran grass, but thick, fat, and substantial. Rather a bit like a pointy triangular sausage. Even the coloring was different.

There was a large proportion of red mixed into the green. Other stalks varied in color from a bright emerald to a deep rust In form it probably came closest to resembling terran iceplant, another incongruity. It was taller, straighter, and did not form clumps nearly as thick as the familiar Mesembryanthemum crystallinum.

“If I remember the tape correctly, this stuff grows wild all over the planet,” Ethan said. “It’s called pika-pina and is edible, although nutritional value is still uncertain. But it’s high in mineral content and bulks a fair amount of raw protein. It’s not a true grass, but lies somewhere midway between them and the mushrooms. Even grows on bare ice. Very complex root system.

“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.

“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.

The Hephaestean form of Skua September, outlined by the fire, stood to one side. He was staring intently at the door. The remaining beamer was clutched tightly in his right fist. It hadn’t grown much colder inside, thanks to the fire, but you could feel the alien darkness pressing close on all sides.

Ethan was aware of something new and unpleasant in the tiny cabin. Humans are not as adept as their dogs at smelling fear, but they can recognize it in each other.

“It was during Mr. du Kane’s shift,” the teacher whispered softly. “He woke Mr. September, who thought it best to rouse the rest of us.” Ethan turned just enough to see Walther sitting alertly in his corner, hands twitching uncontrollably.

“It seems Mr. du Kane thought he heard something moving around outside,” Williams continued. “And while he confesses to a lack of knowledge of the local life, he doesn’t believe it’s one of your natives. He cannot be certain, of course.”

At that point, as abrupt as ship ignition, there was a ringing bong as of something heavy striking metal. It came from outside. September dropped into a crouch. Back in his corner, Walther giggled unnervingly. September hissed for him to shut up or he’d get his neck broken.

Ethan could make out a distant scuffling and rattling. It sounded a thousand miles off. Unfortunately, that was not likely. In addition, above the wind, he distinctly heard a low moaning sound. It was like the noise people make when waking suddenly from a bad dream. It went off and on, off and on, like an idling engine. Very deep it was. Occasionally it was broken by a bass cough.

There was a loud thunk. Then uninterrupted silence. The big man hadn’t moved, hadn’t shifted. Ethan watched him.

September stayed in his crouch, straining for sounds of the unimaginable.

The wind continued to carry its load of lonesome song—a lowing, an unceasing monophony that drew a cold white chalk line down Ethan’s spine. Already he was half believing there was nothing outside but wind whistling through torn metal. It might be a loose couch bouncing around in the rained hull.

He crawled slowly over to the door. Putting an ear near the open crack, he ignored the wind that bit at him. He was careful not to touch the metal, though. By now even the inside of the door was quartz-cold. Skin would stick to it.

He looked back at September and shook his head to indicate he couldn’t hear anything new. September nodded once. The hand holding the beamer remained steady.

Ethan thought he could hear a thudding sound outside, realized it was his own heart. He felt very out of place here. This was all silly, of course. If there had been anything out there it had gotten tired of snuffling around and wandered off. Though it was not pleasant to consider what could be moving around in this midnight Ragnarok.

He started to stand, straightening his half-frozen knees and wondering if the joints would stiffen solid before he made it. He desperately wanted to get back close to the fire. Slowly, easily, he came up to the level of the window. He peered out.

The porous hull admitted enough of the light from the planet’s single moon to bathe the ruined interior in ghost-light. A little more new snow had seeped in, burying a few other human symbols and gestures under virgin white. The wind had apparently carried off more of the left side of the boat’s wall and roof. That was no surprise. It was amazing that the rest of it had held together at all in this gale.

He turned to the others, let out an unconscious sigh.

“It’s okay. If there was anything out there, it’s gone now.” Tension melted, slipped out of the cabin. It wouldn’t be hard getting back to sleep, no. He turned back to the glassite port for a last glance outside.

He found himself staring into an unmoving blood-red eye not quite the size of a dinner plate. A vicious little inkblot of a pupil swam in its center.

He was too shocked to faint. But he was frozen speechless to the spot. Cold had nothing to do with it.

The horrible moaning came again, faster now, excited. The eye moved. Something hit the door like a two-ton truck. The hinges bent in alarmingly and he stumbled backward a few steps. A triangular pattern appeared in the tough glassite.

Dimly he heard someone screaming. It might have been Colette, it might have been Walther. Or maybe both. He was hit from the side and shoved out of the way. September. The big man had a look through the bent door at whatever was outside and it made even him flinch away. He shoved the beamer through the gap, pulled the trigger.

Nothing happened.

The door was struck again and September was jolted back, cursing at the startling rate of three curses per step. They’d been carefully hoarding a dead beamer.

A loud, nervous rasping came from both sides of the dangerously bent door, a monstrous scratching and pawing. The door took another blow. This time the top, hinge snapped off like plastic and the upper half of the metal was folded inward. Ethan was lying on his back and had a fine view through the new opening.

What he saw was a big rectangular head. Two horrible red eyes, like wild lanterns, stared straight at him. A mouth not quite as big as an earth-mover filled with what looked like a couple of thousand long, needle-like teeth gaped open. The teeth grew in all directions, like a jumble of jackstraws.

It either saw him or scented him. The huge skull plunged downward. It pushed, and jammed halfway into the fresh opening. He could have reached up and touched one of those gnarled fangs. It was close enough for him to smell its breath—cloves and old lemon.

Metal groaned in protest as the thing twisted and pushed against the doubled door like a starving dog, moaning wantonly. Off to one side he saw September edging right up next to the door. He jumped across, threw something in the monster’s searchlight eyes, and ducked just as the steam-shovel head snapped at him. The teeth clashed like a gong just above flying white hair.

It blinked, and there was the most awful bellowing scream imaginable. The head disappeared with astounding speed. As it thrashed about in the ruined hull it shook the entire boat. Ethan was hard-pressed to keep from being tumbled into the fire.

Then, all at once, it was quiet again.

September was trying to force the strained door back into place. The weakened bracing gave a little, but a gaping hole remained. He picked up a large chunk of torn couch padding and stuffed it into the gap, jamming it down into the cracks on either side. It stayed.

“Somebody open some coffee. None of us are going back to sleep right away anyhow, I think.” September shoved a great fist down into the padding. “I could use a mug. Woe that it’s but the juice of the brown bean and not something stronger.”

“Lord!” panted Williams. It was the first time Ethan had seen the schoolteacher excited about anything. But only a robot could sit through what they’d just experienced without missing a heartbeat or two. “What was it?”

Surprisingly, Ethan found himself answering, after the first choke on his coffee.

“The section on fauna comes back to me now. That was a nocturnal carnivore. The natives consider it quite dangerous …”

“Do tell,” commented September. He was still wrestling with the padding and the door. “No single critter has a right to that many teeth … Damn this wind!”

“It’s called a Droom,” Ethan added, turning. Then he noticed that Colette was still sitting close to her father … and damned if she wasn’t shivering a little. She looked frightened, too. Of course she would be—anyone would be—but it was so unlike her.

She noticed his gaze. Defiantly, she sat straight and let the old man’s arms slip away. He didn’t protest. She tried to turn that overwhelming glare on him but it wasn’t there this time, and she looked away awkwardly.

“I suppose you think I was frightened of that thing.”

“Well, that’s okay,” began Ethan. “Nothing to be ash—”

“Well I wasn’t!” she shouted. Then she grew quiet again. “It’s just … I’m not afraid of anything real, anything tangible. But since I was small, I’ve … I’ve always been afraid of the dark.”

“It’s her mother, you see—” du Kane started to explain, but she cut him off.

“Be quiet, father … and get some sleep. I’ve got thinking to do.”

Ethan rolled over and stared at a place on the floor that sent the firelight back into his eyes. He thought, too.

The wind had dropped some but still blew steadily from the west. The sun had been up for a couple of hours already, though Ethan thought anything that put out so little decent heat unworthy of the name. He took his own good time getting up. After all, there was no great hurry. His first appointment wasn’t for half a day, yet.

In an attempt to conserve their rapidly dwindling supply of wood, the fire had been allowed to pass on to wherever it is dead fires go. Williams was industriously arranging twigs, needles, and dried lichen-substitute for the evening blaze. The du Kanes were devouring a breakfast of hot cereal without either making a demand for eggs Benedict. Colette, he noticed, was apparently on her third helping. He sighed for lost dreams.

He got off his elbows, sat up, and trapped knees to chest.

“Morning, schoolteacher. Where’s our beastmaster?”

“Gone outside again. His tolerance for this weather is absolutely amazing, don’t you think?” He reached across the ready pyre, tossed a cylindrical package back at Ethan. “He told me he doesn’t sleep much. Wastes time.”

“Huh.” Ethan grunted, started to tear at the top of the package. At the last moment he noticed that the red arrow on its side was pointing down. Hastily he reversed the container. Sighing at his own clumsiness, he gripped the tab again and tugged.

Off came the top, activating the tiny heating element in the packaging. Sixty seconds later he was sipping the hot soup he’d almost dumped into his lap.

After finishing most of the pack, he stood up. Either he was adapting to the temperature or his nerve endings had become so numb that he was divorced now from such mundane concerns as knowing when he was frozen.

Why, it was a perfectly lovely day! Couldn’t be more than, oh, fourteen or fifteen below.

He downed another swallow of the soup, which was already barely lukewarm.

“I’m going out,” he announced to no one in particular, “for a breath of fresh air. It’s getting positively tropic in here.”

“If that’s an attempt at humor,” Colette began, pausing with spoon in mid-flight, “I never …”

But Ethan was already dogging the crumpled door shut behind him.

He flipped down his snow goggles and peered along the center aisle of the boat. He found September examining the edges of the big gap on the port side of the vessel. It was indeed larger than it had been yesterday.

Wishing he could shrink himself and go swimming in the cup of soup, he strolled over. The self-heating liquid was struggling manfully. But it was badly overmatched in this super-arctic climate. He gulped down the last.

“Good morn, Skua.” He had to move closer and repeat himself before the other looked over at him.

“Hmmm? Oh, I suppose it is, since we’re all still about to see it, young feller-me-lad. What do you think of that, eh?” He stepped away from the wall and pointed.

Ethan didn’t have to look closely, nor ask for explanation, to see what his companion was studying. The wind hadn’t made those deep, curved gouges in the duralloy. There were six of them, spaced in groups of three. Others were visible high up on the plating.

“At first I thought it was the wind done it,” Skua said academically. He shook his maned head. “You think we could expect a return visit from that … what did you call the thing?”

“A Droom,” Ethan replied. He ran a gloved thumb along one of the grooves in the metal. It fit snugly.

“The recordings didn’t go into detail on animal life. I don’t know anything about its habits.” He paused, staring at the rough surface of the stripped wiring running through the hull wall.

“Look, I know I wasn’t much help last night. That screaming and tearing, I—” A big hand came down on his shoulder, comfortingly.

“Now don’t you waste another thought on it, me lad. Why, that monster would’ve chilled the guts of many a dozen professional soldiers I’ve known.”

Ethan turned to face the other. “You didn’t freeze, though. Are you a soldier? Or what? We don’t know much about you, do we? We know the du Kanes, and Williams and certainly Walther, and I’ve talked about myself. What about you?”

September shrugged, turned away and stared out across the bleak landscape. The wind had blown away most of the light snow. None had fallen last night, since early evening. The endless icefield sparkled from a billion flaws, except where red-green patches of the hearty pika-pina grew. They were marooned on a diamond.

“Let’s just say I’ve seen worse than that thing,” he muttered softly. “I might also tell you, though I don’t know why I should, that I’m a wanted man. On at least four planets my head, not necessarily delivered in conjunction with the rest of my corpus, could bring you upward of a hundred thousand times ten credits.” He turned and stared down at Ethan with shining eyes, the thick frosted brows crashing together.

“What do you think of that?”

“Very interesting,” replied Ethan levelly. “What did you do?”

“That’s enough for you to know, me lad … for now. Maybe sometime I’ll tell you more.”

Ethan was a good salesman. He knew when to press for a commitment and when to change the subject. He ajudged correctly this was the right time for a change.

“What did you throw at the thing, anyway. The scream it let out was enough to chill your blood … if it wasn’t frozen already.”

“Salt,” replied September, as though they’d been talking of nothing else. “From my dinner pack. There wasn’t much of it left. But then I don’t expect the creatures on this world have much contact with it anyway, especially in the raw state and powdered.”

“I suppose they can get all they need from licking the ice,” mused Ethan, “since it’s frozen sea water. But try your tongue on it and it might never come loose. I’d have tried a brand from the fire.”

“That would have come next. The salt seemed as good a bet, and safer.”

“Safer?”

“Sure. Listen, me lad. There are worlds where fire is a lot rarer than it is on humanx-type planets. This would seem to be one. It’s only a guess, but on similar worlds I’ve seen beasties charge straight for a flame and attack it. They think it’s some new kind of enemy. A living creature. Saw one roll over and over with a burning log in its mouth. Clawing and chewing at it. The fire, not the log. If your Droom—”

“It’s not my Droom,” Ethan protested.

“—had reacted likewise, it might have charged even harder instead of backing off from that busted door. We won’t know, because the salt worked. The fire might even have attracted it. On a world like this I’ll bet plenty of animals can sense heat at a fair distance. Our fire might have put out as much as another Droom, say. Are they territorial?”

“I don’t know that, either,” confessed Ethan.

“Hard to leave much of a spoor on naked ice.” September pulled a now familiar red-green stem from a jacket pocket, started munching on it. Ethan could hear it crunch.

“Does taste rather like parsley. How does it grow so far out onto the ice?”

Ethan reached under the hood of his coat, rubbed his scalp. “As I remember the tape, the root system extends out to a certain distance, putting out branch roots and surface stems all the way. When it reaches that point, growth halts and the end of the main root begins to swell. Nutrients are delivered from whatever central land mass the plant is based on. In that way it builds up a good sized food-rich node at its far end.

“The plant puts out just enough heat to slowly melt its way through the ice. The new nodule acts as a springboard, or advance base, putting out new roots in several directions. If the roots from one node encounter another they grow together, whether they’re from the same parent plant or not. This broadens and strengthens the network, insuring survival of the whole if a central branch is knocked out.

“There’s a giant variety called pika-pedan that grows up to three and four meters high. Its nodes can grow to be several meters in diameter.”

“I see.” September hummed to himself a moment. “Then if we follow an outcropping of this weed, we’ll eventually come to land?”

Ethan smiled. “Good thought. Trouble is, there are reports from the single Commonwealth survey of green patches growing fifteen hundred kilometers and more from the nearest body of land.”

“Oh,” said the other simply. He looked disappointed. “Look, I haven’t had my breakfast. You?”

“Just some soup. I could do with something solid.” He tossed the empty cylinder out of the boat, watched it bounce and roll across the pale surface.

“Okay, after breakfast, what do you think we ought to do, leader?”

“Well,” Ethan considered, “I definitely think we shouldn’t remain here.” He looked at the other for confirmation, but the big man just stared back. He continued.

“We’re not making any progress toward Brass Monkey by sitting here. A really first-class blow could send this whole boat spinning. I think the first thing we should do is look for some more substantial shelter. Maybe a cave on a big island. You circled this one the other day?” September nodded.

“As I said then, it’s not very big. Certainly saw nothing we could use as shelter, unless we dig our own. Given the likely consistency of this frozen earth, I wouldn’t care to try.”

“Swell. After you eat, then, I think if you’d climb—”

“Climb? Uh-uh, not me.”

“All right. One of us ought to climb the tallest tree on the island and get a good look around. Maybe we’ll see something.”

“Like an ice-cream stand?”

September guffawed, slapped Ethan on the back. “A good thought, young feller-me-lad. But first I’d better get about putting something substantial in my belly. Otherwise I won’t have the strength to watch you fall.”

“Even if we should spot another body of land,” asked Colette du Kane, “how do you propose reaching it?” September worked on his oatmeal while he considered her question.

“You said yourself that walking on this ice is damned tough even with makeshift aids,” she continued doggedly. “Since there’s nothing within easy walking distance, any trek we try will measure in the kilometers. This may be swell for you, but I’m not built for cross-country hiking. And father would never make it.”

Du Kane started to protest, but she raised a hand and smiled.

“No, father. I know you’re willing, but corporate directorship doesn’t inure one to much physical hardship.”

“Something more corporate directors should note,” said September, putting down the empty container.

“Despite what you may think, young lady, I don’t relish trying such a hike myself. We’ll have to try and rig up some kind of sled. Maybe we can break loose a torn section of hull. If we could sharpen some long branches to a good point, maybe tip ’em-with metal, we might kind of pole our way along. Be slow and ugly, but better than walking. Not exactly the Intercity Central on Hivehom, but we ought to be able to take along most of our supplies.”

“The weather would have to hold,” said Colette thoughtfully. “I don’t know if I could take another night like the last, and out on the bare ice.”

September looked troubled. “I’ve no way of knowing that myself, Miss du Kane. It’s not a pretty thought. And if another of those snaggle-toothed nightmares happened onto us, why, we’d be just so many cold hors d’oeuvres.

“One thing’s for sure, though. We wouldn’t be any worse off than we are in sitting here. And at least we’ll be making some sort of progress toward the settlement.”

“But what if someone should send over a rescue shuttle?” put in du Kane plaintively.

Ethan surprised himself by answering.

“It’s most unlikely anyone would think to search the surface for survivors, sir. If they did, they’d have the whole planet to choose from. Not much chance of picking us out against this ice, us with no power, nothing casting. But if by some wild chance someone did come looking for us and did find the wreck, they’ll assume we’ve started off toward Brass Monkey. They’ll trace us back along the most likely routes. We can leave signs. At least we know it’s somewhere to the west.”

Well, he said to himself, a bit startled, you’ve just articulated your own probable demise, Mr. Fortune. Rather a sad end for the fair-haired young sales genius of Malaika Enterprises, hmmm? That’s right, go ahead and shiver. Tell yourself it’s the cold.

“Like it or not, we’re on our own, as the young fella says,” September added.

Ethan heard himself speaking again. “There is one other possibility, of course.” Even September looked startled.

“His people might decide to come looking for us.” From his corner Walther glared back at him.

“Not a chance,” the little kidnapper spat. “They’re not that imaginative. We’re as good as dead right now. All thanks to him.” He looked at September with bitter hatred.

“There’s enough rough metal around,” the big man replied easily. “You can cut your throat any time you want to.”

“Or yours, maybe?”

September just smiled slightly. “You’re welcome to try, any hour of any day you choose. One way or the other, it would be a solution of sorts for you, wouldn’t it?

“Right now, though,” he said briskly to them all, “I think we should all take a little stroll around the chunk of dirt we’ve run up against. It’s not very big, but it’s home. For another day, at least. Besides, most of you haven’t been outside. It’s time you started getting used to the kind of country you’ll be spending a long, long time with.”

There were no arguments, not even from Colette. It was Ethan who noticed the obvious problem.

“Wait a minute. We only have four sets of ice goggles.”

It was true. Both Williams and the kidnapper were without the vital pair of protective lenses.

The teacher, however, had his own solution.

“I don’t need them, Mr. Fortune. That’s why I gave mine to you.” He dug under his coat, showed Ethan a tiny black case. Carefully shielding it from the steady breeze that blew in past the bent door, he crouched over. When he stood again, he was squinting.

“I wear protoid optical contacts.” He put the case away. “The ones I’m wearing now are high-glare configuration. They’re supposed to be used for intensity sunbathing. I don’t expect to be doing much of that, but they should do for outside, if not as well as the goggles. I’ll manage. They’re more comfortable, anyhow.”

Despite his small stature and soft look, Ethan had to admit that the little teacher certainly sounded competent. He expected they’d have to count on him as a third man if the going got really tough.

Just as he would be depending more and more on September. On a wanted man. Very wanted, by his own description.

Well, time enough for that later, if there was a later. He put a hand on the door latch.

A voice piped nervously from the back.

“Hey, what about me?”

“You’re coming too,” September growled. “I don’t trust you by yourself with the food or the wood. Not til I’m a lot surer of your mental balance.”

“But I haven’t got any goggles or special glasses,” Walther pointed out pleadingly. Clearly he knew what would happen to his eyes under outside conditions.

“A couple of days unprotected and I’ll be blind as a cave cricket! A week or two and it becomes permanent.” Despite the cold, he was sweating.

“Tear some cloth from your shirt or underwear,” September suggested, “and tie it around your head. Use thin dark stuff to cover your eyes. And keep ’em closed as much as possible. You won’t see much, but you won’t go blind, either. Damn sure you won’t try anything.”

“I’ll freeze, too,” Walther persisted. “I haven’t got a survival coat or double set of clothing like you.”

“Too bad. When we get the sled put together, we’ll do what we can to keep you out of the wind. I wouldn’t expect you to do any honest work anyway. Personally, you can stay with the boat and freeze to death, if you prefer. But if you’re coming with the rest of us, you’re coming outside, now.”

The kidnapper gave a little moan and unbuttoned his jacket. Shivering, he began fumbling with the material of a shirt sleeve.

Ethan found himself feeling sorry for the man. It was not reasonable, considering what the fellow had done to them, or planned for them. Nonetheless, it was soothing to his own conscience.

“Wait a minute. Before you start ripping up your clothes, look around in the cabin for a large piece or two of loose padding from the couches. There seems to be plenty lying around. Also loose hull insulation. Try stuffing it between your jacket and shirt. It’ll be clumsy, but it might keep you warm.”

“Thanks. Really, thanks,” Walther beamed, closing his jacket “It might at that.”

“Why bother with him?” asked September casually. “Why not let him freeze?”

“Have you ever listened to a man slowly freezing to death?” countered Ethan.

September started to say something, halted, looked strangely at him and turned away. If pressed, Ethan would have had to confess that he’d never seen a man freeze, either.

“Have it your way, me lad. Williams, keep an eye on him and make sure torn padding is the only thing he picks up. The rest of us will hike.”

If anything, the little island proved to be even smaller than September had implied. Mostly rocks and frozen soil, it didn’t look rich enough to support a bachelor toadstool. Not to mention ground cover, bushes, and fair-sized trees. But they were there. A couple of the scruffy bushes even supported an iron-red fruit that resembled a cross between raspberries and stringbeans.

Ethan considered the fruit, but the parent plant was a blank in his stored memory. He pulled one fruit loose and shoved it in a loose pocket for later consideration. It looked edible, which meant absolutely nothing. It might contain concentrated nitric acid for all he could tell.

There was also animal life on the island, the first they’d seen besides the Droom. Especially little balls of dark fur with bright pink eyes and short, stubby legs. They popped in and out of gopher-sized holes with startling speed.

And once while September was inspecting a particular tree, a pair of creatures like bats wearing mink coats swooped and darted at him. It was all bluff but he moved away. Whatever they were, they probably had a nest somewhere in the upper branches. They continued to insult him from a safe distance.

Ethan tried to imagine what kind of nest arboreals could build that would withstand a good blow on this world. Say, a 200 kph gale straight off the ice. He failed, turned to examine a blanket of thick red moss that grew in the shelter of a rock clump.

Hellespont du Kane was studying the same growth. “You know,” Ethan said to him, “there’s a lot of red in the pika-pina … and now this stuff, it’s almost crimson.”

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” said du Kane. The old man was obviously enraptured. To Ethan it was only an alien fungus. The old man leaned close. “You know, I raise flowers. Oh yes! Considered quite an expert in some circles.” Then something seemed to go click again behind those eyes and the voice turned mercenary. “It might mean there’s a lot of iron or manganese on this world.”

“I don’t know,” Ethan replied, trying to separate flowers from ore. “The recordings didn’t say much about internal geology.”

“Ah well, an interesting supposition,” said du Kane. He stooped to examine the greasy-looking plant more closely. “I wonder if it’s as soft as it looks. Many plants concentrate interesting minerals in their substance in commercial quantities.”

He stuck a finger into the middle of one patch, pushed … and jumped away with such surprising speed that Ethan jumped himself.

September and Colette must have heard the little screech du Kane gave, because they were there seconds later.

“Father … what happened? Are you all right?”

Since du Kane was sitting on the ground, gritting his teeth in obvious pain and holding his wrist, Ethan was tempted to offer some suitable comments on female semantic brilliance. At the moment, though, he was too concerned with the older man’s welfare.

“He stuck his finger in that bed of moss … or whatever it is,” Ethan replied.

“Felt like acid,” said the industrialist tightly. “It hurts rather intensely.” Click. “Colette?”

“I’m here, father,” she said evenly.

“Can you make it back to the boat?” September asked. Du Kane stood, still holding his wrist, and began edging the glove down.

“Boat? Yes, I believe so. I’m not dizzy or anything. It just pains.”

“It was a foolish thing to do, father,” scolded Colette.

“Now, look,” said Ethan, “it looks harmless enough, and your father had no idea it might be lethal.”

“And you had no idea, period,” she said, slipping an arm around the old man. Ethan started to object. After all, it wasn’t described on any of his tapes. Might even be an unknown species. But she wasn’t interested.

“Let’s just hope it isn’t toxic,” she said quietly.

Du Kane was controlling himself with an effort. Ethan wondered about the oldster’s on-again-off-again moments. One second he was a tower of power, steel-haired duralloy-spined master of a hundred industries. The next, he was a half-senile old man desperately hungering for approval and protection. Which was real, which was sham? Probably only Colette knew the answer to that one—and she wasn’t volunteering any information.

“No way to tell,” said September, jarring Ethan’s thoughts back to the problem at hand. “It might be no worse than a bad bee sting. On the other hand, you could keel over for good in the next minute. But I doubt it. Rich folk only die from overworking or overeating.” Colette threw him a furious look, but du Kane came close to smiling.

“Animals and plants that live in cold climates rarely carry poison. When they do it’s usually nowhere near as powerful as that toted by their tropical counterparts. And this is a completely alien ecosystem. It might be instantly fatal to other plants and animals and harmless to us. Or vice-versa. That’s enough talk, now. Get back to the boat and put something on it. To kill the pain, at least.”

Father and daughter started slowly back toward the wreck. Ethan watched them go.

“You really think he’ll be okay?”

“Yep. It does look a little like a mild acid burn. Can’t be certain. Know better tomorrow. But it’s a damned good thing he had that glove on.

“And now I think it’s about time you climbed that tree.”

“I’ll try,” sighed Ethan. “I’m not much for this kind of athletics. Now, tennis or poef or golf—”

“Do you good, young feller-me-lad. Besides, if the branches get dense near the top, you can slip through them a lot easier than I could. And you can go higher, as well.”

Ethan refrained from pointing out that September could snap off the branches that Ethan would have to dodge.

They found the highest spot on the island by the simple expedient of walking uphill until they were going down. From there they circled a couple of meters to a likely-looking tree. One leg went to the trunk’s right side and Ethan prepared to scramble to the lowest branch. He needn’t have bothered. The shove September gave him sent him flying into the lower branches.

After catching his breath and soothing a slightly scraped left hand, he started up. The branches grew very close together and made for easy climbing. The tree topped out at perhaps twenty meters. Trunk and stubby branches alike were thick and covered with a dense bark, to conserve heat and withstand the hurricane-force winds that swept the tiny islet.

Ethan was able to scramble within a meter of the crown, which swayed slightly in the steady wind. In fact, the wind had not ceased howling since their initial setdown.

From the top he was a good thirty meters above the ice, perhaps more. He looked down to his left. From this vantage point he had an excellent view of the crumpled lifeboat and the arrow-straight skid marks in the ice that extended unbroken to the horizon.

Off to his right, he thought he could make out in the distance a greenish tinge to the ice. More pika-pina, or maybe its giant relative, pika-pedan. Further off, there were one or two bumps on the horizon that might be large islands. Unfortunately, they lay due east. Not that they wouldn’t head for them if they proved to be the only land in sight, but he’d prefer to move in the direction of civilization.

He turned, keeping a firm grip, and was gratified to see what looked like similar bulges off to the west. They appeared to be just as large—if indeed there was actually something there besides a mirage or a figment of his wind-chilled sight. It was harder to see on this side because he was looking directly into the wind. While the tree remained thankfully solid, the ice goggles expressed a perverse tendency to shift position under the shield on his face. He reached around and fumbled with the strap, managed to tighten them a little.

He squinted harder.

On the ice between their island and those distant humps, he thought he could see a dozen or so dark spots on the ice. They weren’t pika-pina, because they seemed to be moving.

September’s voice floated up to him. “See anything, lad?” The wind made it sound farther away than it was. He turned out of the breeze and yelled downward.

“I’m not sure! Maybe a pack of animals. Then again, we might be due for an invitation to a feast.”

“Okay!” A wide grin split the shrunken upturned face. “Let’s hope we’re offered a menu and not put on one.”

Ethan had another look at the distant dots. He assured himself that they were really moving toward the island before beginning to pick his way down the ice-hard trunk.

Little clouds of frozen breath, the two men jogged their way down to the boat. Williams and the others were waiting for them. The schoolmaster helped September close the compartment door behind them.

Ethan saw that Walther’s jacket and pants were full of awkward bulges. It gave him a falsely gnomish appearance. His head was swathed in torn cloth and black eyes peered out through a small slit. It wasn’t pretty and couldn’t have been very comfortable, but maybe it was warm. And the kidnapper was in no position to quibble about fashion.

“How’s that finger?” September asked Colette about her father’s injury.

“We put some anesthetic cream on it,” she told them. “It seems to have brought the swelling down. The pain is still there, but it’s not as severe.”

“Beautiful creature,” breathed du Kane. “Fascinating defense mechanism. Or it might be offensive. We pulled several dozen tiny stingers out of the tip of the glove. I’d very much dislike to step on it barefoot.”

“A lot like the terran jellyfish,” added Williams.

“Speaking of stingers,” offered Ethan as casually as he could, “I think we’re due for a visit from the local welcoming committee.” Would that shake her up?

“About time,” she grumbled. “Damned inefficient.”

“Might be a hunting party,” September added cheerfully.

“Natives!” blurted Williams excitedly. “How marvelous! I must try to note as much as possible. My students will be fascinated.” He seemed utterly oblivious to the fact that he might be some other student’s main course before the day was out.

“Do you think they’ll be friendly?” asked du Kane hesitantly.

“Not much we can do if they’re not,” said Colette coldly.

“Might even be cannibals,” added September, apparently determined to lighten the atmosphere. “Lad, you’ve had the tapes, you do the talkin’. I’ll stand to your right and try to look friendly. Williams, you take his left, since you had a tape too.”

“If the dialect isn’t too thick, I should be able to understand them pretty good, too,” piped Walther.

“I assumed that,” September replied. “You stay in the back and keep your mouth shut.”

“I couldn’t try anything,” said the little man, hurt. “You all understand as much as I.”

“It’s not your language that worries me, it’s your ravishing appearance. It’s sufficiently distorted to frighten even a well-balanced primitive. I’d rather show a little surface symmetry until we know them better. They might be skittish. We can’t take a chance on frightening away potential help.”

Walther grumbled but couldn’t find an argument to counter with.

September turned to the du Kanes. “With all due respect, neither of you understands the language. So you stay behind us, too.” That seemed to suit the two cosmopolitan travelers quite well.

“Everyone knows his or her place, then? Good!” He turned to Ethan. “All right, young feller-me-lad, it’s yours.”

Ethan put a hand on the door latch, spoke to September.

“Know any good opening lines for interspecies contact? They’ve probably never seen a human being before.”

“No but hum a few bars and I’ll wing it.” He chuckled, shoved. “Now get going.”

Fortunately Ethan had already opened the door. The shove might have sent him through it.

IV

SIR HUNNAR REDBEARD SQUINTED hard, but they were still too far away to make out the number of figures standing next to the mass of odd shaping. It truly seemed to be made of metal.

When Eer-Meesach had come running into the Great Hall babbling his hysterical tale of a fiery thing of metal falling from the sky, Hunnar had been one of the skeptical ones.

The wizard had insisted that his telescope told him the outside of the thing was at least coated with solid metal that shone like a dancer’s tiara. And on top of that, he’d insisted he’d seen two creatures emerge from the metal and walk onto the island.

Now he could see it for himself and he momentarily forgot about the creatures. So much metal! If it were as good as steel it would be a valuable prize indeed. They would need every scrap they could gather if the Longax’s plan to contest the Horde were to pass in Council.

It would be crucial to deal correctly with the strange beings. It would also be nice merely to chivan up and lop off a few heads. But not necessarily practical. For one thing, Eer-Meesach would never forgive him. Hunnar made a Sign. He didn’t want his bed turned into a rollicking Gutorrbyn in the midst of a mating.

Also, any beings who could make that much metal stay up in the sky might be able to do unpleasant things to a person. No doubt they knew the value of their metal.

One thought had troubled him all the way out from Wannome. Could they be gods? Gray-maned, omnipotent, immortal gods? It could not yet be ruled out.

However, the wizard’s description of the way in which their craft had descended implied lack of control by infallible immortals. Rather it sounded more like cubs caught on a runaway sled.

But he would reserve his final judgment until after viewing. That would please his teachers.

But so much metal!

He stared at the fallen thing. One fact seemed certain. Whatever they were, their eyesight seemed as good as his own. A group of them appeared to be assembling just outside the ship—he’d reluctantly come to consider it a vessel of sorts. They were standing on the edge of the island. This in itself was an odd thing to do. But by voluntarily restricting themselves to land, they might be making a friendly gesture. Hunnar had the right idea but the wrong reason.

He grinned ferociously. It might mean that these strangers were afraid to do battle with him. Otherwise they would have come out to meet him.

There were five … no, six of the beings. It looked like only one was built along warrior lines. Better and better.

“Suaxus!” he shouted to his first lieutenant, “break left! Vasen, Smjör, with him!” He turned, eating air. “Budjir, break right with Avyeh and Hivell!”

The nine tran immediately split into three groups. They would make a three-pronged approach. Not only was it a sensible precaution, it should also impress their visitors. He’d given Suaxus the left and slightly less wind. The squire was impatient and something of a problem, but basically one of the soundest in training.

And you, Hunnar? Whose grandfather are you, eh? Maturity, he reminded himself, was not necessarily a function of age.

He signaled. On one side of the arrowhead formation, three tran abruptly dropped their left arms. The tough membrane that stretched from wrist to hip folded and the three soldiers leaned slightly to the left. The wind pushed hard and steady into the right wing as three sets of claw-blades dug hard into the ice. The squire and two soldiers made a neat sixty-degree turn to port. Budjir and his men duplicated the maneuver to starboard.

They were getting close already and Hunnar wondered if he’d delayed too long.

“Hafel down!” he ordered his companions. They all lowered their arms and cut speed. It wouldn’t do for them to reach their objective in advance of their flanking companions. Certainly Eer-Meesach and possibly the Landgrave himself were watching from the wizard’s tower. This was no time for sloppiness.

“And be careful when you brake!” he added. Greeting their visitors with a shower of sharp ice-chips would not be facile diplomacy either.

His lance felt light in his right paw. They were almost on top of the strangers, who’d made nothing resembling a hostile move. They were pink-faced and seemed a surprisingly light color, except for one who was a dark brown. While their color varied from individual to individual, by and large it was like that of a fresh-born cub.

He saw Suaxus approaching rapidly from the left and let out his own wings a little more. Budjir would notice the speed-up and match pace perfectly. Looking ahead to the strangers, Hunnar could not make out a single sword, axe, lance, even a knife. Of course, he reminded himself, there could be fifty others armed to the teeth hiding within the metal bottle.

Still, if they wanted to fight they’d have to move from land to ice, and Hunnar had both wind and sun behind him. Let them try something! These first six, at least, would go down like a herd of mewing hoppers.

Be careful, idiot! You’re not thinking diplomatically again. Then the time for daydreaming was past.

“Up lances!” he commanded loudly, “and brake in!”

Suaxus and Budjir arrived almost simultaneously. Neatly done, he complimented himself. Anyone in the castle observing the maneuver couldn’t be anything but pleased.

Hunnar and his men raised their weapons to the perpendicular, turned slightly left, and dug in. Torn free by the sharp claws of the tran soldiers, a shower of ice fragments flew in a glittering cascade to the left. They missed the aliens completely. A couple of them flinched, but the ones in front held proper ground.

One in the rear, however, did utter a short, high-pitched sound. It sounded a little like a yip of uncertainty to Hunnar.

But for all he knew of these odd folk it could have been laughter. The same being had immediately clutched tight to another. Mates, he decided. Another good sign. As yet it was difficult to tell male from female.

It might be impossible to tell without a dissection. There you go again, he cautioned himself. If only this had happened a year ago, his mind would move more easily.

Well, if there were more of the odd creatures concealed in the metal ship, then these were excellent bluffers. Not a one had thrown a look in that direction. With one exception, these all appeared badly undernourished. None of them were children, either. No, they were not that short, but they were dreadfully thin. And much of that seemed to be clothing.

For their part the little knot of humans was suitably impressed by Sir Hunnar himself. But then, the knight was an impressive specimen even among his own people. He stood as tall as September and was nearly twice as broad. Great thick arms ended in hands with three fingers and thumb. These supported folded membranous wings between wrist and hip.

The feet were short, with thick, elongated toes. Each of the three toes held a greatly stretched single claw that narrowed to a sharp blade at the base, forming a kind of triple skate on each foot. The fourth toe was short and had shifted around to the back of the heel. It sported a squat, stubby point that served as a brake when dug into the ice.

While traveling toward the lifeboat, the tran had presented a shorter appearance. This because they moved in a crouch, offering less surface in proportion to wing area. It also helped to maintain balance in the tricky winds.

The barrel-chested torso was covered with short, soft fur. Each soldier wore a thick coat of rich, umber fur from the hessavar. This was cinched at the waist by a belt of hammered gold disks and tooled leather. A short, double-bladed sword was strapped securely to Hunnar’s left leg. An evil-looking dirk rode on his right hip.

A necklace of ugly saw-edged teeth from the krokim fell from the thick neck onto the coat. The hood closely resembled the hoods of their own survival parkas, with the exception of twin slits made to admit the furry, triangular ears. A strap ran around the front edge of the hood and tied beneath the chin to keep the wind from pulling it off the wearer’s head.

The face that stared down at them was uncompromisingly feline, with slitted eyes of bright yellow. The pupils were a startling deep-space black. A broad flat nose, high brow, and wide mouth filled with flat and pointed teeth completed the portrait. The tran were omnivorous.

Body fur was steel-gray, a couple of the soldiers sporting patches of black over the muzzle and at the tips of the ears. One other besides Hunnar possessed a short beard. Hunnar’s beard and facial fur were distinctive in their rust-tinge, almost ochre.

“Say something to ’em, young feller,” whispered September out of the side of his mouth.

Ethan hurriedly tried to assemble a proper opening sentence, dropping verbs into place, shoring up uncertainties with the right pronouns.

“We are a … uh … caravan that has lost its sails,” he began. “The wind blew us false and we travel now on the breath of mercy.” He took two careful steps onto the ice—this was no time for a pratfall—and stood on tiptoe. Then he took a deep breath and exhaled right into the native’s face, praying all the while that none of the germs in his body could effect this mountain of fur in front of him.

Everyone remained motionless for a moment. Then the ferocious-looking primitive relaxed his mouth into a wide grin—without showing his teeth. He leaned over and breathed a fog of frozen air back into Ethan’s face.

“My breath is your warmth,” he said, not with a little relief himself. At least these strangers were civilized. Tactical advantage or no, he was gratified that a fight didn’t seem in the offing.

“Put up your lances,” he instructed the others. “They appear to be friendly.” The last wasn’t really necessary. They’d all heard Ethan’s little speech and observed the greeting.

“We are very trusting today,” Suaxus grumbled, but mostly to himself. He did not relax.

The tran eased, retracting their blades almost entirely. At that point Ethan almost made a fatal mistake.

“Would you like to go inside our ship,” he offered smoothly, “and get out of this infernal wind?”

Hunnar jerked back and two of his men reached for their swords. He wished he could read the alien’s expression.

“Why?” Hunnar asked tightly, his palm itching for his own weapon. “Why would we want to get out of the wind?” he prompted, since the other seemed dumbstruck by their reaction.

“I think I understand,” said Ethan finally. “Where we come from, up there,” and he pointed skyward, “our world is much warmer than this. Your unending hurricane is hard on us. I didn’t think you’d regard it otherwise. Honest, that’s all I thought.” The soldiers relaxed again. Hunnar didn’t bother to correct the alien’s reasoning. Leaving ice and wind would take away their small tactical advantage. But it seemed the other was truly ignorant of this.

“I accept your words,” he said, “but find some of them hard to believe. This is a very pleasant summer day. One could even travel comfortably coatless. But in truth, I would like to see the inside of your vessel.”

He’d put that awfully crudely, after his initial reaction. But that was one of their prime objectives. He was a knight and not a herald, dammit.

“It would make things easier for us,” Ethan replied. “Of course you may.”

September clambered into the windswept boat, leaned out and gave Ethan a hand up.

“I caught most of that,” he said softly. “Why did that line about ‘getting out of the wind’ put them on guard at first?”

“I don’t know,” Ethan answered, struggling for a foothold. He got in, turned to help Williams.

“No, wait, I think I do know. Obviously this is a bunch of local troops, or militia, or whatever. Once out of the wind they must sacrifice a great deal of maneuverability. The way they can move on that ice! Did you notice that none of them came up onto the island?”

“That’s true,” September agreed. “A large scale battle on this world must combine the actions of infantry with old-time sailing ships. Fascinating!”

“I’ve no desire to see even two of them angry,” Ethan countered. “Look at their size. Better not to provoke them.”

“Might be different than you think, lad.” The humans were aboard and now the tran were making their cautious way up. “I noticed something a mite intriguing myself.”

“Do tell,” asked Ethan, watching Hunnar. Watching the way his eyes tried to drink in every detail of the ruined boat.

“Well, their weight should have driven those claws of theirs a lot deeper into the ice than it does. They may be the greatest muscular specimens since the Pitar, but I’ll wager a platinum doubloon that their bones are light. Maybe even partly hollow, like birds. I’m sure they’re much lighter than they look.

“You, young feller-me-lad, may be only half as big as one of those blokes. But you might come out ahead in a shoving match.”

“I’ve no desire to test that theory,” Ethan replied feelingly, “not even by friendly arm-wrestling.”

While Hunnar wasn’t in the wizard’s class when it came to rapid cogitation, even a ten-year cub could tell that this amazing vessel was in no condition to fly anyplace. The great open holes in roof and sides, the shredded acceleration couches and twisted fixture mountings; everything indicated the vessel had not set down as its designers had intended.

He also noticed the instantly recognizable scratch marks on one wall and the roof of the boat and looked at the aliens with new respect.

“You had an encounter with a Droom.”

“I’m afraid we did,” said Ethan. “Scared the crap out of us.”

Candid, too, Hunnar filed away mentally.

Of course, no true warrior would confess to fright in a battle situation—even when confronted by a Droom. If they’d been attacked by a rampaging stavanzer, now! But that was a special case. Why, even he might …

“Your vehicle,” he began innocently, “seems to have incurred some damage. I myself, since I did not witness your arrival, find it hard to believe that this much metal (keep the envy from your tones, knight!) truly descended from the sky.” Then he couldn’t keep the awe out of his voice. “Is it really a flying machine?”

“It is,” answered Ethan. “We came from a ship many hundreds of times larger than this one.” Hunnar couldn’t repress a little start at that.

“It was bringing us to this world from another, where live some of our number, and thence to others. We paused in the … above the air of your world, when a small disaster overtook us. We were forced to flee our ship in this tiny lifeboat. A second misfortune befell us and we were unable to land properly. One of our number,” he added by way of afterthought “was killed in the landing.”

“My sorrowings,” said Hunnar politely. Of course, he didn’t believe this creature’s fantastic story. Other worlds, indeed! Every child who’d studied with a Knowledgable One knew that Tran-ky-ky was the only world in this star system that could harbor life. No, they must be a stunted, nearly hairless variety of tran from the far side of the globe. Ethan’s next words tended to support this assumption.

“There is a small settlement of our people many … many satch to the west of here. That is where we were trying to land when our craft went out of control. If you could aid us in getting there, our ancestors would dance your praises through eternity.”

“How many satch?” inquired Hunnar, not impressed by the flattery.

Ethan did some furious figuring in his head, utilizing their last beacon reading and September’s guesswork.

“Eight or nine thousand, I think.”

One of the soldiers made a muffled whining sound. Hunnar glared at him. But he was hard put to keep from smiling himself. Eight or nine thousand satch. Just a quick chivan around the province and back.

“Such matters are best discussed with the Landgrave,” he replied smoothly.

“The Landgrave?”

“Yes. At the great castle of Wannome. You will meet him—and the Council—when we arrive.”

That suits us,” September said, speaking for the first time. “And I think, laddie, it’s time we all introduced ourselves.”

“Agreed,” said Hunnar. “I hight Sir Hunnar Redbeard, son of Stömsbruk Redbeard’s Son, grand-grandson of Dugai the Wild. My squires, Suaxus-dal-Jagger”—a tall, slimmer soldier stepped forward stiffly—“and Budjir Hotahg. His Landgrave’s men-at-arms and truemen,” and he proceeded to name the soldiers in turn, “Vasen Tersund, Smjör Tol, Avyeh-let-Ot-kamo, and Hivell Vuonislathi.”

“I hight Ethan Fortune. This hight Skua September, Milliken Williams …” and he went down their little group.

“Only one calling?” Hunnar said, indicating Walther.

“A criminal, uh … consigned to our care,” Ethan improvised hastily. “As such, he is entitled to but one.”

As to the du Kanes, Hunnar was mildly discouraged to learn they were father and daughter. He’d badly misjudged ages and relationship. A small point, but it piqued him. Sire and cub, then, and not mates. That was interesting.

“Despite your greeting, friend Ethan, I must be certain you are of the true warm blood and not deviants like the hoppers. Before we can think of aiding you freely, this vital thing must be settled.”

Budjir chivaned over and whispered to his leader. “What needs this, sir? They would clearly seem to be—”

“Be silent, squire. The stjorva appears as a bush, but it bites.” Taken aback, Budjir growled to himself and stepped away.

“What now?” September was asking Ethan.

“I think they want to be sure we’re of the same basic stock as they are. We’re not, of course, but I think he’s hunting for comforting similarity.” He turned to the knight “How can we prove this small thing to you, Sir Hunnar?”

The huge tran walked past Ethan and confronted Colette. She held her ground well but stared up at the carnivorous face apprehensively.

“What does this thing want?” she stuttered in Terranglo.

Ethan conversed briefly with Hunnar. September smiled.

“Our very lives are at stake,” the big man rasped. “You’d better cooperate.” In Trannish, he addressed Hunnar. “Be careful, the She’s a mite skittish.”

The knight nodded. Ethan noticed that the native’s coat fastened at the shoulders with leather ties. He spoke in Terranglo to Colette.

“I think you’ll have to open your parka, Colette. You’ll only be cold for a minute.”

“Open my … are you out of your mind? You think for one minute I’m going to let this elephantine pussycat leer at me?”

“He just wants to make certain that we’re faintly mammalian,” said Ethan easily. “You’re our best and only convincing proof. Would you rather be barbecued?”

“Now Colette,” began du Kane, “I’m not sure—”

“Very well,” said Colette evenly. She began working at the snaps on her parka. Ethan noticed that the other tran soldiers were observing the operation with something more than clinical interest.

She shook a little when Hunnar put those great clawed paws on her, but otherwise she bore the brief inspection stolidly.

“Satisfied?” September asked him the moment he’d finished. Colette had turned away and was resnapping her jacket.

“Eminently.” Privately he felt this only added validity to his theory that these people were merely thinner variants of his own stock with a much more advanced technology.

“You okay, Colette?” Ethan inquired in solicitous Terranglo.

“Yes, I think so.” She was shaking a little and didn’t even insist that he call her Miss du Kane. “I just hope these aborigines don’t carry lice or fleas.”

“What did the She say?” Hunnar asked.

“That she was flattered by your attention,” Ethan replied smoothly.

“Umph. Well, friend Ethan, it is for the Landgrave and the Council to decide if anything can be done about your request for help in reaching your home.”

“It’s not our home,” said Ethan, unconsciously avoiding the other’s neat trap. “Just a single settlement our folk have established on your world.”

“To be sure,” Hunnar murmured. “In any case, the full Council should debate it.” Actually, with the Horde only a malet or two away, any request for so much as a sword blade or scrap of spare sail was apt to be treated with kindly indifference at best. He didn’t say that, of course. Possibly these people could be of some help. There was no point in discouraging them early.

Now, if they voluntarily agreed to contribute the wreck of their boat, that would surely be a point in their favor. A point he ought to bring up about now.

“Is your vessel truly no longer capable of flight?”

That is so,” said Ethan sadly.

“Can it not be repaired?”

“I fear not,” September put in. “It would take the facilities of a full O-G dock. The nearest is parsecs away.”

Hunnar looked across at him. He already felt at ease with Ethan. Less certain was he with this stranger who was nearly as big as himself and whose accent was even more abominable than Ethan’s.

The big human seemed only amused by the intent scrutiny the knight was giving him.

“Then,” he continued casually, “would you object to our making some use of it?” He waited tensely. He didn’t wish to spill blood here, but for so much worked metal …

He did not bother to point out that they were in no position to deny it. Even so, Ethan’s ready answer surprised him.

“Sure. Help yourselves.” Even Suaxus looked startled.

“One thing you ought to know, though,” added September. “I don’t think your people will be able to work it.”

“Our smiths,” replied Suaxus, drawing himself up to his full height, “can work bronze, brass, silver, gold, copper, junite, iron, visiron, and good steel.”

“Very impressive. Believe me, I wish them only the best of luck. If they can mold duralloy in your local version of a manual forge, I’ll be the first to applaud. Now, if you could train a Droom to manhandle the stuff …”

That was one several of the soldiers could not keep from laughing at. It lightened the atmosphere, lessened the tension born of acquisition.

“If we could do that,” smiled Hunnar, “we wouldn’t need the metal.”

“There are some bits and scraps already torn free that you might be able to make some use of,” September continued. “Like the acceleration-couch frames, heating units, and such. I’d like to offer you a couple of miles of wire, but I’m afraid there just isn’t much in the boat.” He wasn’t about to try and explain solid- and fluid-state mechanics. A frustrated warrior could become an angry warrior, apt to relieve his frustration by making short choppy motions with sharp objects.

“We shall see,” said Hunnar. He looked at Ethan. “You surely have no objections then, friend Ethan?”

“No, the boat’s all yours, uh, friend Hunnar.”

“Fine. Now I think it be time to go meet his Lordship.” He was exhilarated. Not a drop of blood shed to win such a prize! And mayhap some allies as well. Tiny allies, ’twas true.

“We’re ready as you,” said Ethan. He took a step forward, then stopped. A look of consternation came over his features.

“Um … how do you propose to get to this castle of yours?”

Hunnar reconsidered. Perhaps he’d been wrong. Maybe these really were children, or at least adolescents.

“We will simply chivan over,” he said patiently. “It is only a short ’lide. Fifteen minutes out, perhaps three times that back, against the wind.”

“By ‘chivan’ I guess you mean to skate?” Hunnar said nothing, confused. “I’m afraid we can’t do that.”

“Why not?” blurted Suaxus, hand moving slowly toward his sword-hilt again.

“Because,” Ethan continued, opening his coat and raising his arms, “we don’t have any wings and,” resnapping the coat and lifting a foot, removing the boot, “we haven’t any claws, or skates.” He replaced the boot hastily as the cold bit at his heel.

Hunnar stared at the now-covered foot and rapidly made some astonished reappraisals. Firstly, his pet theory that these people were but slimmer varieties of his own vanished like a sweetclub down a cub’s gullet. And then the full alien-ness of them—the way they moved, talked, their impossible sky-ship—all came down on him at once with a solid mental crunch.

Invincible knight of Sofold though he be, he was still shaken.

“If … if you have neither dan nor chiv,” he asked helplessly, “how do you move about? Surely you do not walk all the time?”

“We do a lot of that,” Ethan admitted. “Also, we have small vehicles that move from place to place.” He demonstrated a walk, feeling ridiculous. “We also run.” He forbore demonstrating this other human activity.

“We too ‘walk,’ with our chiv retracted,” muttered Hunnar a little dazedly. “But to have to walk to cover any distance … how terrible!”

“There are plenty of humans who feel exactly the same way. They do as little of it as possible,” confessed Ethan. “On our world there are few places to chivan, anyway. Our oceans are not solid, like this, but liquid.”

“You mean, like the inside of the world?” Hunnar gaped.

“That’s interesting.” Williams spoke for the first time. “Clearly they have seen or have memory of occasional breaks in the ice. Since it’s as much a part of their surface as these islands, it’s easy to see how their wise men would conclude that the world was hollow and filled with water.”

“What a sad place your home must be,” commiserated Hunnar, honestly sympathetic. “I do not think I should like to visit it.”

“Oh, there are places on many of our worlds, including Terra, where you’d feel right at home,” Ethan assured him.

“Can you not chivan at all?” pressed the knight. It was hard to accede to such a monstrous abnormality.

“Not at all. If I were to try and chivan … We do have artificial chiv of metal on some worlds, but brought none with us. It’s not standard survival gear on our lifeboats. And I wouldn’t know how to use them, anyway. I think I could make a few meters from here into the wind before falling flat on my face.”

“Couldn’t hurt,” said Colette. He ignored her.

“I will call for a sled,” Hunnar said decisively. “Budjir, you and Hivell see to it!” The squire indicated acknowledgment and headed for the ice, the soldier following.

The humans watched their departure with fascinated stares. Williams in particular was utterly enraptured.

Once on the ice, the squire dug into the soldier’s backpack and drew out a highly polished mirror about a third as big as his torso. It was set in a dark wooden frame and had what looked like a large metal screw set in the base of the wood.

While the squire aligned it with the sun and balanced it, the soldier jammed it into the ice and began twisting until it was screwed in tightly. It was facing those same western islands Ethan had spotted from his treetop vantage.

There was a simple baffle-shutter arrangement that slipped over the mirror. While the soldier steadied it against the wind, Budjir began opening and closing the baffles in a distinct pattern. Almost immediately there was an answering series of bright flashes somewhere along the horizon, at which the squire began fluttering his shutters more rapidly and for some time.

“Clearly, any kind of aural communication,” September mused, “like drums or horns, are out of the question here. This wind would swallow up a good drum inside a half-kilometer or less.”

Williams asked Hunnar, “What do you do at night?”

“Torchlight reflected by mirror serves well enough,” the knight replied. “For long distances we have developed a system of relay stations with bigger mirrors. Except, of course, where they have been destroyed.”

“Destroyed?” said Ethan. It was the inflection in Hunnar’s voice and not the word itself that prompted his curiosity.

“Yes. The Horde burns them so that no word can be given of their passage. Indeed, it forbids their construction. But many feign ignorance and rebuild them.”

“Horde?” probed September disinterestedly. “What Horde?”

“I fear you will have chance to discover,” replied Hunnar. “We have a while to wait. I should like to learn more about you, and your amazing sky-raft, in that time.”

“There isn’t a great deal you would under … find interesting, Sir Hunnar,” said Ethan. “But I’ll be happy to show you around. Now, if I had my damned sample case with me …”

In the discussion that preceded the arrival of the sled-raft, Hunnar revealed a fair knowledge of basic astronomy. Tran-ky-ky rarely had cloudy weather for any length of time, Ethan reflected thoughtfully.

After Williams had answered several pointed questions about his home world and the ship, Hunnar asked if the little schoolteacher was a wizard. When informed that he was a teacher, the knight shrugged off the difference. No doubt, he reflected, Williams and Malmeevyn Eer-Meesach, wizard to the Landgrave himself, would have things to say to one another. Certainly Williams did not try to hide his own enthusiasm at the prospect of such a meeting.

Williams tried to explain a full-sized KK-drive ship to the knight. Hunnar would have none of it. Nothing that big could be made out of metal.

“Why does it not land to pick you up?” he asked.

“Little reasons aside,” answered Williams, “it can’t. No KK-drive ship could. It would make an awful mess of this part of your world.”

“Ha!” grunted Hunnar. A ship of metal that large. Did they take him for a complete fool?

Likewise he could not grasp the concept of weightlessness. But gravity he understood. When you cut a man’s head off, it fell down. “Colette looked a little ill when September helpfully translated this for her. Also, he knew of the gutorrbyn and krokim and other flying things that were odd but clearly not weightless. He’d killed enough of them to know that.

The tran examined the inert body of the dead Kotabit with interest. In the icebox climate it hadn’t decayed at all, for which Ethan was grateful. An experienced warrior might have been able to tell that the human’s broken neck had not come from, say, being thrown against the console. But corpses, even alien ones, were not the items of prime interest. The control board, with its now frosted knobs and dials, drew longer stares. At the same time, Ethan and September were learning about Tran-ky-ky from Hunnar.

Wannome, it developed, was the capital and only near-city of a large island named Sofold. Sofold lay oh-so-many kijat to the west. It also claimed sovereignty over a number of smaller nearby islands. This tiny islet they’d smashed up against was one. A few, larger than this, were garrisoned and settled.

Wannome Sound was an excellent natural harbor and supported a flourishing commerce. There were active hot springs on the island crest. These provided a natural location for the small but vital foundry and the smithies. The island was also rich in deposits of certain metals but had to trade for others.

Cultivation was widespread. Like most inhabited islands, Sofold was virtually self-sufficient foodwise. Gathering of wild pika-pina, which grew back as fast as it could be harvested, was also a major industry.

When Ethan asked if they also harvested the much larger pika-pedan, Sir Hunnar threw him an odd stare. Suaxus whined mirthfully.

Only the foolishly brave or the ignorant tried to make a living gathering the pika-pedan, he explained. It was on the pika-pedan that the stavanzer grazed.

“Stavanzer? What’s a stavanzer?” asked September interestedly.

Again Ethan’s mestaped memory came up with a blank on fauna. “I don’t remember. I get the feeling I should, but there’s nothing … It’s all on the edge … must be a mental block. Won’t come. Why? You planning on starting a ranch?”

September smiled. “Fanning isn’t one of my multitude of talents,” he said.

“Oh, wait a sec. I do remember what the name means.”

“Yeah?” prompted the big man.

“Thunder-eater.”

September pursed his lips. “Sounds harmless enough. Okay, so we don’t volunteer for any pika-pedan pruning expeditions, what? Ask him about the local thieves … government.”

The much-mentioned Council, it seemed, was composed of local dignitaries and nobles who served as administrators, mayors, and justices-of-the-peace of the countryside. The Council was presided over by the hereditary Landgrave, whose word was final but could be challenged in Council.

The Landgrave’s hereditary power was rooted in his ancestry. A great portion of his personal wealth and treasury was derived from customs fees and commerce taxes.

“What sort of bird is your Landgrave?” asked September.

“Fearless, brilliant, a genius at administration and a true wizard of decision,” replied Hunnar. He leaned over and whispered to the two humans. “He’s as tough as a year-old piece of vol jerky, but if you talk true with him from the first, you’ll do well enough.”

“He sounds most imposing … a true leader,” replied Ethan loudly. Then he lowered his voice in return.

“I understand. We’ve one like that ourselves … sometimes.”

Hunnar nodded, then looked uncertain. “Sometimes?”

“I do not fully understand myself, Sir Hunnar. Some day soon, perhaps … He has a disease of age … and something more, I think.” He looked up, smiled, stopped when he noticed Hunnar draw away.

“Sorry. I forgot that showing one’s teeth is not a sign of friendship among meat-eaters.”

“Truly a strange custom of yours,” agreed the knight.

“That’s something else we’ve got to attend to.” He looked evenly at Hunnar. “While I’m sure your chefs are the noblest practitioners of their art on the planet, we do have a certain amount of our own foodstuffs we’d like to bring along.”

“If the quantity is not great, there should be plenty of space on the raft.”

“And it’s about time we set to moving it outside,” said September.

“I was afraid you might bring that up,” Ethan sighed.

The sled-raft was awkward-looking but solid. Twenty meters long by ten wide, a bluff, no-nonsense triangular shape in hard wood, it was built from heavy timbers. There was a matted floor of some vegetable material and a wooden rail running around it at waist level. Tran waist level.

There was a crew of four. The owner, a merchant named Ta-hoding, stared at the ruined lifeboat with an open and unabashed greed that Ethan found positively homey.

A single mast was set about a third of the way back from the pointed bow. This supported a single large square sail held between two sturdy crossbeams top and bottom. The raft rested on three sharpened runners of gray stone, two at the rear corners and a slightly smaller one at the front. The two at the stern were connected to a double wheel that took two sailors to handle.

“A handsome ship,” Ethan said to the captain.

“My ancestors are forever honored to have you on board my pitiful craft, great visitors from the stars! My sire is forever in your honor. My family shall bask in the glow of your radiances forever. My cubs and mate …”

Ta-hoding continued to heap suffocating praise on his passengers until September whispered something to Hunnar that Ethan missed.

“No, it wasn’t supposed to be made known to the general public,” replied the knight. “Actually, the Landgrave desired it be kept as quiet as possible. However, where money is concerned …” He shrugged, a very human gesture. Ethan was beginning to get an inkling of just how much wealth their ruined lifeboat represented hereabouts.

“I see,” said September. He caught another crate of survival rations the soldiers were passing up and stacked it on the wooden deck. It took two soldiers considerable effort to lift the box up to him. Hunnar watched the operation silently. September wasn’t sure whether or not the knight had caught the ease with which he’d handled the first crate. Damn! The big man strained almost theatrically on the next ones.

“A beacon that will shine …” Ta-hoding was following the other humans around, still spouting hosannas.

“Pardon me,” began Williams, and Ethan gratefully slipped away as the schoolteacher rescued him from the seemingly endless assault of frozen platitudes.

“Why are your vessel’s runners made of stone?” Williams asked.

“Alas,” said the captain, “wood wears away too quickly and metal is beyond the reach of even wealthy men, which I assuredly am not … There is a great raft, owned in whole by the people of Vad Ozero, six times the size of my poor craft. Its sails would cover a large inn and it has runners made from solid stavanzer backbone.” He shook his head mournfully. “The ease with which it turns, yea, even into the wind. The maneuverability, the sensuous ’lide of it under full sail, the speed, the profits … ah, the profits!”

Yes, alien though he may be, here was a being that was one with him in spirit, Ethan reflected. A race of philosophers with long beards who scorned material wealth might exist in the galaxy—somewhere. Thus far they remained undiscovered.

“I think that’s it,” said September with satisfaction, and it was. Ethan found himself looking forward to the sight of Hunnar’s home.

Hunnar watched the last of the humans clamber aboard. “We are ready then?” He turned to the captain.

“Let out, Ta-hoding! We are aboarded!”

“As your boldness commands,” effused the skipper. “I bask in the light of—”

“I’m not one of your customers, Hoding,” Hunnar barked in reply. “The Landgrave is paying you, so don’t waste any of your flattery on me.” He turned to his first squire.

“Suaxus, take Smjör and report in for us. If the wind blows true, we should follow you by ten tuvits. Make also a report to the Longax and see that the wizard is aroused. If he awaits you not already with slavering tongue. Straight this time, with none of your bloodthirsty embellishments, mind.”

“Done, sir,” acknowledged Suaxus, a trifle coldly, Ethan thought. “Thou canst depend on me.”

Hunnar replied with another of those tight-lipped smiles. He exchanged breath with the other. Although there was no obvious difference in their age, Hunnar seemed to Ethan years the eldest.

“I know I can, Suaxus. Wind with you.”

Suaxus clapped his knight on one shoulder. Then he yelled for Smjör and disappeared over the side of the raft. Leaning over the rail, Ethan could see them streaking off at an angle to the southwest. Soon they’d probably begin tacking back against the wind, eating up the distance to their home.

It was no surprise that a single native could move faster than the bulky raft. He turned away from the wind and rubbed at the ice crystals that had formed on his upper lip.

The raft boasted a single wooden cabin. It rested squat against the back of the single thick mast. A summer day to the locals it might be, but he was just plain cold. Inside, the du Kanes were huddled up against a residual pile of trading goods, well away from the tiny windows.

The purpose of some of the objects in the pile was obvious. And what looked like a small stove had a pipe leading into the flat roof. It wasn’t lit.

Williams was sitting by the door. As usual, Walther had crammed himself into the furthest, darkest corner.

“Well, it’s a long way from first class,” Ethan essayed in a feeble attempt at humor, “but on such short notice …”

Colette just glared back at him. Williams said nothing either. He was totally absorbed in examining the interior of the cabin.

“See?” he said, pointing to a joint in one wall. “They use notched logs and wooden pegs, reinforced in the difficult places with iron and bronze nails. Most of the implements on that stove are bronze, but a few are beaten copper and the stove itself is iron. There are one or two steel-tipped spears in that locker, back there. The handles have the most beautiful scroll-work.”

“Must be Ta-hoding’s pride and joy,” Ethan commented, mentally guessing at the artifact’s curio value.

“I should not be at all surprised,” the schoolmaster agreed. “I found nothing like pottery. Water would freeze on the potter’s wheel.”

The raft gave a sudden lurch. Colette squeaked.

“Now what’s happening?” she moaned.

“I,” said Ethan with commendable enterprise, “will go and see.”

“I think the captain has turned his vessel slightly into the wind,” informed Williams. “Shortly we should …”

His voice faded as Ethan left the sheltering cabin. He rounded the side and stepped into the wind. He wasn’t used to it but it was no longer unique enough to warrant a curse. September was up near the pointed bow, in conversation with Hunnar.

The sail cracked. They were following the course taken by Suaxus and Smjör, who by now were well out of sight. The two turned as he came up to them.

“Be your companions well?” inquired the knight solicitously.

“As well as can be expected, Hunnar.” He glanced up at September. “Walther sits in his corner and glares at nothing in particular. Colette is alternately brazen and scared, her father says nothing until he has to, and Williams is too busy taking mental notes to notice much of anything.”

“And you, young feller-me-lad?” The wind whipped a single loose strand of white hair across his forehead.

“Me? Well, I’m …” Come to think of it, he’d been so busy he hadn’t had time to consider his own feelings. “I’m cold.”

“A pithy summation, lad.” He moved to clap Ethan on the back again. This time Ethan avoided it, grinning. The wind clawed at his face.

“We’re really picking up speed.” The sail fluttered and rattled between the bracing spars.

One sailor was positioned at either end of the lower spar while Ta-hoding and the other manhandled the double wheel. The captain was carefully trying to match wind speed with desired direction. His eye moved continually from sky to sail to ice.

“Stand ready!” he bellowed above the howling atmosphere. Then, “Hard over!” and he was straining furiously at the wheel, forcing it to the right.

The raft slowly began to move to starboard. There was a split second when it was facing directly into the wind and the mainsail snapped back against the mast with a crack like shattered planking. The two spar men pushed and pulled as one, the sail snapped into a new configuration, and they were traveling at high speed to the northwest.

“Nicely done!” yelled September admiringly. He pulled himself sternward, bracing against the railing. Ethan followed curiously. He wanted to have a closer look at the sail. Anything that could take the kind of continuous pounding it was being subjected to might have commercial value.

It was thicker than sailcloth, a material Ethan had no formal knowledge of. Despite this it seemed flimsy for taming the high winds it had to take on this world. It was a bright yellow—surely not the natural color. Hunnar came up behind him and confirmed it.

“The inside of the pika-pina is soft, but the exterior is tough and thin. When dried, treated, and drawn out through looms, it makes a very strong fiber. Sails, ropes, a dozen useful things.”

“You don’t say?” commented September, who’d returned from his brief examination of the raft’s steering mechanism. Then he did something that almost gave Ethan impetus to scream.

Gripping the lower edge of the sail in two powerful hands, he wrenched suddenly in opposite directions. At any moment Ethan expected to see the big man go down under a swarm of four angry sailors.

No one paid him the least heed. Ta-hoding didn’t even glance up from his post at the wheel. Neither did the other sailors. Budjir and the other soldiers continued their story-swapping.

Eventually September let out a deep breath and let go. As near as Ethan could tell, he hadn’t made so much as a tiny rip in the material.

“Strong is the word,” September wheezed. ”I’d think that several layers of this stuff, tightly woven and laid over each other, would make a very respectable shield, what?” Hunnar looked at him with new respect.

“You are a military man, then, friend September?”

“Let’s say I’ve had occasion to do some scrapping.”

“It might,” admitted the knight, “except that treated hessavar hides laid to wood or bronze or iron are better. For one thing, they’re harder to burn.”

“Um. I didn’t think of that.”

“Would you like to try my sword?” Hunnar offered, leaning into a particularly violent gust.

September looked tempted. But rather than risk exciting attention, or give away any hidden abilities, or lack of same, he politely declined.

“Not today, friend Hunnar. In the future, in less awkward surroundings, should there be another opportunity—”

“When the Horde comes you’ll have plenty of opportunities,” said the knight grimly. He walked between them and stalked off to chat with the captain.

“What’s this ‘Horde’ he keeps referring to?” September asked Ethan.

“I don’t know.” He stared after the knight. “I’ve got this feeling, though, that we’re not going to get much nearer Arsudun until we find out.”

V

ACTUALLY THEY MADE SLIGHTLY better time than Hunnar had estimated. The wind rose to a steady 60 kph, but under the skillful paws of Ta-hoding and his tiny crew, the ungainly raft fairly flew across the ice. The merchant might be comically effusive, but he was a master seaman—or iceman, rather.

It was an exhilarating experience just to stand in the sharp prow of the raft and let the wind shriek past your face. It battered at the snow goggles and whipped the too-large hood which now enveloped Ethan’s entire head and face. The angry air had all the softness of a newly minted scalpel. Exhilarating, yes. But how much more exhilarating it would have been to be warm again … would he ever be warm again?

He grew aware that Hunnar was standing next to him. “Wannome,” the knight murmured, “and Sofold Island. My home. Yours, too, for a while, friend Ethan.”

For another moment there was nothing but a blur on the horizon. But as the little raft flew closer, the scene seemed to leap across the ice at him. Before he knew it, they were cruising beneath towering stone walls amidst a swarm of similar craft. All were built along the triangle design. Most were about the same size as their own ship.

There were a few two and three times as long, and one great raft that must have gone at least ninety meters. It had a two-story central cabin with smaller cabins fore and aft.

Decks were piled high with crates and boxes, all securely lashed down against the wind. Many were protected with material made from the same stuff as the sails. The big raft’s fittings were brighter, with here and there decorative flashes of metal and bone. Sails were splashes of rainbow against the ice. Ethan realized that any color other than white or green could be easily spotted many kilometers off.

Moving with the westwind behind them, several ships shot past them at tremendous speed. All were moving from or to the same spot, an opening in the walls. The entrance was flanked by two massive towers of gray stone. Great walls stretched off to right and left, curving into the distance.

Ethan staggered over to the cabin entrance, yelled inside. “Mr. du Kane, Colette, Milliken, you can come and look. We’re here.”

“Wherever that is,” grumbled Colette.

A moment later they were all clustered along the bow of the raft. With delicate handling and elaborate curses, Ta-hoding was maneuvering them skillfully through the swarm of shipping.

Along the tops of the flanking towers patrolling tran were visible. The raft slid between the walls, edging near an exiting merchantman with orange sails and ornately carved handrailing. Once, the merchantman’s low spar, riding higher than their own, almost clipped the raft’s sail. Ta-hoding hurled a stream of invective at the other, of which Ethan managed to understand perhaps half.

Bow in hand, the first mate of the other vessel came to the rail. It was the first indication they’d had that archery was known to the natives. He made threatening gestures with it in their direction until Hunnar walked over and spoke quietly—as quietly as one could above the wind—to the other. That worthy shut up fast and disappeared.

“How do you close off the harbor?” Ethan inquired. “I don’t see anything resembling a gate.”

“With nets of woven pika rope,” replied the knight “A gate would have to rest on the ice.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“A good fire on the ice would easily undermine such. The walls themselves are built deep into the ice but a gate, naturally, could not be so. Also, there is the Great Chain. It is passed from one gate tower to the other and can keep out all but the tiniest ships. The nets serve to keep out men on foot.”

The walls, Ethan observed, were several meters thick, with plenty of room on top for maneuvering troops. They stood about twelve meters high, with battle towers slightly higher.

Once inside the gate he could see that the walls completely encircled the harbor. It was a very respectable feat of basic engineering.

Wannome was ideally suited for an iceport. The island itself lay on the east-west axis, with harbor and city at the eastern tip. Once within the harbor, ice-sailors would have the island to shield them from the constant westwind. On leaving the harbor they would pick up the prevailing gale immediately. Travelers coming from the east would have a more difficult time of it, but would still find the same quiet landing and protective wall.

Ethan took another survey of that impressive construct. He wondered what threat could make an individual like Hunnar worry despite it.

Dozens of rafts, including small pleasure craft, plied the broad harbor. The merchantmen tied up at long, narrow piers which were built directly out onto the ice. Since the ice-ships had no draft and did not bob up and down on nonexistent waves, the piers were barely above the “water.” Wooden cranes and pulley hoists added to the confusion in the harbor.

At the eternally unchanging tide-line where ice met land, a farrago of small buildings began. Tran of all sizes and shapes moved about the ice-front.

The humans were by now turning quite a few heads on passing rafts, but Ethan was too engrossed in the approaching scene to notice. The ground sloped sharply upward from the piers. It disappeared in a crazy-quilt jumble of two- and three-storied stone buildings and houses.

Near the houses, narrow streets paved with smooth flat stones were visible. Each had a broad swath of smooth ice running stripelike down its middle. All of the buildings seemed to sport chimneys of stone or black metal and high gambrel roofs. If Ethan had spent more time thumbing through history recordings instead of sales catalogues, he might have been struck by the town’s resemblance to medieval European cities.

The ice median strips were artificial, having been made by melting ice and then allowing it to refreeze in the desired place and pattern. Even at a distance Ethan could see furry dots dropping harborward at high speed. It was equally clear that the ice ramps were for descent only. It would take a mighty powerful eastwind to permit upward chivaning.

Rapid transit in Wannome, then, was no problem—as long as you were going downhill.

Above the town, steep crags rose to right and left There was a low saddle between them. Clinging to the rocks on the left and seemingly a part of the mountain itself was the great castle of Wannome. It descended in stone levels to merge with the harbor-girdling wall.

The castle, Sir Hunnar informed them, had been founded by a wandering knight, one Krigsvird-ty-Kalstund, in the year 3262 SNC. Ethan’s knowledge of the trannish dating system was nil, but the castle looked awfully old.

The island was built like a doorstop, with the harbor and town of Wannome at the high end. From the town the ground rose abruptly to the island’s high point. From there it dropped in a long, gentle sweep to the ice and a great field of pika-pina. A steady stream of black smoke rose from the mountains.

“The pika-pina,” Hunnar had explained, “protects us from attack from the west out of the wind. The great wall and castle does likewise for the town and the eastern island.”

“What about your north and south?” asked September.

“There is wall around much of the island, but far lower and weaker than this. But the granaries, ships, and foundry are all at this high end of Sofold, protected by the wall and by steep cliffs. An attacker could come from north or south and make a successful landfall. Then he could devastate the fields and herds, the country downs. This would gain him naught but pleasure. Fields can be replanted, houses rebuilt especially with the wealth of the province intact.

“Wannome can support and shelter the entire population of Sofold should it prove necessary.”

“What about an attack on the city from the landward side,” continued September.

Hunnar gave him a patronizing look. “I see you do not understand us. No tran will fight on land when he can maneuver four times as effectively on the ice. It must be different with you, since you have no chiv or dan. That is why ships and caravans are at their greatest danger when out at ice. Few can move faster than a fighting man with a good westwind behind him. To try and take a high position from land … no, such an attack could never succeed.

“A landing might be made as part of a siege-plan, to prevent the townsfolk from getting supplies from the rest of the island. But never with the thought of taking the city from that side. No one could move fast enough. For one thing, there are ice paths running all around the island. They give us the ability to move rapidly on land. These would be destroyed before any invader could make use of them. We would still retain those in the heights and the town. Thus we would have great mobility while an invader would struggle clumsily about in the dirt.” He pointed at the encircling harbor wall as they pulled up to an empty pier.

A large gray pennant fluttered at the end of the pier. It was divided into four squares. A large tusk occupied the upper right-hand corner, crossed by a sword. An anvil and hammer decorated the lower left, while the opposing squares were a solid red and yellow, respectively. An exquisitely carved and appointed raft with an unusually tall mast was tied up at the pier nearby.

“The Landgrave’s yacht,” Hunnar explained.

“About the wall,” prompted Ethan.

“Yes. An ice path also runs along its top. So the men above have equal mobility with those on the ice below. And except on unusual days, an enemy has the wind in his face and side at best, and the sun in his eyes in the evening. Not the best conditions under which to pursue an assault.”

The two spar men reefed in the single sail. One side of the triangular raft struck the pier with the slightest of jars. Immediately young tran appeared beneath the raft. They placed large stones in front of and behind the triple stone runners.

Suaxus was there to greet them.

“I have given your messages and my report to the Protector,” he intoned, after he and Hunnar had exchanged breath and shoulder-claps. “You are to bring them to his presence immediately.”

“Has the Council been informed?” Hunnar asked. Ethan thought he detected more than mere curiosity in the knight’s voice. It was hard to tell. Mestaped language was hard on inflection. Still, there was something going on here that was being kept from them.

Suaxus grinned tightly. “The Landgrave in his wisdom felt that a private audience might better serve the present needs of the province … at the first. No point is there in shocking the other nobles with the sight of these strange ones.”

“Come along, my friends,” said Hunnar. “It is a substantial walk, although perhaps not for you.”

The harborfront had an easy familiarity to Ethan. He’d worked in dozens of such on half a hundred worlds. Some had been more, some less, civilized. All were concerned with the task of acquiring material wealth.

Business proceeded all about them. Trading, bargaining, loading of rafts, unloading, fighting, pickpocketing, with everywhere masses of children somehow finding space to play. A seething mob of sentient greed. Oh well. The universe was not physically perfect, either. Hundreds of furry tran filled the harborfront with a warm, musky smell. It was not unpleasant, but in hot or humid air it could have been overpowering.

Many of the locals paused in their business and chatter to eye the alien procession. But no one ventured to stare very long, or to pose comment that might be overheard. This was probably due, Ethan considered, to the presence of Hunnar and his soldiers.

The children, however, were not so shy. Miniatures of the adults, many clad in just jackets or short coats in the gentle breeze, stopped and stared at them with wide cat eyes, compact fluffs of light gray fur. He had to forcibly resist an urge to cuddle them, contenting himself with an occasional pat on an adolescent head.

“The townsfolk don’t seem overly friendly,” September finally commented.

“Being in my care,” Hunnar replied, “it is apparent to all that you are royal guests. It would not be seemly for you to mingle with the common folk.”

“Well, I’m afraid I’m going to have to mingle for a minute, tradition notwithstanding.” And before Hunnar or anyone else could make a move to stop him, he’d broken away from the tight little group and sauntered over to halt before a small open shop.

Stal Pommer, the elderly proprietor, looked across at the smooth-skinned alien, then helplessly to right and left. His normally loquacious neighbors studiously ignored him.

“How much?” asked September, pointing.

“I … uh, that is … noble sir, lord, I don’t know that—”

“You don’t know?” September interrupted, aghast with mock outrage. “A shopkeeper who doesn’t know the price of his own merchandise? How do you stay in business?” He tugged at his doubled-up shirtfront “I, as you can clearly see, desperately require a good warm coat. I’d like to purchase that one.”

“Yes, lord,” Pommer stammered, regaining a little of his composure. He looked in vain for September’s wings, then gave up in disbelief when he finally realized there was nothing between the big strange one’s wrist and waist but empty air.

“Don’t just stand there gaping,” urged September impatiently. “Take it off the rack and let me try it on.”

“Surely, lord, surely!” Pommer went over to the revolving wooden rack, drew off the indicated coat. He handed it to September. The latter stepped into it and drew the back half up over his shoulders. Then he bent and brought up the front. Holding it closed with a hand at the shoulder, he tied first the right and then the left side with the leather ties. The length was all right but it was a mite too broad. Ethan would have swum in it.

“A little loose at the sides. As I have no need of a wing-slit why don’t you just sew them shut? That should bring it in enough. Leave me just enough room to get my arms through, eh? The leg holes are fine.”

“Ye … yes, lord.”

Under the watchful eyes of the soldiers, the rest of the humans, and half the children in Wannome, Stal Pommer set up the unnatural task of sewing closed the sides of the hessavar coat

“You will not be able to open these now, lord, even to don the garment.”

“That’s the idea, tailor. It’ll be like slipping into a turtle shell, but I’d use rivets if I had to. Clover, it’s the first time I’ve been halfway comfortable since we came down.”

Pommer ignored the itching temptation to inquire into the nature of turtles and rivets and concentrated on his sewing. The needle he used could have doubled as a small sword.

Pommer stepped back. September swung his arms, did a few deep knee bends.

“Not bad a’tall. Wish it had sleeves, though. How much?”

“Um … eighty foss,” suggested Pommer, hesitantly peeking around the alien bulk.

Sir Hunnar growled softly and put his hand to sword hilt.

“But for you noble lord,” he squeaked hurriedly, “only sixty, only sixty!” Hunnar grunted and went back to studying the pavement.

“Well, I haven’t any of the local lucre,” mused the big man, rubbing at the ice mat on his chin. That woke the old tailor up. For a minute there the human took on the appearance of a shifty type that transcended race, Landgrave’s men-at-arms or no. “But maybe this will do.” He removed something from his shirt blocking it from Hunnar’s view with his body. “This,” he explained, “is combination knife and fork. Very simple instrument. Made of duralloy. Standard survival kit issue. We’ve others.”

“What knife?” asked the oldster, intrigued. “I see only a little square of metal.”

“Press this depression, here, in the center of the square.” Pommer did so, hesitantly. He jumped a little when knife and fork sprang from opposite ends of the square.

“I can’t for the life of me imagine what you’ll do with the fork,” said September conversationally. “But that blade ought to be useful in your work. It’s a damnsight better than your best steel. And it’ll never lose its edge, nor break. Should last you and your kids a long time, what? That survival stuff is built to take it.”

The tailor didn’t understand this odd creature completely. But he could tell the bargain of the age when he saw it.

“Uh … it surely seems an equitable exchange, lord.” He was so excited and nervous he missed the square in his first grab at it. He pulled it out of sight quickly, before Hunnar or any of the other soldiers could see what it was. “Thank you, lord, thank you!” he muttered, bowing obsequiously. “Please visit my humble shop again.”

Hunnar was fidgeting aimlessly. “Are you quite finished?”

“Yes, thanks,” replied September.

A familiar voice piped from the little knot of humanity.

“Hey, what about me?” said Walther.

“What about you?” replied September coldly. He turned back to Hunnar. “This is the first time since we landed on your world that I’ve been warm. I couldn’t wait any longer. Sorry if I upset your protocol. Say,” he finished innocently, “aren’t we going to be late for that appointment?”

“I should not be surprised,” Hunnar snapped, turning away. Ethan noticed that the big man kept the knight answering questions all the way up the hill. Probably to keep him from thinking about what September had paid the tailor with. It might occur to the knight later, but by then it would be a little late to invalidate the exchange.

The walls of Wannome castle were surrounded by a deep, narrow moat. Empty, of course. This was spanned by a short drawbridge. The walls themselves rose vertically for fifteen meters and more, solid gray and black rock and masonry. Wannome had its share of craftsmen, Ethan reflected, and not only smiths.

Two lancers flanked the sides of the bridge entrance. They wore coats of inscribed tooled leather with shields of leather and worked bronze. Each carried a slim, steel-tipped spear. The helmets had openings for the ears, and a nose-piece down the center. They swept out and down in a backside flare to protect the neck.

The young tran who met them just inside the high gate was garbed in similar fashion. Only his leather was inlaid with silver in sharp relief and he wore a sword much like Hunnar’s strapped to one leg. Also, his helmet was made from silver-inlaid leather and had imitation silver flames worked along the crest. A four-square gray patch, a tiny double of the pennant at the pier, was sewn over his left breast.

He arrived panting for breath. “The Landgrave bids you to him quick.”

Sir Hunnar frowned, made a half turn to Ethan. “Not good. I hope we haven’t gotten you off on his Lordship’s bad side.” He glared over at September as though that worthy were personally responsible for any forthcoming dire consequence. September whistled cheerfully and smiled back.

“Now I must ponder on a fair excuse,” Hunnar muttered.

“Why not tell him the truth?” queried September as they followed the garishly-clad herald across a courtyard. “That I stopped to buy myself a coat because I was freezing to death?”

“On a day like today, of pleasing warmth? No, even I still cannot realize that you are used to living in fire itself. But to confess that you stopped to converse with a tailor before the Landgrave himself … ?” Hunnar looked horrified. “No, no! He would have you all spitted out of hand.”

“Easier said than done,” replied September, unmoved. “Besides, if I’d frozen solid I wouldn’t have presented much in the way of available conversation, would I?”

“There is that,” admitted Hunnar seriously. “His Lordship does appreciate candor. We’ll see. He may be so curious about you he will forget to be insulted.”

They passed through another small open area. Ethan noticed a smith taking the dents out of a bronze shield in a glowing cubby off to their right. The attraction was in the fire. A few soldiers leaned idly at arms to the side of another door, a far cry from the ramrod-straight troops they’d encountered at the drawbridge entrance. Another bunch were seated in the shade playing what appeared to be a variant of the universal game—dice.

They entered the inner keep, walked through a long hall to a wide staircase.

Up they went, then a turn, then up another. They’d gone halfway up the second when there was a sudden squeal of surprise from behind. For a second Ethan thought they’d lost Colette. But she’d only strayed too far to the center and stepped onto the gleaming ice path. From there it was a short but fast slide back to the bottom step. Her dignity and one other part were bruised, but there was no lingering damage.

After remounting the stairs their guide made a hard left. They passed another set of ubiquitous guards. Then a right turn down another hallway, and another, and they entered a long, vaulted hall. A group of three tran awaited them at its far end. To one side a great fire blazed in a huge fireplace. The temperature in here might even be slightly above freezing, Ethan reflected.

“No, I shall announce you,” the herald cautioned. He strode off down the long, brightly dyed rug that covered the bare stone floor. There was a seemingly endless table to each side, with chairs and odd writhing candlesticks.

“Remember,” Hunnar whispered to Ethan as they walked slowly behind the herald, “he’s tough and stringy, but not vicious. Not intentionally so, anyway. I’m told we’ve had harder rulers. At least he’s not an idiot, like his half-brother.”

“Will we get to meet this half-brother?” asked Williams clinically.

“Not unless you’ve even stranger means of transport than your metal ship. When his fault became obvious, he was put to death.”

“Dear me,” replied the schoolmaster, taken aback. That seems rather extreme.”

“Our way,” said Hunnar simply.

“This is an extreme world,” added September. “You don’t get supported by others here, what?” Then he spoke to Ethan. “Take your time, young feller, and say what you think best.”

The herald had stopped ahead of them. Now he turned and boomed, “Sir Hunnar Redbeard, Squire Suaxus-dal-Jagger, and Squire Budjir Hotahg, with the party of outlanders!”

“Outlanders?” September looked askance at the knight.

“That is what they’ve been calling you,” Hunnar replied. “For lack of a better term. Slowly now; watch me.”

They followed the knight the last dozen meters. Ethan had a moment to scan those awaiting them. Then Sir Hunnar bowed low, crossing his arms over his head and covering himself with his wings. They all imitated the movement as best they could, not rising until the knight had done so.

“My lord,” he began, “these folk crave mercy for intruding upon the province of the people. They seek protection and mayhap service. They are on a … ” he hesitated for a second, “a pilgrimage to far parts of the world. Their metal sky-ship was disabled as though by the Father of Rifs and they are cast upon us for deliverance.”

An old, tall tran with solid gray fur put both hands on the arms of his throne. The Landgrave stood erect. Ethan noticed that the back of the throne was carved from what seemed to be a single unbroken pillar of ivory that rose all the way to the high roof. It was inscribed with symbols and etching as far up as he could see. The thing was as big as a good-sized tree.

The Landgrave was dressed in flowing leather and silks. Hammered metal plate decorated with silver thread formed a complex, flashing breastplate. A single leather band with a bright metal rectangle of gold set in the forehead was all that passed for a crown. He did, however, wield an elaborately carved wooden staff nearly two and a half meters tall. It was thin, a polished mahogany-color, studded with cabochons in red and bright blue. A few faceted gems adorned the knob at the top.

“Sir Ethan Frome Fortune,” declaimed Hunnar, pointing Ethan out before he could protest the undeserved title, “I present you to the right-true-and-just Torsk Kurdagh-Vlata, Landgrave of Sofold, and True Protector of Wannome.”

“We are honored in the presence of your father’s father and self, son-of-the-wind,” Ethan intoned, giving the rehearsed speech his best sales pitch.

“You are welcome, outlanders,” the Landgrave replied. His voice was startlingly high for a tran, compared to those they’d already encountered. The Landgrave gestured to his right at an incredibly shriveled but bright-eyed old individual dressed entirely in black silks. He wore a black headband.

“My personal adviser, Malmeevyn Eer-Meesach.”

“The honor is mine, noble sirs,” responded the wizard smoothly. He was eyeing them with such obvious naked anticipation that he made Ethan a little nervous. That same stare had been applied to laboratory rats with uncertain futures. As it developed, he was doing the old tran an injustice.

“And this,” continued Kurdagh-Vlata, turning to his left, “is my daughter and only cub, the Elfa Kurdagh-Vlata.”

The gesture was directed at a surprisingly lissome and nearly naked female tran. She gazed down at Ethan with a stare far more disconcerting than the wizard’s. Considering the temperature in the great hall, her garb seemed an open invitation to pneumonia.

Something hit him a sharp rap in the shin and he spun. September smiled at him.

“Time enough later for sight-seeing, me lad,” he murmured in Terranglo. “No wonder friend Hunnar was convinced of our similarity.”

“What?” he said brilliantly. He returned his gaze to the throne, found the Landgrave watching him impatiently.

“Your companions,” whispered Hunnar urgently.

“Oh, yes.” He stepped to one side and made a grand sweeping gesture. “Um, Sir Skua September …”

September performed a bow full of intricate hand gestures. It confused Ethan but the Landgrave appeared delighted.

“Hellespont du Kane, a … ah … merchant of great renown on his world. His daughter, Colette du Kane …”

Du Kane executed a marvelously supple bow that surprised both Ethan and September. Colette hesitated, then followed with an awkward curtsey.

“And Walther, um … ”

“You’re still not going to learn my last name, buddy, until it’s too late to do you any good,” the kidnapper muttered in Terranglo.

“Yes?” prompted the Landgrave.

Ethan looked uncertainly to September.

“A criminal in our custody,” said the big man easily. “One not to be trusted and to be watched every moment. He secreted himself aboard our ship and …”

“It’s all a lie!” shouted Walther abruptly. “They’re the criminals, not me! I was taking them all to justice, when—”

September turned on him. “Quiet, punk,” he said in Terranglo. “I can break your head right now. The Landgrave and I can argue about who was telling the truth afterwards. I’ll let your spirit know how it comes out.”

The little kidnapper shut up.

“Sir Hunnar?” queried the Landgrave. “What means this outburst?”

“I believe what Sir Ethan and Sir Skua say to be the right truth, your Lordship. The hysterical one is evil and clever.”

“Well then, can we not do our new-welcomed guests a service? Order him dispatched out of hand!”

“Ah, that is not the way of our people, your Lordship,” put in Ethan hastily. “He must present himself and his crimes before a special machine. The machine, being impartial and unemotional, will give justice fairly.”

“Where is justice if your emotions are not involved?” the Landgrave countered. “Not to mind. We have but just met and here find I discussing the fine points of jurisprudence. Other matters attend. I welcome you as friends and allies. You shall be given rooms and whatever you need for personal comfort. Tonight dine with my knights and I. Your home is here now.” Whereupon he sat down with great dignity and obvious satisfaction.

Ethan paused. “There is one matter we should discuss now, your Lordship. The question of aid for our continuing journey westward.”

“Journey? Journey? What is this, Sir Hunnar?” said the Landgrave gruffly. “Squire Suaxus, you said nothing to me of a journey.”

“I did not have time, my Lord, for—”

Sir Hunnar broke in “They do not understand, my Lord. Remember, they are truly from another world.”

“Be that as it may,” said Kurdagh-Vlata stiffly, “we know nothing of moving from one world to another.”

“That is so, my Lord,” continued Hunnar. “Yet they say their folk have a town aways from Wannome. ’Tis there they wish to travel. Some eight or nine thousand satch.”

“An afternoon jaunt, yes.”

“But if they could reach their friends, Lord, they might bring more metal and perhaps other—”

“Enough!” snorted the Landgrave. “They would no doubt require a raft for this journey, perhaps several?”

“Possibly more than one, Lord.”

“With full crews, and provisions, and soldiers to protect from pirates?”

“True, my Lord, but—”

“Tis out of the question!”

“But your Lordship—” began Ethan.

“They are gifting us with their vessel, my Lord,” said Hunnar. “A veritable mountain of metal. Without obligation. ’Twould pay for such a trip many, many times over.”

“Yes it would. Tis generous of them, to give away what they can no longer use. Nor protect.”

Ethan started to protest, but guessed rightly that was just what the Landgrave was hoping he’d do. He kept silent.

“Absolutely impossible—at the moment. Perhaps in a malet or so. After we have treated with the abominators.”

“Yes, my Lord!” boomed a huge voice from the back of the hall. “How are we to deal with the abominators?”

Everyone turned to the source of those stentorian tones.

A tran they hadn’t seen before was striding toward them. He was resplendent in azure and emerald silks, overlaid with fine leather bindings and straps. His beard was longer than Hunnar’s and tinged with white over the steel-gray.

The eyes were sunken deep under hairy brows. As he drew closer another aspect of his person was made clear. Here was the first really fat tran they’d encountered.

“Darmuka Brownoak,” announced the herald, rather after the question. “Prefect of Wannome!”

“What’s all this mean?” September whispered to Hunnar.

“Darmuka is prefect of the city and a powerful member in Council besides,” the knight replied. “A very forceful and stubborn individual. Also ambitious and greedy. And very wealthy, which in the long run ’tis more important than all the others. There are few richer than he. The Landgrave is one, of course. Of the others, some support him, some Darmuka.”

“Hmm. Political conflict,” murmured Ethan to no one in particular. “I thought the Landgrave had absolute power?”

“In all decisions the Landgrave has final power,” said Hunnar. “This does not mean he imprudently acts against the wishes of a majority of influential citizens.” The knight quieted as the prefect came within hearing distance.

Darmuka put one foot up on the dais and surveyed the gathering with interest and undisguised contempt.

“So these are the strange ones who come on a raft of flying metal, eh?” he said almost challengingly. “They surely are strange strangers.”

“You’re no interstellar sex god yourself, fatso,” countered September. Ethan winced, but the prefect merely grunted satisfaction.

“There will be no insulting of guests in my presence,” declared Kurdagh-Vlata rather lamely.

“Insult?” The prefect put both paws delicately on his chest and drew himself erect. “I, insult a visitor to the Council Chamber? I?” He turned and looked intently around the room then, so hard that the herald and even the Landgrave couldn’t resist doing the same. The prefect stared at the ceiling and even raised the corner of a throw fur to glance beneath it.

“By the by,” he continued in mock surprise, “where is the Council? I do believe a quorum is not present. Here we have six alien creatures of unknown power and intentions. They bring with them a ship of more forged metal than Wannome has seen since the Great Sack. And not a member of the Council present … other than my poor, hastily arrived self, of course.” He looked innocently at the Landgrave. “Is this in accordance with the Charter of Council? Perhaps the Council should be called into session, to discuss their absence. Since they are not here, it cannot be debated. Dear me, a paradox.”

“I did not feel it necessary yet to trouble the full Council with such an odd matter,” replied Kurdagh-Vlata. It sounded mighty feeble to Ethan.

“I see,” said Brownoak. “As is well known, his Lordship’s wisdom exceeds all of ours combined. I bow to his decision.” Darmuka executed a sloppy half-bow. “However, as I entered, I think ’twas mentioned something about ‘dealing with the Horde.’ Would you say, milord, that anything which relates to that matter is of more than odd nature? Worthy perhaps even for discussion by Council, as it does affect every adult and cub in the great land of Sofold?”

“Yes, surely,” Kurdagh-Vlata responded.

“Then might it not be prudent to postpone any discussion of matters relating to such until full Council has been gathered?” Kurdagh-Vlata said nothing and Darmuka prompted, “Is this agreed, milord?”

“I … oh, very well, Darmuka! Confound your impudence!” He stood abruptly and struck the floor twice with the base of the jeweled staff. Sir Hunnar and Darmuka both bowed. The humans copied them. The Landgrave then retired, taking his daughter and advisor with him.

“Tis good to see you returned safe and whole, Sir Hunnar,” said Brownoak. “Did your expedition include any successful massacres?”

“We met no one, so we fought with no one, spineless messenger,” replied the knight stiffly. He smiled slightly at the other. But this time a flash of white was visible between his lips. Clearly he was controlling himself with an effort.

“How very fortunate. I should be distressed to see one of our finest knights injured over such an odd matter. Especially with a crisis approaching. Good day to you, outlanders.” He bowed toward Ethan. “We shall undoubtedly see more of each other.”

With a fluttering of sea-colored silk and rich brown hides, the prefect stalked off down the hall.

“Well,” said Hellespont, “I may not have the grasp of the local language that you gentlemen possess, but that chap is of a type I need no words to recognize.”

“He’s a character, all right,” September commented in Trannish, nodding. He looked over at Hunnar and grinned. “You two aren’t exactly blood-brothers, I take it.”

“The Brownoak has less blood for battle than a jelly-moss,” spat the knight, staring after the other. “That one so bereft of heart should wield so much power … Worse, he is an unconscionable butcher who would dress the whole province for rape, content in the rightness of his way!”

He sighed. “Come. I will take you to rooms. And there is something of great significance you should be informed of before we can discuss your journey any further. Or before you are put before the Council … I will see to the transfer of your food to your apartments. The Council, however, will expect you to dine with them. Can you eat our food?”

“It’s a long way from the Honeybucket Room in the Grand Hotel on Hivehom, but I think we can manage,” replied September.

“That one,” said Ethan, reminding Hunnar of Walther’s presence, “should dine alone in his room, with a guard in attendance. One who is not susceptible to bribery.”

Walther shook his head but said nothing. “I’m even smaller than the lady du Kane and you’re all frightened of me.”

September just laughed.

“I will see to it,” said Sir Hunnar.

VI

ETHAN’S ROOM WAS NEATLY furnished. He suspected his accommodations were fancy by local standards. If Wannome was a typical province capital, then the trade prospects for the planet were far better than anyone had guessed. Why, in precious metalwork alone … and these marvelous coats …

Now, if he could only find a way to file a report! …

The big canopied bed had damask-like draperies and covers. He wondered how such material was made. All of the wealthy tran they’d encountered so far had been clad in similar material. Neatly worked, too. He doubted the material came from silkworms. If there were insects on this world they kept themselves scarce. Any self-respecting silkworm would turn to a small lump of frozen flesh in a short day. And they didn’t seem advanced enough for artificial fabric. Another mystery to unravel.

The bed was probably intended for a single occupant, but it was three times the width of any single bed he’d ever slept on. The wooden chest at its foot was intricately carved. A huge mirror covered much of one wall, no doubt just the right size for an adult tran.

A real double bed must be an ocean of morphean comfort.

The door bolted solidly—from the inside only, he noted—although the bolt itself was made of hardwood and not metal. Wannome’s designers had left nothing to chance in creating their guest suites. The door would hold well enough to keep out the casual thief, but not well enough to resist a concerted charge from a couple of well-muscled guardsmen.

He also noticed a small but elaborately set whetstone. It was placed near the foot of the bed and could be operated with one foot. Its purpose escaped him for a moment. It was too low to conveniently sharpen a knife, for example. Then he realized it was for putting an edge on one’s own chiv.

That must be the normal routine on awakening, he mused. Rise early, wash, clean, and sharpen your feet

Something else was troubling him more, until he chanced to open the heavy chest. It was filled with thick, wide furs. They weren’t as smooth-looking as the odd diaper-like coats everyone wore, but they were heavy and warm. There was no fireplace in the room, and the single window was open to the sky. Without the furs there would be no way he could sleep through the temperature drop at night.

He walked over to the window, which was high and narrow. There was a complicated wooden shutter arrangement that would serve to keep out the wind if not the cold.

It wouldn’t keep out a determined enemy, though. Then he looked out and down. He’d forgotten how many steps they’d mounted.

The south side of the island was precipitous here, and the castle of Wannome was built right to the edge. It was a killing fall to the ice below. With a little imagination he could almost see waves breaking against the cliff. Perhaps they had once, millions of years ago. This side of the castle, at least, was invulnerable.

Leaning out into the biting wind, he squinted and saw that the high cliff continued westward for a fair distance before dropping down to the ice. An occasional flash of green broke the whiteness.

A look at the sky. Let’s see, he thought. The tran have their evening meal at sunset. That should leave him a couple of local-time hours before he’d be expected to put in an appearance. When he had time it might be a good idea to revisit that tailor. Maybe he could make underclothes as well as coats. The outfit he’d been wearing on the Antares when he’d been abducted—was that one or two thousand years ago?—was not conducive to strenuous living.

The special survival parka he was wearing was holding up beautifully. But below the surface, so to speak, things were beginning to get a bit raunchy. There was a knock at the door.

“It’s open,” he said without turning.

The voice that replied did make him turn. It said, “Good wind,” and wasn’t human.

The Elfa Kurdagh-Vlata, heiress to the throne of Wannome, closed the door gently behind her. Her caution was disconcerting. She bolted it. That was ominous.

“I apologize for these rooms.” Her speech was husky. “They were the best father could do on such short notice. And we’ve little idea of your needs.”

Ethan walked away from the window and not incidentally put the bed between them. If that was supposed to faze her she didn’t show it She walked over and sat on the end. The human contour analog was astounding. She drew swirls in the silken coverlet.

“Do you really come from another world?” she asked breathlessly. Her outfit was done up like holiday packaging—by a clumsy six-year-old. The fact that the skin beneath was covered with light gray fur made it appear no less naked. Excepting the feline head and broad feet, and those piercing vertical pupils, she might have passed for a tridee starlet clad in skin-tight mink.

“Yes, we do,” he replied eventually, with some emphasis on the “we.” If she was expecting him to prolong the conversation she was sorely mistaken. He couldn’t for a moment forget that her father was not only a grouch with a reported short temper, but also had the power to remove head from shoulders with a wave of his hand. Until he knew a great deal more about local mores, he was going to be as quiet as a monk. This was no place to depend on mestaped information.

Besides, she was as tall as he was and much broader, which made for rather an intimidating personality.

“It’s surprising. You’re not so terribly different from us, it seems,” she said, her flashing yellow eyes fixed on him.

Dammit, if only she weren’t so farking attractive! Now watch that, he told himself. She isn’t even of the same species. Of course, there were aberrant humans who had a thing for other species. He knew one chap who …

Quit that!

“I think this is all very exciting,” she said finally into the growing silence. The finger paused in its silken whirlpool. “You don’t even have any fur on your bodies, except on top.”

“Actually,” Ethan responded, trying to be scientific, “that’s not entirely true. We do have some elsewhere.” He was about to mention “chest” when she interrupted him.

“Really? Let me see.” She made a spring that carried her halfway across the bed.

In dream-troubles most folk are the epitome of suaveness and sophistication. Ethan was no exception. Reality—cold reality, to say the least—had too many improvisations.

First of all, he couldn’t quite decide whether she was trying to kill him or kiss him. Apparently loveplay on this world was as aggressive as its climate.

He’d have told her to stop it, but his mouth kept getting full of gray fur. It seemed certain she was trying to bite him. At least, those four major canines gave that impression. Now, if someone like that Darmuka fellow or her father were to stroll in, bolt or no bolt …

He redoubled his efforts. Putting both hands out to push her away, his palms encountered something soft and warm. Human or not, it wasn’t a shoulder. She moved even faster. Shifting his hands, he shoved frantically.

The result was both gratifying and educational.

She seemed to fly off the bed, land on her feet, and slam into the far wall, where she crumpled slowly to the floor. For a horrible moment he thought she’d hit too hard. If he’d killed the Landgrave’s only cub, that would remove all the uncertainties from their immediate future.

Fortunately, she was only shaken, and stayed conscious.

“M … my, you are strong!”

He was torn between offering her a hand up and refusing further body contact. “Are you okay?”

“Y … yes, I think so, good knight.” She rose slowly and felt the back of her head and neck. Then she did some rearranging on her clothing, which had become delightfully disheveled. With a shoulder against the wall for support, she looked at him oddly.

“I hadn’t expected quite so … overwhelming a rejection,” she murmured.

“I’m sorry,” Ethan replied, unable to forgo some sort of apology. “Our situation is very serious and it’s hard for me to take anything lightly right now. I’m afraid, I, uh, don’t know my own strength.”

“Well, I certainly do.” She blinked. “I shall retire and consider this further,” she said cryptically. “I will see you again, Sir Ethan. Good day.”

Putting hand to forehead to wipe away the freezing sweat, he became aware that it was shaking badly. He grabbed the offending member. That only made the whole arm shake. Its companion was none too steady either. He let out a long breath, then put both hands under his backside and sat on them. That stopped the shaking and kept them warm too boot, but now he couldn’t do anything about the sweat.

Hopefully he’d handled the situation correctly. Now he’d worry about Elfa’s reaction and future feelings toward them. It was a damnable thing to have happen.

He was still pondering and sitting when September walked in.

“Well, young feller-me-lad,” he began, glancing back the way he’d come, “I just passed her highness in the hallway. Seems you’ve made something of a conquest, what?”

“Or a mortal enemy. I’m not sure. It was more on the order of an opening skirmish. Hey, how come you’re sure she came from my room?”

“You’ve just confirmed it.”

“It might have been a veiled murder attempt, too, you know.”

“I understand the penalty for playing around with the offspring of nobility is—”

“Dammit, Skua, I wasn’t playing around!” he said indignantly. “She was playing around with me. That is—”

“—death by slow torture, with all sorts of intriguing local variants on time-honored themes. Hunnar’s been filling me in on some blanks, since you were occupied.”

“Oh God. Does he know too?”

“I don’t think so. Someone was sent to fetch you, tried your door. Finding it bolted, they assumed you wanted privacy. Good thing, too.”

“Phew! Say, I found out something interesting, too. We were right about body composition. Almost certainly their skeletal system is less solid than ours, or whatever the proper medical term is. I gave her what I thought was a sharp shove and ended up throwing her halfway across the room. Scared the hell out of me.”

“Really?” grinned September, the gold ring in his ear flashing. “Tell me more. Are they covered with that fur all over? Or are there certain places where—”

“For Harmony’s sake, Skua!” Ethan said disgustedly, “nothing happened.”

“Then why’d you find it necessary to toss her across the room?” he pressed, leering.

“I didn’t find it necessary,” Ethan continued patiently. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. She was so much lighter than I expected.”

“That ought to be interesting.”

“Will you stop, already?”

“Okay, young feller. Relax. I’m just joshing you,” September continued in a serious tone. “So despite their greater size, their actual body weight is less. Then a good-sized human like yourself is probably as strong as most of ’em.”

Not necessarily,” said Ethan. “Just because they’re lighter doesn’t mean they’re not stronger. There’s an awful lot of muscle on those frames. I just took her by surprise.”

“Still,” considered September, “in any kind of wrestling match, you’d have a tremendous advantage. Useful.”

“What did Hunnar tell you?” Ethan sat back on the bed and curled his hands behind his head. “By the way, did everyone get single rooms?”

“Yes. Except the du Kanes. Colette refused to be alone, so they arranged for her to have a bed in with her father. That mold Walther has equally sumptuous quarters—only his door bolts from the outside and there are bars on the windows. Not that he’s going anywhere that way. Have you looked outside? I wouldn’t care to try a descent without a good strong cable and crampons.”

“In this wind?” said Ethan. “I wouldn’t like to try it even then.”

“Hmm. Now according to Hunnar, most of the people on his world, hereabouts anyway, are peaceful. Aside from fun things like swiping someone’s daughter now and then or bashing in a few heads. Fine, upstanding folk.”

“Me, I want a nice quiet bar or nullball course with my old clubs and shooting companions,” said Ethan dreamily. A blast of frozen air cut his cheeks. “Okay, they’re all charming fellows. So?”

“I said most,” September continued, inspecting the wooden chest at the foot of the bed. “There are also, it appears, bands of nomadic barbarians. Usually these do no more than attack an occasional raft, sometimes successfully, sometimes not.”

“There had to be a reason for the castle and the soldiers,” said Ethan.

“Other than protecting everyone from his neighbor, you mean? Sure. Anyway, over many years a couple of these bands have grown large enough to acquire the status of nations in themselves. They migrate on a fairly predictable circuit, living off tribute from the peoples they encounter. Hunnar told me what it’s like when they move in. It doesn’t make for pleasant listening.

“In addition to the standard tribute of money and food and clothing and such, they take over the town or raft or whatever for about a week, local-time. They take what they like from the shops and aren’t above broiling the occasional shopkeeper who might venture an objection. Raping or carrying off the local girls who haven’t been safely hid, killing a few kids for fun … oh, they’re your usual happy primitive innocents, free from the corrupting bane of civilization!

“If there’s any hint of opposition or resistance, the town is put to the torch and the entire populace down to the youngest cub massacred. Excepting a few women, they don’t even take slaves, so they’ve no compunction about killing. No wonder everyone elects to pay tribute.”

Ethan grunted. “They sound almost human.”

“Don’t they? They move in long columns perpendicular to the wind and sometimes three and four ships deep. They’ve dozens of sleds, on which they spend their whole lives. Even carry livestock and feed for same … the males take turns running scouting patrols, but the rafts never stop, except when they’ve moved in someplace.”

“Like army ants on Terra,” said Ethan.

“Yes, or Turabisi Delphius from that new thranx world, Drax IV. Hunnar likens them to other elemental forces they have to endure, like the wind and lightning. The nomads are the same people physically. But culturally and maybe even mentally they’re throwbacks to an earlier, less civilized age.”

“How often do they have to undergo this?” Ethan asked, staring out the window. He could hear the full-bodied wind howling outside. The window framed an unmarred rectangle of glacier blue.

“About every couple of years, sometimes three.”

Ethan looked away from the sky. “The Horde that everyone keeps mentioning.”

“That’s it,” September nodded. “This group has been taking tribute from the people of Sofold for a hundred years or so. Also most of their neighboring provinces. Seems we arrived at an interesting time. Hunnar and a lot of the younger knights are sick of paying tribute. They want to fight.”

“That sounds like something they’ve been through before,” said Ethan. “Have they got any chance of getting permission?”

“Well, as you would figure, such a proposition has to be approved by this so-called Council. By themselves, Hunnar and his fellow bucks would just amuse the moneybags. But there’s a chap named Balavere the Longax who’s the number-one general-type in this dump and he’s thrown in with ’em. Hunnar says he’s convinced Wannome has a fifty-fifty chance of standing an attack and siege.”

Ethan whistled. “Not very good odds with the survival of your entire people at stake.”

“Maybe not. But this old boy has gone through something like twenty-odd tribute periods himself. He’s good and fed up. As you might guess, the opposition to the fighters is composed of those who have the least to lose. Country mayors and growers, this prefect fella Darmuka, others. Balavere and Hunnar have the support of a lot of the local merchants and traders. During tribute time the country folk are spared much of the burning and rampaging that goes on, since the barbarians naturally concentrate where most of the people and goods are, meaning Wannome.”

“I’m better at haggling prices,” said Ethan. “How do our host’s chances look?”

“Well,” said the big man, sitting down on the edge of the bed, “as is typical in such cultures, most of the able-bodied males on the island have had some sort of combat training, however informal. Hunnar says they can put about eight thousand armed men in the field. Of these, maybe two thousand have had some form of advanced military training. There’s a standing permanent garrison of about five hundred, under the direction of some fifty or so knights aided by about a hundred squires and another hundred squire-apprentices.”

“Three thousand soldiers and five thousand militia,” said Ethan. September nodded.

“And this Horde?”

“At least four times that.”

Ethan said nothing.

“According to Hunnar,” September continued, “this tribe is led by an especially nasty son-of-a-bitch with the charming moniker of Sagyanak the Death, Scourge of Vragan. Vragan was a small hunting community they razed about ten years ago. The Death has the interesting hobby of taking folk he doesn’t care for and nailing them to the ice. They have these short lances mounted on tiny double stone runners, with little sails. The Death and other assorted uppers go upwind until they can barely see the stake-out. Then they set their lances and release them.

“By the time they reach the condemned, those sail-powered lances have built up enough speed to drive halfway up someone’s body. The head of the victim is always propped up so he or she can see the lances coming. Isn’t that cute?”

“I wish you could have saved that little anecdote till after dinner,” Ethan mumbled. He believed he had a reasonably strong stomach, but this world … “Okay, you’ve convinced me he’s not a nice fella. What does Hunnar want from us? He wants something, that’s sure, or he wouldn’t have spent all that time telling you about it. Nor describing what a bastard this Sagyanak is. Sales technique. And he said there was something important he wanted us to know about before dinner tonight.”

“Good lad,” said September approvingly. “Here it is, then: As you would expect, Hunnar and this general Balavere are being very careful about the whole idea. They’d much rather convince the Council that tribute isn’t a paying proposition and it’s more logical to fight. But if they can do it by creating so much emotion for fighting that no one will speak against them, then by the Black Hole, they’ll do it that way.”

“Which means?” asked Ethan, digging his toes into the warmth of a fur blanket.

“That when they put their proposition forward, it would be appreciated muchly if we spring up like good chappies and swear to fight to the last dribble of blood alongside ’em.”

“Umm. Don’t you mean that they want us to support their idea of fighting?”

“No,” said September bluntly. “We are to agree to pick up swords and spears and make suitable hacking motions alongside our Sofoldian brethren.”

Ethan sat up quickly. All thoughts of napping remained stuck to the blankets.

“They want us to fight? But why? We’re not citizens of Sofold and we’re surely not warriors … at least, I’m not.”

“That will change,” September replied placidly. “While the locals seem to have responded to our appearance with a great deal of calm, Hunnar assures me that we’ve created quite a sensation. Otherwise their attitude might lead one to think that strange aliens dropped in on them every day. Hunnar would like the opposition to believe we’re some kind of omen, what? The signs for battle are auspicious and all that sort of thing … But if we cower in the castle while the real fighting is taking place, all potential psychological lift will go down the tubes. So we’ll be expected to march happily into the action, spending the blood of the enemy left and right with mysterious alien devices. Eh, me lad?”

Ethan had gotten stuck in a mental cul-de-sac several sentences back.

“Fight?” he murmured wonderingly to himself. “I can handle a nullgee club or a tennis racket. And I’m not bad at ricochet golf, if I do say so. But as to standing up and exchanging ax blows with one of these super-muscled pussycats—”

“In return for this minor physical but major moral support,” September continued smoothly, “Hunnar has promised us all the aid we need to reach Arsudun.”

Ethan threw up his hands. “Oh great! Assuming that any of us are left alive to take advantage of his munificence. I suppose in that event he’ll personally see to a splendid funeral cortege. We’ll be deposited with much weeping and heaving of anguished breasts at the foot of a reluctant Landgrave. I know one thing. There’ll be no smile on my corpse. Suppose we don’t go along?”

He expected September to counter with something like “we can’t refuse,” or “they’ll chop off our fingers until we agree.” His reply was a surprise.

“Nothing.” He shook his head slowly. “They’ll just do the best they can to persuade the others, without our commitment. If we want, we can leave for Brass Monkey tomorrow and make our own way as best we can.”

“Oh.” He thought again of Hunnar’s face when, at last, the chance to fight had been mentioned. “When are you going to ask the others?”

“I already have. Colette du Kane thought it over real hard. Then she said we had no alternative. I’m beginning to think that girl’s got a mind as sharp as her torso is flabby … You know how the old man is. Odd fella. One minute he was trying to tell me about how he’s got to take care of himself so’s he can get back to his bloody flowers, the next it’s ‘down with the cowardly invaders, up Sofold!’ He went along … Walther said no, not surpri—”

Ethan was surprised himself. “You asked him?”

“Sure I asked him. He started to say no, but changed his mind. Just wanted to make it unanimous.” The big man smiled.

“And Williams?” Ethan was trying to visualize the schoolmaster in helmet and armor with battle-ax in hand. The picture served to cheer him.

“He’s been holed up with that top-dog wizard … what’s his name?’ … Eer-Meesach. Barely looked up from their confab long enough to nod at me before diving back into a stream of chatter I couldn’t follow. Don’t know if he’s even aware of what I asked. One of us seems to have made a real pal among the locals.”

“It’s hardly surprising,” said Ethan thoughtfully. “Think of the things someone like this Eer-Meesach could learn from a Commonwealth plain citizen—let alone a teacher. We can use an open-minded native or two on our side. A man of science is helpless by himself, but two of them constitute an entity capable of ignoring starvation, freezing, and prospects of imminent death just by chatting about some item of mutual interest,” he concluded.

“Really?” mocked September, caterpillar eyebrows arching. “Are you in that category too, young feller-me-lad?”

“Who, me?” He chuckled. “Right now my greatest scientific aspiration is to annihilate the biggest steak in this quadrant. With Hammoud’s barbecue sauce, crisp-turned reshka, and a bottle of Lafitte Calm Nursery Blend ’96, or maybe ’97. Speaking of which,” he continued, turning on his side, “what are we going to do for food tonight?”

“A question of real significance,” agreed September, nodding. “I suggested to Hunnar that we use our own food from the boat. Looked positively shocked, he did. Wouldn’t hear of it. Claimed our alien odors and smells might make some important councilman ill. I pointed out that if one of us threw our dinner all over said councilman it wouldn’t do his contingent any good either. He wouldn’t buy it. Said it would be a poor way of showing our solidarity if we refused to tear meat with them … at least, that’s how I mangle the metaphor he used … So we’re stuck with whatever the chef has in mind. I didn’t have a chance to wangle a copy of the menu. You said we shouldn’t have any trouble handling the food, right?”

“I hope not,” Ethan replied thoughtfully. “I don’t anticipate any, from what I remember. That doesn’t rule out the possibility of there being one or two just bad goodies in the banquet. I’d advise sticking to one or two plain dishes and not trying to play the interstellar gourmet. Probably most of it will be hearty and bland. Did you happen to find out anything about local etiquette?”

September smiled. “You eat with your fingers. Beyond that you improvise. And armor is optional.”

“I asked Hunnar about the local manners myself,” Ethan mentioned to September. He was nervously trying to adjust the brilliant gold sash that swept diagonally across his brown spotted-fur dress jacket. The royal tailor had gone through a triple funk trying to fit them with clothing suitable to the occasion.

Since, with the exception of September, the humans were as tall as tran adults but not nearly as broad, any formal outfit was big enough to swim in.

Stitching and cutting at children’s clothing with near light-speed, the royal tailor had somehow managed to outfit them all.

September whispered back at Ethan. “Don’t worry about it.” He winked in a way Ethan didn’t fancy. “Just watch our neighbors and do as they do. I’m told that fighting for a choice section of haunch is permissible, so long as no one spills blood on his neighbor or gravy on the Landgrave.”

Du Kane plucked at his modified coat unsteadily, but Colette seemed to have him well under control. As to her own “gown,” it at least served to minimize her bulkiness—though it would pass unnoticed among the broad-beamed tran. As to its composition, all she could say was that it itched.

Ahead, sounds of Trannish chatter mingled with rough bellows of good humor, defiance, anger, outrage, enjoyment. Occasionally a sonorous belch would rise above all.

There was also music from stringed instruments, drums, and something close to a profoundly sick oboe. Odors of broiled meat and boiled vegetables tweaked other senses. Admiration and uncertainty at the presence of strange visitors apparently did not extend to waiting dinner for them.

Hunnar met them outside the entrance to the Great Hall. He appeared more nervous than Ethan could recall.

“There you are! By the great wild Rifs, what took you all so long? I was starting to believe that perhaps after all you had decided to … to go your way by another path.”

“Not a chance, Hunnar old man or whatever,” said September, clapping the knight on the shoulders. It didn’t faze the tran, Ethan noted with a twinge of envy.

Hunnar looked past the big man. “Where is the little quiet one?”

“Oh, Walther’s here too,” replied September, jerking a thumb to the rear.

Even in splendid silks and furs the kidnapper still managed a ratty appearance.

“I don’t think Hunnar means him,” added Ethan, looking over their little assemblage. “Where’s Williams?”

September had a glance himself. “Yes, where is—”

“Rest at ease, gentlemen, here I am.” The familiar voice came from the far end of the hall. The schoolteacher appeared with the wizard, Eer-Meesach. Williams smiled apologetically as he drew next to them.

“I’m sorry for my tardiness, friends. I hope I haven’t upset anything.”

“No, no,” said September. “Confound it, man, must you apologize for everything?”

“I’m sorry,” Williams replied automatically. “Malmeevyn has given me some information that could be of great import.” The wizard bowed slightly.

“Ya, sure,” grunted September, unimpressed.

“Tis time,” interrupted Hunnar, before the teacher could continue. “Follow me and be at your ease. I don’t believe many will stare at you anyway. In that respect your arriving late is beneficial. But those with interested eyes will note who you enter with.”

Malmeevyn obviously had standards of his own, because he’d left them already. As they started in Ethan sidled over to Williams.

“What’s your news?”

“What do you know of Rex Plutonicus?” whispered the schoolmaster.

“Rex Plutonicus?” Ethan’s brow crinkled. He looked knowledgeably at the other. “That’s the monster volcano they spotted on the first survey, isn’t it? Active, about eleven kilometers high? I didn’t know you’d taken a terrain tape.”

“I didn’t,” Williams replied. “That was broadcast as part of a general passenger orientation—to sell shuttle-down tickets, I suppose. It’s the most outstanding single topographical feature on the planet.”

“I must have been asleep,” Ethan answered. “I only remember it from the tapes.”

“Do you recall its location?”

“No. Wait … yes. It’s about four hundred kilometers due east of Brass Monkey.”

“Correct. Sight-seeing trips are run from the settlement.”

“I may be dense, but I don’t see the import yet.”

“The wind here blows almost continually from the west,” said Williams with carefully controlled excitement “Malmeevyn says that on very windy days great clouds of black smoke and ash descend on the earth. They darken the land and make the crops bitter. The smoke and ash come always from the same southwesterly direction. No one from Sofold has ever been there, but occasionally a trading ship will arrive that has passed near. It’s a great burning mountain. The Trannish name means ‘The-Place-Where-The-Earth’s-Blood-Burns.’ ”

“Damn! I see what you mean. Reach the volcano and from there to Brass Monkey is easy. Southwest and then we’re warm again!”

“There could be variations in the smoke pattern,” cautioned Williams. “But the wizard was quite insistent about it always coming from the same direction. Most of the time the wind blows due east, so smoke and soot from many eruptions would pass far south of here.”

Ethan was rubbing mental hands together. “At least we have a direction now for our raft … if we can get a raft.” Suddenly he found himself beside a chair. September was whispering in his ear.

“For O’Morion’s sake, young feller, sit down!” He tugged at Ethan’s jacket. “Sit down! Want ’em all staring at you?”

Ethan sat. Then he became aware of the Boschian scene he’d been drawn into.

They were seated on the outside of a great table shaped like a long letter “U.” Tran of all sizes and descriptions were seated both inside and outside the arms of the table. The Landgrave, his daughter, and Eer-Meesach were sitting at the base of the U, on the outside, facing three empty chairs.

“For the Landgrave’s ancestors,” explained September.

Hunnar was seated across the table from them, on the inside and several seats down the U. Ethan noticed that their little group was positioned well down the arm of the table, close to the Landgrave. A location of some honor, probably.

The richness of silks and furs was dazzling. Ethan saw neither fashion nor couture, only credit signs with lots of lovely zeros trailing behind like newborn puppies. The attire of Sofold's nobility offered every color. Gold, deep blue, and scarlet predominated.

Great metal and polished wooden platters piled high with smoking meat, baskets of breads and fruits, and cauldrons of pungent soup filled the tables to overflowing. Light came from huge, thigh-thick candles set on posts around the table. He took notice of the controlled war that took the place of plate-passing and reflected wryly that no one would put candles on the table for risk of total conflagration over a stuffed olive, or whatever those little green things were.

In addition, light came from baskets of oil burning in wrought-iron cups set into the walls. And the great fireplace sported a blaze that would have violated every fire regulation a humanx hotel manager could envision.

His own plate was wide and formed of some coppery material. He also had a cloth napkin not quite as big as a two-man tent and a knife more suitable for a cavalry charge than a dinner.

In spite of some lingering hesitancy over the alien cuisine, his mouth was beginning to water. At least, between his furs and the fire, it wouldn’t freeze.

Next to him, September was gnawing happily on a meat-laden bone with all the delicacy and comportment of a famished hyena. He nudged Ethan in the ribs, gently this time.

“Dig in, young feller. By the Dying Dead Red, these people know how to cook.”

“Pardon me if I don’t share your enthusiasm. It’s my tender unbringing and respectable charge account holding me back.” He turned to his other side.

Williams was nibbling absently on something that looked like a cross between a carrot and a stick of emergency space protein. Next to him, Walther seemed to be displaying about the same amount of gusto in downing his meal.

Across the table, Hellespont du Kane was doing his best with a pair of knives to slice some meat from a small bone for both himself and Colette. The meat stayed off his clothes. Also off his plate.

Ethan looked around, then reached uptable for something that resembled corned beef but could just as easily have been the pickled liver of a pregnant krokim. Nonetheless, it looked inviting and smelled better. A knife came down and just missed his fingers. It was wielded by a rangy tran several seats up from them. The native gave him a good-natured closed-mouth grin and carved off a choice portion for himself.

Ethan gritted his teeth, half-closed his eyes, and made a long-range stab with his own knife. When in Rome-Vatican … Surprisingly, he came back with the rest of the roast, or whatever it was, and nobody’s hand.

Two good-sized tankards sat in front of his plate. The meat, he discovered, had a flavor like roast pork, although it was more heavily seasoned than he’d expected. It certainly wasn’t bland.

He tried the larger tankard and found that it contained a drink like thick hot chocolate with a faint hint of pepper.

He almost choked on it when September let out a whoop and clobbered him with a flying elbow. He thrust his own small tankard at Ethan and his eyes sparkled. “Now here, young feller-me-lad, is something worth fighting to preserve. Put some of this liquid starlight into your gullet. The thranx themselves never brewed half so good!” He turned and bellowed something to Hunnar.

Ethan stared at his own small tankard with a mixture of lust and terror, chewing slowly on some indefinable vegetable. He picked it up and peered inside. The contents were dark and had a startling silver color.

“Called Reedle,” September informed him. “Reedle-de-deedle-de …” he sang as Ethan hesitantly put metal to lips.

It went easily down his throat and into his stomach. There it must have encountered something flammable, because it burst like a stretched bubble and spewed tiny fireballs all over the place. One of them crawled right back up his throat and burned itself to a miniscule cinder right between his eyes. He let out a long whoosh.

“Reed … raw … reedle, huh?” September didn’t answer him. He was otherwise engaged, mentally. Shortly thereafter, Ethan was too.

A little while later he noticed a cloying sweetness in the air. It wasn’t a by-product of his dinner. Instead he discovered it emanated from several of the rather provocatively clad ladies seated nearby. The tran used perfume, then. Interesting. By Terran standards it was pretty crude stuff. By thranx standards it was a total loss. Here was another opportunity for trade, olfactory desires being equal.

For the hundredth—or maybe it was the thousandth—time, he lamented the loss of his goods, out of reach on board the Antares. He took another gulp of reedle and turned his concentration to the more interesting types seated at the great table.

Eventually his eyes traveled to the far corner of the U and to Darmuka Brownoak. The prefect was well into his own meal. He appeared to be enjoying it without becoming over-exuberant or soused. Mostly he was smiling and nodding at the shouts and comments of those seated around him. A cool, sharp, dangerous customer, Ethan reflected.

His gaze continued around the table and was startled to encounter a pair of glowing yellow eyes staring back into his own. They belonged to a beautiful, overpowering, hirsute valkyrie named Elfa.

Great credit! He’d almost managed to wipe his distressing—well, awkward—encounter with the Landgrave’s daughter from his mind. Hurriedly he averted his eyes and concentrated with full attention on dissecting a second chop—“vol,” Hunnar had called it.

He was on his third helping and second tankard of reedle when Sir Hunnar rose abruptly and bounded onto his seat. Ethan poked September, who’d subsumed enough reedle to float an elephant, and whispered across to the du Kanes.

“Now’s the time. Don’t do anything or say anything even if provoked. Brownoak and his cronies will be looking for the slightest opening.”

Hunnar put both paws in the air. Gradually the roar and howling subsided to a steady murmur, a grinding like surf on gravel. When it dropped further, to where a single voice could be heard easily, he began.

“So. Here you sit. The pride of Sofold. The wealth of its minds, the deciders of its fate, arbitrators of destiny. Pagh!” He spat “You collective dung-heaps! Offsprings of vols! Hoppers. Gleaners of lavatories!”

Angry murmurings swelled around him. There were a few cries in Trannish of “Bring him down!”

“Oh, you claim to be otherwise, eh?” Hunnar continued. “While we sit gorging our fat selves, at this moment the Horde moves on its trail of slime and blood to visit our homes. Yes, the Horde comes. Like it or not, the Horde comes. Straight as the path of a thunder-eater grazing, the Horde comes … What will happen when it reaches us? Will you sit and laugh so heartily, merrily, then? When your purses are emptied and your daughters filled? What then?”

An old tran rose halfway out of his seat across the table.

“We will pay our assigned levy, as we always have, Sir Hunnar, take a few weeks of misery and burden, as we always have, and survive, as we always have!”

Hunnar whirled and faced the oldster. “He does not ‘survive’ who lives on the sufferance and humor of another. What if this time our offerings should not satisfy the Death, eh? What if ill humor should visit Sagyanak in the night and tell him to raze Wannome to the earth-ice? For pleasure, mayhap. Burn the fields and towns of Sofold, for amusement? What then of your ‘survival,’ old man?”

“My!” interrupted a familiar, penetrating voice from across the table. “Don’t berate poor Nalhagen,” continued Darmuka Brownoak easily. The prefect paused, took a tiny sip from his tankard of reedle. It was quiet enough in the great hall for Ethan to hear the container hit the table gently as the prefect set it down. Some things, Ethan reflected, were the same from planet to planet. On the surface this was a conflict of philosophy. In reality it came down to a battle of wills between young and old, between the rich and content and the talented and impatient. Everyone in the hall knew it. They waited to see what would develop.

“He only wants to live, like the rest of us. Most of us, anyway.” Brownoak glanced around the table and there was a murmur of assent from the crowd. “Why,” the prefect continued, “such a thing as you postulate has not happened in the hundreds of years of Sofoldian history. Why would Sagyanak have reason to do such a thing now?” His stare was one of profound amazement. “To destroy Wannome and Sofold would be to destroy forever the tribute the Horde receives from us at regular intervals. Would the Scourge cut out the bottom of their purse?”

“They have done this to other towns,” Hunnar said.

“But never to Wannome.”

“So we continue to dig our noses in the dirt, year upon year, to gratify this monster?” the knight snorted. “I say no longer. Fight, this time!” He opened his claws and made tearing motions at the other. “Fight once, and have done with ignominy and hardship forever!”

“I think I should agree with you in that,” said Brownoak.

“What?” Hunnar was taken aback.

“If,” the prefect continued, daintily wiping his mouth with one of the rag-napkins, “I did not dislike suicide. Indeed, we would ‘have done with it.’ You and I would be no more. Truly, death would end ignominy and hardship, but I am not anxious to employ such a solution yet. I’m as brave as the next man,” and he glared sharply up at Hunnar, “but I am also a thoughtful being and a pragmatist. We would be outnumbered many times by a foe whose whole life is spent not in trading and growing, mailing and crafting, but in killing and fighting. We’d have as much chance of winning as a hopper caught in the path of a stampeding thunder-eater.”

Hunnar countered instantly. “In spite of what you may think, prefect, I too am a thoughtful person, and I say we would win. The walls of Wannome have grown too high for the Horde to scale, too thick for the Horde to break, these past years. Nor could they breach the nets and the new chain that guards the harbor entrance.”

“What of a siege?” asked Brownoak, sipping reedle.

“With a little preparation we could stand such far longer than they. No barbarian can sit on his haunches and stare placidly at his enemy. He is not mentally equipped for it. Sagyanak’s own tribesmen would throw out any leader who ordered such. The Scourge knows that as well as you or I.”

“You say all this,” came a flat voice from uptable. A middle-aged tran with a short steel-wool beard looked up at Hunnar. “Yet you are but a cub compared to most of us, risen rapidly in the ranks of his elders. If you are the thoughtful one you claim, you can see my point. Why should we agree with you, a mere youngster? How much of your declaration is fueled by ambition and youthful impatience rather than careful reason?”

“Because I—” Hunnar began, but he was interrupted.

“I will have none of that, Hellort,” rumbled an abyssal voice from down the table.

The tran who rose was stocky—no, even short—by tran standards, but so massively built that he was almost square. The powerful torso was bent and knotted with age. But the voice was like a scalpel in a field of butter knives. Tiny slit black pupils peered out of bony caves from beneath overhanging brows. The tran was all smashed and crumpled, almost deformed.

“I meant nothing insulting,” apologized Hellort quietly. “I’ve no questioning with you, Balavere.”

Ethan peered at the other more intently, not caring that he was staring. This, then, was the famous Balavere Longax, the most respected military man in Wannome. From Hunnar’s brief description of him Ethan had expected a giant, not a blocky dwarf. But the tran general was clearly a giant in ways other than physical.

“Yes, you do, Hellort. Because, you see, I too have considered this question painfully. I find myself in agreement with the good Redbeard—his youth notwithstanding. He may appear impetuous. Do not perceive that as ambition. He has a sound military head on his shoulders, yes, and moves smoothly over difficult ice.

“Sofold is the strongest province in the area,” he continued pridefully. “If any can make a decisive stand against the Horde, ’tis we. It should be Sofold. But we must do this thing on our own. No one—not Phulos-tervo of Ayhus nor Veg-Tuteva of Meckleven—will send a single soldier from his land to aid us, for fear of their being recognized and invoking the wrath of Sagyanak.”

“Are you so confident of victory, then?” broke in Brownoak.

“Of course I am not confident of victory,” the general replied softly. “I will not lie to you, sirs. A battle of such magnitude contains too many uncertainties. No intelligent soldier would venture a prediction on the outcome. But I say this,” he continued, as the prefect seemed ready to add more, “I’ve seen Wannome rise and strengthen over these last few good years. Dangerously so, and Sagyanak should realize it. There is your reason for bringing us down, at least a little. But the Horde has grown fat and lazy on tribute. They’ve not fought a real battle in some time.”

“And we also will have the aid of the strangers from the stars,” added Hunnar, “for who can believe their coming at this crucial time to be accidental?”

A hundred pairs of slitted cat-eyes looked straight at Ethan. They all seemed to be focused on a point just below his hair. He wanted to reach up and scratch the place but didn’t dare. He squirmed a little, though. The crowd wavered.

“Strange in form, perhaps,” said the imperturbable, thrice-damned Brownoak, “but not in ability. Perhaps less so, in fact. And ability is what we need, not cries of star-sent omens.”

“Ha!” said September. Ethan looked at him in surprise, as did many others. Which was the idea.

The big man put one foot on the table, stepped up, and walked across. He just missed a meat pie here, a tankard of reedle there. When he hopped down on the other side, every eye in the hall, human and tran, was focused on him.

Bending, he gripped the rear legs of Hunnar’s chair. With a single, flowing motion, he lifted both knight and chair chest-high off the floor. There was a gasp of surprise from the crowd. It was followed by a few cheers and a babble of excited conversation.

September put Hunnar down, recrossed the table, and resumed his seat.

“Quite an exhibition,” Ethan complimented.

“You could probably have managed it yourself, young feller-me-lad. I thought it worth doing. But Hunnar and I didn’t have a chance to practice that in private. I’m glad the execution matched the theory. Would have looked awfully funny out there if I’d gone and tipped him over.” He took a long draught of reedle and smacked his lips. “Though he went up a lot easier than some folk I’ve hoisted. Now, if I’d dropped him … ”

Ethan didn’t mention that he thought September probably could have made the lift even if the tran knight weighed as much as a human of similar size. Someone up by the Landgrave was waving for attention. It was Eer-Meesach.

“I can say,” intoned the wizard in strong voice, “that among these strangers is also a being of great knowledge. A wizard equal to … well, nearly equal to … my own person in powers of intellect.” He pointed dramatically down the table.

“Stand up, Williams, dammit,” September mumbled around the lip of his tankard. The schoolmaster rose quickly and stood staring at the table, looking for all the world like a kid caught snitching at the cookie jar. He sat down almost instantly.

“And there are others among them of abilities even more astounding,” continued Hunnar excitedly, “all pledged to assist us in this holy endeavor!”

“What’s he talking about?” asked du Kane from across the table. “I’ve picked up a bit of the language, but not enough to translate what he’s raving on about.”

“He’s telling everyone how terrific we are,” said Ethan absently, trying to concentrate on Hunnar’s speech.

“Oh,” said the industrialist. He leaned back, looking satisfied. Ethan decided the tran could interpret that as overwhelming confidence.

“I am not so convinced,” began Darmuka Brownoak, but Hunnar talked him down.

“A loosing, a loosing, then!” The cry was picked up, carried around the table like sherbet.

“Yes … now time … fight … but if we should lose? … weapons? … how much time? … family … a loosing!”

Eventually the Landgrave stood. There was immediate and respectful silence in the great hall.

“A proposal of grave consequence has been put to this gathering. Councilmen and knights of Sofold, the call has been made for a loosing. Whatever else can be said, it is sure there is enough interest for such. I so call it.”

“Is this loosing like taking a vote?” Ethan queried September.

“That’s it, me lad. You pledge your booze, is what.” He grinned. “That’s serious. My kind of folk.”

The Landgrave picked up his chalice. He held it at arm’s length, ramrod straight away from his body. Everyone stood and did likewise, including the ladies, Ethan noted. The little band of humans was tardy in copying the gesture, but no one seemed to mind.

“We have no vote in this, of course,” September told them, “but we can participate. It looks better that way.”

Into the silence the Landgrave said, “So that each may know of his neighbor …”

At that, September and a large number of the assembled dignitaries inverted their tankards, spilling magnificent reedle over table, food, floor, boots, and selves. The other humans did likewise a second later.

A herald had wheeled a high chair to the right of the Landgrave. Now he began a slow count, but Hunnar had started ahead of him. Before the herald could finish, the knight roared with joy and threw his tankard clear to the beams of the vaulted ceiling.

“WE FIGHT!” he bellowed.

The cry was picked up by dozens of throats. “We fight, we fight!” Hunnar ran and embraced old Balavere. Then everything degenerated into a confusing, heaving mass of hairy bodies, sharp questions, and endless toasts. The musicians added to the erumpent revelry with a sprightly semi-martial tune. A few tran moved into the U and began dancing. Others seemed intent on flattening their companions with crippling slams to the shoulders.

In the noise and confusion, Brownoak rose and said something to the Landgrave. A frozen smile on his face, he retired. Those tran who had been seated close to him accompanied the prefect in exit. In the explosion of congratulations and excitement hardly anyone noticed their withdrawal.

Ethan finally succeeded in drawing Hunnar’s attention. He pointed out the prefect’s abrupt departure.

“You’re going to have trouble with that guy,” he warned. But the knight was too overcome at the final realization of his hopes to take cognizance of Ethan’s warning.

“The vote in Council is against him,” he said absently. “What can he do now? Nothing! He is more helpless than a cub, and embarrassed besides. Forget him. Do you not understand? We’re going to fight!”

Ethan turned away and noticed General Balavere standing in a circle of older tran. Solemnly there was a gentle touch on the shoulders, quiet conversation with first one, then another. Closer inspection revealed another interesting anthropological fact about their hosts, which was that they did actually cry. Ethan turned away.

Meanwhile, the Landgrave had been attempting almost desperately to restore some semblance of order since the prefect had left. He pounded his staff on the floor and enlisted the vocal services of the herald. Then, apparently deciding it was hopeless, he signaled something to the musicians in the balcony.

A wild, strongly rhythmic tune replaced the pseudo-march. With a yell, the councilmen and knights separated the two long arms of the great table, turning it into a wide “V” shape. Instantly the funneled dance floor was occupied by swirling, flying couples.

It was interesting to note that the dancing, while highly energetic, did not last long at all by terran standards. No matter how husky-looking, many of the dancers seemed to get quickly out of breath. Apparently, with the wind to move them, the tran had not developed their lung-power overmuch. By the same token, the acrobatics of the lighter-than-they-looked dancers verged on the appalling. Their sense of timing and balance, logically enough, was inhuman. He’d keep that in mind if he ever found it necessary to dodge the local police. It had happened before.

On the ice, they would run circles around him.

Laughter and handclapping added to the feeling of merriment. Right now everyone was in the best of spirits. Later, when the enormity of their decision had sunk in, there would be time for quiet contemplation and thought.

Ethan was thoroughly enjoying the scene when there was a tap on his shoulder. He turned and was confronted with the copious bosom of Elfa Kurdagh-Vlata. He hurriedly elevated his gaze, finding no relaxation in the return stare at the top.

“As thou can see, good Sir Ethan,” she purred, “I have not yet been asked to dance.” This was not entirely true, as several young tran with bruised shins could attest.

“Perhaps Sir Hunnar? …” Ethan suggested desperately.

“Foo! He’s too busy accepting congratulations for the way in which he outmaneuvered the prefect. Anyhow, I want to dance with you.” She lowered her voice. “I have not forgotten your mastery at … hand-to-hand combat. Are you equally adept at dancing, mayhap?”

“Oh no,” be said, shrinking back and finding the table blocking his retreat. “I know nothing of your local dances. I’ve got two left feet. And I’m naturally clumsy besides.”

“That, for sure, I cannot believe,” she said smokily. She reached out and grabbed his arm with a paw that might have been lighter than his own, but was backed by muscles of iron. Rather than be yanked from the chair, he got up peacefully.

“Come then, and we will disport ourselves with the others.”

Before he could protest he found himself in the middle of the floor, trapped in a whirlpool of fur and giant shoulders. The music was alien but not impossibly exotic. The steps of Sofoldian dance were fairly simple. After a bit he was actually enjoying himself. Never mind that he was flirting with disaster.

A strange sort of rescue was provided by Sir Hunnar. The knight stepped up behind him, put a paw on his shoulder, and said in the cheeriest voice imaginable, “Sir Ethan, I challenge you.”

“Beg pardon?” Ethan responded, stumbling over his own feet

“A challenge! Yea, a challenge!” came the cry from the crowd. Almost as soon as he caught his balance, it seemed, the floor had been cleared around them. Everyone was staring expectantly at him and Hunnar.

Meanwhile, the knight was removing his cloak, decorations, and dress jacket.

“Wait a minute,” began Ethan confusedly. “I was just starting to get the hang of the dance. What’s this challenge business?”

“In truth, ’tis really nothing, friend Ethan,” replied Hunnar, flexing his massive arms and stretching his wings. “Just a simple custom. Tis good manners for guests and hosts to fight. I was reminded that this pleasantry had not yet occurred. Tis an opportune time as any to perform such.”

“I disagree,” countered Ethan cautiously. “Anyhow,” he continued, backing up a couple of steps, “why pick on me? Why not exchange blessings of good fellowship with Sir September?”

“I would have,” the knight grinned. “But look.”

Ethan turned. September reclined full-length across the table. His flowing white hair lay half-in and half-out of a bowl of cold soup. A tankard was gripped limply in one massive hand. He was snoring with the melodious buzz of a broken bearing.

“I’ll waken the good knight,” Ethan stalled. “Really, Sir Hunnar, I’m not cut out for this sort of thing. Now, if you’d like to have a go on the links … would there be a course about?”

“Ah, your modesty is truly worthy of you, Sir Ethan,” said Hunnar admiringly. He was now naked to the waist. The resulting pectoral panorama would give any barber pause.

“Let us to combat!” He came barrelling across the room, arms forming a great hairy crescent.

Well, at least it wasn’t supposed to be a lethal conflict, Ethan rationalized. It was the least he could do in the interests of good fellowship, wasn’t it? Besides, he’d seen the ease with which September had hoisted the knight, chair and all.

He tried to ignore the roar of the crowd—they sounded just like a bunch of inebriated conventioneers, he decided—and duck the roundhouse blow Hunnar threw at him. He stepped in and tried to get a grip on the knight’s waist. What he got instead was a solid buffet on the side of the head. His vision was momentarily restricted to sights galactic—black spaces and colored stars.

He sat up and refocused his eyes. Sir Hunnar was standing several meters away, panting and grinning down at him. Obviously more subtle tactics were required. Cries of “Well struck!” and “Good blow!” came from the appreciative crowd. His opponent might not weigh in as heavy as he, but he could still knock your head off while you were looking up the proportionate discrepancies, Ethan reflected.

All right, he would try something else—if he could remember that far back.

Sir Hunnar came on again. He feinted with his left paw and swung the right. Ethan stepped to one side, blocked the blow with his left arm, and hit the other gently in the ribs, just behind the wing membrane, and then in the jaw. He spun and hit him in the lower back with his heel, almost falling down in the process.

His own weight and the blow combined to send the knight sprawling. For an awful moment Ethan thought he’d broken something. The tran were tougher than that, however. Hunnar rolled over and grunted.

“How did you do that, Sir Ethan?”

“Come on and find out,” invited Ethan, breathing heavily.

Hunnar climbed to his feet and advanced again, more cautiously this time. Ethan let him grab his right shoulder. Then he spun into the other’s charge, driving an elbow up and into the broad chest. Hunnar let out a whoosh, surprised. Ethan bent and grabbed a bladed foot by the ankle, yanked and straightened up, putting the knight on his back. Ethan turned and drove the heel of his foot into the other’s midriff—gently. He walked away while Hunnar was trying to catch his breath.

The crowd was deafening. On Terra his movements would have seemed slow and clumsy. But here their alienness seemed to verge on the magical.

Sir Hunnar sat up, holding his middle. He smiled. “I could see that one, I think. Will you teach me that last trick, Sir Ethan?”

“Sure. Here, you start like this …” But he didn’t have a chance to continue, because a moment later massive palms were literally pounding congratulations into him. If it continued he’d be asking for mercy from their admiring assault.

Even worse, he noticed that Elfa was staring across at him with gleaming, almost worshipful eyes.

Someone in the crowd pressed a tankard of reedle into his hand. His left leg hurt where he’d pulled something. He drained several swallows. He did not notice Colette du Kane, who was staring at him with a most peculiar expression.

VII

HE WOKE IN THE middle of the night, and it wasn’t from cold. The icy night air was sharp enough to keep him from falling asleep again, though. After several futile attempts, he put his hands under his head and stared up at the canopy which covered the bed. His suit crinkled under him and he edged up against the bulk of his survival parka.

Something was going to have to be done about the attentions of the Landgrave’s daughter before a fatal misunderstanding occurred.

He knew next to nothing of local custom in such matters. But if someone should develop the wrong idea or walk in on them at another moment like that first one, it could be very awkward indeed. They’d be reminded very quickly of their alienness. Even Hunnar’s friendship might evaporate with surprising speed.

Finally he rolled over and felt under the blankets for the parka. It was difficult to put it on in the light from the single remaining candle. The thermometer had plunged to regions where no human should have stirred from bed. But with his mind thinking furiously on other matters, he hardly noticed.

Once he’d donned the parka, he unbolted the door and slipped out into the hall. He had a fair idea of the location of the Landgrave’s rooms. Tracing the proper steps and turns in the sub-freezing, windswept hallways was something else again. Only a few candles and oil lamps lit the way.

At night, with the wind moaning through the corridors and everyone but a few uncommunicative guards asleep, the castle seemed as forlorn and empty-cold as the mountains of the moon.

The whole thing was ridiculous. What was he going to do, rouse the Landgrave in the middle of the night? On the other hand, it might be the best time. In secret, without nosy courtiers around. An unguarded, unwatched discussion. It might also help minimize his embarrassment. And it was something that ought to be dealt with soonest.

Ah, the Landgrave’s quarters were just around that turn, there. He would tell the guards …

He looked down the hall, peered harder. The flickering, uncertain light made it hard to be sure, but there didn’t seem to be any guards. That was odd. He slowed as he approached the door to the inner chambers.

The guards were there, it turned out Both of them. Immaculately clad in inlaid armor and leather. One was pinned neatly to the wall by a pair of long pikes. His expression was frozen in shock and surprise. The other’s head lolled on the floor at an unnatural angle. His blood flowed over the smooth stones.

Several possibilities suggested themselves right away. None of them made any sense. In the shock of the moment he didn’t stop to consider that where two competent armed guards had been neatly dispatched, he might prove singularly ineffective. He stuck his head inside the open door and looked into the room.

The tableau that greeted his eyes might have been drawn from an ancient Terrussian opera. It was crowded enough.

In the great canopied carved bed, the Landgrave lay pinned to the blankets by two husky tran wearing simple masks. A third stood over him with a standard ship-issue survival knife poised to strike. Hellespont and Colette du Kane sat to one side, securely gagged. They were tied to a couple of chairs much too big for them. A fourth tran, wielding a bloody saber, watched them.

Ethan turned, reached down, and hefted the pike of the fallen guard. Two courses of action suggested themselves. He could charge in and dispatch the four assassins, free the du Kanes, and earn the eternal admiration of all. Or he could turn and run down the hall screaming like a broker whose credit had submarined until he’d roused enough help to be effective.

Logic, plus the fact that he could handle a garden hoe more readily than a pike, inclined him toward the latter course. Not as glorious, but more practical. He turned and took several steps down the hall.

“Alarm, murder most foul, assassins, cutthroats! Rouse yourselves! Help, help, the Landgrave is being murdered! Guards, knights, priests, depression, devaluation, competition!”

Confused murmurs sprang up throughout the castle as the cold walls bounced Ethan’s cries up corridors, around turns, down iceways. The pile of stone started to stir like a beehive poked with a stick.

Replies also came from within the room in the form of a string of curses. One of the assassins, a huge burly fellow with a sword slash on one arm and fur knotted like an old rug, came out with weapon at the ready. He looked to his left. This was a fatal mistake, since Ethan was waiting on his right.

It took little skill to skewer the killer through the middle.

The tran screamed like a girl, which added a satisfying note to the growing pandemonium. At one end of the hall, figures could be seen running toward them. Ethan started for them.

And tripped over the prone guard in the half-dark.

He rolled over on his back, stunned. Above him a tall, shadow-garbed figure raised a red saber over its head. Fangs glowed in the oil-light. The saber descended. He could hear the air it cut. The wielder grunted questioningly and Ethan heard the steel hit the stone floor at his side, so close that it cut his shirt and struck sparks from the rock. Something blunt hit him in the stomach.

It was the feathered end of the arrow that was buried in the other’s gut. Another millisecond and he was buried in an avalanche of blood and fur.

It might be lighter than it should, but it was dead weight. In a minute, though, there were hands to help him. He stared into the gloom. Hunnar was among the crowd. Feet ran past him. Shouts rang like bells from the hallway walls.

“Very close, Sir Ethan,” said the knight, giving him a muscular arm up. “Our thanks.”

“Mine to you,” he replied breathlessly. He fingered his middle where the back of the arrow had struck before snapping in half.

“Not to me. Hunnar pointed to another figure standing in the twilight beside them.

Suaxus-dal-Jagger was holding a bow half again as tall as himself, an arrow notched in the gut-string. He nodded curtly, turned, and started down the hall.

Hunnar knelt and rolled the body of the saber-holder over. He examined the silent face while Ethan tried to wipe some of the blood from his parka.

“Do you recognize him?” he asked curiously.

“No, but that is not surprising strange. Such men take care of their anonymity. What happened?”

Without replying, Ethan turned and led him into the room he’d seen so briefly. At least twenty armed tran were now clustered inside. Their faces were not pleasing to look upon. Right now they were giving the room a thorough search, even hunting for hollow places in the walls.

The du Kanes had been released. Colette was rubbing her wrists. In the freezing air Ethan could imagine how painful the ropes must have been. When she saw Ethan, she took a step in his direction, caught herself, and stared at the floor.

Crazy twit, he thought uneasily.

“You happened along at a propitious time, sir,” said du Kane. “Those blackguards rudely assaulted us in the midst of a sound sleep. Before we knew it we were trussed tighter than a good copyright. We—”

The Landgrave stepped roughly between them. He put a paw on each of Ethan’s shoulders, gently but firmly.

“This I do now promise you, Sir Ethan. We are bound to this fight that approaches and there is no help for it. But should Wannome triumph, I swear to you on my ancestor’s honor that all our abilities and wealth shall be bent to the task of taking you to wherever you should wish, be it halfway around the world. I owe you my life. Few in Sofold carry such a valuable curam.” He turned to greet his daughter, who had just arrived. She ran into his arms, her face twisted into an unreadable alien expression.

Ethan turned away. That ought to do as a lever for trade concessions, he thought, trying to push the sentimental scene from his mind.

“I’m not sure I understand, Sir Ethan,” said Hunnar, rubbing his own arm. Maybe he’d literally fallen out of bed. Ethan became aware for the first time that the knight was naked except for his sword. “Why did they take your two friends?”

“It’s obvious enough,” explained Ethan tiredly. “They were going to murder the Landgrave and make it appear as though the du Kanes had done it. Not only would that have finished your plans to fight this Horde, but it would put us in a pretty fix, wouldn’t it? C’mon, Hunnar, you know as well as I who’s behind this.”

Hunnar hesitated, then looked shocked.

“The prefect? But he wouldn’t dare!”

“Someone did. Why not him?”

“For one thing, my friend, you are mistaken in your thoughts. Should the Landgrave die it would have no effect on our decision to fight the Horde. The Landgrave’s daughter would inherit the throne and a new Landgrave would be chosen to serve beside her. Having been duly determined, the Council’s declaration would stand.”

“I see,” said Ethan reflectively. “Tell me. Does Elfa get to choose her own Landgrave?”

“Certainly not! Should the Landgrave leave naught but female offspring, then the eldest receives a suitor selected by the Council. Someone to perpetuate a strong line.”

“Really.” Ethan was thinking furiously. “And who would the Council be likely to pick as a good match?”

“I had not given the matter any thought,” replied Hunnar. “I doubt anyone has. The Landgrave has many years before him yet. In such a case I might hope it could be myself.” He averted his gaze. “But ’twould probably not be.”

His head came up and his eyes widened. He looked thoughtful. “I understand you now, Sir Ethan. Yes, for the sake of seeing himself on the throne, or his children, he could do that.”

They stood quietly for a few moments. A soldier appeared at the doorway, his armor askew from the speed at which he’d donned it.

“Nothing is found of the other Unmentionables, sir,” he gasped out. “Tis feared they have eluded pursuit and left the castle.”

“Keep at it,” replied Hunnar angrily. “They may be hidden in a box somewhere, or in the kitchens. Search every corner, even the catacombs. Find them!” He turned back to Ethan.

“Did you see their faces?”

“Sorry. I’m afraid I didn’t see much of anything after sticking this one.” The thought of what he’d just done suddenly hit him. “I … sorry, Hunnar, I feel a little sick.”

“I did … see one,” said Colette. Ethan turned surprised eyes on her.

“I thought you didn’t understand the language.”

She looked at him pityingly. “Did you think I’d waste my time studying patterns in my quilts? I’ve been studying the language with our servants. So has father. His mind … wanders, sometimes. But when it’s all present, it’s a shockingly competent one. He has a photographic memory, I might add … I think I understand what this Hunnar said. He wanted to know if you could identify those who got away, didn’t he?”

“Yes. And you think you could?”

She nodded.

“What does the She say?” asked Hunnar interestedly.

“She believes she can recognize your two assassins if she sees them again.”

“That would be excellent!” The knight’s eyes sparkled. He showed his teeth. “Tis something, at least.”

“Look, why not pick up the prefect for questioning? It’s certainly the best lead you’ve got.”

“Lead? Oh, I see. Arrest the prefect?” Hunnar looked shocked. “On only personal supposition? It cannot be done! … No, not even the Landgrave would consent to it, though no love is lost between him and Brownoak.”

“Don’t you have protective custody?” Ethan asked.

“What?”

“Never mind. Well, that sticks it, then,” he said disgustedly.

“I am sorry, friend Ethan. I do not understand.”

“Forget it, Hunnar.” He patted the knight on one massive, hairy arm. “I hope you find your assassins. Would-be assassins.” On Terra, he mused, he’d be a prime suspect.

His reason for paying a nocturnal visit to the Landgrave was completely forgotten. Anyhow, this wasn’t the proper time to discuss it.

He looked around at a sound from the doorway. September was standing there, swaying slightly and looking a little bemused. Ethan didn’t find the big man’s drunkenness a bit funny just now.

“Now, what’s all the racket here?”

“The du Kanes were kidnapped by a bunch of local nasties. They intended to kill the Landgrave and frame the du Kanes for it.” He eyed September intently. “I broke it up.”

“Bravo, young feller-me-lad, bravo!” He belched loudly. “Wonder what they do for hangovers here. This damned racket’s given me a devil of a one—practically shook me out of bed.”

“Then why don’t you go back to it?” Ethan spun away in disgust.

September stared at him sharply for a moment, then sagged. “Yerse, young feller, I believe that’s exactly what I’m going to do.” He turned and stumbled off down the hall.

It was much, much too soon when the servant woke Ethan politely and brought in his breakfast. A carton of their own emergency rations, thank Rama! Not that the local food last night hadn’t been edible. Even tasty in spots, but it was good to smell real terran food again, even if fast frozen.

He searched through the case and came up with a can of self-cooking bacon and eggs, a smaller cylinder of coffee, and a flat, two-sided slab that when keyed down the middle broke into two hot slices of buttered toast.

He wolfed it all down, rearranging the more persistent itches within the parka. Preparing to don his shoes, he found a pair of fur-lined boots next to them. They were a little large, but then the royal tailor no doubt had a hell of a time with their foot shapes. Not to mention the odd task, as the tran didn’t wear footgear.

Probably September had slipped him instructions and a rough sketch or two. So they were ill-fitting and awkwardly stitched, but they were warm and that was all that counted. The soles were even studded with tiny metal shards, to give them some grip on the slick ice.

Unfortunately, he was still stuck with the too-large survival suit. He might do better with a native coat like September’s.

The castle that morning was a carnival of conversation and gossip. It centered around the attempted assassination and the role played by the visitors from the sky. September went off somewhere with Balavere and Hunnar to inspect the city and harbor defenses and make pertinent suggestions. Ethan wondered about the big man’s profession for the nth time and finally gave it up. An admitted criminal …

No, he cautioned himself. Being wanted on several worlds did not automatically convict him. Church and Commonwealth notwithstanding, the legal tenets of planets varied hugely from system to system. They had to. Monolithic law would make the gigantic humanx Commonwealth unworkable.

So the same act that might condemn a man to death on one world could make him hero on another.

A servant told Ethan that on awakening Williams had been visited by no less a personage than the great wizard himself. So those two were off again somewhere trading anecdotes and information.

The du Kanes were keeping to their room. As for Walther, he was allowed out under guard for exercise only.

That left him alone to explore the town and the castle.

Several days of comparative freedom from official dinners and such gave him time to examine Wannome in more depth. In many ways it resembled a host of small ancient terran walled towns. Especially those few that had been preserved as historical monuments. Ethan knew a little of them from school and the traveldees.

Personally, he’d never been able to afford a trip to the home world. Nor had the company found it fit or necessary to send him. Someday, perhaps …

But there were endless differences.

For example, there were none of the fountains that decorated so many human and thranx towns. Naturally not. Not when it would require constant heating to keep the water flowing.

Alternatively, many of the houses sported fantastic roof decorations carved in ice, often by very young cubs. The inhabitants were gruff, but friendly. By the second day they’d gotten over their fear/uncertainty and had grown positively effusive. Clearly the word had been passed that the humans were not only guests but special favorites of the Landgrave. And he who favors one favored by the Landgrave favors himself—a universal tenet, if differently expressed, he reflected.

The cubs were a total and unexpected delight, rolling, bouncing, chivaning balls of fur that surrounded him wherever he went and threatened to get all tangled up in his clumsy legs. The blatantly displayed fact that he possessed neither chiv nor dan both astounded and delighted them. No doubt they looked on him as a new variety of friendly freak, a silly goblin called up just to please and delight them.

He visualized them lying in the street, running blood, impaled on pikes, and decided that if he’d been in Hunnar’s place he would have fought for this chance to resist as soon as he’d grown old enough to articulate his position.

Or would you, my good salesman? Sure you wouldn’t have found it more expedient to buy another two or three years of safety, of good business? Eh? So certain of your conscience?

The thought bothered him and he shook it off without resolving it. Of course it was tough to get out of the habit of buying peace. But it could grow too comforting, too degrading. A dedicated pacifist, he found himself shocked at what a few days on this backward world had done to his comfortable picture of the universe. Weren’t the commercial practices of some of the great companies just as bloodthirsty and ruthless, if more discreet? Didn’t Sagyanak have his counterparts in polished boardrooms and his spirit back of major stock manipulations?

By the end of the first week he’d already grown a little bored with Wannome. Even the harbor, with its ever-shifting panorama of rafts and cargoes, was growing stale. Heart and soul he was a big-city boy. While he could trade, and trade well, on the most primitive worlds, it was the thought of mechanized comfort and sybaritic civilization awaiting his return that pushed him along. His was most definitely not the soul of an outdoorsman.

None of the captains he talked with, nor any of their crewmembers, had ever heard of Arsudun Island or Brass Monkey. Nor had they visited The-Place-Where-The-Earth’s-Blood-Burns.

It was a fine, sunny day—meaning that the temperature was within cozy distance of freezing and some tran were going without coats. And you didn’t have to lean into the wind to stay in one place. He met Colette in the hall. When she finally confessed to boredom exceeding his, he proposed that they explore some more of the island.

Hunnar took a few minutes away from his frantic preparations to provide them with instructions on how to get around. Certain sections of the island would be easier for them to see than for a tran, while others would be just the reverse.

A set of rations from their store of food, and they were off.

It was steep climbing to the saddle between the mountain tops. But from there the view, as Colette described it in one of the few complimentary adjectives Ethan had heard her use, was “magnificent.”

From here one could look up to the sharp crags on either side that formed the high points of Sofold Island. To the east you could look down across the tightly packed, steep-gabled roofs of the city, then out over the busy harbor, with its ever-moving commerce and dozens of flashing painted sails, to the great harbor walls and the endless ice beyond.

This they’d anticipated. What surprised and pleased them was the view in the other direction.

Coming eternally from the west, the wind hit them hard when they topped the last rise. Below them, a long, broad plain spread out, dotted here and there with farms and clusters of little stone buildings. Herds of vol and monkey-like hoppers were visible in distant fields. Squares of crimson laisval, the local substitute for wheat, were patches of billowing flame in the bright sunlight.

Beyond, he could make out a field of green extending as far as he could see in a great fan shape toward the horizon like the tail of some monstrous bird-of-paradise. Off to the left, kilometers across the ice, he thought he could detect another patch.

Their guide, a sprightly adolescent named Kierlo, explained what it was. “There, noble sir and madame, grows the great pika-pedan, in a field greater than several Sofolds. There the thunder-eater comes to browse.”

“I’ve heard so much about this thunder-eater,” said Ethan as they strolled along the broad path that ran along the crest, “that I’d like very much to see one close up.”

The youngster laughed. “No one goes to look at the thunder-eater close up, noble sir.”

“It’s vicious, then?”

“No sir. Not vicious. But it can be very irritable, like some k’nith.”

Ethan knew the k’nith. A small animal like a hairy rat. He found it repulsive, but it was apparently a favored pet among the cubs of Wannome. They seemed affectionate, despite their fearsome appearance, and tended to explode into frenzied squalling at the tiniest upset. The cubs found such outbursts amusing.

Clearly they were more tolerant of their pets than a human child, who would have grown disgusted with a k’nith in a day or two. The climate even made for hardier pets, he mused.

“I’d like to see the foundry,” he said suddenly. It dawned on him that they must be quite close to this major source of Wannome’s wealth and power.

“Yes, lord.” The youth turned down a narrow path that Ethan would have walked right past. Once around a bend in the rock, he could see smoke from the mountaintops once again.

The foundry itself occupied a little valley. It was small to the eye, even tiny, at first. But once they drew nearer, he could see that much of it was cut into the naked rock and built into caverns to take advantage of the heat rising from deep within the planet’s crust.

From this area of the crest he could see that several of the crags were old volcanic cones. Most were dead or dormant, but a few puffed black smoke skyward. All of the craters sloped to the west and had been invisible from the city side.

Wannomian smelting and metal-working turned out to be an odd mixture of primitive technology and some surprisingly advanced techniques. The drawing and tempering of sword blades, for example, and of spear points.

The foundry head was in Wannome conferring with the military councilors. They were met by Jaes Mulvakken, the assistant chief.

“We are most honored, noble sir and lady, that you have found time to inspect our poor—”

“Skip the flattery and formal self-deprecation,” smiled Ethan. He’d almost perfected the technique of smiling without revealing his teeth. “We just want to have a casual look around.”

Mulvakken was all business when it came to explaining the operation of the foundry. He even managed to get Colette interested. Ethan was impressed by the tran’s efficiency and knowledge. He’d make a fine district supervisor for a major mine.

While he preferred talking about finished products, he had to admit the foundry was fascinating.

In order to get close to the heat vents and geysers within the mountain, tran workers were first doused with ice water. Moving their arms and legs to keep the joints free, they soon wore jackets of transparent armor on torsos, arms, and legs. It gave Ethan the shivers just to watch it.

It was strange to see someone donning special outfits to retain the cold. Everything backwards. “Where are your mines?” he asked Mulvakken. “At the west end of the island, sir. Some of our shafts and tunnelings extend out even under the ice.”

“Don’t you have trouble digging into this super-permafrost?”

“Oh no, sir. The deeper we go, the softer it gets. And the miners are out of the wind. But the pika-pina is rooted in that end of the island. Cutting through the roots is worse than trying to cut through rock. Usually we just remove the dirt and work around the roots themselves. The ice is easily melted and the water removed … Sometimes we can cut through an old or weakened root here, a dying linkage there. But it is so entwined and grown upon itself that ’tis near impossible to separate one bit from another.

“Nor would we want to kill it. The pika-pina gives us food, while the metal gives us wealth.”

“An attack on that end of the island by an enemy would capture the mines, then,” said Ethan unnecessarily.

“Oh yes! But a lump of iron ore is a poor weapon, noble sir. Even were an enemy so inclined, and knowledgeable enough to work the mines, he could not with us continually harassing him. We’re well protected here in the mountains, sir, even better than the city folk.”

“Oh, I don’t know. This western slope doesn’t look so bad.”

“Perhaps not for you, sir. But I have heard you are built differently from us and that climbing uphill without wind aid does not give you as much difficulty.”

That was probably true, Ethan reflected.

He was examining the huge windmills that powered lathes and grindstones and brought air to the forges when he felt Colette’s hand on his arm.

“Oh look. There’s professor Williams.” She’d taken to calling him “professor” Williams now, though they didn’t know exactly what level of upper school he taught. He’d not volunteered the information. Sometime Ethan would have to ask.

The schoolmaster was seated at a table along with the ever-attending Eer-Meesach. Both were so engrossed in a pile of diagrams that they didn’t notice the arrivals until Ethan and Colette had stood behind them for several minutes.

“I’ll leave you, noble sir and lady, to the company of the wizards. I have much work to do. Tis sure no one knows how to put a decent edge on a sword these days.” Mulvakken gave them a bloodthirsty grin and bowed politely.

In other words, Ethan reflected wryly, I’ve wasted enough time showing you alien V.I.P.s around and it’s time I got back to some serious work. He waddled off in the direction of smoke, heat, and ringing noises.

“Well, Milliken. Eer-Meesach.”

“Greetings, sir and madame,” the wizard said with sprightly enthusiasm. His eyes were shining. “Your friend has been showing me many things. Great things. I haven’t been so excited since I was a famulus!”

“What have you been up to, Milliken?”

“Malmeevyn has been helping me with mechanical equivalents and local terminology. I’m not much of a fighter and thought I might be able to help some other way.”

“Nor am I,” said Ethan sincerely.

“Oh, but we all saw the way you handled Sir Hunnar that night.” He couldn’t keep the admiration out of his voice. “Even Mr. du Kane is a better fighter than I … But I did think I might be able to aid in other ways. I’ve read quite extensively, you know. I’ve been trying to help out the Wannomian armorers with an idea or two gleaned from terran and centaurian history. My first idea involved catapults, but both sides already understand and utilize the principle. Very powerful devices they have, too.”

“They’d have to be,” Ethan commented, “to do much in this wind.”

“Yes. Also swords, pikes, axes, lances, halberds—all kinds of things for cutting and stabbing. Spears and bows for throwing. But I’ve been working closely with Malmeevyn and the metal workers and I believe we’ve managed to come up with a couple of beneficial developments.”

He reached under the table and brought out an object the like of which Ethan had never seen.

It had a long, straight body of wood, with a short bow set on one end. There was also an obvious trigger and some sort of pulley and crank mechanism at the other end.

“Very interesting,” said Ethan, conscious of his historical cretinism. “What is it?”

“An ancient terran weapon. It’s called an arbalest, or crossbow.”

“A marvelous invention!” shouted the wizard, unable to contain himself. “I showed it to Leuva Sukonin’s son, a knight of archers. When I outdistanced his best bowman he fell on the icepath and nearly slid all the way into town!” The wizard chuckled at the memory.

“It can throw twenty to forty zuvits further than the finest archer,” Williams said, “and it’s more accurate and powerful besides. It cannot be loaded as fast, it’s true. But it will penetrate the thickest of leather-bronze shields at close range. I made the bows extremely tough. I think this version is more powerful than anything ever used on old Terra. These tran have truly awesome arm and shoulder muscles … from holding their dan against the wind, I suspect.”

Ethan hefted the weapon uncertainly. He tried the crank but could hardly budge it. “It’s impressive, all right. I don’t suppose you’ve succeeded in coming up with maybe a pocket laser or a nice portable thermonuclear device, hmmm? It would make things a lot simpler.”

“I’m afraid not” Williams smiled slightly. “But we are still working on other developments. I hope one or two will be ready in time to do some good.”

“That’s right” muttered Ethan, “—time.”

“No one’s said anything to me about time either,” protested Colette. “When is this Horde or monster or whatever due to arrive?”

“No one knows, Colette. It could be several malets yet. Or they might be sighted tomorrow morning. Hunnar says they might even decide to pass Sofold completely for another year. I can’t tell whether that possibility pleases or disappoints him. Now let’s have another look at that chap who does the interesting marketable scrollwork on the sword-hilts …”

In the weeks that followed Ethan got to know the people of Wannome as well as those of New Paris, Drallar, or Samstead. Preparations for battle continued apace, but the flow of commerce in the harbor never slackened. There was still no word of the Horde.

One evening he wondered if the whole story of the Horde mightn’t be a gigantic fraud—a cleverly concocted story designed to keep these useful and interesting strangers from the sky in Sofold. He quickly discarded that as a thought not only unworthy of people like Hunnar and Balavere and Malmeevyn, but also illogical. Although he wouldn’t put it past the Landgrave.

No, there’d been too much obvious passion displayed that night when the inhabitants of Sofold had determined to fight their tormentors instead of groveling to them—too spontaneous, too genuine, even in its alien setting, to be a mere dumb show created for such ignoble purpose.

He, Hunnar, and September were seated at a table in the general castle dining hall, down near the scullery. This was where most of the castle folk took their meals. Hunnar then suggested a walk along the sky balcony and the two humans agreed.

The sky balcony was the highest open pathway in Wannome Castle, excepting only the High Tower. From its wind-lashed parapet one could stare down a sheer drop to solid ice below, and far out across the great frozen sea to the south.

Their sojourn was interrupted by the breathless arrival of one of the apprentice-squires. He scraped to a halt, gulping freezing air, and almost forgot to bow to Hunnar. His face was wild.

“N … noble s … sirs …!”

“Take it easy, cub,” Hunnar admonished him, “and catch your breath. Your words ride the wind too far ahead of you.”

“Not thirty or forty kijat to the southwest, noble sirs—the thunder-eater comes!”

“How many?” asked Hunnar sharply.

“On … only one, sir. A Great Old One! A caravan … three ships … blundered into it, hoping to find some shelter in the pika-pedan and then ride the wind-edge in. Only one escaped. Its master sits even now in audience with his Lordship!”

“Come,” Hunnar said curtly to the two men. He started for the stairs without even bothering to see if they followed.

“So one of these ‘thunder-eaters’ finally shows up,” said September. “Excellent! I’ve been listing slowly to starboard sitting on my butt here. At least now we’ll have a chance to see one of these things, what?”

“I don’t know,” Ethan commented carefully. “From Sir Hunnar’s attitude, I don’t think they run out day excursion rafts. And that apprentice did mention something about two ships being lost.”

“Ah, that could have been from the storm,” countered September. “Say, Hunnar!” They hurried to keep up with the knight. Hunnar was being polite in not making use of the downward ice-paths. If he had, they’d have lost him in seconds. “Will we have a chance to see this thing?”

For Hunnar, the reply was unusually curt.

“You must understand that this is not a frivolous matter, my friends. In its own unthinking way, the stavanzer can be as dangerous as the Horde.”

“Oh, come on now,” September replied in disbelief. “It can’t be that big. No land animal on a Terra-type planet can. There’s not even any water to buoy it up. A really big animal couldn’t walk.”

Hunnar halted so abruptly that Ethan bumped into him, bounced off the iron-hard back beneath the furs.

“You have not seen a thunder-eater, stranger from the sky,” he said quietly. It was the first time since their initial meeting he hadn’t used their names. “Do not judge til then.” He started off again as suddenly as he’d stopped. Ethan followed, surprised. The knight was really worried.

“A stavanzer,” Hunnar continued as they descended yet another stairwell, “could destroy the great harbor more completely than any Horde and would do so without thought or compassion for life. A barbarian wishes to conserve in order to enrich himself. The thunder-eater has no such thoughts.”

“I see,” said September, abashed. “Look, I apologize, Hunnar. I shot off my big mouth without having ammunition. Moratorium until I see the thing, okay?”

“You do not know so naturally you cannot imagine,” said Hunnar, mollified. “There is no need to apologize for such.” He didn’t say anything about September’s shooting off his mouth. “There will be no chance to ‘look’—only the Hunt.”

“You mean you’re going to try and kill this thing?” asked Ethan. “After making it sound nothing short of invincible?”

“I did not say ’twas invincible, friend Ethan. Only very big. But no one kills a stavanzer. Not in recent memory, anyway. We must try to drive it off. Were it a herd I should not worry so much.”

“Why not? I’d imagine a herd would be a hundred times worse,” Ethan commented.

“No. A herd would move only for its grazing grounds—the great pika-pedan fields to the south. They migrate on a north-south polar axis, mostly in the empty regions to the west. As a group they have little curiosity. But a lone one, and a Great Old One at that, might investigate Sofold from sheer perversity. It takes something extraordinary to excite a herd. Somehow, we must turn him.”

“You say you can’t kill it, but you speak of turning it,” said September. “How? With pikes?” There was nothing mocking in his voice.

“No. There is one way to fight the thunder-eater. If your souls are sound, you may have a chance to try it. Many who do claim it is the supreme moment of their lives. For some ’tis also the last. Yet it must be tried,” he concluded as they topped a rise in the passageway.

“Just how big is this boojum, anyway,” Ethan finally asked, exasperated.

“The thunder-eater has been granted but two teeth. Do you know the Landgrave’s throne?”

“Yes.” Ethan recalled the chair, inlaid with stones and polished metal set into a tower of pseudo-ivory. It would fetch a fine price from a certain decorator on …

“The back of the throne itself, the white pillar … what did you think it was?”

“Some kind of stone,” Ethan replied. Then he paused. “You aren’t trying to tell me that …?”

He held onto the thought as they left the castle, barely aware that other knights and men-at-arms had joined them. They passed the du Kanes. September barely had time to shout, “We’re a-going a-hunting!” to them. Colette yelled something in return but Ethan didn’t hear it.

Down at the harborfront, kettledrums were droning like fat beetles. A knot of moving, businesslike tran had collected around the Hunnar-nucleus. Ethan caught occasional glimpses of solemn-faced townsfolk.

As they continued downhill, he couldn’t help noticing that the soldiers and knights carefully avoided the ice-paths out of deference to their crippled visitors.

He wondered if anyone else would be able to see what was going to take place. The wizard had a telescope in his rooms, but it might not be able to scan the area they were heading for. But Milliken would be there, and maybe also the Landgrave.

All this fuss over one animal. And it wasn’t even a meat-eater, like the Droom.

They reached the harbor. The crowd parted to reveal three of the oddest craft he’d seen since their landing.

Three small rafts with large sails sat ready by the docks. Their sails and bodies were painted pure white. Arrow-narrow and long, they were clearly designed to stay hidden against the ice.

To the rear of each was tied a second, even stranger craft. Each consisted of a single tree-trunk, averaging about twenty meters in length and one or two in diameter. A single small sail was mounted on each. The front end was cut and shaped down to a needle-sharp point.

The bottom cross-spar of the sail ended on each side in a tiny wooden ship or large skate, depending on how one chose to view them. Each was equipped with an even smaller runner to its outside, making each into a stubby, one-tran outrigger. The cross-spar was connected to each skate-boat by a single pole.

There were two wooden runners under the tree itself, a single solid one near the bow, and a third skate-boat at the rear.

The sails on each of these massive lances—for such they clearly were—were furled. Three wind-powered spears suitable for battling a goliath.

Ethan had a thousand questions. Hunnar was already on board the first raft, giving directions and inspecting lashings. Ethan followed September on board. Almost immediately the strange little convoy started toward the harbor gate. All other ships gave them respectful clearance and some of their sailors came to the rail to watch quietly.

A moment later they were through the great gate towers. As they rode out of the lee of Wannome and its sheltering mountains they picked up speed. The sails crackled and the helmsman set course slightly into the wind, to the southwest.

“We must circle well behind the beast,” Hunnar explained, “to allow the lightnings to build up speed. When they have, the towing raft casts free and moves clear.”

“Those spears are maneuverable, then?” asked September over the howl of the wind. Sailors fought the rigging.

“Only a little,” Hunnar replied grimly. “Once set on course, they can be turned only to right or left, and only with the wind. There is no turning about.”

“What happens,” asked September finally, “when you make contact with the creature?”

“Here Jaipor, take over!” Another tran hurried over to take a rope from the knight. Satisfied, he led them toward the stern of the fast-moving raft. Ethan could feel the tension building among the crew. They stood behind the helmsman and Hunnar pointed to the following raft.

“A strong but simple latch ties the lightning to the three skate-boats. Each is a tiny raft in itself, but without sails. See the high, padded back? That is to protect the rider and to catch a little of the wind.”

“They look like big wooden shoes,” commented Ethan. He recalled Ta-hoding mentioning that wooden skates wouldn’t hold much of an edge on the ice. But then, these weren’t intended for long journeys.

“Momentum should carry the three steersmen clear of the thunder-eater,” Hunnar continued, “and to safety.” Ethan peered closely at the tiny boats.

“Once you’ve released from the main lance, how do you steer the things?”

“With your body weight. The skates are well balanced. The release should take place in plenty of time to give the rider ample opportunity to veer wide of the target.”

“Of course, the closer you get before giving up control,” said September, “the more accurate the strike.”

“Of course,” agreed Hunnar.

“Then if you’ve no objection, I’d like to be one of your sparmen.”

“I would be honored, Sir September.” They exchanged shoulder clasps.

“Oh, well,” said Ethan, “I suppose I’ll have to take the other, then.”

“Now young feller, this is no game, what? If you don’t really want—”

“Oh, shut up, Skua. I’ll take the opposite spar.” He felt like a fool, but he’d be damned if he’d back away when September had volunteered.

“Tis settled then.” Hunnar turned and pointed toward their companion rafts skimming alongside. “Sir Stafaed will command the first bolt and Sir Lujnor the second. We will have the last.”

“Does this thing have a weak spot?” asked September over the roar of the wind.

“It may. If so, none have found it. There is no hide protecting the eyes and they are nerve-centers if naught else. Tis best to strike there. They are small and set low. If we could blind him, that would be better than turning him from the city.”

“If he has good vision it means he’ll see us coming,” added September thoughtfully.

They continued to swing in a wide curve, until Ethan realized all at once that they were now running with the wind. He looked over the sharp prow of the raft. Somewhere far ahead was a wavering green blur, the huge field of pika-pedan. They’d come a long way fast.

The sailors brought in the sail. Sharpened ice-anchors of dark iron stabbed ice. The three rafts with their trailing death slowly skidded to a halt, shaking and straining in the wind.

“Now we ride the lightning,” said Hunnar solemnly. He scrambled over the side of the raft.

According to the surviving merchantman’s report, the stavanzer was moving northeast. They would try to turn him southward again.

“You take the port side, lad, and I’ll have at the starboard,” September shouted to him.

“What?”

“The left side, the left! And don’t let loose your latch-piece til Sir Hunnar gives the sign.”

“Think I’ll freeze at the wrong moment and let go early?’ Ethan stared up at that buttressed visage. The eyes twinkled.

“No man can deny the possibility, young feller.”

“Well … I might,” he replied, almost defiantly. “But it won’t be from fear. It’ll be from this delightful climate.”

The wind was blowing harder than usual for midday. That meant he had to grab twice at the wooden rail of the raft to keep from being blown away like an empty sack. It was bitterly cold out here, divorced from the castle’s sheltering walls. He was relieved just to scramble into the comparative shelter of the skate-boat.

The broad wooden back of the skate was thickly padded. It vibrated steadily in the perpetual gale, but the worst winds howled harmlessly past. Leaning forward slightly, he could see just over the central trunk. September waved and he waved back.

He leaned out, sticking his face into the wind again, and waved back at Hunnar. The knight would steer while he and September managed the sail.

The latch-piece that held the skate-boat to the lower cross-spar was a simple wooden pull. It was set into a pole which was based in the floor of the skate and the bottom of the spar. He noticed with satisfaction that it had been well greased. There would be no last-minute frantic tugging. The sail was harder to work, with only the single rope to keep it steady.

Two sailors from the big raft were on the tree-lance itself. They raised the lightning’s own sail in unison with the sail on the raft. Both began moving together. Somehow the two sailors kept their balance in the wind until the pure white lance-sail was up. They moved carefully to the sharpened end of the log, jumped free, and chivaned up to the raft where ready hands pulled them in. Since both raft and tow-raft were now moving at appreciable speeds, it was a delicate bit of work.

The sailors and soldiers on the raft carried pikes and bows, more for their psychological value than out of any expectation of usefulness. It wouldn’t do for a tran to go into battle weaponless. Not even if his only task was to watch and pray.

On the other hand, Ethan didn’t feel the need for even a very small dagger. Despite Hunnar’s expositions, he had only the vaguest idea what to expect. They were going to strike the stavanzer broadside. Hunnar would aim for the head. At his signal, a loud, sharp whistle, they would each release their skate-boats and shear off, to be picked up by the trailing, waiting rafts.

That was the theory.

Despite the obvious danger, Ethan couldn’t contain a certain perverse curiosity. He wanted very much to see what sort of land animal could take the wind-driven impact of a twenty-meter sharpened tree that weighed maybe half a ton without being killed outright. There was a certain wealthy collector of rare animals on Plutarch who might conceivably …

But, he reminded himself, they would break off long before that. His only glimpse of the thing would probably be brief and distant.

Still, stavanzers did die, Hunnar had informed them. Of what? Old age? How long did the virtually indestructable thunder-eaters live?

There was a jerk and he looked up. The raft had cast them loose and was already swinging south to get out of their path. The other two lances had cast off seconds earlier and were speeding down the unyielding sea ahead of them. He squinted through his goggles, isolated in a world of ice, wind, and wood.

Ahead, a green blur gradually took form and substance, grew larger. Their speed continued to increase as they ran wildly before the wind. Now he could make out the size of the pika-pedan compared to its pygmy cousin. His breath froze in his throat then. It wasn’t from the cold.

There was something moving on the outer edge of the green. Then he saw the thunder-eater, and was afraid.

The Great Old One was over a hundred meters long—a gigantic slate-gray mountain that heaved and pulsed like a great slug on the clean ice. Its back and sides were studded with grotesque ridges and spines, a bizarre living topography.

There were no legs, no arms, no visible limbs of any sort. The belly of that awesome bulk was a horny pad thicker than the skin of a starship, as tough, and worn smooth as glass. A mouth as wide as a driveship dock inhaled air which was expelled through two lifeboat-sized valves near the tail, moving it like a squid.

It moved slowly now. But Hunnar had told them tales of stampedes, like steel-gray storms. A herd would strike a small island and leave nothing but a greenish-brown stain against the ice.

He shrank. He was a dog—no, an ant—attacking a whale. Only this was bigger than the biggest whale that ever was. It expanded in all directions, all dimensions, like a tridee projection.

From the side of the biblical behemoth projected a tiny splinter of wood. It leaked crimson. One of the lightnings had struck home, then.

He couldn’t find any sign of the other and assumed it had missed. He was wrong. Later, a searching raft found part of the mast. That was all they ever found of raft and crew.

Somewhere, distantly, there was a shout, a whistle. Then a blackness grew ahead of him. Something dark as space at the Rim, gaping like a cave. A monstrous ebony cavern, two colossal stalactites of white hanging from the roof. Tons of vegetable matter vanished into that yawning abyss every day.

It was turning toward them, to the north. The wrong way. And they would miss.

Another, more distant, whistle sounded. The eager wind bit at it, tore it away. The latch rested tightly in both hands, sail forgotten now. Hunnar and September had cast free. But if he waited just a little longer, put a little more weight on the outside of the skate …

He stood. Bracing against the wind and the side of the skate, he leaned out over the ice, to his left. The huge lance began to shift, slowly, agonizingly, centimeters at a time, to port. Ethan leaned hard into the side, straining for just another millimeter of drift. Protesting wood shifted from its original course.

The black chasm grew until it blotted out ice, pika-pedan, sky. A dark hole swallowing the universe. It was opening and closing with a mechanical, slow-motion intensity, a ponderous cyclopean bellows. Above the wind came a dull roaring, like a dying stardrive. Eating air and excreting thunder, the stavanzer was moving.

Crosslatch … pull … whistle … get round … left … left … no, port-left … left-port? …!

The blood on his lower lip was beginning to freeze. Suddenly something or someone—he wasn’t sure it was he—jerked convulsively at the latch. The tiny skate-boat heeled far over on its side, almost touching the ice. He had to scramble to keep from falling out. Almost calmly he saw that he’d delayed too long. He would not clear the creature.

He would not clear the mouth.

It would be open when he reached it, he knew instinctively. A prayer would have been appropriate but what he mumbled instead was, “Move over, Jonah. Here I come.”

Then, startlingly, he missed, was past. He glimpsed an eye bigger than the whole skate-boat shooting past at blinding speed, black pupil like an onyx mirror reflecting his numbed stare. He was speeding past endless acres of roiling, heaving gray flesh.

The stavanzer’s mouth was enormous. The throat itself was not. Moving at nearly two hundred kph, the half-ton lance struck the back of that gaping maw. Several seconds passed while the impact traveled down miles of neurons. A shudder passed through the gargantuan bulk. The thunder-eater heaved the upper half of its body off the ice, an Everest of dimly felt agony. It dropped with a force that snapped Ethan’s speeding skate-boat off the ice like a coin on a taut blanket.

He sailed past an alien gray landscape, a vast confusion of ice and cold sky. Night came hard.

VIII

HE REMEMBERED VANILLA WAFERS. Then he opened his eyes and saw a familiar fur-framed face with a unique nose. September was staring at him anxiously. Other memories flooded in and he sighed. Likely there wasn’t a vanilla wafer within half a dozen parsecs of where he lay.

Where he lay was in his bed in his room in Wannome Castle. He tried to sit up and was made aware of a fascinating phenomenon. Every square centimeter of his body was putting in an impolite claim for attention.

“I,” he announced slowly, falling back onto the fur blanket someone had bunched beneath his head, “hurt. All over.”

“Not surprising, young feller-me-lad,” said September, the concern vanishing from his face. “But other than that, how are you feeling?”

Ethan chuckled. It was mentally satisfying, but it also compelled certain sections of self to protest violently. He followed the ensuing silence with a question of characteristic wit, scintillating brilliance.

“What happened?”

“Why didn’t you let go your latch when Hunnar gave the signal?” the big man asked instead of answering.

Ethan thought, remembered. “We would have missed. It was turning the wrong way and we would have missed. Shot right past …” He tried to rise again. September put a hand on his chest and gently forced him back.

‘That particular beastie is no longer a problem. Lord, what a sight! I’ve seen a lot of big and biggests, lad, but that hunk of ugly meat tops them all. Couldn’t believe how fast something that big can move.”

“Hunnar told me, before.”

“I thought we’d seen the last of you for sure when you didn’t let loose with the rest of us,” September continued. “Gone forever down that unholy gullet. Oh, by the way, you turned it fair and proper. Took off southward with a roar you wouldn’t believe. Near to shake a man’s skin off, what? Though how it could even move with that log down its pipe I don’t know. Tough? Oh my, yes!”

“I don’t mean what happened to it. What about me?”

“Oh, you? Well, I didn’t see much myself, being a-scooting fast in the opposite direction. But there was a well-positioned lookout in the front-running raft. Said when the thing rose off the ice … unheard of thing to do … and whacked down, it tossed you into the air like a ballooning spider.

“You came down on the other side of the beast in the high pedan. That and the padding in the boat probably saved you. After contact, though, it was every chip and splinter for itself. If you’d landed on bare ice I expect we’d still be scraping up pieces of you. As it developed, you should have seen how much wood they pulled out of your skin. Good thing those survival parkas are tough. How you got out without busting anything, let alone everything, I’ll wonder over til my last days. You took a powerful sock in the head.”

“I feel tolerable now,” he lied. “How long have I been out?”

September grinned. “Off and on, about a week.”

“A wee—!”

“ ’Twas a near thing, I don’t mind telling you, lad,” he said solemnly. Then, more cheerfully, “Sure didn’t hurt our standing with these folk, though. I expect they consider you the greatest thing to come along since warm.” He scratched at his pants. “But it’s just as well you’re up … if not exactly about. It seems it’s time.”

If they’d just take the anvil off his head he’d feel almost decent.

“Time? What time?”

September slapped his head with a blow that would have taken an ordinary man’s head off.

“Idiot! Forgot you couldn’t understand anything while you were mumbling. Mumbled some weird things, too, you did. The Horde’s coming, of course. Captain from someplace called Yermi-yin pulled into the harbor yesterday on his way to somewhere unpronounceable. Stayed just long enough to give the Landgrave the word before skimming out again. Poor fella was as white as the ice. He headed due south and didn’t seem inclined to change course even when we told him he might run into a mad stavanzer. Alien or no, anyone could see he was plenty scared.”

Ethan determinedly heaved himself up on his elbows and found that without warning the room had gone triplicate … just like everything at the home office.

“Then I’ve got … to get ready. We’re going to fight, too …”

Again September eased him down into the mattress.

“You just lie there … alone, I’m afraid … and take it easy, young feller. They’re at least a week’s fast sail away. So there’s no need to run around screeching and squawking like a plucked poonu. Hunnar and Balavere are organizing the militia. The populace is storing grain, pika-pina, vol, and suchlike like crazy, for a siege. Everyone is doing what they’re supposed to. You’re supposed to rest.”

“Can they really stand a siege, Skua?”

September looked thoughtful. “Hunnar seems to think so. Says the enemy’s sure to crack mentally before the Sofoldians run out of anything vital. The general agrees with him, though he’s not as vocal about it. Crafty old bird … They’re even stockpiling firewood … although with those natural fur coats they’ve got they can do without it. Yes, when you start stockpiling luxuries I’d say that indicates a certain modicum of confidence … No, I don’t think there’ll be much of a siege. Just one double-helluva fight.”

“Hunnar seemed sure he could beat them.”

“According to that captain,” September mused, “they cover the ice from one end of the horizon to the other. I’ve been talking tactics with the general staff. I think I’ve made a few points. Frankly, any change in normal procedure ought to confuse that bunch. If this Sagyanak’s as stubborn as some of Sofold’s best, then we shouldn’t expect much new from the Horde … But it’s a new situation for the Sofoldians. They’re willing to try new ideas. Just takes a little subtle convincing, a bit of reasonable explanation. Also, Balavere threatened to crack a few heads … If I were in the spot they’re in, I’d be willing to experiment too. Wouldn’t you, me lad?”

“We are in their place,” replied Ethan quietly. September grunted.

The battle armor was clumsy and too large, but Hunnar had insisted Ethan wear it. The leather leggings jolted and pulled at each step and the bronze breastplate was an unrelenting drag at his chest.

He’d absolutely refused one of the flaring, ornate helmets, though. Even a child’s size wouldn’t have fit well. His head would ring around inside like a clapper in a bell. While it wasn’t designed for fighting, the parka at least wasn’t a burden.

The wind whistled around him. He walked back over to where Hunnar and September stood together at the edge of the High Tower. September was pointing into the distance.

They might have had a better and clearer view from the wizard’s telescope. But then they would see only one thing at a time. Besides, the learned miasma of the wizard’s chambers palled after a while, along with the very real one from aromatic chemicals and half-vivisected animals.

According to their long-since-departed informant, the Horde would appear out of the northeast. But for now there was only the invisible thread that divided cold-ice land from ice-cold sky.

“No sign of them, Hunnar?”

The knight paused in conversation with the big man and looked down at Ethan. “Your eyesight ’tis good as my own, Sir Ethan. Yet I do detect naught of the assembled swine.”

“Could they be circling to take you from the rear?” asked September. He scratched at a persistent itch with the edge of a big double-bladed sword.

Hunnar dropped a deprecating hand.

“No. They might try such a maneuver later, to annoy us if for naught else. But Sagyanak is unlike many barbarians. Nothing will be done without purpose … or so we are told. Still, any nomad is unpredictable.”

“Like you,” suggested Ethan.

“Perhaps, like me,” the knight replied, not upset by the comparison. “As I said, all it would accomplish would be to anger us—hardly a sound motive. No, they’ll parade up to the gates and make a fine show of themselves. They’ve no reason to think we’d be so foolish as to offer resistance.” He grinned wolfishly.

“What a surprise the Death is going to get! Perhaps the Scourge will rave and rant enough to burst a skull-side blood vessel. That would spare us the necessity of a formal execution.”

“Ah, there,” said September. “Isn’t that a sail? Or have I been dipping too deep into the reedle again?”

No, certainly that was a spot of blue far, far out on the ice. It grew, was joined by others of different size and shape and color. Every imaginable shade was represented in the concatenation of sails. Soon the far ice was a rainbow of barbaric coloring: magenta, umber, jet, crimson—there was a lot of crimson and other reds—azure, carnelian, sard …

Some of the sails were dyed in swatches of random color. Others boasted intricately designed motifs and mosaics. Some were woven, others painted—all of a bloodcurdling nature.

A few sported railings decorated with dull white trannish skulls.

They didn’t cover the ice as the captain had warned. But they filled a disconcerting portion of it.

“Must be nearly a thousand rafts out there,” murmured September. But the big man’s nonchalance fooled no one. Even he was a little awed.

“More than we expected,” Hunnar admitted. “Yet it only makes me gladder, for there will be more of the vermin to dispose of.”

Beating into the wind, the nomad fleet moved closer. One by one they took up position along four-deep lines. One by one the sails came down and ice anchors went out.

“Settling in for a relaxing stay,” September said.

Even at this distance, Ethan thought he could detect some rafts that were crowded with livestock, others with crates and supplies. It was a mobile city.

Soon all the sails were furled but one, which belonged to a small, rakishly set little raft. It lay alongside a huge ship with a double-storied, garishly painted central cabin. The small raft broke off and skimmed slowly for the harbor gate.

Ethan could make out toy figures straining at the mechanism that raised the obstructing nets and the Great Chain barrier.

“Parley raft,” said Hunnar with satisfaction. “The Landgrave and members of the Council should be preparing to receive it. Let’s go.”

They followed him down the winding stairs into the castle proper.

“This will be something to tell one’s grandcubs,” he said back over a shoulder.

They were not part of the official greeting committee. Also, it had been decided that it would be better if the Horde did not have a look at the humans until it could upset them the most. Let them think then, as some of the Sofoldians still did, that the aliens were gods or daemons, not just skinny tran with severe haircuts.

The musicians’ balcony was deserted and gave them an excellent view of the Great Hall. Down below, the Landgrave waited on his throne. This time he was dressed not in comfortable silks but in bronze and leather armor, steel helmet and breastplate. He was an impressive sight, but Ethan had to concede that Balavere or Hunnar or even Brownoak would have carried the royal armor with a good deal more effect.

Elfa, he noticed, was resplendent in armor of her own. No decolletage this time.

Grouped around the throne were the members of the Council, town representatives, and the more senior knights and their squires. Sunlight gave the assembled helmets and pikes and axes the aspect of the inside of a jewel. Migrating circlets of light were cast onto the bare stone walls and vaulted ceiling as they turned and shifted. They were an impressive group.

Curious, Ethan gave the huge, curving white column that formed the back of the Landgrave’s throne another look. Rather puny, after all.

His eyes dropped and roved over the crowd as they waited.

The du Kanes, of course, weren’t present. Nor did they intend to participate in any actual combat. Hellespont begged off on his age, and Colette because it wasn’t ladylike. He wished she could have a good look at Elfa Kurdagh-Vlata. But September had managed to convince them to don armor, at least.

Walther was safely locked away in his gilded cubicle, where he couldn’t do anything foolish to himself or anyone else. And Williams was off with Eer-Meesach somewhere, seeing to some kind of mysterious alchemy of their own. Having seen the crossbow in action, Ethan awaited their next revelation with anticipation and not a little leeriness.

There was a commotion at the entrance to the Hall. All eyes turned in that direction. At the same time, it occurred to Ethan what had been bothering him about the assembly. He turned to Hunnar.

“Shouldn’t the prefect of Wannome be present for this?”

The knight spoke without turning. “The prefect has expressed his manifest displeasure at the entire proceeding. He has confined himself to his manor until an unspecified time. I, for one, don’t miss him.”

Something was nagging still. It was shoved aside by a rhythmic booming of drums from outside the Hall. A herald’s voice rang out.

“Here approach those representing Sagyanak the Death, Scourge of Vragan …”

“… All-powerful Destroyer of Ra-Yilogas,” finished a powerful voice. It rolled and rumbled off the walls. “And Ruler of the World!”

A group of three tran came into view, striding down the central carpet. The leader of the triumvirate was the biggest native Ethan had yet seen, a towering figure resplendent in flame-colored cloak and coat. Under his left arm, snug into the dan, he held a helmet in the shape of the gutorrbyn, the flying dragon. His armor was nearly as red as the cloak itself, a burnished bronze crossed by polished vol-leather strappings and gold-silver buckles. A long, broad sword was fastened securely to his left leg. As he swung his arms Ethan could see that designs in gold dust had been glued to his tough wing-membranes.

His stride was long and hurried, as though he came on distasteful business best concluded quickly. Impatient to get on with the looting, no doubt, and upset at the delay.

His two companions trailed slightly behind, one to either side. They were nearly as brilliantly clad, one in blues, the other in yellow and black. Neither had the physical presence of their superior, however.

Ethan leaned over and whispered to Hunnar.

“Is that Sagyanak?”

Hunnar gave him an odd look. “Of course not, Sir Ethan. What a strange question!”

“Why …?” he began, but September shushed him. The lead nomad was speaking.

“I am Olox, right hand and first servant of the Destroyer. It has been far too long since we last visited our gracious friends in Wannome. Far too long. And when we finally rectify this unfortunate oversight, are we greeted properly?” He expressed outrage and bafflement; his companions wore woeful expressions.

“No!” He looked up at the Landgrave. “We are not. What do we find instead? Armed men on the walls! Many armed men. Nets and chain bar our free entrance, passage to an open harbor.

“The Destroyer chooses to graciously assume, though, that this is done in error, perhaps through our own fault at not identifying ourselves sufficiently. Or perhaps,” and here his tone changed to one of brutal coldness, “our friends in Wannome are subject to a peculiar forgetfulness. The Scourge has helpful ways aplenty to jog a loose memory here, a slipped remembrance there.”

“Yet surely ’tis all a mistake, ’tis all unintentional!” he said cheerfully. “And now that we are truly made known to you, the Death expects prompt payment of the standard tribute … with mayhap a few thousand additional foss by way of compensating for embarrassment and upset nerves at your unkind greeting.”

The Landgrave leaned forward into the silence that followed and shook an old fist at the three.

“Now listen well to me, butcher Olox. Yes, we know you. Those armed men on the wall who upset your nerves will do more, if you wish. Chain and net return as soon as your putrid self has taken leave of us. Then I can order this Hall cleaned thoroughly to remove the stench that will linger. Go back and tell your bug-master that the people of Sofold and the city of Wannome pay tribute no longer, lest you seek to collect a fortune in the edges of axe-blades and the points of spears!”

The one called Olox had stiffened at the first word. Ethan felt he could count every hair on the ambassador’s head. But, surprisingly, he said nothing and waited until the Landgrave had concluded his speech.

“I have considered,” said Olox slowly when the Landgrave had leaned back, “and answer that I relish your every word, every syllable.”

“I am glad,” grinned Kurdagh-Vlata. “Would you like to hear them again?”

“Twill not be necessary,” replied Olox the Butcher, “for each and every word has been forever set down in my mind. They will be repeated to the Death with every inflection, all timing, intact and exact.”

“Good,” said the Landgrave. “Should you require any aid, do but send for it. I shall forward any lapses of memory in writing, with whatever suitable embellishments my courtiers can concoct.”

“Then, Torsk Kurdagh-Vlata, Landgrave of Sofold, ruler of Wannome, I end thusly: put firm paw to sword and have an eye to your womenfolk, for when I next see you I will not find you so talkative, I think.”

Cloak flying, the nomad general turned and strode from the Hall. His two servitors were hard pressed to match his stride without breaking into a run.

No one moved. Then, from the far side of the silent hall, General Balavere’s voice shook them all.

“Well, will you sit there contemplating your fat bellies til doomsday? Get to your posts! See to your men!”

The hall dissolved in a flurry of sudden activity and excited conversation.

“Not quite as anticlimactic as I expected,” Ethan commented. “Was it, Hunnar? Hunnar?” He and September turned together, but the knight had already slipped quietly away.

The big man rubbed his face. “Gone to his own post, I suspect. Probably wanted to use the ice-paths to move fast, take up position. He’s in charge of the southeast third of the harbor wall, from the gate-tower to the castle. Didn’t want to wait for us. We’d slow him to a walk and there are more important things on his mind now than courtesy.”

Ethan turned, almost tripping over the sword strapped to his right leg. “I guess we should join him.”

“Might as well.”

The two humans passed small squads of troops running through the hallways or chivaning at seemingly reckless speeds down the stairway ice-paths. Most of the soldiers and militia were already on the wall.

As they left the inner keep and walked along the outer battlements of the great castle, they could peer down into the courtyards. Gradually these filled with clumps of well-dressed civilians and many women and cubs.

These were the wealthier country folk, evacuated from their impossible-to-defend homes about the island. They would spend the coming troubles in the relative comfort and safety of the castle itself. The great majority of country refugees would have to make do with the facilities available in the town.

Those would be badly overcrowded, but while food and heat held out there would be no problem. And according to Hunnar, Wannome had little to fear in those respects. Everyone would be uncomfortable, but they’d manage.

They passed through another long, dark hallway, rounded a bend, and nearly collided with a troop of archers who were moving to higher positions within the castle. Another turn and they were out in the brilliant sunlight and familiar, constant wind.

They jogged easily along the broad top of the wall that sheltered the harbor, protected the city. There seemed to be an archer or pikeman at every slot in the stone. At regular intervals there was a war-tower, through which they ran. Puffing cold clouds, Ethan could see one and sometimes two crossbowmen perched atop each tower. They seemed woefully few.

They were approaching the great gate now. The Great Chain was in place, enmeshed in a spider’s nightmare of antipersonnel netting. Hunnar should be commanding this section.

Halfway down the wall September had grunted with satisfaction and tapped Ethan on the shoulder.

“Have a look, lad, to our left.”

Ethan peered over the wall and saw nothing for a moment but the harbor itself. Then he spotted what the big man was referring to.

Halfway off the ice on the far side of the harbor lay the crumpled hulk of their lifeboat.

“How … ?” began Ethan.

September smiled. “Balavere said he’d see to it. Told him it would be a sensible precaution if they expected to hold on to it, so he ordered out a dozen merchant rafts to drag it in. They must have had a helluva time getting it free. Once it was moving I expect it slid along okay. Thank the No-Spaces for this ice! If they’d had to pull it over any kind of rough country they couldn’t have moved it half a kilometer.”

“I wonder,” mused Ethan as he dodged a long pole designed for pushing off scaling ladders, “if Sagyanak even knows about it.”

“Well, it wouldn’t startle me,” September replied. “You’d think the Sofoldians would have tried to camouflage it from the eyes of that envoy. I suppose they figure it doesn’t matter in the long run.”

“You think Olox saw it, then?”

“Don’t let appearances fool you, lad. That character might have been constructed like a senile grizzly, but he had weasel eyes. I watched him close. While the Landgrave was feeding him insults he was taking in the armor and attitude of every knight and noble in that hall. Probably had time to count the percentage of metal weapons, too. That’s one advantage the Sofoldians do have, a decent supply of bronze and iron weapons. If we get through this …” He paused. “I hear you had a look-see through their foundry.”

Ethan nodded. He was getting winded from the long run. September didn’t seem fazed. The younger man felt an unreasoning discomfort at this and tried to seem fresher.

“Then you know they’ve got plenty of heat available. A lot more than I guessed. Good access to volcanic chimneys, and those windmills, too. I think I might be able to rig an electrodyne forge, by Contusion! Scrap a few parts from the boat … Yes, if we survive this we might leave the Sofoldians a way to work that duralloy after all. Ah, there he is.”

They slowed to a walk. Hunnar was resting at a pikeman’s slot, staring out across the ice. They carefully crossed the ice-path that ran down the center of the wall-top. He turned at their approach.

“Well my friends, before very long we shall discover things.”

“Don’t look so moody. What are they about?” September asked.

Hunnar turned away. “Have a look for yourselves.” He moved over and the two humans were treated to an uninterrupted view of the icefield.

Between the barbarian rafts little white could be seen. The ice was covered with shifting, sparkling, multi-colored furry bodies. Swords, shields, bucklers, and helmets flashed like night sky in the heavy sunlight. The Horde was leaving the rafts.

“There’s a slight crosswind up from the south,” Hunnar informed them, glancing at the sky. “I expect the main body will come from that direction. They’ll slant due west and then up at us. The brunt of the attack will fall on this line.”

Sure enough, clumps of nomad troops began to detach themselves from the main mass and tacking against the wind to gain distance to the west.

Ethan saw that they stood nearly at the end of the wall. The Great Gate Tower was to their immediate left, another battle tower to their right. He looked back the way they’d come. All along the wall, curving back to the castle like a gray snake, there was motion. Knights strove to adjust their men in accordance with the enemy’s movements, made last minute changes, hopeful preparations.

“Will they attack only this section of wall?” asked Ethan a little apprehensively.

“That would be foolish. As they outnumber us by so many, they will assault the entire length of the harbor in strength, hoping to find a point we have vacated or weakened. Otherwise we could concentrate our strength here alone and have a better chance of beating them off. But they can spread themselves thin and still outmatch us four and five to one at every kijat. Tis merely that from this side they will have slightly better wind, therefore better speed and maneuverability … Also, we must keep troops to guard the mountain passes. They may try a thrust there, though I doubt it. Still, some of our strength must stay there, though Sagyanak has no reason to resort to subtlety. They will come to us with great confidence.”

He paused and looked at September. “Friend Skua, you have no weapon.”

“Why bless my soul, so I don’t! Forgot the damn sword.” He turned and hurried to the battle tower on their right.

“I see you carry a sword, friend Ethan. Can you use it?”

“I guess I’m going to learn in a hurry. I’d feel a lot better with a nice new wide-aperture laser.”

“I should feel better if you had one of your magical weapons, too,” the knight replied, managing a slight grin. He stared out across the ice. The raft-head was growing huge horns to south- and northwest. Half to himself, he muttered, “There will be archery fire to cover, despite the wind. Will they try to move in close and shoot linear, or stay above us and fire downwind? Distance or accuracy?” He shook his helmeted, red-maned head uncertainly.

September reappeared, carrying the biggest battle-ax Ethan had ever seen. Of course, he didn’t have a working knowledge of such devices, but it looked godawful big to him. It was double-bladed and made of black iron. September swung it back and forth and over his head and behind his shoulders, mimicking an action of a long-vanished terran sport.

A number of the men-at-arms gave a cheer when they saw the ease with which their alien ally handled the monstrous cleaver.

“You throw that axe around like a cub’s toy, friend September,” said Hunnar admiringly.

“Well,” said September, taking a friendly swipe with it at Ethan and nearly giving the salesman heart failure, “I’m not much on thrusting, but I appreciate finesse. So I tried to select something suitable to my delicate sensibilities.”

Hunnar stared at him uncomprehendingly for a moment, then let out a jerking trannish laugh.

“I see. You joke. You will tell it in more direct fashion to our verminous friends when they come over the wall.”

“I’ll be as entertaining as possible,” September promised. He took a deep breath. “When are they going to get on about it? Or do we wait until after lunch?”

The answer came several minutes later in the form of a low basso rumbling from across the ice. It sounded like distant thunder. Ethan thought he could detect an odd swirl of motion near the big raft, but it was too far off to make out details.

A weird sound was that deep drone. It reached right down inside a man and caressed the bones.

“The Margyudan,” explained Hunnar quietly. “That means no quarter and no prisoners. Well, we expected no less.”

Hunnar’s men stood frozen at their stations along the wall. Ethan could understand their feelings. Death made its own music.

Surprisingly, it was September and not the memory-stuffed Ethan who was able to identify the sound.

“I’ve heard something like this on Terra and a few other worlds,” he said, “only on a much smaller scale. On Terra they call it a bull-roarer. The natives of the northern continent on G’Dim call it a Rane. But this version must be much, much bigger to carry this far against the wind. Come to think of it, the device itself might be wind-powered.”

Abruptly, the sound ceased. Ethan could hear himself breathing. Only the wind moved. Only the wind talked. Ethan drew his sword, the rasp of metal against scabbard gratingly loud.

The peace was split asunder by a monstrous howling from all sides. Ethan had never heard the like before. It came from everywhere, had no one source. And the enemy was barely in sight, since they were moving far west to gain wind.

“Working themselves up good and proper, what?” September whispered. “I expect when they’ve huffed and puffed themselves into a really fine old-fashioned frenzy, they’ll come at us.”

The howling and moaning continued for ten minutes, and seemed more like an hour. Then there was a single great simultaneous bellow that shook the stones of the wall. A living gray blanket, the limitless mass began to move toward them. They came in a wide, easy curve up from the southwest, slanting up into the wind.

Soon he could pick out individual figures within the Horde. No two sets of armor looked the same, contrasting with the formal uniforms of the Sofoldian soldiery. The more garish the better, it seemed. Many of those in the forefront carried scaling ladders. Others held long knotted ropes with bone or metal grapnels on the end.

“Down!” roared Hunnar unexpectedly. Along the wall the defenders hugged themselves to the stone, trying to bury themselves in their armor. A hail of arrows, like the flight of a billion bees, came sailing over to clatter against the stones. There were a few screams from somewhere down the wall.

One arrow came whizzing through the slot a few centimeters in front of Ethan’s scrunched-up face. It shot across the stone to hit the far side of the parapet, ricocheted back to die against the heel of his boot and lie peacefully next to the leather. The bone tip was shattered.

Another angry swarm hummed overhead. It occurred to him that despite four years of university, another year of advanced sales training, and on-the-job experience, he was utterly helpless in the face of a bunch of hysterical primitives.

There was very little time for thought. Hunnar yelled, “Up now!” and Ethan stood, turned.

He was confronted almost immediately by a snarling face framed in metal and leather and a pair of slitted yellow eyes that stared hypnotically into his own. He stood frozen in shock, unable to move, the sword dangling limply from one hand. The nomad raised a heavy mace in seeming slow motion over his head while Ethan watched, unmoving.

A long pike thrust out of nowhere and skewered the other through the chest. It gurgled, coughing blood, and dropped from view. That broke the ennui that had coated Ethan. Another minute and he was swinging his own sword rhythmically, jabbing and slashing and cutting at anything that showed itself above the clean gray stone. He never did have a chance to thank the pikeman who’d saved his life.

The yelling and shrieking, crying and bellowing drowned any coherent speech. In one harried moment he got a glimpse of September. Roaring like a pride-leader, the white-haired old giant was swinging the monstrous ax in great arcs, lopping off hands, arms, and heads like a thresher taking up wheat.

Hunnar seemed to be everywhere, dropping alongside for a quick thrust with his own sword, stepping back and running down the wall to rearrange a line of spearmen, offering encouragement to the fighting and solace to the wounded, always appearing where the fighting was heaviest, red beard bobbing in and out of the morass of blood and fur, receiving information from down the wall and offering some of his own.

All along the harbor wall lights were blinking demandingly as both Sofoldian and nomad flashers threw silent tirades of anger and agony at each other. Carnage was reported by peaceful sunlight.

Ethan thrust forward again, felt something hard and cold along his right side. September saw him falter and was at his side in a minute. He caught Ethan as the younger man staggered, dazed.

“Where you hit, young feller?” he asked anxiously. He had to shout to make himself understood over the noise.

“I … I don’t know.” Really, he didn’t. He’d felt something strike, but he wasn’t weak or faint. He looked down at himself, felt his body. Nothing. September had him turn slowly and examined his back. Ethan heard, “Bless my soul!” for the second time that day.

“Don’t keep me in suspense,” said Ethan tightly. “What is it?”

He felt a tugging at his back. September grunted once. Then he was grinning and showing Ethan a long barbarian arrow. ‘This was sticking out the back of your tunic, three-quarters through. Must have gone right down your sleeve. Sonuvabitch.”

Ethan wanted to say something appropriately clever, but didn’t get the chance. In the next minute it seemed that a solid wall of screeching, howling nomads were swarming over the top of the wall. In places some of the enemy had actually attained the top and were fighting inside. But reinforcements, using the ice-paths to move quickly along the wall, chivaned up and down to repair such cracks in the line.

Then, abruptly, the screams and bellows of defiance turned to howls of frustration. The great mass of enemy troops was moving backwards and down, retreating across the ice. Yells of derision accompanied them, along with arrows and crossbow bolts.

September walked over to Ethan, pulled his helmet off, and slung it across the wall. It bounced off the stone with a metallic clunk. His face was red and running with sweat. A tiny trickle of blood ran down one cheek, dribbled lazily off his chin. The huge ax was stained crimson.

“You’re bleeding,” said Ethan.

“Eh?” September paused, put a hand to his face, brought it away. “So I am. Well, just a scratch, it is. Right now, young feller-me-lad, I’m too tired to care.” He let out a long, exhausted breath.

“I had a dozen brand-new pocket medikits in my baggage,” began Ethan, but September waved him off and frowned.

“I’ve had enough of listening to you talk about the marvelous trade goods we haven’t got, young feller.”

“Sorry,” said Ethan contritely.

“Getting too old for this sort of thing … what?” the big man mumbled.

All down the wall and across the harbor, the Sofoldian soldiers and militia were singing and celebrating their victory with a fervor that matched their fighting intensity. As word spread, a similar tintinnabulation arose from the town itself, as the townsfolk and their country visitors slowly received the news.

Hunnar joined them. The knight’s eyes were glowing and his once-immaculate uniform was stained with dark splotches. “By the Running Plague of Deimhorst, we beat them! We beat them!”

“They’ll be back, y’know,” wheezed September.

Hunnar glanced down at him. “Yes, I know. But consider for a moment what has happened here. Ah no, you cannot. You cannot feel the same. For hundreds of years no one has dared to challenge the might of the Horde or any of their bloodsucking ilk. Whatever happens now, even should Wannome be razed to the ice, the word will be spread. Whether from us or from a garrulous drunkard among the enemy. It will be known that the barbarians can be beaten!”

“It wasn’t exactly an overwhelming victory, you know,” added September drily. “That last charge almost rolled us over.”

Hunnar took a long, slow breath of his own. “I know, friend September. It was a near thing.” He looked around, walked over to the body of one of the enemy. “If it had not been for this, I fear we would indeed have broken. Look.”

He stuck a foot under the corpse and shoved. It rolled over onto its back. Ethan could see the stubby hilt of one of Willams’ crossbow bolts protruding from the soldier’s chest. It had gone right through the thin layer of bronze and the double leather backing.

“Twas not so much the greater range of your wizard’s weapon, though that was important, but the fact that it carries so much striking power. Even, yea, into the wind!”

“You’ve lost that surprise now, though,” September commented pointedly. “Next time they’ll know what to expect.”

“All the anticipation in the world will not slow one of these,” the knight observed. He prodded the hilt of the bolt. A little blood oozed out as he moved it around in the dead tran’s chest.

“And Mulvakken and his craftsmen are turning out new bows and many dozens of bolts constantly. Though we still have four trained men for every crossbow that is finished. That is our greatest weakness.”

“Will they attack again today?” asked Ethan curiously.

Hunnar glanced at the sun, then looked down at him. “No, friend Ethan, I think not. The Horde,” he explained with relish, “are not used to retreating. It will take their leaders some time to absorb what has happened to them. Tis completely foreign to their experience. For the first time they will have to ponder a real strategy. I cannot guess what that may be, except that it will not be another open frontal attack!” He smiled ferociously. “The ice is sick with their bodies.”

“Well, I’m glad to hear we can rest awhile,” said Ethan, “because I am completely and totally finished. Out of it. Tired.” His right hand was resting in a pool of ice water. He raised it and patted a little gently under his eyes, wiped it free with the back of a gloved hand before it could … wait a minute. Ice water? At this temperature?

He looked down. His hand had been resting in a large pool of rich red blood, which was just now beginning to congeal and thicken in the sub-freezing air. His survival glove and jacket sleeve had been soaked to a point halfway up his forearm. It looked like a scrap from a slaughterhouse.

“Darn! Now I’ll have to find a fire and melt this out.” Then he fell over in a dead faint.

IX

THE FOLLOWING MORNING DAWNED clear and lovely—and windy. It was so beautiful that it was almost impossible to imagine the horror of the previous day. It was not necessary to call on the mind, however. All one had to do was glance over the harbor wall. The ice was littered for hundreds of meters in all directions with tiny clumps of fur and wide frozen ponds of dark red.

Warriors on this world, he reflected, were spared at least one of the great horrors of war. Since every engagement took place in a perpetual deep-freeze, there would be no lingering stink of moldering corpses.

“How do you feel, young feller?” asked September. “You keeled over so quick-like yesterday you had me worried a second.”

“I’m sorry about that,” Ethan replied.

“No need to apologize …” began September, but Ethan halted him.

“No, I’ve seen men killed before. And these aren’t even humans or thranx. I thought I’d seen quite a bit, but this …” He indicated the ghastly litter on the ice before them.

September put a great hand on his shoulder. “In the universe, my young friend, it’s always the familiar sights that shock the most. We’re always expecting the unfamiliar.”

Hunnar joined them, but his eyes were on the ice. Come to think of it, so were those of most of the men-at-arms stationed along the wall.

“What will they try today?” asked Ethan, aware that he was missing something.

“Don’t you hear it?” the knight replied.

“Hear what?”

“It has been sounding for several minutes now. Listen.”

Ethan waited, straining to hear something from across the ice. As usual, there was only the eternal infernal wind. Then there seemed to be something more.

“I hear it,” growled September. “Sounds like singing.”

“Yes,” Hunnar agreed. “Singing … Ah.” He pointed. “There.”

Far out across the solid sea, a strange object of truly monstrous proportions was moving toward them. Four long lines of nomad warriors were harnessed to four thick cables of woven pika-pina. Ethan could make out individual words now. The singing was accompanied by a deep-throated thrumming from smaller versions of the great Margyudan.

“Hayeh, chuff … hayeh, chuff!” intoned the straining barbarians. “Haryen abet hayeh chuff … hoo, hoo, chuff! …”

They swayed in rhythm to the song, pulling first to the left, then the right, left, then right. After they’d moved another dozen meters closer, the design of the engine they were dragging became clear even to Ethan’s untrained eye.

Hunnar said quietly, “That’s the biggest moydra … catapult … I’ve ever seen.”

Both singing and machine halted a few minutes later. The long lines of warriors rolled up their green cables. A crew of busy nomads began working about the base of the great war engine.

“Throwing out ice anchors,” said September, staring into the distance, “and blocking down the skates. I don’t wonder. The recoil on that thing must be terrific.”

The singing resumed, on a much smaller scale this time. Ethan could see the huge Cyclopean arm gradually sinking toward its base. It was hard to get a true sense of scale at this distance, but the crossbeam of the catapult was many times the height of a man.

There seemed to be a lapse in the activity. “What are they doing now?” he asked anxiously.

Hunnar yelled, “Get down!”

The cry was echoed by dozens of other voices along the wall. Ethan dropped as he had yesterday. Nothing happened. He raised his head slightly. There was a loud whistle in the sky and it wasn’t arrows, and it wasn’t the wind. Something went crunch in the distance, behind them.

Without waiting for an “all clear” he was on his feet, across the ice-path, and looking into the harbor. He almost stumbled on the ice.

Across the harbor, near the second tower down from the harbor gate, a section of wall at least five meters wide and three deep had been knocked from the back section of stone as though by the bite of a giant shovel.

Several twisted tran-shapes sprawled on the ice among the broken stone. From both walls troops were converging on the spot. A few started to scramble down the open break onto the ice.

There was a line in the harbor ice formed by three successive gouges, each about twenty meters apart. They lay in line from the broken section of wall. Twenty meters beyond the last gouge lay an enormous chunk of solid basalt. It sat placid and innocent in a slight depression of its own making.

Hunnar uttered something vicious that Ethan couldn’t translate and started running toward the castle. From several towers, Sofoldian catapults began to twang in response. Their smaller stones fell far short of the huge barbarian war engine.

A broad crescent of nomads had assembled next to the catapult. When it became clear that their own machine was impregnable they set up a great cheering and screaming that didn’t stop until the next stone was released.

This one landed short of the wall, took one bounce, and slammed into the masonry not ten meters down from where Ethan was standing. The concussion threw everyone stationed on that section off his feet.

Immediately, Ethan was standing and leaning over the side to inspect the damage.

A respectable portion of rock had been smashed free. Now it lay scattered on the ice like so many pebbles, the boulder a colossus among them.

“It’s a damn good thing it takes them so long to wind that thing up,” said September. “Just the same, Hunnar’s going to have to do something about that toy—and fast. Otherwise, near as I can figure, Sagyanak can sit out there and enjoy the party while that one piece of oversized artillery slowly turns these walls into gravel.”

The flickering candles illuminated the map spread before them, but did nothing to lighten their spirits. Balavere, Hunnar, Ethan, and September sat at the table. They were joined by the Landgrave and several other of Sofold’s most important nobles, the latter forming Balavere’s general staff.

One of the nobles was using a long stick of polished wood to indicate crosses and circles on the map, gesturing here and there at the line representing the harbor wall.

“The wall has been nearly breached—here, here, and here. Severe damage to battlements has occurred here, here, here, and here. Wherever you see a sting sign there is minor damage of varying degree. This is not to mention our personnel casualties, nor the damage to the spirit of the men. There is some talk of surrender and throwing the city on the mercy of Sagyanak. It is small as yet, but will surely grow unless something is done.”

“Better to throw oneself on the sword,” said Balavere. “But I understand their talk. Tis intolerable to sit helplessly and watch one’s comrades flattened, unable to fight back.” He shook his great maned head.

“We cannot endure more than another two or perhaps three days of this bombardment before they will have weakened us at so many points that it will become impossible for us to keep them from the harbor. Then it will be all up.”

“So we must keep them out … somehow,” responded Hunnar tightly. “We could never survive an open battle on ice with them. We killed thousands today, but they still outnumber us badly. Do any think otherwise?” he concluded half hopefully.

No one saw fit to dispute this depressing bit of truth.

Finally Balavere gave a sigh and looked up. “Tis a poor leader who does not solicit advice when he himself has naught to offer. Gentlemen?”

One of the nobles spoke up immediately.

“Surely our technology is greater than that of these barbarian primitives! Can we not build ourselves a weapon of equal, if not greater power?”

“In a few malvet, most surely we could, Kellivar, replied Balavere. “But we need one in two days.”

“Could we not,” proposed one of the older nobles, “establish several of our own smaller moydra within range of their own? From there we could throw animal skins of burning oil onto it.”

“Have you seen how they surround it?” said Hunnar tiredly. “We could not disguise such a plan from them. We could never muster a protective force of sufficient strength to stave off an attack on such an advanced position.”

“Even if it were protected,” the noble added, “by all our new crossbowmen, who would have only a single small bit of ice to defend?”

“Well …” hesitated Hunnar. He looked questioningly at Balavere.

“The idea has merit, Tinyak,” the general replied. “Yet, should we fail to fire the barbarians’ engine quickly, even the crossbows would not be enough to prevent an encirclement. I cannot take the risk of losing them in such an enterprise. They were the difference on the walls yesterday.”

“By the Krokim’s tail, is it not understood that in a few days there will be no walls!” shouted one of the nobles.

“The way I see it,” said September calmly, “is pretty simple, if I might have leave to say a few words, noble sirs?”

“You proved yourself the equal or better of any at this table,” said the Landgrave, speaking for the first time. “We will give close attention to whatever you counsel.”

“All right then.” September leaned back in his chair, propped one foot on the table and began rocking back and forth. “Near as I can tell, there’s only one thing to do. That’s put on your warm woolies, friends, sneak out the dog-door, and set fire to that gimcrack by hand, yourselves, tonight.”

“Fighting at night is unmanly,” said one of the nobles disdainfully.

“So’s getting terminated by a fat slab of street paving,” September countered.

“Tis not worthy of a gentleman!” the other grumbled, less certainly this time. “At night.”

Ethan glanced around the table, saw the same indecision mirrored in the faces of others.

“Look,” said September, taking his foot off the table and leaning forward intently. “I’ve been amply supplied with the details of what this Sagyanak is going to do if and when the Horde gets in among your women and kids. You won’t have to worry about the fact that such atrocities will be conducted in an unmanly and ungentlemanly fashion, because none of you will be around to condemn it. That’s if you’re lucky … Now, you can try this long shot with me, because I intend to try it whether any of you come along or not. Or you can get around this question of etiquette by sending along some of your wives or mistresses in your place. I don’t think moral considerations will trouble them.”

“Everything we hold dear and true is at stake,” interrupted the Landgrave suddenly, “and there are still some among you who would sit at leisure and debate fine points of obscure protocol … Damn and hell!” He stood up, old and shaky all of a sudden. “Sir September and Sir Hunnar will take charge of an expedition to move against the enemy this very night. However, I will force no one to take part in this who would feel his honor forever impugned. Should the expedition be successful,” and here he looked hard at Hunnar, “and it must be successful … there will be no question as to the honor of those who went …

“General Balavere,” he continued, looking over at that stocky individual, “you will see to all necessary details. I must retire.”

They all stood. Staff in hand, the Landgrave walked off into the dark, trailing a pair of bodyguards. The others sat down, muttering. Gradually they all came to look expectantly across at the alien being who sat as equal in their council.

“How many?” inquired Hunnar firmly. “How many will you need, Sir Skua? Tis certainly a bold undertaking for only the finest of knights.”

“I think no more than twenty,” replied September thoughtfully. “Ten to pull the oil raft and ten to act as escort. Also, see that everyone is outfitted in armor and outer dress taken from captured material. At night, even a superficial disguise can make all the difference. As for myself, well, we’ll have to figure out something else.”

“And for me,” added Ethan with finality.

“Get me a helmet with a low front,” the big man concluded. He turned to Ethan as the table dissolved in a buzz of conversation.

“Listen, young feller-me-lad. There’s no need for you to take part in this. It’s going to be the middle of the night out there. The temperature will be down in the Pit’s own level and cold enough to sear the skin off your face if your heater breaks down. If someone got blown away on a night like that we’d never find him again.”

Ethan considered. The last night-expedition he’d been on had been in the company of a delightful young lady on the colony world of Gestalt. She’d spent a balmy moonlit night introducing him to certain exquisite variants on Church theologies. Her conversion of him was short, but ecstatic.

Now there was the bare clean surface of a different sort of world. A man would freeze to death in seconds without special defenses. The cold bit into your teeth like an old dentist’s probe.

“I’m going.”

“On your own head be it, young feller.”

“I’m going, too,” came a voice from the back of the hall. Everyone turned quietly. Ethan stood to see over the wide shoulders of one of the nobles.

Darmuka Brownoak, prefect of Wannome, walked slowly toward them, patiently buckling on his silver-inlaid armor.

At night the open icefield seemed more than ever like a white desert. They’d gone over the mountain pass and arrived at a deserted little icefront town on the south side of Sofold. Hopefully, no enemy sentry had seen them depart from the single tiny pier.

Ethan lay on his stomach, the odd-shaped armor digging uncomfortably into his ribs, and dug his gloved fingers into the rough wood of the sled. The splendid barbarian helmet jounced awkwardly on his head, held there by facemask and straps. Goggles protected his eyeballs from freezing.

Ten Sofoldian soldiers pulled the sled, set in waist harness five on either side. The wind was almost directly behind them and they’d shot off at a speed that literally pulled the breath from Ethan’s lungs. Even the wind seemed stronger than usual tonight. At least the flared helmet gave him some protection. Now if it would only stop chafing.

Laboriously he turned his head, the fur-lined metal scraping against the wood, and managed a glimpse of the lights shining within the magical castle of Wannome. It rode the sheer south cliff of the island like a dream.

But they were running for other lights, a thousand times as many lights, scattered among the barbarians’ unending expanse of camp. It made an endless gleaming parade to south and east.

“Now remember, lad,” September had explained to him, “if anyone speaks to you, play like you’re deaf and dumb. Let Hunnar and his two knights do all the talking.” Ethan had barely managed a half-frozen nod.

If they were intercepted, their story was to be that they’d been one of the small patrols which had been raiding the deserted towns and villages in hope of uncovering some forgotten cache of foodstuffs, utensils, or anything else worth carrying off. They’d broken into an underground warehouse half full of supplies—barrels of vol oil, for example—and had spent too much time guzzling the small stock of good liquor they’d found. Before they knew it, the ice-that-ate-the-sun had performed its ugly act. Now they were trying to sneak back to camp before captain-killer Slattunved could discover their absence.

As the official surveyor of shifty stories, Ethan had picked over the plot and pronounced it at least plausible. He knew a decent sales pitch when he heard one.

Still, one wrong gesture, one word out of place, and they’d go down under ten thousand aroused nomads.

“There, I think I can see it, young feller.”

Ethan looked up, squinted through his goggles. Sure enough, a black silhouette loomed against the speckled sky. There was no mistaking the outline of the great catapult. All of a sudden, then, they began to slow.

One of the unharnessed knights dropped his right wing a little, skated close to the sled.

“Careful now. A patrol comes.”

Below the howl of the wind—at least 60 kph, he thought, shivering—he could make out Hunnar and the other knights scraping ice as they strove to brake to a halt. He lowered the helmet over his facemask, pulled his arms tight up against his sides, and tucked his hands under his chest, flattening himself to the cold wood.

Up ahead he could hear Hunnar speaking in gruff tones to someone unseen, explaining the provisioning party’s strange luck in turning up a great supply of oil for the Scourge’s tent, but no food to speak of.

Then he heard one of the barbarians ask, in a strange dialect, “What about those two?”

He could imagine the feet coming closer, a hand lifting off the helmet. Then a cry of shocked surprise at the sight of his alien face … and surely their presence was known to the enemy after yesterday’s battle on the wall. A sudden swift descent of the sharp blade, cries, spurting blood …

“Oh, them?” countered Hunnar smoothly. “Well, the dwarf there is so ashamed of his small size that he tried to down twice the reedle of any of us. Even dipping him in fresh melt had no effect. The other one had just enough to make him think he was a gutorrbyn. He tried to fly off the roof of some dirtgrubber’s barn. He flew all right—straight down.”

There was a tense pause. Then the patrol leader let loose a hoarse series of jerking laughs.

Eventually he managed to contain himself. “Tis best you get them back to camp, then,” he finally snorted, “before your captain does find them, or he’ll skin them alive. If Death-Treader should breach the walls of the Insane Ones, we will attack tomorrow.”

“Truly,” replied Hunnar, “they would be forever sorrowful should they miss the Sack.”

There was another short exchange of pleasantries, too low for Ethan to hear. Then they were moving forward once more, though much slower this time. He raised his head just slightly, saw that they were alone on the ice again. The patrol had evidently continued on its way westward, tacking into the wind.

“Everything linear?” whispered September so sharply that Ethan nearly lost his grip on the sled. He’d completely forgotten about his big companion. September had lain like a dead man throughout the entire exchange.

“You wouldn’t think to have any trouble talking,” he replied, “but my stomach’s halfway up into my throat.” September chuckled. “For a minute there, when he asked about ‘those two,’ I saw myself spread across the ice like bread-dough.”

“You’re lucky,” replied September, “I was so busy organizing things before we pushed off that I forgot to go to the john.”

The meeting with the patrol must have been an omen, for they didn’t encounter another soul the rest of the way. An attack by night was apparently as unthinkable to the nomads as it had been to the cultured coterie of knights back in the castle.

All but one of the guards at the great siege-engine were enjoying a deep sleep in the several tents at its base. These were pegged into the ice and benefited from the windbreak the catapult provided.

The one duty guard observed their approach and chivaned over, completely unsuspecting. He was probably curious as to what a group of his fellows were doing out on the ice so late at night with a raft full of barrels and two unmoving bodies.

Hunnar met him. He offered him the same explanation he’d given the patrol leader, explaining their partly successful raid. Then he presented the other with a “stolen” sweet-stick. The guard accepted it with thanks.

“Death-Treader did well today,” Hunnar said conversationally. “Would that I had been closer, to better see the fear on the faces of those stupid towndwellers.” The last word Hunnar uttered in the contemptuous tone the barbarians held for anyone fool enough to live in one place instead of moving free with the wind.

“The crew had some difficulty ranging him today,” admitted the guard, “but all will be perfected for tomorrow. We will surely breach the walls, perhaps in several places. Some say it will not even be necessary to attack. With their walls down, the fools may finally realize their impossible position and surrender. That will be even better.” He grinned horribly. “There will be more prisoners to play with.”

“True,” Hunnar agreed. “But I hear the strain on Death-Treader was great today.” He pointed upward. “Is that not a crack in the bindings I see? There, on the Arm. After not having worked for so long, it may have rotted.”

The guard turned to look. “I see no crack. But wait, Death-Treader was used only four kuvits ago, in practice for the usual care.” He started to whirl, his voice rising. “Who—?”

Hunnar’s dirk went right through his throat, ripping up into the larynx. The guard choked on the blood, staggered, and sank to the ice without a cry. Hunnar wiped the blade on his leggings.

“That’s it, young feller!” said September, scrambling to his feet and slapping Ethan on the shoulder. “Let’s go!”

“If you don’t mind, I’d just as soon skip this part. I’ll stay here.”

“Oh.” September looked at him understandingly in the dark. “I know, my lad. No problem.”

Ethan and four others began unloading the raft. Hunnar, September, and the other knights and soldiers entered the tents on the far side of the catapult and silently set about the bloody job of disposing of the sleeping guards. By the time they’d finished their grisly work, Ethan and his companions were already scrambling up into the wood and fiber framework.

“Pass it up!” he yelled down, holding tight to the superstructure with both legs. The wind tore and battered at him, angrily trying to sweep him off his perch.

“Quickly now!” sounded Hunnar’s voice. They were very close to the main body of the nomad camp.

Thick, syrupy vol oil was ladled over the wood, bracings, and bindings until the oleaginous mess became dangerous to walk on. The aromatic stink seemed sufficient to wake the dead. Fortunately, the wind carried most of it away.

There was a shout in the distance. Two of the knights stopped passing oil upward and ran toward the source. They returned a few moments later.

“Two,” one of the knights told Hunnar and September. “Officers. Apparently they were just returning to their tents. I don’t know if they could tell who we were, but they must know there aren’t supposed to be people climbing on the moydra at night. They ran before we could reach them.”

A few minutes later this was confirmed by yells, queries, and concerned shouts from within the nomad encampment. The noise multiplied rapidly.

“Off, off, get off!” ordered September frantically. Slipping and sliding on the greasy wood, Ethan and the other soldiers scrambled down to the ice.

A dozen torches were readied. They’d been well soaked in oil and the wind wouldn’t quench them. They were thrust in a circle at September, who paused momentarily.

“It’s not the highest product of our technology, nor the one I’d like to have right now, but I’m glad we’ve got it.” He held out Hellespont du Kane’s expensive, filagreed, iridium-plated lighter.

One torch and then another blazed, stark shadows exploding onto the ice. The shouts behind them grew louder. One of the non-torch-bearing knights had moved toward the encampment. Now he turned to shout back at them.

“Hurry! Someone comes.”

“Scatter them well, mind,” ordered September. Twelve arms spun, released in unison. Only two of the blazing brands were blown out. With the wind behind them, the others carried well up into the superstructure.

They seemed to flicker there, tiny spots of isolated flame. For a horrible moment Ethan feared they wouldn’t catch and the whole risk had been taken for nothing. Then, almost together, they went up.

With a roar that briefly drowned the wind and the rising shouts from the camp, the great wooden frame virtually exploded into orange flame so brilliant that the little knot of watching humans and tran were forced to shield their eyes.

“Onto the sled now, young feller!” bellowed September, giving Ethan a shove and not trying to keep his voice down. The tran took up their harnesses and in a moment they were speeding northward and west in a wide curve that should bring them back to Wannome and in through the main gate. If they didn’t make the curve, Ethan reflected, they’d plow full bore into the far side of the enemy encampment.

Now it didn’t matter if every sentry in the camp was alerted. The howls and shrieks of rudely awakened nomad soldiers sounded loud in their ears as they raced before the wind, building speed. Cautiously, keeping a tight grip on the raft, Ethan turned on his side to look behind them.

A tower of flavescent orange, crackling and splitting, clawed at the black sky like a mad thing, while the wind tore away ragged shreds of its head and swept them westward.

He could make out small dark shapes silhouetted against the base of the pyre.

“Look at it burn, look at it burn!” he yelled to September almost boyishly.

“No need to shout, young feller. I’m right here.” He too was on his side, looking rearward. “Poor chaps don’t seem to know what hit ’em, what?”

Something whizzed overhead.

“Whup! I withdraw any sympathy. Seems they do.” A second arrow thunked into the base of the raft. “Damn!” the big man muttered. “Wish I’d thought to bring one crossbow.” He turned and hollered to Hunnar who was chivaning alongside.

“Leave us if you have to, Hunnar! This thing slows you.”

“Not a chance, my friend.”

September looked ahead, then back into the night. “You’ll never make it with us.”

“Tis as good a time and place to die as any,” the knight replied easily. Then, ignoring September’s curses, he let himself fall slightly behind the raft.

Ethan put his hand on his sword hilt. He peered desperately into the darkness, but couldn’t determine how many were following them. There seemed to be more than twenty, in any case.

Something struck September on the side of the head and dropped him as though poleaxed.

Ethan turned, alarmed. “Skua! Are you hurt bad?”

“Relax, young feller.” The big man propped himself up on one elbow, felt his head. “That smarts. Good thing they made these helmets tough. Goddamn arrows.” Ethan peered closer, saw the dent in the metal just above the forehead. If September had been a tran he’d have lost an ear.

Their pursuers were close enough now for Ethan to make out individuals. There was something surreal in watching them move closer and closer with painful slowness, as they made up distance lost on the clumsy sled.

A couple of other soldiers had dropped back to form a rear guard. Now they were flailing behind themselves with swords and axes, trying to run and fight at once.

One of the pursuers shoved a long pike forward, caught a Sofoldian soldier in a wing. The barbarian jerked and the soldier, pulled off balance, fell to the ice. He vanished beneath the enemy and the night as they sped on.

One of the nomads had gained the end of the raft. He grabbed hold of the wood, thrust forward with a spear. September brought his sword down—he’d left the heavy ax behind in the castle. The thick wood of the spear shaft shattered. The other cursed, swung the wood hilt first. September parried it, slashed, and opened an ugly cut on the barbarian’s arm. He dropped away from the raft, clutching at the bleeding limb.

It was growing crowded around the sled. One of the harnessed soldiers was down, a dead weight dragging them back. The others were too pressed to cut him loose. It was becoming impossible to keep speed and fight at the same time.

They were circling in toward the harbor gate now. Ethan did some quick figuring. They’d never make it. They’d be overpowered before they got close. Perhaps the du Kanes and Williams might eventually make it safely to the settlement

One nomad chivaned in from the west and fairly flew onto the raft. Ethan swung clumsily with his sword but it only glanced off the other’s armor. The broad muscular body hit September, knife at the ready, and the two grappled on the pitching, swaying sled. The other was trying to pull the big man off the raft onto the ice.

Desperately Ethan reached over. He caught September’s leg just in time to prevent that fatal roll. Out of the sweat-distorted corner of an eye he saw another of the enemy move in close to the stern of the sled, spear held ready.

He was trying to decide whether to let September go to parry the spear or hope that his armor would ward off the first thrust, when something hit the barbarian with such force that he was almost cut in half. In a microsecond the confusion surrounding them had multiplied tenfold.

September had managed to break free of his persistent assailant and had shoved him from the sled. He gave Ethan an exhausted smile.

“What’s going on?” asked Ethan bewilderedly.

“That fella was tough!” gasped the big man. “They must be sortieing from the city!”

Yes, now Ethan could recognize the armor of the Sofoldian troops as they swept and battered away the sled’s pursuers. Minutes later they dashed under the gate chain and nets and were inside the cold womb of the harbor. The wind shrank to a bearable gale. Utterly winded himself, Ethan collapsed on the sled, not caring if he fell off. He tugged off the uncomfortable barbarian helmet and slung it far out onto the ice.

He lay there as they moved slowly toward the Landgrave’s pier and the cheering nocturnal crowd. While the hysterical populace screamed and sang, he stared up at the strange stars and tried to guess which one was home.

When they finally tied up to the dock and were greeted by the Landgrave himself, not even September could explain why Ethan was crying.

“They’re not going to be throwing even dogfood with that thing for a long time,” September commented. The big man had had his cuts and bruises attended to and now, several days after their desperate sally, looked good as new.

There had been no sign of activity on the part of the nomads after their great moydra had been destroyed. It looked as though, contrary to Hunnar’s expectations, they were settling in for a siege.

It had been nearly a week now, though, and Ethan was as bored as any Sofoldian sentry after days of sitting on the wall and staring out over the ice.

He’d taken to learning sele, a local kind of chess. Elfa was serving as instructress, on strict warning from him that sele was the only thing she would try and teach him.

Surprisingly, Colette kept interrupting their sessions with requests for a walk, or correction on a point of translation—she was getting good at the language—or some other trivial excuse. Once she’d even made a couple of attempts to learn the rudiments of the game herself. Standing behind him and leaning close over his shoulder, she gave the board her undivided attention.

However, she’d refused to have a dress made of the local materials; her shipboard outfit was by now ragged and thin, and whenever she leaned over him Ethan was subjected to several distractions of a nonverbal nature. Although he’d been the distracted one, it was Elfa who had quit in disgust and stalked off in a royal huff.

Frankly, it would have been pleasant to say that he was completely unaware of what was going on. But he’d worked too many fine cities and operated among plenty of sophisticated folk. He didn’t like the way things were developing, but there wasn’t much he could do about it. And darned if he wasn’t a little flattered.

Today, however, September had had to come for him in the local library, a fascinating place despite the maddening lack of pictures in the books. But he’d gone quick and quiet when he saw the look on the other’s face. They headed for a section of the castle Ethan rarely visited.

“What’s up, Skua? And why the sour expression?”

“Hunnar once said that he couldn’t picture our nemesis sitting on their backsides for very long without coming down with a severe case of the fidgets. Well, he was right. They haven’t been sitting. In fact, it appears they’ve been working ’round the clock.”

“Small area. On what?” They turned a corner and started up a ramp. “Another catapult?”

“Uh-uh. Hunnar says it would take months for them to rebuild something like that. After having seen it, I can believe him. No, it looks like this Sagyanak has come up with another surprise, and it’s a damn good thing we found out about it when we did. Though I don’t see what we can do about it in any case.”

Ethan was badly upset by the big man’s pessimism. Throughout the battle he’d never been so dour—an island of confidence in oceanic chaos. He sounded more discouraged than Ethan had ever heard him.

“How do we know about this ‘surprise’?” he asked finally.

“Wizard’s telescope,” came the curt reply. As they turned another corner Ethan saw that they were indeed heading for the old magician-scholar’s apartment.

It hadn’t changed from the one time he’d visited it, and it still stank. It wouldn’t have been very diplomatic to point it out, but the expressions on his face should have been sufficiently eloquent.

Hunnar was waiting for them, wearing a face that matched September’s own. So was Williams.

Ethan had seen very little of the schoolmaster since the fighting had begun. They’d passed in hallways and occasionally joined for a meal. But as their familiarity with the language and people of Wannome grew, the need for the humans to stay together at all times had diminished. Ethan assumed that the teacher had been up in the foundry, helping the tran craftsmen in the vital business of turning out a steady stream of crossbows and bolts. He was a little surprised to see him here.

“It appears they are nearly finished, friend Skua,” said Hunnar in a worried tone. He looked resigned. “Have a look, Sir Ethan.”

Ethan seated himself behind the crude, baroquely decorated telescope and applied his right eye to the eyepiece.

“The little knob at the right side is the focus, lad,” offered September helpfully.

“Thanks.” Ethan twisted the knob slightly and the image snapped suddenly into sharp relief. It was still fuzzy, but that was due to the crudely ground lenses and not his own eyesight. Considering what the Wannomian lens-makers had to use for sand, the telescope was a remarkable achievement.

Far back amidst the solidly anchored barbarian fleet, a great open space had been cleared. Considerable activity was occurring around a single huge, low raft. Many big logs, like those used in the stavanzer-fighting lightnings, had been tied together with heavy crossbeams. The resultant raft was one huge, crude, open deck mounted on gigantic stone skates.

“We found out about this only this morning,” September told him.

Eer-Meesach spoke from the background. “Tis fortunate indeed that I detected the vermin, else we should have no warning at all.”

“What’s it for?” asked Ethan, without removing his eye from the scope.

“I think it’s pretty obvious, young feller,” replied September. “Look off to the left, at that big pile of rocks they’ve assembled. You might have to move the scope a bit.”

Ethan did. Yes, to the left a swarm of nomads was unloading great stones from heavily laden rafts, arranging them neatly on the ice. Sometimes two rafts were linked together to transport an especially huge rock.

“I see them,” he said.

“They’re building a helluva big raft, there,” the big man continued. “Bigger than anything Hunnar or anyone here has seen. Its size and the construction that makes such size possible render it practically unmaneuverable, but that won’t matter.” His mouth tightened, the protruding chin cut air.

“They’ll load it to the breaking point with rocks and boulders, tons worth, put a couple of monstrous sails on the thing, haul it upwind and let it go. With the wind behind it and a good start, it’ll build up a pretty speed, what? It’s an obscenely big ram, is what it is.”

“Can it breach the wall?” Ethan asked quietly.

“I fear such is the case, friend Ethan,” answered Hunnar. “There is enough stone assembled now, and still they bring more. I think twould penetrate the wall like vol butter.”

Ethan took his face from the telescope.

“Can’t you be ready to block the hole with nets and chain once the ram’s gone through?”

“There is no other chain like the Great Chain that guards the harbor gate,” replied Hunnar ruefully. “They will come close behind this monster. We will try the nets, of course, but it will be very difficult. We will not know the size of the hole, nor will it be easy to bridge such a gap and secure the nets before the Horde is upon us. And still we must be ready to defend all sections of the wall, lest they swarm over us at some too-weakened point. Once they break into the harbor, we are done. They will attack the town and we will be forced to abandon the perimeter to them.” The knight looked terribly depressed. Ethan didn’t feel too good right then, either.

Williams spoke to the ensuing silence. “I think we’d better tell them now.”

“But we have done it only on such a small scale,” the wizard replied. “Still, I must agree with you. It may help.”

“What are you two babbling about?” asked Hunnar sharply.

“The great wizard Williams has shown me many things,” said Eer-Meesach, ignoring Hunnar’s lack of respect. “The crossbow of which your archers are so enamored, youngster, is the result of but one such thought. We have something else which may be of some use.”

“But I’m not sure how to apply it!” said Williams almost pleadingly. “We don’t have the proper facilities, or time, or anything!”

“Oh well,” sighed September, “let’s have a look at it, anyway. You never know.”

X

MANY OF THE PEOPLE in the city had been working double and triple shifts, day and night, but there was even more activity than normal in Wannome that night. If Sagyanak’s spies had been able to see inside the walls of the harbor, they surely would have been puzzled at the activity that filled the shoreline and enclosed ice. Vol-oil lamps and torches shed a cautious light on the scene.

They would have been even more puzzled at the strange activities taking place in certain crannies of the mountains, sections of dark abandoned countryside and old-town, and at the huge bonfires that shocked the main square with light.

In a room far up in the great castle keep, the war council of Sofold was meeting in heated discussion.

“I say ’tis far too dangerous!” one of the nobles exclaimed. He slammed a fist onto the thick table. “Tis too new, too alien. Tis not of us.”

“Nonsense!” countered Malmeevyn Eer-Meesach from his chair near the Landgrave.

“The crossbows are equally new and alien,” Hunnar riposted.

“They are not. They are but variations on our familiar longbow. But this … this is the work of the Dark One!”

“I’m not at all that dark,” said Eer-Meesach.

“Do not be flippant, old man,” snorted the noble. “I, for one, am not overwhelmed by your learned nonsense.”

“You’ll be overwhelmed, good sir,” admonished Hunnar, “if we fail to prepare for when that ram bursts into the harbor tomorrow!”

“Can it truly breach the great wall?” asked one of the knights disbelievingly.

“You have not seen it, Sutlej,” said General Balavere solemnly. “It will breach the wall. Unless it should hit at too acute an angle, and I think there is little chance of that. Though,” and he paused thoughtfully, “once the ram is moving, it would take a thousand men to correct or change its course.”

“If this new thing of yours does not work as you describe,” said the old mayor of one of the larger country towns, “we shall all fall into the center of the earth.”

“I keep telling you,” September began, but he halted, spreading his hands helplessly—they’d been through this very question twice a dozen times, already. “Sofold is as solid as the Landgrave’s throne, and more so.”

“All this may be true,” replied the old mayor, scratching the back of his neck, “but we have only your word for it. You ask us to believe a great deal.”

“I know, I know,” September said. “If we had more time … and this is the only chance I see.”

“Yet you say this will not stop the ram from breaching the walls.”

“No. There’s no way we can stop that thing. I don’t think they’d let another night expedition within a satch of the ram. But this may save us all, afterwards.”

“And if it should fail?”

“Then you’re welcome to whatever Sagyanak leaves of my corpse,” the big man finished.

“Fine compensation, fine satisfaction!” laughed the other hollowly.

“General?” The Landgrave looked over at his principal military adviser, thrusting the problem squarely onto his shoulders.

“This is the most difficult decision I have ever had to make,” the old soldier began. “More so even than the first decision to fight. Tis because there are questions here that go above mere military matters. I must go against everything I was taught about the world as a cub. And yet … yet … our strange friends have been right about so many things. And there is always the outside chance that they will align the ram improperly, or that the wind will shift on them and it will strike the wall at an angle and not breach, mayhap even miss completely.”

“Do not avoid me, Bal,” chided the Landgrave gently.

The two old tran looked at each other carefully. Then Balavere smiled slightly. “I wouldn’t do that, Tor. I recommend Sir September’s plan. I should like to see this thing he promises … even if we do all fall into the center of the world.”

“Let it be so, then,” pronounced the Landgrave.

All rose.

“By your Patience, gentlemen,” said September, “the wizard Williams and I must get down to the landings. We’ve a great deal to do ere the ice disgorges the sun.” He turned to Ethan. “Young feller, you’ll see to the assembly of the material?”

“Right away. Oh, du Kane wants to help, too.”

“Not really?” said September. “Well, take him with you, then. I can’t have the old bastard underfoot, but it’s encouraging to see him recognizing the real world, at last.”

But as he started off down the hall, Ethan found himself sympathizing with du Kane and not September. He knew the financier wasn’t useless, only a victim of culture shock and belief in his own omnipotence. He’d felt more than enough of similar emotions ever since they’d smashed into that first little island.

The wind from the west the next day was powerful and steady—perfect for the nomads’ needs. Ethan hugged the castle wall against the gale.

The great ram had been completed some time during the night and moved out of range of even the wizard’s telescope.

“Shifting it far enough to the west to get room for building speed,” Hunnar explained. “It will take that monster a dozen kijat just to build to raft speed.”

“I don’t know why they bother,” said September. “Even half that should be enough to knock down the wall.”

“With all respect, friend September, I suspect they desire not merely to knock down a section of wall, but to make a clean breach large enough to drive a good-sized raft through.”

“You don’t think they’ll try to come in on rafts, do you?” September asked. “Not that we could change things now anyway.”

“No. That would require skillful handling indeed. Even a few good-sized rocks could catch a raft, tumble it, and block the breach. As we might try to do. But individual warriors could get through despite such obstacles, and before we could bring up anything to block the gap.”

“Think not encountering something like that will make ’em suspicious?” continued the big man.

“Sagyanak, or Olox, or one like those might be taken by such thoughts. But I do not think those murderers so brave that they will be in the front line of attackers. The simple warrior will see naught but open ice between himself and the defenseless city. For animals like these, that is an irresistible temptation.”

“Let’s try that flasher once again,” suggested September.

“Very well.”

There were two of the brightly polished devices at their observation position high up on the castle’s south parapet, in case one should fail or break. September gave orders to the two operators.

“Tell Williams there’s still no sign.”

Immediately the skilled communicators had the flashers in operation. Side mirrors brought the sun into the central reflector. An answer was blinking at them from down in the harbor almost before they’d finished.

“They acknowledge ‘very good and waiting,’ Sir.”

“Fine. Thanks,” replied the big man.

They had another hour to wait before the ram was sighted. The nomad soldiers were drawn up in their familiar crescent parallel to the harbor wall. As it had been days ago, the line was solid and unbroken. There was no indication of where the ram would come from. The concentration was, as always, heavier on the south side. No one expected the ram to come from the north or the east, into the wind. There would be no feint to this attack.

Despite the toll they’d taken among their tormentors on that first terrible day, the Sofoldian defenders were still badly outnumbered. But there were heartening signs in the barbarian line. It was still unbroken, but it no longer seemed to stretch to infinity as it had that first time.

As usual, it was Hunnar who made the first sighting.

“There! Over their heads by that dark spot on the ice.”

Ethan leaned over the wall, squinting. Almost immediately the enemy began to move away, split. A huge gap opened in the lines.

The ram was a tiny dot at first, but it grew rapidly larger. Soon it seemed as big as a stavanzer, though it was not nearly so. Still, it was plenty big, bigger than the biggest raft Ethan had yet seen. It sparkled oddly in the sun-glare.

“What’s that reflection from? Not the stone, surely.”

“It is and it isn’t, friend Ethan,” replied Hunnar evenly. “They’ve taken meltwater and poured it over the stones. Letting it freeze has turned the load into a solid, unbroken mass.”

There was silence among the Wannomian watchers, human and tran alike. The ram moved closer and closer with the deliberateness of an eclipse. No sound came from the distance, no pounding engines, no flaming rockets. The juggernaut moved mute.

Without turning, September spoke to the flasher operators. “Signal ‘standby’ to the wizards.”

The ram grew larger, seemed to leap into sharp focus. It passed through the waiting gap in the nomad ranks. Rocking with sheer speed, it came hurtling on at close to 200 kph. With a roar, the barbarian crescent started forward in its wake.

“Brace All!” sounded the cry from several places along the castle battlements.

The ram struck.

The concussion climbed the walls and threw men within the castle to the ground. Ethan could hear masonry falling in the inner rooms, an occasional tinkle of breaking glass. A section of wall two towers west from the main gate erupted in a shower of stone shards. The sound of damned stone crawled inside the head and battered ears from both sides.

A rain of rock and wood splinters descended and everyone covered as best they could. Large chunks were thrown all the way across the harbor into the far wall, taking pieces out of the interior side.

The ram slid two-thirds of the way across the harbor toward that interior wall on its five remaining runners, trailing two broken masts and a sea of shredded pika-pina sailcloth. Boulders and raped wood formed ugly blemishes on the clean ice.

A clear gap showed in the wall, broad enough for tran to chivan through twenty abreast. A close-packed mob of screaming, ax-waving barbarians, thousands strong, had followed close behind the ram. They reached the walls and the breach.

Dozens of grappling hooks and scaling ladders assailed the walls, ropes were snugged tight. Howling bloodthirsty cries, others swarmed into the gap, ready to overwhelm any attempt to close it.

Those at the walls climbed up, and over. They found only empty spear-slots, deserted battle-towers. Deafening cheers rose from the entire perimeter. The interiors of the great gate towers were gained. The Great Chain was melted into place, but the antipersonnel netting was cut loose and a fresh stream of angry warriors poured in via the main gate.

Ethan saw a gaudily armored officer gain the open gap, hesitate, and look about him uncertainly, clearly puzzled at the absence of the defenders. Ethan’s hand tensed on the castle parapet. But the cautious officer was swept away and into the harbor by the tight-packed river of attacking nomads.

Some of the barbarians began to run along the tops of the walls toward the castle and the city. They ran because the ice-paths had been melted and hacked into uselessness. They reached a point where the wall entered the castle itself—and were halted by a solid barrier of stone and a hail of arrows from above. A few began to batter ineffectually against the walled-up entrances.

Some tried to climb the raw stone itself. They were easily picked off by the archers above. Most turned and, spreading their wings, dropped in a semi-glide to the uncontested ice below.

The harbor was rapidly filling with screaming, thrashing warriors all milling about and looking for someone to fight. Confusion and uncertainty was beginning to take hold. The mass vacillated, shifted. Then, as one, they rushed on toward the undefended city with a horrible cry.

The entire remaining strength of the Sofoldian army met them at the shoreline.

Camouflaged barriers of rock and lines of sharpened stakes appeared, tied together by cables of barbed pika-pina rope. The tough, nearly unbreakable cord had been laboriously studded with sharpened bits of glass, wood, and metal. September and not Williams had been the one who had shown the locals how to make a fair imitation of concertina wire. A hail of crossbow bolts and arrows and spears felled hundreds of the surprised enemy in that first startling counterattack.

But it was only a last-ditch defense, screamed the nomad officers to their men! One more effort and the soft city-folk must surely collapse! The great wave swept forward again—to lose more hundreds to a barely covered deep ditch filled with sharpened stakes, tipped with vol dung and other poisons. The concealed moat was quickly filled with moaning, twisting bodies.

Yes again, urged the garishly garbed captains, the resplendent field officers! A last charge to sweep away the fatally weakened defenders! Yet a third time the nomad mass trundled forward, slammed into the Sofoldian line. Hand-to-hand combat sprang up at isolated points along the shore, the barbarian Horde gaining a centimeter at a time, the length of every spear and sword bitterly contested.

From high on the castle battlements, September calmly said, “Ready now” to his communicators. An acknowledging series of flashes came from a tiny house now perilously close to the front line.

Meanwhile more of the enemy poured into the harbor, slowed as they ran into their fellows. There must have been ten thousand pressing inexorably against the thin Sofoldian defenses, with more arriving each second, every tran a pillar of hatred and fury.

“Now,” said September quietly. The message was flashed to the waiting receivers. The flasher operators had guts. They didn’t drop and kiss stone until they were certain the command had been received.

There was a pause.

For one terrifying moment, nothing happened. Ethan raised his head slightly and peered through an arrow slot.

The ice convulsed.

Concussion lifted him from the ground and slammed him back into unyielding rock. He felt wet stickiness on his cheek, but he’d only scraped himself. A microsecond later he tried to metamorphose into a tiny ball. Down came a bitter squall of ruptured ice, mixed with pieces of barbarian armor and pieces of barbarian.

Far out on the southwest icefield, Borda-tane-Anst, knight of Sofold, felt the ice-earth shake under him, saw the huge column of flame and smoke erupt in the harbor of his home. His mind rejoiced because the magic of the alien magician had worked. But deep inside he was frightened near to death.

The earth did not open beneath them. Pulling at the pure white cloak that he’d been lying under all morning, he rose and waved his sword to right and left. Then he and six hundred picked Sofoldian troops spread their dan and started grimly for the rear of the nomad encampment. All carried torches in addition to swords and spears.

The Dantesque scene in the harbor was revealed as the smoke was borne away by the wind. There was no dust, but stinging, blinding particles of ice still hung in the air, and Ethan was grateful for the goggles.

Below, an awful cacophony had begun, not of defiance this time, but of pain and fear and terror. The two humans watched, completely oblivious to the antics of Hunnar. Usually dignified to the point of coldness, the solemn young knight had shed his reserve and was leaping about like a cub, hugging every man-at-arms within reach and whooping with joy.

Uncountable multitudes of barbarian soldiers, who had stood within the harbor a moment ago, now lay dead or dying from terrible wounds. The ice sheet had cracked from the hundreds of charges but had not broken through to the freezing depths below. Eer-Meesach and Williams’ estimates had been proven correct. The ice was much too thick here to be affected by such ancient explosives.

Not as sound was the harbor wall, which had been subjected to another violent shaking. Several sections looked dangerously near collapse. The schoolmaster’s fuse and firing mechanism, cannibalized from the wrecked lifeboat, had done its task efficiently. The hundreds of charges had gone off within seconds of one another.

During the night, funnel-shaped holes had been melted in the ice, then filled with glass, metal, bone, and wooden fragments, and a year’s accumulation of bronze, iron, and steel filings originally destined for re-melting in the volcanic forges. Filled with anything that could cut or rend or tear.

Water had been poured over the pockets of crude shrapnel and allowed to refreeze during the early morning. The barbarians had been cut down like grass.

Now the battered, weakened army of Sofold came boiling out from behind its barriers and temporary ramparts, howling and shouting as barbarically as their supposedly less civilized tormentors. Axes, swords, and spears fell indiscriminately among healthy and wounded alike.

Ethan stood shakily and turned away from the sickening slaughter.

Many of those who’d survived were in shock. They were completely incapable of putting up effective resistance to the ready, prepared Sofoldians. It must have seemed like a hundred lighting bolts had landed among them.

Now archers and crossbowmen broke from the castle and the stone barrier at the other end of the wall, began retaking their positions atop the ancient masonry. Only now they were firing into the harbor, picking off those still fighting and any trying to retreat.

The still considerable body of enemy warriors surged dazedly back and forth, with dozens dropping every minute.

Ethan stared out over the now cleared ice. Then he turned and got September away from his survey of the massacre.

The enemy raft fleet was burning. Some were raising sail and struggling to escape even as they went up in flames. Fanned by the uncaring, indiscriminate wind, the blaze spread rapidly from one raft to its neighbor, thence to three or four others. Ethan saw one sail rigged, only to be struck by a ball of flame blown from a burning storage craft. Pika-pina and mast went up like match and paper in the thirsting wind.

Distant screams drifted over the ice to Ethan and chills raced up his spine. He put his hands over his face and sank in stunned silence to the ground. September put a gentle hand on his head and tried to comfort him.

“I know what you’re thinking, young feller-me-lad,” he muttered softly. “But you’ve got to consider what these folk have suffered. The only difference between them and their traditional enemies out there is a little book learning and another philosophy of life. Underneath, they’re very much the same animal … just like most humans are, when we’re pushed. To them the nomad women and cubs are as dangerous as the menfolk. Not because of what they can do, but because of what they represent. Do you understand that?”

Ethan sat still as the stones. He looked up.

“No.”

September grunted and walked away. To the end of his days, Ethan would hear the far-away shrieking.

Confronted with a murderous, unstunned enemy in front of them and fire behind, the once proud, invincible Horde of the Death dropped helmets, weapons and armor, broke, and fled toward their flaming homes. September was trying to get Hunnar’s attention. The knight finally calmed down enough to listen.

“Your tane-Anst did his job well, what? Will he have enough sense to watch for those who escape? They’re scared and many are weaponless, but hysterical humans, and probably tran, have little regard for their own lives. Makes for difficult fighting.”

“Tane-Anst is a good soldier,” said Hunnar thoughtfully. “He’ll take care to keep his men together.”

Finally Ethan stood and had a look at the retreating mob of surviving nomads. “This tane-Anst only took about six hundred men with him, Skua. Won’t they be badly outnumbered by these?”

“No group of well-organized, disciplined soldiers is ever outnumbered by a mob, Ethan. Remember that.”

Ethan turned and looked down into the harbor again. The ice was literally blotted out by a vast array of twisted, broken furry forms and a small lake of rapidly freezing blood. Hunnar came up to him. The knight was trembling now and Ethan thought he saw a little of what September had meant reflected in Hunnar’s face. After hundreds of years of helpless genuflection, reaction to what he and his people had done today was beginning to sink in.

“The Landgrave watches from his rooms and can see well for himself what has been wrought this hour,” said the knight, his voice slightly shaky. “I go to give him official word of his troops … and to remind him of his promise to you, my friends. Will you come?”

“No, this is your moment, Hunnar,” said September.

The knight exchanged breath and shoulder clasps with both of them, then departed at a run into the castle. September strolled to the edge of the parapet and looked down into the harbor. The fighting had degenerated into a bloodcurdling mopping-up operation, with Sofoldian soldiers and militia examining each corpse and methodically slitting the throat of any who lived.

“It may not be a gesture of the morally highest,” he began, “but for better or worse, by introducing gunpowder here we’ve brought a whole new kind of warfare to this decidedly bellicose people. And you know?” He turned and glanced at Ethan. “Try as I might, I can’t convince myself we’ve done a bad thing.”

“Bad or not,” replied Ethan drily, dabbing at his cut cheek, “it’s always one of humanity’s first gifts, isn’t it?”

There was a ball to end all balls in the great castle that evening. It served to cover the fact that many of Sofold’s finest young men had passed to the Warm Regions that day. Sadly, the brave and methodical tane-Anst had been among them, felled as he personally led a squad in pursuit of just one more fleeing raft.

At least three quarters of the barbarian fleet had been burnt or captured, together with a province’s ransom in armor, weapons, and treasure. And those ships which had escaped had not departed overcrowded.

To everyone’s intense disappointment, Sagyanak had been among the successful escapees.

The Scourge’s power, however, was forever broken. From a near god, the Death had been reduced to simply another annoying pirate, whose strength had been scattered with the wind.

By way of partial compensation, the head of Olox the Butcher was prominently on display atop a jeweled pike at the dinner table. It was joined by the crania of assorted companion warriors.

The little knot of humans sat in an honored position, far up the table near the Landgrave himself. But they’d seen too much blood to fully enter into the merriment of the night. Only September, sitting next to him, seemed able to throw himself into the spirit of the occasion with honest gusto.

Ethan stared curiously across the table at Hellespont du Kane. One of the wealthiest men in the Arm. Yet he still wore the same expression Ethan had observed back on the Antares, the day they’d had their private destinies inextricably altered by a pair of indecisive kidnappers. Nor was his appetite affected. He downed a delicately carved slice of roast with the same precision he doubtless employed in the finest restaurants of Terra or Hivehom.

Ethan felt an urge to put a fist in that robotic face. For a wild moment he thought du Kane might really be a clever robot, and that the flesh-and-blood du Kane was somewhere else, perfectly comfortable except for a mild upset at the loss of one valuable piece of machinery. It would explain several of the odder things about the industrialist.

But no. He may have been robot-like in some respects, but he was definitely human. Like his daughter. He was just a nice, slightly dotty, schizophrenic old man with several hundred million credits and a daughter as cool-headed as he probably was—once.

Ethan was discovering the interesting side effects which the steady consumption of reedle could produce in the human system when Hunnar came over. Standing between the two humans, the tran put a paw on each man’s shoulder and leaned close.

“It is necessary that I see you both in private,” he whispered.

“Aw, don’t be a party-pooper,” September huffed. “Sit yourself down with us and—” He broke off in mid-sentence when he saw the look on the knight’s face. It was solemn—and something more.

They left the grand hall, the masquerading torchlight, the flashing, jeweled cloaks and blouses; left the polished dress armor of the nobles and knights and the gowns of their ladies; left them to follow Hunnar down quiet cold hallways and mocking stairs.

“Isn’t this the way to our rooms?” said Ethan unquestioningly.

“That is so,” Hunnar replied, but Ethan’s probe failed to elicit any more information.

From distant chambers Ethan could hear shouts and laughter. The other inhabitants of the castle were celebrating the victory in their own fashion. Once, when they passed a chill open balcony, he had a glimpse down into the town itself. Bonfires blazed in open squares, and every torch and lamp and candle in Wannome was burning. The city wore a necklace of light.

Celebrating would continue for days, General Balavere had told him. Or until everyone was too drunk to lift another tankard or mug.

He wondered where Williams had gone. The schoolmaster hadn’t been seen since he’d been introduced as a co-guest of honor. When the Landgrave had presented him and proceeded to make a flowery speech full of lavish praise and sugary compliment, the little professor had fidgeted and squirmed like a five-year-old posing for his first pre-school soloid.

On the other hand, old Eer-Meesach had expanded in the light of praise like a fat sunflower.

“Sulfur from the volcanic vents and springs,” Williams had nervously explained to the rapt audience of chromatically clad nobles and ladies, “saltpeter from dry old vents, and charcoal from the townspeople burning cut wood and even furniture.”

“But not any of the beds!” a voice had bellowed from downtable. Williams’s voice was drowned in raucous laughter and he’d slipped away quietly.

Only to reappear behind Ethan and whisper, “Later perhaps … something rem … show you th … big … okay? …”

Ethan had mumbled a clever reply, something along the lines of “Yeah, sure,” and ignored the schoolmaster. Williams and Eer-Meesach had then left the room. Maybe to resume the trannish wizard’s lessons in galactic astronomy or to do new work on the big telescope Williams had promised to help him design.

They turned down a hall that in the past weeks had become as familiar to Ethan as his home apartment on Moth. They passed his room, then September’s, then the du Kanes’, and continued on down a slight ramp, around a corner …

A little knot of soldiers was clustered just ahead. The passage here was brightly lit. A heavy door to an apartment Ethan had never entered stood wide open.

The group parted when one of its members spotted Hunnar and the two humans. Parting revealed a single soldier crumpled on the floor. He lay on an uneven frame of dark scarlet. It centered at a spot on his back and the small but fatal stiletto imbedded therein.

“We’ve looked all over the castle for him,” Hunnar explained awkwardly. “We’ve no idea of where he has gone to, nor how, or why. He may have slipped out some time during the fighting and caught an arrow, tumbled over the cliffs. Tis little point in searching fully til morning.”

“You think Walther killed this one, then?” asked Ethan.

“I did not say that … but we would like to find him,” Hunnar added unnecessarily.

“Did any of the nomads penetrate this far into the castle?” September queried.

“We do not believe so. But there were those of the vermin who tried to gain the interior. One or two might have been bold and daring enough to crawl along the stone to the side and thence slip through a window.”

“I wonder if Walther could handle a small raft by himself?” mused Ethan aloud.

“Think he might have made off in the confusion and hopes to make Brass Monkey ahead of us, eh, young feller-me-lad? Beat us to his friends and maybe salvage their whole original plan … must have tempted him,” the big man said thoughtfully. “I know I wouldn’t try it. A few thousand kilometers of virgin ice to cross, scrapping with Droom and gutorrbyn and windstorm and pirates and who knows what else all the way. Crazy little punk might have tried it, though. If so, I expect he’s saved us some trouble. He knew the best he could expect if we got back was at least partial mindwipe. Man’ll do superhuman things for intangibles like memories.”

“I don’t see how he could have escaped the nomads,” commented Ethan, shaking his head.

“Nor do I,” agreed Hunnar. “However, that knife,” and he gestured at the protruding hilt, “is no barbarian device. Twas made in our own foundry.”

“What should we do, Skua?” asked Ethan.

“Do? Well, me, I’m going back to that hall and slobber reedle until I float … physically or otherwise.” He turned on a heel and called back over his shoulder. “And I heartily suggest, young feller-me-lad, you come ahead and do likewise!”

Ethan glanced down again at the stone-still body. A gust of icy atmosphere sucked at his body heat and he shivered. Torchlight rippled like chiffon dolls’ skirts.

Then he shrugged, said a bad word, and turned to follow September.

Ethan crossed his arms and flailed opposite shoulders. It didn’t make him any warmer. As a method of raising his body temperature it proved effectively nil. But it did better psychologically. Excellent! He would freeze to death nice and sane. This self-flagellation is making you warmer, he repeated unconvincingly, it’s making you warmer.

His skin fought the supposition tooth and nail.

It was a fairly cool day—minus ten or so outside. While it was perhaps thirty degrees warmer in the castle, it was still a long way from tropic. Modified to fit his human frame, his new hessavar-fur coat gave him considerable protection. They’d even managed to persuade the royal tailor to sew on real sleeves and leggings. At least now they could worry a little less about the dangers of frostbite.

Frost-nibble, however, was driving him crazy.

And he’d been wearing the coat for weeks now. Every so often an uncomfortable feeling crawled up his back as if the long-dead fur was beginning to take root to his chafed, abused body.

If it weren’t for their occasional jaunts to the foundry for a really hot bath, the encrusted dirt and sweat could have doubled as a heat-sealing coating in itself. They hadn’t fallen that far—yet.

It had been nearly two weeks, for certain, since the epic defeat of Sagyanak and the memorable battle in which the Sofoldians had shattered the power of the great Horde forever. In other words, the local population was just about sobered up.

Now he was making his way up to the vile-smelling rooms that Eer-Meesach called home. He passed an open balcony and spared a glance for the scene below.

Once again rafts were moving across the ice of the great harbor. Most of the frozen blood from the thousands of corpses had been chipped and melted away, the rough spots on the surface smoothed over. Hundreds of Wannomian stonemasons, carpenters, and other craftsmen were at work repairing the extensive damage to the harbor wall. Even the huge gap where the monstrous ram had broken through was beginning to be filled as loose stone was gathered off the ice and fresh rock brought from quarries in the mountains.

He turned from the balcony down a short hall, began to ascend a spiral ramp. He vaguely recalled that at the start of the victory celebration Williams had mumbled something about another surprise. Well, it couldn’t be more of a shock than the introduction of gunpowder had been to their hosts. Heaven help the social system of this feudal ice-world if the little schoolmaster’s subsequent revelations were half as overpowering!

The multitude of traveling rafts in the harbor would take the news of the Sofoldians’ unprecedented defeat of one of the great nomadic Hordes back to their own towns and distant cities. They would also carry samples of gunpowder and formula for same so they could resist the bands which plagued their home provinces.

The elimination of those utterly ruthless, bloodthirsty groups would probably be a good thing for the body politic, not to mention individual political bodies. At least, it would until Tran-ky-ky ran out of barbarians. Then the various barons, landgraves, and dukes would be stuck with their new toys and no one to look at except each other.

Unless, of course, the barbarians managed to get hold of some gunpowder for themselves, in which case …

He gave it up. It was too complicated. Nor was he especially inclined toward sociological speculation. All he wanted to speculate on was getting over to Brass Monkey in one piece. Then, hopefully, to pick up his sample cases, dispose of a few thousand credits worth, and acquire a few decent orders. Smiling, he’d be off for the next world, definitely one with a generous sun and nothing more disturbing meteorologically than an occasional sensuous zephyr. Not a continual hurricane screaming eternally eastward.

He gained the top of the spiral, walked a few paces down the hall, and entered the wizard’s apartments. He considered this time that there were no guards at the door. It hadn’t impressed him until after the attempt on the Landgrave’s life. All the nobles had guards also. Not Eer-Meesach. The inhabitants of Sofold were a thinking, practical people, but still sufficiently superstitious to hold a healthy respect for demons, elves, and wizards like Eer-Meesach. It would take a gutsy cutpurse indeed who would try for a few pieces of gold or some such when the wizard had threatened to turn any thief he caught into a swart worm.

The wizard was one of a little group gathered around a stumpy, weatherbeaten table. And on this world, “weather-beaten” identified something shaky or ancient indeed. The antiquing on this archaic desk hadn’t been put there by the local equivalent of terran or thranx professionals. Such contrivances are only practiced by advanced races.

Present along with the wizard were Williams and September. Monumental hooked nose, jutting chin, gold earring—the big man took up half the available space in his billowing hessavar fur. He looked up when Ethan entered.

“Hello, young feller-me-lad.” He was radiating obvious enthusiasm over something. “Come have a peek at what our two intellectuals have been up to, what?”

Ethan rubbed his gloved hands together—that seemed to help a little—and edged in between September and the schoolmaster.

A sheet of vellum was tacked to the smooth tabletop. The drawing on it was not too complex, but it was sufficiently alien in nature for Ethan to have to scan it twice before he could guess what it might be.

“Looks like a raft,” he said finally. “Of sorts.”

“Of sorts indeed, cub,” commented Eer-Meesach excitedly. “Twas your friend Williams who conceived the basic idea that lies gloriously before us. I merely executed it.”

“I’m afraid I’m not much of an artist,” Williams apologized.

Ethan had another look at the sketch. “It certainly looks different.”

“My principal area of study was early Terran history,” Williams confessed, squirming embarrassedly. “That’s how I happened to know that old formula for gunpowder.” He pointed at the drawing. “I’ve been thinking about this ever since we were picked up by Sir Hunnar and his men. As you know, three-quarters of Terra is covered with water.”

“I’ve seen pictures,” said Ethan, nodding.

“Well,” the schoolteacher continued, “this particular kind of ship was developed and raised to almost poetic heights by a young Terran named Donald McKay, who lived and worked on the east coast of the North American continent. They were called clipper ships.”

“Funny name,” said Ethan. “Why?”

“I don’t know.” Williams shrugged. “The derivation has been lost. As you can see, I’ve modified the original design so that instead of having a curved bottom, as in an ocean-going boat, we will have a raft with a flat base. It will run on five runners—two fore, two aft, and one slightly further aft for steering purposes.”

“It may not be quite as maneuverable as some of the local craft,” put in September, “but it’s going to be a damn sight faster than any kind of surface transportation this icebox world’s ever seen before.”

“Not an unreasonable expectation,” agreed Williams cautiously. “It will require a considerable amount of wood compared to local rafts. Several large trees will have to be banded together to make the masts, and a great deal of sailcloth is needed.”

“I’m no engineer,” said Ethan bluntly, “but it just looks to me as if in a good blow, with all that sail, she’d turn over.”

“The base will be carefully counterbalanced with just such a possibility in mind,” the teacher replied. “But I think the double runners will give it a good deal of stability.”

“And who’s going to pay for it?” Ethan was on familiar ground now.

September grinned. “Despite all those glory holy-hosannas the Landgrave ladled on us, lad, he hemmed and hawed like a penniless beggar when we put an estimate to him. Went on and on about how repairs to the fortifications in the harbor and reparations to debilitated families were leaving the treasury empty as the inside of his promises. You’d have thought we were going to take his gold-inlaid shirt, too.

“Hunnar and Balavere were there. They listened quietly to the whole thing, real dignified and proper. When his majesty was finished they gave him a tongue-lashing that must have flayed his ancestors forty generations back! Then I pointed out to him that the moment we were delivered safe, healthy, and relatively unfrozen to Arsudun Island, the ship would become property of the Sofoldian navy. He’d managed to neglect that little item in his tale of woe.

“The raft’s captain-to-be, Ta-hoding … you remember him?” Ethan nodded. “Ta-hoding enumerated the tremendous commercial advantages such a vessel would have over all competitors, especially with the forever sharp duralloy runners, and—”

“Wait a minute,” Ethan interrupted. “I thought they couldn’t work the metal.”

“They couldn’t,” replied the big man with a trace of pride. “All last week I’ve been puttering around with Vlad-Vollingstad, the foundry boss. Ripped out the whole board on the lifeboat, emergency repair supplies, controls—everything. An electrodyne forge isn’t too complicated. With the unlimited heat supply they have, I think I can get one going. I’m afraid they won’t be turning out any suspension housing, but they’ll be able to cut and bend until the lifeboat’s completely reworked. We need a lot less than that for a few big runners. Might even be able to get away with just slicing off a few sections of hull and sharpening them.

“The biggest problem is one for pure sweat. Since we can’t bring the heat to the metal, we’ll have to bring the metal to the heat. That means hauling the whole wreck up into the mountains to the foundry. Surprisingly, the Landgrave didn’t object to the cost of that one, even though it may take every vol on the island. I don’t think he wants all that nice indestructable metal sitting in the harbor where a few imaginative visiting captains could tow it away.”

“They wouldn’t get very far,” said Ethan. “Not pulling that mass across the ice.”

“Probably not,” the big man conceded, “but try and convince the Landgrave of that. So as soon as we can round up the men and animals, that gets first priority after starting the forge.”

Ethan ran a finger over part of the drawing. “You really think this thing will stay upright in a high wind?”

“Not until we try it out in one, we won’t be.” Williams nodded agreement.

“The base weight should keep it steady,” said the schoolmaster. “Also, note the airfoils front and rear. Something McKay did not have to worry about. With so much sail area on a raft that size, I’m more worried about the possibility of her becoming airborne than tipping over. These”—and he tapped the two foils on the sketch—“should eliminate any chance of that.”

Ethan stared at the hybrid of nineteenth-century terran and modern tran technology and shook his head admiringly. “Congratulations, Milliken. It’s quite a project.” He extended a hand and the schoolmaster shook it shyly. “I only hope the damn thing works.”

“What an enterprise!” Eer-Meesach began. “Nothing like it has ere been seen in Sofold or her neighbors. We shall call it ‘Slanderscree’ after the dark flight of dawn-birds which precede the souls of the departed!”

“Encouraging appellation,” commented Ethan drily.

The wizard didn’t understand him. “Bards will sing of its sailing for a hundred times a hundred years. We will be all in song and verse immortalized, sirs. The greatness of our quest shall …” September gave Ethan a gentle nudge.

“I think you’ve heard everything you have to, lad.”

“I think so, too, Skua.”

They excused themselves. Malmeevyn was so engrossed in enumerating the magnificence of his anticipated immortality that he barely noticed them depart.

Out in the cool quiet of the hallway, Ethan couldn’t resist a last question.

“Assuming this monstrosity actually gets built, Skua—”

“It will, lad.”

“Yes, well, I’ll believe it when the first sail fills. And when it isn’t torn to splinters in the first honest breeze. Assuming that—can we make it? Can we get to the settlement? And how long will it take?”

“I’ve got confidence in the boat, lad. Williams may be a bit of a secret romantic, deep down, but the design is sound. We’ve got compasses. Now that we know we’ve got a landmark close by the island, this volcano … what do they call it?”

“The Place-Where-The-Earth’s-Blood-Burns,” reminded Ethan helpfully.

“Yeah … from there it should be easy enough to find the town. Let’s see … given the speed that thing should be able to make, allowing time for the locals to get used to the different rigging, plus the fact that we’ll be moving against the wind at times … I’d guess we should be able to do it inside of a couple of months. Depending on the weather, of course.”

“What do you think of our captain? He didn’t awe me the first time we traveled with him.”

September grinned. “Ta-hoding? Looks and sounds like a fat whiner, doesn’t he? Probably because he is a fat whiner. But he also impressed me as a being who knows his seamanship … icemanship, rather. I’d prefer to have him at the helm and wide awake as opposed to some smooth-talking arrogant braggart who can’t tell a snow squall from a dust cloud. Give me a captain who’s concerned first for his own precious skin above a gallant idiot any time.

“I’m going to be tied up with that forge and shaping the raft runners. Williams will be busy with Eer-Meesach grinding out crude blueprints and plans. But someone has to oversee the actual construction. By the Black Hole in Cygnus, you know who volunteered when he found out about it?”

“Do tell,” said Ethan.

“Old du Kane, that’s who! Actually asked if he could. Said something to the effect that he wasn’t especially adept at decapitating belligerent obstructionists or getting drunk in comradely fashion with the local soldiery, but that he could manage large groups of people and materials. He’s learned enough of the local lingo to get by, so I told him to go ahead.”

Ethan didn’t share the big man’s confidence in the financier. “You think he’ll handle things properly? He’s not the most diplomatic type in the Arm.”

“Don’t confuse performance with personality,” admonished September, scratching at a fur-hidden ear. “I’m not fanatically in love with the old pirate myself, nor any of his ilk. But we’re not in the position of choosing from an unlimited workforce. Besides, I can guess how much credit every day he spends out of contact with his empire is costing him. He’ll get that raft built as fast as possible, all right.”

“I suppose so,” Ethan conceded uncertainly. “I can’t keep from wondering what happened to Walther.”

September grunted at the mention of the vanished kidnapper.

“Probably a frozen smear on the ice by now, what? Or resting comfortably in the belly of a Droom or some other charming member of the local fauna.”

“I suppose so.”

Ethan broke away to make for his own room and a roaring fire.

XI

THE BUILDING OF THE Slanderscree proceeded as rapidly as anyone dared hope, despite Landgrave Torsk Kurdagh-Vlata’s royal howls of agony over the unending list of expenses. His moaning ran the unceasing wind a good vocal second.

September singed an arm when the first jumpspark was fired from the makeshift forge. After an hour’s steady work and cursing, however, the recalcitrant hunk of machinery worked perfectly. Overawed, no doubt, at recognizing an elemental force greater than itself.

With the big man sweating at the foundry, Williams and Eer-Meesach running from mountain to harbor to village with drawings and corrections in the dozens, and du Kane supervising the actual construction, Ethan was left with the thankless job of handling the thousands of minute, attendant details.

He couldn’t believe that building a primitive, crude raft could involve so many little decisions and questions, all made and answered on the spot. Surely an interstellar freighter could be no more complicated.

Brown-green sailcloth was matched to design specifications. Meters of pika-pina cable were measured and trimmed. New crates of fresh-forged bolts and fittings had to be shepherded down to the ice-dock.

Put together with equal parts sweat and invective, the Slanderscree began to take shape.

Something else was taking shape, too, and Ethan liked it a lot less than the a-building raft. This was Elfa’s continuing attempt to become something other than a casual acquaintance.

One day, despite the offense it might cause the Landgrave and the damage it could do to their cause, he erupted at her. To his surprise, she took it rather calmly—almost as though she’d been waiting for it. After that she didn’t bother him again. He was puzzled but decided not to press for the facts. He was ahead on points. Better leave it that way.

Despite delays and the inevitable confusion arising from problems in translation, despite a temporary failure of the electrodyne forge, despite endless hours of frustrating explanation from Williams on how the complex rigging was to be installed, there came a day and hour when the Slanderscree was finished, stocked, and ready to depart—though Ethan had a hard time convincing himself that it would ever move.

It sat there at the end of the Landgrave’s dock, dwarfing the commercial rafts that skimmed its flanks like waterbugs. Nearly two hundred meters long, with three towering masts, bowsprit, and dozens of tightly furled sails, it radiated enormous power held in check. The tran arrowhead design had been slimmed down to needle-like proportions. Only the two big airfoils marred the raft’s rakish lines.

There was nothing unusual about the morning set for their departure. A typical trannish day—sunny, windy, freezing to the core. Last-minute supplies and spare parts were being taken on. A considerable crowd had taken time from the unending drudgery of making a living to see them off—or preside at an entertaining crack-up. They lined the shore and-spilled out onto the ice. Cubs ignored mothers and darted in and out around the great duralloy runners.

Sir Hunnar came on board as nominal commander of their military compliment. But General Balavere was making the journey, too. When he was a cub he’d experienced a rain of ash and hot stone from the Place-Where-The-Earth’s-Blood-Burns. It had darkened the sky over Wannome for four days. Surely it was a holy place—and the general had reached an age when such things took on increasing importance. He was going to see that legendary mountain.

Old Eer-Meesach, of course, couldn’t have been kept away by a herd of famished krokim.

The raft had nothing like the carefully arranged chain of responsibility that existed on board a spatial liner. Nor did Williams’ arcane knowledge yield any counterpart for the ancient terran clippers, beyond the rank of captain. So Hunnar’s squires, Suaxus and Budjir, came along as his seconds. Ta-hoding retained much of his own raft crew and worked through them.

Another side of Hunnar was reflected in his choice of squires. Neither was a type Ethan would choose: Suaxus always dour and suspicious, Budjir laconic to the point of apparent idiocy. However, both were almost severely competent.

The crew and passengers trooped on board to the accompaniment of tremendous cheers and shouts of encouragement, a few good-naturedly obscene, from the assembled townsfolk. Some had come from as far away as Ritsfasen at the far western tip of Sofold Isle for the departure.

The Landgrave stood at the dock surrounded by his important nobles and knights. When all were on the raft and the boarding plank had been pulled back, he raised his staff. A respectful silence settled on the crowd.

“You have come from a strange place and you go to a strange place,” he intoned solemnly. “In the short time between you have done deeds that will be remembered forever by the people of Sofold and myself. You have also said that the universe is a vast place, vaster than we could ever imagine, with thousands of being as different from us as we are different from you living in it.

“Should these worlds and beings extend to infinity and you were to go among each and every one, you will always find a home and fire for you and your children’s children here, in Wannome.

“Go now, and go with the wind.”

“WITH THE WIND,” echoed the crowd somberly. Then someone made a rude noise and they broke into wild yelling and cheering.

“A predictable sentiment,” commented Hellespont du Kane flatly.

“Yes? They might be cheering for us, or because their exalted ruler kept his speech admirably short,” September theorized, turning away. But had that been a hint of moisture at the corner of the big man’s eyes? Or was it only distortion from the scratched and battered snow goggles.

“All right, Ta-hoding!” he bellowed aft. “Let’s see if this firetrap will make it out of the harbor!”

The strange new commands were issued in modified Trannish sailing terminology, relayed across the deck and up into the rigging to the sailors stationed aloft.

Just watching the huge natives scramble up the rigging into the shrouds in the continual gale gave Ethan the jitters. And it would be much worse once they left the sheltering bulk of the island. But those powerful muscles and clawed hands and feet held them steady as, one by one, the rust-green sails began to drop and dig wind.

Slowly, smoothly, the Slanderscree began to slide away from the dock, while the shouts from on shore grew louder and louder. Eyes on the sailors above, September walked over and gave Ethan a sly pat on the back.

“By-the-by, young feller-me-lad, did you ever manage to get that business of the Landgrave’s offspring straightened out?”

“It was never out of line,” Ethan riposted. “I thought I did, but she wasn’t exactly in the forefront of the crowd, waving tearfully as we departed. Perhaps not.”

“I didn’t see her either. Though I notice you’ve warmed up to du Kane’s daughter.” The lady in question had vanished belowdecks the moment she’d come on board in order to get out of the wind. Raft or boat or castle, that was next to impossible on this world.

“Glassfeathers,” Ethan countered, leaning over the rail to watch the ice slide past. “She’s human, too. She just had to have someone to talk to, finally. I don’t wonder that she doesn’t chat much with her father. Certainly you and Williams aren’t exactly the most charming conversationalists around.”

“Sorry, young feller, but when I see her it’s without that fur and survival suit, figuratively speaking. That kind of crimps my inclination to easy banter.” He patted Ethan again in fatherly fashion and sauntered off forward, whistling.

The Slanderscree was moving out of the lee of the mountains. She picked up speed rapidly as the quickly maturing crew put on more and more sail. Even the moonraker was out by the time they reached the main gate—completely repaired once again. By then they were moving at a respectable 30 kph. But they’d be lucky to hold that, moving to the westward. Moving east, with the wind, however, the Slanderscree’s speed was limited only by the strength of her sails and masts and her ability to keep from becoming airborne.

The last cheers they heard came from the guards at the gate and the operators of the Great Chain as they shot between the towers. Once free of the harbor’s confining walls, Ta-hoding, praying all the while, swung her in a wide curve designed to bring her back to the southwest and on course.

Ethan held his breath as the raft came around. No one could predict how the radical new mast-and-sail configuration would respond on a craft and world far different from long-dead Donald McKay’s wildest imaginings.

The sails cracked like Williams’ crude gunpowder, the masts creaked, but the raft came about neatly. Everything held together as they slammed across the wind. They’d follow a zig-zag course, plodding for thousands of kilometers. Even so, the Slanderscree would make good time whenever she turned southward, building up to a nice 60 kph or so before she’d have to turn west into the wind.

He turned and scanned the deck in search of September but failed to locate him. The big man had probably gone below to get out of the wind himself for a while. Ethan saw no reason why he shouldn’t do likewise.

He’d reached the hatch when the sounds of yelling and hooting reached him. It was several seconds before he thought to look skyward.

There, perched outside of the wicker observation cage at the top of the mainmast, was Skua September, gripping the top of the windswept pole with his legs, waving his arms and braying like a hairy jackass.

Ethan remained rooted to the deck until the big man finally tired and climbed down. He held his breath all the way, expecting at any minute to see the big man slip or lose his grip and be torn away by the clawing hurricane like the last leaf of autumn.

But he reached the deck easily enough. He walked over to Ethan, tiny particles of ice coating his snow goggles. A gloved hand brushed absently at them. He was panting heavily.

“Quite a view, lad, quite a view! A blood-racing experience, what? How about giving it a go?”

“As you should know by now, I’m not the reckless explorer type, Skua.”

“All right, lad, all right,” the other sighed. “You’re the feckless metropolitan type. Shame. It’s an exalting experience.”

“I don’t doubt it, but I’m quite cold enough right here without having to add fatal exposure and bodily danger to it. I prefer the deck. I’ll prefer my cabin even more.” He turned and opened the sliding hatch door.

To find a familiar and totally unexpected figure blocking his way.

“Good morrow, Sir Ethan,” said Elfa Kurdagh-Vlata coquettishly. “It is less cold belowdecks.”

“Elfa,” he said haltingly, “I don’t find this a bit funny. How did you talk your father into letting you on board ship?”

She walked out of the hatch, stood on deck. “I didn’t ask him. I hid on board til I thought it was too late for you to turn. It is too late for you to turn, isn’t it?”

“You didn’t ask him? How the hell did you sneak on?”

“I hid in an empty crate and the sailors brought me on with the other stores. Only it wasn’t empty.” She smiled prettily. “It was full of me.”

Hunnar had joined them as soon as he’d recognized Elfa. If anything, he was more stunned than Ethan.

“Elfa!”

“Really, the powers of observation of this expedition’s leaders amaze me. You are the second person, Sir Hunnar, to identify me right away.”

“What,” continued Ethan doggedly, ignoring the sarcasm, “is the Landgrave going to say when he finds out you’re missing?”

She looked thoughtful. “I expect he’ll be furious. He’ll rave and curse and threaten and break things and turn Wannome upside down. Eventually he’ll find my note—”

“Note?”

“—and know I’ve gone with you. Then he’ll really get mad.”

Ethan turned to September. “What are we going to do with her, Skua?”

“Well, we could turn back,” he considered, admiring the fur-clad Elfa openly. “With the wind behind us it wouldn’t take that long. But I hate like hell to give up the time and distance we’ve already made just to return this hot adolescent to her daddy, what? And there’d be all sorts of awkward recriminations and explanations and such … more time gone. No, tell the steward there’ll be another for supper and let’s keep on our merry way, hey? We can always find a place for her … eh, Hunnar?”

“What?” replied the startled knight He looked at the big man unsurely.

They were a thousand kilometers out of Wannome. Even as they breathed, another few meters of ice slid beneath the duralloy runners and vanished astern. Now they were gliding over strange ice that none of Hunnar’s men or Ta-hoding’s sailors had ever traversed before.

They’d passed few islands during the last hundred kilometers, none of them inhabited. The sense of desolation touched everyone.

“An empty land,” Hunnar commented quietly, subdued.

“Yes,” agreed Ta-hoding. “Tis plain to see there’ll be no trading here. Yet, some of the land we passed looked hospitable.”

“The volcano might have something to do with it,” said September. “I shouldn’t wonder that at this distance these islands might receive periodic rains of hot ash and pumice.”

“Even so,” mused Ethan idly, “the possibility of establishing a few trading centers with an eye towards expanding inter-surface commerce might—” He paused at a cry from the mainmast that froze both tran as thoroughly as a hundred below.

“Gutorrbyn! Nor’east!” Hunnar, Ta-hoding, and dozens of sailors and soldiers rushed for the rail.

“What’s happening?” yelled Colette from a hatchway. Hunnar beat Ethan to the answer.

“Get thee below, lady du Kane!” It was uttered as an order, not a suggestion. Colette bristled.

“Now, wait a minute—” she began hotly.

September’s tone was menacing and devoid of humor. “Do just as he says, Miss du Kane.”

She hesitated, looked at him uncertainly. Still muttering, she disappeared belowdecks.

“I see ’em,” the big man mumbled, shielding his eyes with a hand.

“So do I,” concurred Ethan.

Far off to the northeast, a small cloud of tiny brown specks had come into view. The cloud of gnats grew to fly-size, changed into a mass of dark T-shapes.

“Can we outrun them?” asked September. Hunnar’s reply was terse.

“No, my friend. Perhaps with the wind behind us … but they would still have the angle. Tis certain they’ve seen us. We may have to fight, though there is always the chance they will not be interested in us.”

There was a querulous bellow from across deck. Ethan recognized the voice of General Balavere.

“Dragons, sir!” Hunnar called back.

“How close?” barked the general, buckling on his sword.

“Five, maybe six kijat, and closing on us.”

Balavere cursed, strode to the forehatch, and absently yelled into it. Almost immediately, soldiers came gushing out of the hole as though it was a disturbed anthill. Meanwhile, the general hurried to join them astern.

“We’ll never keep them out with this rigging,” observed Hunnar, staring worriedly aloft. “We’ll put the archers in the center in a group, and spearmen along the rails.”

Ethan watched the flock grow larger. “How smart are these things?”

“Less so than a k’nith,” Hunnar replied. “They hunt by vision, sound, and smell, not their brains.”

“Here’s a thought,” began September. “We might try this … ”

No one moved on board the Slanderscree. Everyone tried to dig himself into the rail or one of the makeshift barrel-and-crate barricades. Not even the bravest of the ship’s pilots could be persuaded to stand at the wheel while the dragons attacked and neither Hunnar nor Balavere would force anyone. So steering was being handled from belowdecks with a crude tug-and-pull system of ropes.

The flock came on, gaining steadily on the big ship.

“Must be close to a hundred of ’em,” whispered September conversationally. “Ugly looking devils, aren’t they, young feller?”

There was the twang of a bow and Balavere’s voice reached them from up near the bow.

“Hold your fire, there! Make those arrows count, idiot!”

The gutorrbyn did not attack. The leader veered off at the last moment and began to circle the raft. The Slanderscree continued to plow wind, her decks devoid of motion, while a halo of squealing, squawking monstrosities danced round her masts.

Broad and bat-like, the leathery wings were attached to furry, streamlined bodies which ended in long, forked tails. There were claws halfway up each wing and great taloned feet coiled like springs under soft bellies. Each head was a nightmare cross between crocodile and wolf, with a long, wrinkled snout stuffed with double rows of razor-sharp triangular teeth. Huge tarsier-like eyes glared down with blank, mindless malevolence.

“Watch the leaders,” warned Balavere. “If they come it’ll be in a curve.”

There was no point in holding your breath. Might freeze if you didn’t keep it moving. The ship moved on, quiet, with the rustle of a hundred pairs of wings drumming against the wind and the creak of spars and sail.

A hatch opened. Colette du Kane walked halfway out.

“When is something going to hap—?” She happened to look skyward, saw the mass of circling demons. One hysterical scream.

“Trinska!” cursed Hunnar. “They might have lost interest!”

Colette screamed again.

September suddenly shouted, “Ware zenith!” in Terranglo, hurriedly translated it into Trannish as a single line of gutorrbyn folded their wings, dipped to their right, and dove for the isolated frozen figure on deck.

“Loose, loose!” screamed Hunnar at the archers. Bows began to sputter.

Nearly as big as a man and twice as powerful, one of the monsters crumpled to the deck not a meter from Ethan. He thought he heard the neck snap when the creature hit the planking. It had three arrows imbedded in its chest.

Colette had apparently recovered her senses. Ethan heard the hatch cover slam shut. He didn’t see it because teeth flashed suddenly in front of his face and there was a clack like a beartrap. He slashed half-blindly with his sword, felt it bite something soft. There was a hoarse giant-rat scream and a sticky substance covered his bare wrist. A foul, fetid odor assailed his nostrils. Then it was gone and his sword was free.

It was hard to tell the screams of tran from dragon. He swam through an alien nightmare of blood and teeth. He saw one dragon skimming low over the ice, the limp corpse of a sailor firmly caught in its talons. Once the toothed maw dipped low, slashed almost indifferently at the lolling head.

Dead gutorrbyn bodies matted the clean wood. Small bunches of spearmen kept the attackers away while protected archers took a terrible toll among them.

A wounded dragon flashed by, screaming, and smashed into the ice below. It was feathered with arrows. Ethan spun, cut at a spinning, snapping horror that dove at his back. He ducked, and another pair of claws missed his head by centimeters, their owner shrieking in frustration. It backed air, started to pull up for a turn over the deck.

Something slammed it violently sideways and it crashed into a mast. Ethan now could see that a fair proportion of the mounting pile of dragon-corpses on deck were studded with short, thick darts. He spared a glance upward.

Wicker cages were bound at the top of each towering mast to protect lookouts from the wind. Now they served a pair of crossbowmen in each. They’d kept still until the fight was joined. Now they were beginning to make their presence felt, picking off the gutorrbyn below and those crawling in the rigging. In the confusion, none of the dragons looked to find where the stubby, deadly bolts were coming from. They dropped in pairs and threes, now.

Ethan thrust his sword forward again, but by now there was little to strike at. Screeching defiance, the remnant of the fatally mauled flock abruptly lifted with the wind and shot away to the westward.

Panting heavily, he walked over to where Hunnar was trying to bind up the arm of a badly gashed spearman.

“Well, we beat them off, Sir. How are our casualties?”

“There might be more, but we seem to have lost only one man and have few enough wounded. Again the wizard’s magic has served well.”

“That, and perhaps another,” said Ta-hoding. Their captain had spent the battle huddled alongside Hunnar, jabbing occasionally with his sword while expending most of his energy in imprecating his ancestors for getting him into this trouble. As a result, only his ego was scratched.

Now he was standing at the rail, staring at the northern horizon. “Tis long til night, yet darkness comes. Have you noticed, sirs?” Ethan hadn’t. Frankly, he couldn’t see much difference in the light even now.

But Hunnar apparently saw, as had Ta-hoding. “You are right, captain.”

September came over. “What’s all this about, now? Another attack? Good thing those beasties aren’t very bright. They could have picked us off neatly with a little thought.”

“I don’t know, Skua,” Ethan confessed. “Ta-hoding and Hunnar seem concerned about something in the light.”

“Not the light, noble sirs,” said Ta-hoding. “Look there, to the west a little more.” The two humans did so. “There, the Rifs!”

Now Ethan saw. A great dark cloud was just barely beginning to crawl over the stark horizon. Its front sparkled and flashed like the visible pulse of some huge animal. And the sky did seem to dim slightly.

“It comes early,” intoned Hunnar. “I wondered at seeing gutorrbyn come out of the north. Usually they move with the wind or into it. Clearly our flock was driven south.”

“Meaning we didn’t beat them off, then?” asked September.

“No, Sir Skua. I suspect they fought as long as they did only out of strong hunger. They’ve probably been running before that for some time. Now they are forced to try and cross to the west before the Rifs reaches them.”

Above, sails snapped and buffeted the masts, flailed uncertainly against spars in the unfamiliar cross-winds.

“We’ll have to turn further south and run before it as much as we can,” said Hunnar. “If we can stay well enough west it might even be a help … if everything holds together.”

“Good sir,” began Ta-hoding nervously, “I would recommend instead—”

“And we’ll reef in as much sail as you deem wise, good captain …”

Ta-hoding relaxed slightly.

“… less ten percent additional which I will order on, for I suspect you may value your hide above the swiftest completion of our journey.”

“You do me a terrible disrespect, noble sir, for in truth I would gladly sacrifice my poor self to insure that the honored and glorious friends of—”

“Enough, enough!” said Hunnar disgustedly, but without malice. “See to your sails and not platitudes, captain, and quickly!”

Ethan looked back at the cloud. It had doubled in size and was rapidly dominating the entire horizon, swallowing light and blue sky at a furious rate. He started forward.

“Going below, young feller-me-lad?”

“No!” Ethan was shocked at the vehemence of his response. But the big man’s words had been just a mite patronizing. Maybe he wasn’t ready for dancing atop the mainmast, but by Rothschild, he could damn well stay topside and take a little storm!

Hellespont du Kane surveyed the deck, left the hatchway, and strolled over. Ethan didn’t much feel like talking to the financier, but courtesy was part of his character. Besides, he might have a chance to make use of his famous acquaintance one day—if he ever thawed out.

Du Kane nudged one of the dragon-corpses that hadn’t yet been reached by the clean-up crew. Probably estimating its potential price per kilo on the interstellar marketplace, thought Ethan drily.

“Is it over, then, Mr. Fortune?”

“That much of it is,” Ethan replied, trying hard not to be brusque. “However, it appears that we are in for a mild blow. I suggest you go below and tie down anything you don’t want banged about.”

“Only my daughter, and she can take care of herself.” Was that line for real, or was du Kane playing straight? The perpetual poker face gave no clue. “The Rifs, then.”

“You know about them?” said Ethan, a little surprised.

“Oh yes, I shall remain on deck to absorb the experience. If you’ve no objection?”

“I? Object?” He’d enjoy seeing this stuffed shirt scramble for safety when the first strong gust struck. “Be glad of your company.”

Hellespont du Kane looked at him squarely. “There is no need to play irony, Mr. Fortune. I know what you think of me.

“Just a second, now, du Kane,” said Ethan, turning from the rail. He’d been caught badly off-balance. “What makes you think—”

“Never mind, never mind.” The financier waved a hand negligently. “It does not matter. Some of us, Mr. Fortune, are not born to the comradely, easygoing, instant-intimate manner. I have friends, but they are relationships based on mutual respect and, in some cases, mutual fear. I should like to be more … more …”

“Human?” supplied Ethan, and instantly regretted it. Du Kane looked his age, then. The glance he gave Ethan was almost—almost but not quite—pitiable.

“I would not venture to express it quite so strongly, Mr. Fortune, but we cannot help the way we are, can we?”

“I don’t know, Hellespont.” He clutched a strand of the rigging to steady himself in the rising wind. Sailors were beginning to string safety lines across the deck. “Is that a question or a declaration?”

Ethan stood at the stern. Ta-hoding manned one side of the huge wheel and his helmsman the other. “It will take two of us to manage her—for the first hour, at least,” he’d explained. All but a few of the top sails had been taken in. The raft skimmed smoothly toward the northwest. Ta-hoding was trying to make as much distance that way before the front struck and forced him to swing south with the wind.

By now the stygian nimbus blotted out most of the northern sky. Lightning crackled like a mad composer’s composition on three sides of the ship.

“Soon,” moaned Ta-hoding. “Soon. I can smell it coming.”

“Hold fast, friends,” warned Hunnar. “The first moments are the worst. Tis a live thing.” He moved off forward to double-check the safety lines.

“According to the captain,” said September, having to shout to make himself heard over the wind, “it’s kind of like an atmospheric tidal bore. You know what a tidal bore is?”

No one did. Before the big man had a chance to explain, the Rifs struck.

Ethan was prepared for anything, and that’s exactly what happened. He was knocked free of the rail and blown several meters across the deck before he rolled up against the feet of a sailor. The tran iceman was hugging one of the safety lines like a mistress. Somehow he maintained his hold, reached down a massive hairy paw, and grabbed Ethan by the scruff of his jacket. Ethan practically climbed his leg until he could get a grip of his own on the line.

The concussion from that first hammer-like gust had gifted him with a bruised cheek and a cut lip—worse than he’d suffered in the gutorrbyn assault. Slowly, carefully, he dragged his way back toward the rail.

Somehow, Ta-hoding and his helmsman were holding the ship on course. Hunnar had suggested lashing the wheel, and it had been a surprise when the captain refused.

“A rope has no brains, noble sir, and the Rifs is an angry great cub. You cannot trust it with a lashed wheel.” But he’d agreed to have the two alien airfoils locked in position.

The Slanderscree suddenly tilted and Ethan made a dive for the rail. Up and over the wind heeled the flying raft, until she was hurtling along on her port runners alone. Than Ta-hoding slammed the wheel over; she turned south, and crunched back to the horizontal with a violent crash. But she continued to run easily and nothing appeared to have broken or buckled.

September pulled himself up to where Ethan clung. “Held her heading a little long, there. Got plenty of guts, our fat captain. You okay?”

Ethan carefully extended a gloved hand and moved another step closer. “One of these days I’m going to tell you I’m dying, just for the hell of it,” he shouted back.

The wind flailed at them, intent on smashing the unyielding raft to kindling. Now that they were in the storm proper and moving with it, the raft ran easier. Fury pushed them but the initial insanity was gone south.

“How fast do you reckon we’re going, young feller?” Ethan didn’t have the damndest idea, but a barely audible voice from behind him apparently did.

“I should estimate the initial front at well over 150 kph. Now I perceive we are riding a wind of slightly more than a hundred. Invigorating, is it not?”

Moving hand over hand on the safety lines, Hellespont du Kane pulled himself to where Ta-hoding and his helmsman fought with the wheel.

“Old man or not,” began September, blatantly disregarding the fact that he was no swaddling babe himself, “I’m going to put a fist in that smug puss one of these days.”

“I don’t think it’s smugness so much,” replied Ethan, wondering that the aged industrialist was still on deck at all. “It’s just that whether it’s a million credits or the proper setting of silver at the table that’s in question, du Kane is very matter-of-fact about things.”

“Probably react to a fist in the snoot that way, too,” the big man grunted.

Ethan blinked beneath his goggles. The ice was gray under the streaking storm clouds, which raced the ship like an endless herd of galloping hippos. Lightning threw geysers of ice-chips when it struck the ice.

Several times the iron rods at the tips of the three masts drew million-volt white scimitars, but without damage to the raft. If you ignored the pain in your arms from gripping the rail, or the way your goggles dug circles around your eyes, why then, Ethan admitted, it had a wild and wonderful kind of beauty.

In fact, it was magnificent.

“I’m going below for something warm. Coming, young feller?”

“I’ll … I’ll be along in a minute,” Ethan murmured. Lightning jumped in a gargantuan triple arc from one tiny island to another. “You go on.”

September grunted, then paused, swaying in the gale. “Did you ever hear of the Analava System?”

A part of Ethan’s mind managed to drag itself away from the meteorological asylum. “Sure, vaguely. Weren’t those the two planets in the Vandy sector that went to war despite intervention of a Commonwealth peace team and a Church edict … oh, some twenty years ago?”

“Twenty-two. I told you I was wanted. Well, you want to know what I’m wanted for? I think, young feller-me-lad, I may just tell you.”

That drew Ethan’s attention away from the howling weather. September faced him broadside, clinging to the railing with one hand and a safety line with another, fighting the wind.

“Hundred twenty million people died in that war. Lasted a whole week. There are one or two people who think I’m responsible for it. That’s why they want me.” Then he turned, put both hands on the safety line, and started to make his way to the nearest hatch.

Ethan was too shocked to try and keep him from going, too stunned to frame any questions. The Analava War was one of the great horrors of modern times, a blot on the history of the Commonwealth, a running sore on the record of mature homo sapiens, and a throwback to the Dark Ages. His personal recollections of it were of the faintest—he’d been only eight or nine at the time. Details he’d learned later, in maturation. But the shock and terror it had on the adults around him were memories he retained from childhood.

September was crazy, of course. No one man could possibly be held responsible for the deaths of 120 million human beings.

Lightning cut and ripped at the gray ice. He looked out and saw none of it.

A giant hand picked him up and threw him out of his bunk. He didn’t think the joke was a bit funny and said so at length as he flailed angrily at his blankets in the dark room. Sleep evaporated from his curtained brain as he untangled himself and absorbed several facts at once.

First, while he was sure he was sitting up straight, he seemed to be leaning at an angle. He was sure the fault was with the universe and not him. As his eyes grew used to the darkness he was positive of it. He fumbled a bit, lit an oil lamp. Yes, the deck was canted to the left at an unnatural angle.

A respectable rumble of trannish curses drifted in to him from the main hold. Terranglo related semantic species came from September’s cabin, next to his. Cries of uncertainty and anxious questioning were already beginning to supplant the first howls of outrage. He opened his door.

Someone had already lit the lamp in the hall and lights were beginning to go on down in the main hold. If there was a sailor or soldier who hadn’t been dumped from his bunk, Ethan didn’t see him.

Fighting with his jacket and survival suit every centimeter of the way, he walked to the end of the hall. Tran were struggling to their feet, trying to straighten bunks and sort bedding, repeating the same inane, unanswerable questions to each other over and over. A single moan of pain came from somewhere far forward, but otherwise everyone seemed more shaken mentally than physically. He walked back and rapped on the door of the cabin across from his own.

A concerned Sir Hunnar confronted him almost immediately. The bedraggled knight was trying to banish the sleep from his own eyes and buckle on his sword at the same time.

“We’re stopped!” Ethan blurted.

Hunnar shook his great red mane. “Tis assured you can find the sum of some things, Sir Ethan. Most definitely, we are.”

Ethan glanced past the massive torso and saw General Balavere struggling with his own garb. September joined him a moment later and the three started up the passageway.

They nearly collided with Ta-hoding. The expression on the plump captain’s face was not reassuring.

Hellespont du Kane stuck his head out of the door of his cabin and shouted across to them, “What has happened, gentlemen?”

“We’re going to find out, du Kane,” Ethan yelled back at him. “Soon as we do, I’ll let you know.” The financier nodded and vanished back into his rooms.

Ta-hoding led them up the steps, grumbling over his shoulder. “It seems we may have run aground. That in itself is no insignificant worry, noble sirs, but I am more concerned about the damage. Tis almost a certainty one or more of our runners has collapsed. By the angle the raft lies at, I should guess one. I only hope ’tis the bolting to the hull and not the runner itself.”

“That’s duralloy we’re riding on, captain,” reminded September. “Reworked or not, it won’t crumple. I think you’re probably right about the bolts.”

Ta-hoding shoved at the hatchdoor. As always, the two humans braced themselves for the expected blast of groping, heat-sucking air.

The Rifs had degenerated into a mere gale. By morning the storm would pass them completely. Carefully shielded from the wind, lanterns threw dancing tendrils of light onto the deck. Ta-hoding was met by the waiting night-duty helmsman. Then another sailor came over, breathing unevenly, to stammer out a long string of information.

Hunnar and September walked to the railing while the conference continued. Ethan listened briefly, then joined them.

“We’re aground, all right,” suggested September.

“Can we pull free?” Ethan asked.

Hunnar pondered the question. “This southeast wind will die by first light. Then we’ll have the normal westwind in our faces. That should enable us to pull off with little trouble.”

Ta-hoding rejoined them. “Well, noble sirs, it seems I was woefully wrong. We have not run aground. Not exactly, anyway.”

“I don’t follow you,” said Ethan, squinting ahead into the darkness. “Certainly looks like an island up forward.”

“It does,” the captain agreed. “Again the world lies. Come.”

They followed him toward the bow. As they approached the sharp prow of the ship, Ethan noticed something shining in the moonlight off to the right. A big, cream-colored pillar. It looked oddly familiar.

They had to step carefully to avoid the fallen rigging and shattered spars that had been knocked down. The upper half of the foremast had snapped in the middle and the huge log had crashed to the deck, bringing rigging and furled sail down with it. Only a stub of the bowsprit was visible, and the left railing near the bow was crumpled, though the hull seemed sound.

To their left, sailors with lanterns threw rope ladders over the side and started down to the ice.

The stavanzer was quite dead. Extending into the dark to port and starboard, the uneven crusted back loomed over the prow. By terran standards it was a colossus. Compared to the only other member of its species Ethan had seen, this one was small, even tiny.

Ta-hoding scrambled awkwardly over a broken topspar, reached the bow and leaned forward.

“A young one, very young indeed. I wonder how it happens to be here alone.”

“Probably it was separated from its herd in the storm,” Hunnar guessed. “And sought the shelter of an island.” He stared at the wide, arching back, at the two flaccid air jets. “It must have been very weak and perhaps also asleep when we struck. I think it must have died instantly. See? We’ve hit just behind the head.”

Indeed, the sharp prow of the fast-moving raft had impacted just behind the huge closed eye. The long, tapered bowsprit had plunged mortally deep into the great animal, wreaking havoc with that endless nervous system.

“We’re damn fortunate it’s not an adult,” September observed.

“Fortunate indeed,” agreed Hunnar.

“Here, captain!” The cry came from their left, up from the ice. They followed Ta-hoding over.

Budjir had been on night-watch. Now he reached for the paws that dipped to help him back over the shattered rail.

“We struck the thunder-eater at an angle, sirs. The front port runner has broken completely loose from its mounting and now lies alone on the ice. The fore starboard runner is bent sharply, but the bolting held.”

“Vunier!” muttered Hunnar. “Well, we have spare fastenings. The mast will be no trouble, but the other …” He sighed. “We will have to make the repairs. Another delay, my friends.”

“Don’t fret,” said Ethan cheerily. “It won’t make any difference.”

At least the weather proved predictable. The receding storm held a little longer than the tran had expected, but by mid-morning the same familiar westwind gale had regained sway.

Ethan chatted with Budjir as the squire helped raise a fresh case of crude nails from the hold.

“Quite a storm we had, wasn’t it? How often does it get that bad?”

“Oh, that was a very light storm, sir,” the squire replied, his open peasant face devoid of duplicity. “Tis but bad luck we were caught out on the ice. Soon the real storms will begin.” He walked forward with the case, leaving Ethan thinking cold thoughts.

With the prow of the raft buried in the dead stavanzer and the rear runners holding firm, the Slanderscree was high enough off the ice at the bow for men to work underneath. Nevertheless, timbers and blocks were cut and placed to further reinforce the bow and assure that it would not collapse on the men working below at a sudden shift in the wind. Soon sounds of hammering and sawing, pounding and scraping rose above the gale.

Ta-hoding leaned over the side and grunted his pleasure. “At this rate we may be on our way before another day has passed. That is wondrous metal that your strange skyboat was made of, Sir Ethan. Even steel would have broken and twisted on that impact.”

“There are ways you might obtain more of it, you know,” said Ethan thoughtfully, beginning to enjoy himself. Shop talk! “Also ways to make it into things you need, easily and quickly. You have some things of manufacture that might do well in trade … nothing extraordinary of course … among my people. Your fine woodwork, for example. And such as this coat of hessavar. And other things.”

He looked over to where a group of crewmen were removing—excavating would be a better term—the enormous tusks of the dead stavanzer.

“Those teeth, for another example. What are they used for, anyway? Surely not for defense.”

“Eh?” Ta-hoding had been dividing his attention between Ethan and the repairs. “Oh, naturally not. The stavanzer has no enemies. The avaer are used for digging up the ice to get at the roots and the rich grenloen of the pika-pedan.”

That was simple enough. He had more questions, but they were interrupted by a shout from the mainmast lookout.

“Sail on the horizon!” Then, seconds later, “Many sails!”

“Convoy?” bellowed the captain loud enough to make Ethan wince. There was silence above. Other eyes turned from their work to stare at the basket atop the mast. Below, repairs slowed as the word was passed.

“Too far!” came the eventual answering shout. “But ’tis too many! And the pattern is not right!”

September was just coming on deck. Ethan met him halfway to the stern.

“Company, lad?”

“Looks like it, Skua. Ta-hoding thinks it might be a merchant fleet. The lookout isn’t so sure. I guess you could meet anyone out here.”

The repairs continued, but the metalworkers, carpenters, and supervisors kept throwing uneasy glances at the northeast horizon. They worked a little faster.

Word came up that the starboard runner had been straightened and the bent bolts replaced. The new foremast was already in place and other tran were retying the rigging and setting in new sail. Work was proceeding apace on the broken port runner. Then came a cry from the lookout that stopped everything.

“The Gods mock us! Tis the Horde, the Horde that comes!”

Hunnar uttered a violent oath and launched a vicious kick at the rail. Extended in anger, his chiv cut triple gashes in the wood. He whirled and stalked off to inform Balavere. September was shaking his head.

“Now if that isn’t just the loveliest thing,” he groaned.

“How could they have known to follow us?” cried Ethan. “How?”

“Ah, I’m not at all sure this meeting is by design, young feller. They’ve probably been running, running. Just our bad luck they ran this way. They may think we’re just another big merchant ship … They’ll recognize us when they get close enough, all right.”

“We could take down the banner,” Ethan suggested, “and let Ta-hoding and some of the crew try to bluff it out.”

“Bluff what out? Young feller, you don’t understand. If this were only a two-man raft bound with cargo of firewood for the ol’ homestead, or twice as big as us and loaded with silks and precious metals, they’d still swarm all over it. It may make a difference to Sagyanak that we are who we are, but it won’t to us. Result’ll be the same as if we’d never met them before. We’re still prey. Damnation!”

Soldiers were swarming into the rigging, crossbowmen taking up their posts in the three lookout baskets. Archers stationed themselves along the rail. Tarps were removed from the three small catapults that were useless against gutorrbyn. The complement of the Slanderscree now bent all energy toward preparing an unfriendly welcome for their unwanted visitors.

All except the repair crew, who worked faster than ever.

Hunnar stared across the stern. The rafts were now close enough to count, and he was doing just that.

“Too many. A shred, a short tailing of their former selves, but too many for a single ship, even this one.” He muttered another few choice curses. “If they could fix that venier runner we could outrun them easily!” He noticed Ethan’s inquiring gaze. “No, Sir Ethan. We will never be ready in time. The men will work until they are discovered by those, but they cannot make repairs while under attack. Perhaps …” his voice dropped to a mumble as he glared at the oncoming rafts, “we may even finish her this time, at least.”

Something sounded wrong to Ethan. He found it.

“Her?”

Hunnar looked down at him in surprise. “Why, yes. Did you not know? The Scourge is a woman.”

On board her tattered, shaken grand raft, a shadow of its former magnificence, Sagyanak the Death received the word of her lookouts. Yes, the runners of the oddly formed stalled vessel were truly made of metal the color and sheen of the demons’ sky-boat. And the Sofoldian banner flew from her masthead.

She smiled a half-toothless, ferocious smile.

The young warrior on her right stiffened as she turned to him. “Norsvik, I want as many taken alive as possible, do you hear? Even should it cost a few more of the People. These should be kept as healthy and undamaged as is manageable—so that they may last long.”

“It shall be as you say, Great One.” The warrior bowed and left the room.

Sagyanak placed wrinkled, clawed fingers together and began to stroke the arm of her throne. It was built of the bones of those she had vanquished. Soon she would add another set to the elaborately enscrolled frame. Perhaps even some demon-bones.

She wondered with interest if they would scream as did a normal man. That was a good question for the Mad One.

“They’re leaving the rafts,” said Hunnar, protecting his eyes from the high sun with a paw.

“I’m kind of surprised they don’t try to board us from their own rafts,” admitted Ethan.

“Well, young feller, I’m sure they’ve got their reasons. For one thing,” and he squinted as the wind shoved at his goggles, “none of those rafts look to be in good shape. In addition to what Hunnar’s folk did to ’em, that storm couldn’t have done ’em any good, either … And remember what Hunnar told us about these folk being able to move better on chiv than most rafts.”

The Horde poured onto the ice. They didn’t cover it with their numbers this time, and when, finally, they began to move forward, their yelling and chanting did not deafen. Or maybe they knew who rode the strange craft before them and their relative quiet was indicative not of lack of spirit but of terrible purpose.

They charged without pause. A hail of grappling hooks and scaling ladders hit the sides of the stalled raft. Soon Ethan was swinging his sword with the same lack of expertise but determination he had displayed on the walls of Wannome.

September ran one warrior through the chest, pulled his ax free, and yelled instructions to the tran at the miniature catapults. There was a simultaneous release of celluloid tension. Four small smoking bundles arched out over the ice. A shower of glass and iron shrapnel and blinding powder exploded in the middle ranks of the attackers.

Bleeding and torn, they fell to the ice. But their companions didn’t falter. Again the catapults fired and more nomads were knocked unmoving or moaning to the frozen sea.

“It doesn’t frighten them anymore!” Ethan shouted over the confusion.

Several times it seemed certain the barbarians would swarm onto the deck and overwhelm them. Several times the archers and spearmen were forced back from the rail or cut down. Only the constant rain of crossbow bolts from the tran in the masts closed off the breakthroughs, sealed the temporary gaps.

The battle continued all day, the tran and men on the ship fighting off wave after wave of attackers. Only when the ice had begun to devour the sun did they at last give up and retreat.

Not caring who noticed, Ethan sank exhausted to the deck. His sword clattered beside him.

Hunnar headed forward, no doubt to confer with Balavere and compare losses. The general had taken a bad arrow wound in the shoulder but had remained on deck throughout the fight.

September looked subdued and worried as he wiped his broadax.

“No miracles impending here, lad. Unless Williams can turn these sails into posigrav repellers. Shame I don’t believe in magic. To have come this far, have worked this hard … only to end up hamburger in the hands of a bunch of washed-up primitive alien bandits like these …” He shook his head, the great nose dipping and bobbing, and surveyed the corpse-laden deck. “Looks like we’ve lost at least half our complement. I think we’ll have to press a sword on du Kane, and his daughter, too.”

“How badly did we hurt them?” asked Ethan tiredly.

“Bad, young feller, bad. But not nearly bad enough. Tomorrow they’ll be all over us. If they should decide to break down that unrepaired runner or to fire the ship …”

“I’d have thought they’d have tried that already. Wonder why they haven’t?”

“Why, lad, this raft’s the fastest thing short of an air-car on this planet. I’d think she’d want it in one piece, this Sagyanak, if she can get it.” He paused, staring into the distance. “Ah, take a look.”

Ethan scrambled painfully to his feet. A ring of nomads, half of the surviving force, were drawn up in a broad circle around the Slanderscree. The rest were returning to the rafts. Archers at the ready rested near the bow, just out of range of crossbow.

“They’ve seen the busted runner,” said September. “And they’re not about to let us fix it, not by the Horse’s Head, what? Any work party we put over the side will get cut to pieces. Somehow we’re going to have to get that thing fixed so’s we can make a break tomorrow. No way we can stand off another all-day assault. We’re almost out of our pacific schoolmaster’s bombs, too.”

It was a grim group that gathered in the captain’s cabin that night.

“There it stands, sirs,” concluded Hunnar. He’d just repeated, with embellishments, what he’d told Ethan earlier. “As is apparent, our chances of repulsing the vermin’s next attack is, realistically speaking, very low. We have few thunder-packages left, few crossbow bolts, and far too few men. When the bombs and bolts run out, they will have us. We must try to break away. Yet we cannot get a crew safely outside to repair the runner.”

“The starboard runner is completely repaired and repositioned,” added Suaxus-dal-Jagger. “I would say that the other would collapse the moment any pressure is put on it. Truly, we cannot move unless it is fixed.”

The raft’s plan was laid out on the table in front of them. Now Ta-hoding, who’d been listening quietly while studying the schematic, spoke up.

“There is one thing that might be tried, sirs.”

“At this point all suggestions are welcome ones, captain,” said Balavere, holding his shoulder.

Ta-hoding leaned forward and ran a finger over the diagram. “We might chop through the flooring around the central runner brace here, and here. Our craftsmen could then work safely from within the raft. Possibly even part way outside, for the enemy will surely be looking only for men trying to slip over the side.”

“Can the runner be fixed from inside?” asked Ethan.

He was disappointed at Ta-hoding’s negative gesture. The captain continued. “Not very well, nor permanently, no. There is no way to perform the necessary final metalwork. But a temporary hold might be fastened through the bolt-holes with double-thick cable, which could then be lashed and tightened around the interior bracing.”

“Sounds not firm,” mused Balavere. “Would it hold at all?”

Ta-hoding made the tran equivalent of a shrug with his eyes.

“There is no way to predict, noble sir. Such an arrangement could hold fast for days. Or it could snap, as the squire says, the moment pressure is put to it.”

“I’m placing this in your hands, captain. Do you think it will hold?”

Ta-hoding hedged, obviously not fond of being put on the spot. Finally, “I would think for a morning, certainly. The cable should be strong enough to handle that much friction, if it is made very tight and does not work loose too quickly. Yes, I would stake my life, it will hold for a morning-time. I will stake my life to it.”

“A safe wager, captain,” said Hunnar. “If you are wrong there will be none of us about to collect. Can this be made ready by morning?”

“Not if we sit here jabbering all night,” broke in Balavere excitedly. “Captain, see to your men and to your repairs. And mind they proceed quietly. We have no wish to arouse the animals’ curiosity.”

Ta-hoding nodded and departed at as close to a run as Ethan had ever seen him use, the schematic of the ship held tightly in his paws.

“Then sirs, if that is all there is to be decided upon …”

“Your pardon, General, but that is not all,” said September. “Let’s say we make the repair secretly and in time. Let’s say further that this jury-rigged setup of the captain’s actually holds together. We pull free of that meat-mountain and start running into the wind. I assume we can make better time into the wind than they?”

“No question of it,” said Balavere.

“All right then, we show them our fundament and laugh ourselves silly as they disappear astern. What’s to prevent them from following doggedly in our tracks … this thing does leave tracks … and catching up with us as soon as that temporary hitch does fail?”

Balavere thought, hesitated. “We must take that chance. Likely we can lose them. Or, not knowing the precariousness of our situation, they may believe we are beyond overtaking.”

“And they may not,” September countered. He looked around the table. This awkward thought which the big man had raised refused to run away and hide. It demanded an answer, and no one had any.

“I beg your pardon, noble sirs,” said Eer-Meesach from the quiet end of the table. “I am not often involved in matters military, I know, and would prefer to shun this one. But I have had a thought. We may have other allies in this.”

“Don’t talk in riddles, wise one,” admonished Balavere. “I am too tired for games, and my shoulder hurts.”

“Very well. Tis a risk, and a considerable one. But as seems certain, our lives are balanced on the blade of fate as this ship is on those runners. One more risk should not drive us onto it any deeper …”

XII

ONE THING, ETHAN REFLECTED moodily the next morning, was that the wind wakes you quickly on this world. There’s no dawdling in bed. Right now he’d happily sign away a year of his life for a modest comfortese bed, which he would immediately set at roasting level before freezing the controls.

He turned and eyed the bow warily. The sailors had withdrawn to the rear half of the ship. Everyone huddled behind something solid in the pre-dawn chill.

There was a violent explosion. A fountain of raw meat and flesh vomited into the clear air. The westwind caught most of it and carried it off at right angles to the ship proper. He stood and stared out across the ice as the enemy encirclement, barely visible in the growing light, scrambled awake at the sound of the explosion. What were the demons up to now?

At least they’d had the pleasure of rudely waking the entire enemy camp. He took a deep breath, but cut it in the middle. Now that the gigantic carcass was laid open to the air, the smell of internal decay slowly permeated the entire ship despite the untiring efforts of the wind to sweep it away.

There was a cry from the lookout and then everyone was running for the stern.

A small cluster of four … no, five barbarians had broken from the circle and were chivaning slowly toward the motionless Slanderscree, moving in single file. They appeared to be unarmed.

“Parley party,” Hunnar explained laconically. “I do not believe we have anything to discuss with them.”

“I beg to differ, friend Hunnar,” said September. “We’ve as much to say to them as we possibly can think of, and for as long as we can say it without becoming obvious. We can gain time for that work crew. They still may not finish in time, but every minute we can stave off the final attack …” He left the rest unsaid.

One of the nomads was helped—none too gently—over the railing. Balavere and the others clustered around him.

The envoy’s once-magnificent helmet had a bad dent on one side. His leather frontispiece was cut and stained. But he seemed neither tired nor disenchanted, as Ethan had hoped. He spoke directly to Balavere without formal by-play.

“The Scourge would hold converse with those among you who lead. I am Haldur the Talker. I and my three lieutenants will remain here as hostages in bond for those you send.” As he spoke, three more of the nomad party were being helped on deck.

“We agree to the terms,” said Balavere, after a quick conference with Hunnar.

“Suaxus, make one of the noan ready.” The squire moved to do so.

The Slanderscree carried two of the little rafts, or noan, to serve as lifeboats or scout vessels as occasion demanded. Now one was being lowered over the side to serve as transportation for them all—but mainly for the human members of the parley party, who would only slide and slow the others on the ice. Three of the Slanderscree’s crew came along to handle the sail and steering.

Hunnar, Ethan, Skua, and Suaxus comprised the exchange group. Once aboard, the noan raised sail. The nomad who’d remained behind on the ice guided them through a gap in the barbarian encirclement. A low murmur came from that ugly gathering as they passed through. Many of the nomad warriors wore bandages and splints in addition to badly battered armor. They were in a murderous mood and Ethan hoped Hunnar knew what he was doing in agreeing to this exchange.

They passed squads of nomads chivaning toward the ring. Preparing for the final effort, no doubt.

September was thinking along similar lines. “Getting ready to attack again.”

“Was there any doubt of it?” declared Hunnar. “I am twice surprised at this parley request. Does she think us fools enough to surrender?”

“Whatever the reason, be thankful for it,” September replied. “It buys time.”

“Listen,” put in Ethan, “are you sure we can get back to the raft? This charming lady’s character doesn’t impress me. How honorable is she?”

“As honorable as the lowliest slime that seeps from the garbage tailings,” spat the knight. “Yet there will be no question in this matter. All respect the person of an envoy. Without such concord it would make surrender awkward. Such as these prefer not to fight if it can be arranged. Remember when I said they have grown fat.”

Ethan watched another pack of taut, tightly armored tran chivan past. “I don’t see any who look especially corpulent.”

“No longer, since the defeat, friend Ethan. Had this happened two or three hundred years ago, when the Horde was still new in our land, I do not believe that even with your wizard’s crossbows and thunder-making we could have defeated them as we did.”

They were nearing the anchored nomad fleet—or rather, the pitiful remnant thereof. Their guide directed them among the rafts until they drew alongside what once must have been a veritable palace on runners.

Now the bloodcurdling motifs and designs carved into the rails and central pavilion were scarred by fire. The golden leafing on the central structure had been seared and melted.

Waiting hands helped them onto the deck, holding firmly. To see how much meat was left on him, no doubt, Ethan reflected. He tried to imagine some get-togethers he’d attended where the company had been worse, but the private jest brought no hidden smiles. It was hard to be flip when at any moment some unpredictable primitive might try to make steak out of you.

They entered the pavilion and passed through several rooms. The interior of the big cabin was still rich-looking, still comfortable. Eventually they reached a room larger than all the others. Several well-built specimens of trannish manhood stood along the walls, armed with huge double-edged swords.

At the far end of the room was an incredible throne made from trail bones and skulls and inlaid with precious metals and gems. The thing that sat on the throne was, even to alien human eyes accustomed to a different meterstick of beauty, outstandingly repulsive.

Instead of the huge, glowering warrior Ethan had first envisioned, Sagyanak was a shrunken, wrinkled old crone. An ugly sack of bones and bile, made the more hideous by childish attempts at facial and body makeup.

This ancient construct of weak ligaments and venomous eyes leaned forward and stared at them, a finger rubbing lower lip like a pallid bristled worm.

“So, there you stand, as the Mad One said you would.” They did not question or reply. “That you have even come to this parley says you are not so strong as I thought. Better and best, better and best.”

“That we come to this parley,” replied Hunnar evenly, “means we are proper in respecting the rules of conflict … something you have never bothered to do.”

“There are no rules to war,” the crone answered indifferently. ‘There is but victor and defeated. Methodology is irrelevant. But you have come.”

“Already established,” Hunnar replied impatiently, despite September’s anxious glance. “What is it you want? You’ve interrupted my morning meal.”

“So you have plenty of supplies, too. Excellent. Additional stores are always welcome.”

“If you can catch it before the wind does, you may follow and be welcome to our garbage.”

She leaned forward slowly, showing broken yellow teeth.

“When I have taken you, you will not long be fit to serve even as garbage.” With an effort, she sat back and tried to essay a pleasant smile. The result was horrible. “But there is no need for this unpleasantness. I do not need you to justify my actions in battle, good knight. Leave that for another visit Now, I have been known never to break my word. To do so would dishonor me before, the Gods and the Dark One. Know you this to be true?”

“Tis so,” admitted Hunnar.

“Then I say this to you.” The head leaned against the throne-back and the slit eyes narrowed. “Give up to me the great raft the demons have built for you. Yea, you may even keep your weapons, including the magic bows-which-are-not-drawn. I covet them, but you may retain them. Also the thunder and lightning your catapults throw. Keep these and go freely wherever you wish. I swear this.”

Hunnar must have been startled at the seemingly generous offer, but he did an admirable job of not showing it.

“We cannot do that. We are too far from Sofold to safely chivan back over open ice.”

“I will give you rafts enough for all your people, including your wounded, and enough supplies to return. I swear this also. And you will have the wind with you.” There was a predatory gleam in her eyes. “What say you?”

Hunnar appeared to consider, then turned away. While Suaxus remained at attention, the others discussed the proposal in whispers.

“She can’t be trusted, can she?” asked Ethan.

“It is strange she offers us our lives. Yes, if she so swears, she can be.”

“I don’t share your confidence,” put in September. “If we make it back we’d have to start building another boat from scratch. I don’t know if that toy forge could manage it. This thing smells worse than that great stinking carcass in front of the ship. That crazy Eer-Meesach!”

“I concur with you, friend Skua. We face very probable death if we do not agree,” Hunnar explained. “We might not live out this day. The offer will not be made again.”

“We still have a chance to break and run for it.”

“The moment we put on sail, friend Skua, they will attack. With irons and fire. If they cannot have the ship they will surely not allow us to escape.”

“There’s still the wizard’s idea,” said Ethan.

“Of which nothing has come,” September countered. The debate was interrupted by a new voice. Recognition escaped Ethan for several seconds.

“Come on, gentlemen, you’ve been stalling long enough. You may as well accept. It’s all you can do and you know it.”

They turned. Ethan hadn’t thought to hear that voice again.

Walther walked through the screened door to the right of the throne, took a seat at its base, and smiled at them. No one offered greeting.

“Well, don’t look so stunned,” he admonished them in fluent Trannish. It was the first time Ethan had heard him speak the native language, though he’d admitted to knowing it before. “I confess I was in tight for a while there. Afraid one of these hairy berserkers would run a spear through me before I could explain who I was and what I had to offer. Once I got through to a perceptive captain-type, he had me brought to the boss-lady here. We had a nice chat.

“Of course, it was too late for me to do anything about the battle she’d already lost, but I had a few other suggestions. I managed a private looksee at the shrimp’s plans for a big raft. Wasn’t hard to figure out what you intended to do with it. The main remainder of the Horde slunk off for a little subsistence raiding and thieving, but small rafts made up to look like merchant ships were always shuttling back and forth between us and the harbor.

“We knew when each mast was set in place, when every box of stores was taken on board. As soon as you shoved off and got a little out of sight, we followed. Not only do I know where you’re headed as well as you do, but that big raft cuts a helluva gash in the ice. Easy to follow.

“Only thing I hadn’t figured on was the speed that thing makes. If you hadn’t had the decency to run into that big grass-eater, we’d still be chasing you. Everything will work out nicely now, though.”

“Yes, I can see it, too,” said Ethan, surprising himself again by breaking in. “You’ll take a picked group of these murderers and sail on to Arsudun. Not knowing you from normal humanfolk, the humanx authorities will ignore you. Then you find your associates. If they don’t fry you out of hand for bungling the whole enterprise, you’ll explain the situation to them, fly back here in an air-car, pick up the du Kanes, and with only a little time lost, continue your original plan to hold them up for ransom. Neat. And us?”

“Believe me,” said Walther sincerely, “I wish I’d never set eyes on either of you. Or that teacher, either. Yes, that’s a fair scenario. You can make your own way into Brass Monkey. By the time you can get another boat built, make it to Wannome from here, and then to Arsudun, we should have received our credits and scattered to the far corners of the Arm.”

September pointed at the listening Sagyanak. “One other little item. What does she get for providing you with transportation and protection, um?”

“Oh, in return for her help, Her Majesty will retain the lovely big raft you’ve built.”

“That all?”

“Well, I did sort of promise her a few crates of modern arms and maybe a small cannon or two once we’ve been paid off.”

“Leaving aside the fact,” September continued, “that that’s a violation of every rule for contact with Class Four-B worlds, just what do you imagine this she-scorpion will do with ’em?”

“Why, I expect that Her Majesty,” he said, glancing over at her, “will sail pronto back to our frigid foster icebox and reduce the place to rubble. After which, without killing off too many of the populace, she’ll resume her former status as protector of commerce in the territory. As for ‘laws,’ ” he continued contemptuously, “through sabotage of an interstellar liner and kidnapping of you all, I’ve already made myself a candidate for mindwipe. I’m not in the least concerned with what the locals intend to do with any new toys I might choose to give them.”

“I should have broken your neck when I had the opportunity,” observed September calmly.

“Yes, you should have. But you’ve missed your chance. Agree, and you can at least get out of here with your hide. Refuse and we’ll take the boat from you anyway. Fight and you’ll be overrun. Try to run away and we’ll cut that broken skate free and fire the sails. You are good and well stuck, friends.”

“Even if we do agree, what if the tran don’t go along with us?” asked Ethan. Walther shrugged.

“That’s your problem. I think you’d better convince them. Oh yes, one other thing. I’d like you to leave the brat … what’s her name? … Colette … with me, as a guarantee you won’t try and follow us into Brass Monkey on the rafts we leave you. It wouldn’t do for you to sail in a couple of days after me and let the peaceforcers in on our little secret, would it?”

Something very like a cackle came from the throne. This request, demon-origin or not, she could understand.

“Maybe you’d like me to cut off my right arm, as a further gesture of insurance?” asked September sarcastically.

“Naw, keep it. I’m feeling generous today.” He grinned, a small mind in a sudden position of power and enjoying every minute of it.

“We will return to our ship and inform you of our decision,” said Hunnar, unable to listen to any more of this without going for certain throats.

“You’ve got half an hour by the sun,” replied Walther easily. “You can spend the time counting houris for all I care. If you agree to the terms, take in the banner at your stern. If not, well,” he shrugged, “I’ve done my best for you.”

“I don’t wonder that she calls you the Mad One,” guessed Ethan.

Walther started and lost a little of his composure.

“Watch your mouth, bright-eyes. This is no sales convention.”

“And you’re certainly no door prize,” he said as they left the throne room.

Ethan tried to affect a nonchalant attitude as they slid back over the ice. But he didn’t really relax until they had passed through the encirclement. Now there were plenty of women and cubs in the group, who looked every bit as ragged and vicious as the menfolk. Obviously Sagyanak was leaving nothing to chance. This was to be a supreme effort on her part.

And why not, with such a prize? With modern weapons she could rule as much of the planet as she chose without far-off humanx authorities ever finding out about them.

“Of course we can’t agree to this,” he said to no one in particular.

“Of course not,” September said. “But it did kill some time. Maybe enough. In any case we must try to get away now. The thought of even a single decent pistol in the hands of that horror makes my stomach crawl.”

“You’d know about that, wouldn’t you?” said Ethan suddenly, giving him an odd look. September chose not to reply. He turned instead to talk to Hunnar.

“We’ll have to hold them off and pick the best opening, then break for it.”

Balavere and Ta-hoding were waiting with anxious expressions when they reboarded the raft. It felt good to be back on the high deck, even if it was destined to become a baroque coffin within the hour. The barbarian hostages scrambled with poor grace to get over the side. Hunnar watched them speed for the safety of the encampment with obvious disdain.

Something unseen hit Ethan, planted a freezing kiss on one cheek and vanished down a forward hatch. Ethan caught only a glimpse of flying fur and a hint of a pink face.

“What was that?” he mumbled, rather stupidly.

“Why, that was Colette du Kane, young feller.” September grinned. “Wonder why it is that impending destruction always gives women the hots?”

“Deity, Skua! Sometimes your crudity exceeds all standards!”

“Please, no compliments before battle,” he replied.

They explained to the others the results of their one-sided “parley.” Ta-hoding was rapidly being reduced to a quivering wreck. Balavere just listened quietly, nodding now and again at something Hunnar said, questioning September, until they’d both finished.

“Twould be unthinkable to give them the ship under any circumstances,” said the General finally. “I would rather raze it to the ice than let the Evil One near it.”

Ethan sniffed the air and gagged. The miasma from the rotting colossus seemed powerful enough to stand off an attack by itself. In fact, after a look over the rail he noticed that the section of the encirclement directly to the east of them had actually grown thinner. It might really be of some aid. When they made their break, they would have a weakened section to try for. But Hunnar and Ta-hoding wanted to run the other way. Ethan sighed and looked at the thinned line of enemy troops with regret. The tran were probably right And the nomad rafts were drawn up to the east, forming a second barrier there.

Extra weapons were passed to all, along with the solemn word that there would be no quarter, no let-up in this next attack. Once again preparations were made for steering from below deck. Not because of impending storm, but in case the helmsman topside should be cut down when the raft tried to break the enclosing circle.

The wounded took swords or spears. So did Elfa and Colette and even Hellespont du Kane, who at least could wield one like a cane. The crossbowmen scrambled aloft, settling themselves in their baskets and stacking bolts nearby. Archers and pikemen moved to positions at the railing.

Waiting.

Ethan surveyed the poised Sofoldians, a pitifully reduced group, then the hundreds of tensed nomads. There were no reserves this time to take up an empty place on the rail if a man fell. He was beginning to lament all the sales, commissions, deals, promises, and women he’d failed to make. It must have taken more than a half hour.

It could have been his imagination. Or maybe Sagyanak and Walther had decided to give them a little extra time in the hopes that the increasing tension would weaken the resolve of those on the Slanderscree. Another precious few minutes for the furious repair crew.

They finally broke, howling and screaming, chivaning toward the raft from all sides. No disciplined assault this, but a shrieking, angry, uncontrolled mob.

Arrows began to thunk into the deck, the masts, the railing. A man went down a few meters to his left. Meanwhile their crossbowmen and archers were returning the fire from superior height. Dozens of barbarians dropped, hundreds came on. Again the uninvited grappling hooks and ladders sprouted. One hook narrowly missed pinning Ethan to the rail.

A helmeted head appeared over the side. September swung at it—he had the great axe in his hands again. Ethan hacked and flailed at the knotted rope attached to the hook.

One voice drifted down through all the noise and confusion. Ethan hardly recognized it. It was the voice of the mainmast lookout, posted aloft with the crossbowmen. He was using a megaphone—another, simpler invention by Williams. His message was brief.

“THEY COME!”

Ta-hoding, who’d been shaking every time an arrow whizzed within half a dozen meters of him, heard it also. Suddenly he was moving his fat bulk about the deck at an insane pace, bodily pulling sailors from their positions and all but booting them into the rigging. Ethan prayed that the captain wouldn’t run into a mast and knock himself flat.

Dropping swords and pikes and spears, they scrambled into the shrouds. Sails began to drop, grew convex with wind. The wheel creaked, a ghostly turning as the below-deck system struggled to move the half-frozen fifth runner. The soldiers fought all the harder to compensate for the manpower loss.

Gradually, a strange lull seemed to settle over the combatants on both sides.

“Hear it, young feller?” murmured September.

“Yes … yes, I do,” he whispered back, unaware that he’d done so.

The sound was faint, distant. A carefully controlled tsunami. Continuous rumble welling out of the ice itself.

Their attackers heard it too. Questioning looks assaulted the eastern horizon. As the susuration grew louder it began to assume a definite rhythm, rolling and booming like heavy surf. A nomad hesitated in mid-cut with his sword, another thrust his spear with less authority, yet a third drew his bow and let the bowstring sag limp.

The Slanderscree began to back free of the dead mountain. Ethan was sure he could hear a slight metallic groan from forward and belowdecks. He ignored it. Maybe it would go away. Whatever it was, the roped-together runner did not buckle.

Fires erupted in the encirclement on all sides of the raft as stockpiled wood was ignited. Rafts of dried wood soaked in oil were made ready to be pushed against the ponderous, slowly-moving great raft. Here and there torchbearers began to move toward the ship.

But at the same time, other nomads were beginning to slip back down their boarding ropes, stumble off the ladders. They fought against those pressing forward.

The torchbearers got halfway to the turning raft, now dripping warriors from its sides.

“There, I see them!” Ethan yelled. September turned too, and then Hunnar, and then the few of the enemy who still fought.

Far off in the distance eastward, a tiny clump of steel-gray bumps hove into view, like a herd of great whales. Except that the slightest of these was greater than the greatest whale that had ever swum Terra’s seas.

Adamantine sunlight encountered thin paired strips of white and flashed. The sound of thunder floated ominously over the glass-earth.

Ta-hoding ignored the occasional arrows which still flew over the deck and scrambled for the wheel. Another sailor joined him. Now there were four sets of powerful arms pulling at the fifth runner, two above and two below deck. Ethan watched the captain’s suety face swell as he strained to get the ship clear of the corpse.

They would only need seconds to pick up wind and start southward. There was no question of running into the wind now. Against it they could outrun the Horde, but not the herd. They might get out of their path. They had to get out of their path.

Utter confusion extended invisible claws, gripped the barbarian ranks as the word was passed. Spears and axes and torches were dropped as the remaining nomads spread their dan and chivaned for their lives. A few of the barbarian rafts were struggling with reduced crews to pull out their ice-anchors and get under sail as well. It was impossible to tell at that distance, but Ethan supposed many of those anchors were being cut free.

The majority of the nomads seemed determined to gain the distance to the rafts, the only homes they’d ever known. A few, less concerned, scattered in all directions, though it was hard going against the wind, or north, or south. A few milled about aimlessly. Others were trampled under chiv by their hysterical fellows.

Hunnar was growling low in his throat, glancing from the sails to the straining captain, then astern.

“Get her nose around, Ta! Get her nose around!”

Now the herd was close enough for Ethan to discern individuals. Close enough to see the long, gargantuan tusks curved partway back into the cavernous mouths. Even battling wind-noise, their thunder dominated as they inhaled cubic liters of air, forced it out of the fleshy jets near their rear.

The tran of the Slanderscree fought like demons to put on every centimeter of sail. There was a crackling and snapping. The still shattered bowsprit turned with agonizing patience to the south. Nearly free now of the attentions of the Horde, she began to move.

She passed the half-putrid corpse with nail-biting slowness—the corpse whose rotting stink had drawn the furious, bellowing herd from feeding grounds far over the horizon to gather and mourn over one of their dead.

Just as Eer-Meesach had said it would.

Ethan found himself pounding the rail with a fist.

“Move, ship, move! Please move!” Rippling wave-thunder drowned out all sounds now, hammered relentlessly against his eardrums. Prayers went unheard.

A few, a very few, of the barbarian rafts had put on sail. The rest were trying.

The herd moved in slow motion upon the rafts. With them. Among them.

Through them.

There were no more rafts.

The Slanderscree was pulling away as her sails ate wind. The bad runner held for a minute, then a second, and another, until it was forgotten in other concerns. Ethan stood frozen to the rail as the herd approached at an incredible pace. They were moving at least 100 kph—into the wind!

What remained of the once omnipotent Horde of the Scourge vanished beneath several million kilos of gray flesh, became a red-brown smear on the shining ice.

The herd drew closer. For a second time Ethan gazed down the throat of Leviathan.

It paused, froze in space.

Began to recede.

“They’re stopping at the body,” murmured Hunnar finally, long after they were safely away southward. He had to clear his throat once before the words came out. “Thank all the Gods!”

“It didn’t look like many of them managed to escape,” said Ethan.

“No,” agreed Hunnar, curiously unemotional. “Not many.”

“Cubs, too,” continued Ethan, his voice dropping to a barely audible mutter.

September showed no such concern. He was rubbing both hands together and chatting with sailors and soldiers, as happy as if a freshly baked cake had exited the oven without falling. Hunnar was leaning over the stern, straining to pick out shapes among the rapidly receding forms.

“I didn’t see Sagyanak’s raft in those final seconds. Could the devil-bitch have escaped again?”

“Sorry to kill all the bad dreams you half-hoped to have, friend Hunnar,” said September. He grabbed at his hood as a sudden gust of wind threatened to tear it off. “I did.”

“What do they do with the dead young one, the stavanzers? Now that they’ve found it?” asked Ethan.

“If the wizard’s information is accurate, and it has been thus far,” the knight replied, “then the thunder-eaters will remain with the dead for several days. I have never seen such a thing myself. Supposedly they prod the body with their tusks, nudge it every so often in the apparent hope that they may stir it to life once again … Eventually, some inner desire satisfied, they will move off, never to return to that spot again. Or perhaps they merely grow hungry. None know for certain. Among my people, at least, the observation of the thunder-eater’s habits from close range ’tis not over-popular. And thunder-eaters do not die often.”

“I don’t wonder at your caution.” Ethan noticed that Ta-hoding was only a short breath from total collapse, now that the Slanderscree was out of danger. A sweaty heap of fur and flesh, the captain had sunk to the deck next to the big wheel. He stared into nothingness. All his efforts seemed directed to following each breath with another.

“Noble animals,” Ethan mumbled.

“What?” September came over. “Those supra-nourished grotesque herbivores? Get a hold on your self, lad!”

Ethan sighed. “Skua, sometimes I think you have no poetry in your soul.”

“Now as to that, young feller-me-lad, firstly you’d have to establish the existence of the latter. And you’re one to talk!” He sniffed with exaggerated force. The resultant supercilious pose was so comical that Ethan couldn’t keep from laughing. “You kindly explain to me, lad, the poetry in volume buying or discount pricing.”

Ethan started to do just that, but had to pause in the middle of the first sentence.

Why did someone have to keep reminding him of where he wasn’t?

XIII

THERE WAS LITTLE NEW to look at as the raft continued to devour the kilometers. The journey rapidly became a dull cycle of rising, pacing the too-familiar deck, talking, eating, and returning to sleep. The humans, in one respect, were fortunate. They had the added extra task of fighting to stay that one step ahead of frostbite.

They’d entered a new region, filled with innumerable small islands. Many rose nearly perpendicular from the ice—dark, black stone, the stumps and cores of long-eroded volcanos. They served to break the monotony of flat horizon, but just barely, since the next was much like its predecessor.

A few of the islands were inhabited. Tiny villages clung precariously to the cliffs.

Occasionally a small raft or party of wandering hunters would parallel the Slanderscree for a few dozen meters. The dialect here differed from that of Sofold. Ta-hoding, a good merchant, was able to converse with them like a neighbor. After the first few encounters, even Ethan and the other humans could make themselves understood, though they lacked the captain’s fluency.

The Trannish language had a universal planetary base, then. Local variations did not preclude adequate communication between widely scattered groups. Another plus as far as trade and commerce were concerned.

No matter how skilled or strong, the locals rapidly dropped behind, unable to match the big raft’s speed.

Things grew so dull that Ethan found himself wishing for another storm—but not a Rifs. That bored he wasn’t.

He got it.

After the third consecutive day of freezing wind and even a little razor-sharp sleet, he was damning himself for a romantic idiot and praying for a return to the clear sameness of days before. Anything for a reprise of calm weather!

Constant maneuvering in the high wind had finally cracked several of the top cross-spars and weakened the repaired foremast. Ta-hoding also wanted to fix the still-amputated bowsprit, and there was no telling what the storm had done to the awkwardly repaired runner. They still had a long way to go and you couldn’t tell when you’d need every square centimeter of sail and solid, dependable runners.

The little informal council met once again—on a much less anxious note than the last time. Suggestions were easily made, as easily rejected. It was finally agreed that they would take the time to put in at the first town or village which offered the raft protection from the westwind, a decent harbor.

Ethan was on deck the next morning when the lookout gave the cry, so he was one of the first to see the monastery of Evonin-ta-ban. He joined Ta-hoding as the refuge came into full view, shining dark in the light of the fast-rising sun.

“Odd-looking sort of place,” said Ethan. “What is it? We haven’t passed anything like it before. Surely it’s not a hunting or farming community.”

“I do not know what it is, noble sir,” the captain replied uneasily. “Truly, I have ne’er seen the likes of it before. But Dagstev, the lookout, was right about the harbor. It looks to be sufficient … at this distance, anyhow. There do not appear to be any ships within, so it cannot be a trading community. Very, very strange. Perhaps … perhaps we’d best not land here, noble sir.”

“Glassfeathers. You’ve got to learn to face the cosmos with a more open mind, Ta-hoding. One of these days you may even skippership between the stars.”

The captain’s reply was direct and left no room for semantic nitpicking.

“Not if all the devils that ever were got behind me and pushed, Sir Ethan!”

“Why not, captain? Your own ancestors probably had the power of flight.”

“And had the good sense to give it up, too,” Ta-hoding countered religiously. “Give me a good ship with sharp runners, smooth ice beneath her keel, and a strong wind astern and I’ll be quite satisfied. I leave the skies to those who wish them. And say nothing about their sanity, however questionable.” He concluded on a note of finality and commenced barking landing orders to the crew. The Slanderscree was angling for the harbor entrance and Ethan decided to leave the captain alone.

One by one the wide sails were reefed in. He went below, roused September from his lingering breakfast and informed Hunnar, the du Kanes, and several others of their incipient landfall.

Hunnar joined him and they ascended to the bow. Together they stared over the broken bowsprit.

“Ta-hoding said he’d never seen anything like it, Hunnar.”

“Nor have I, friend Ethan, nor have I. But I find its aspect only unusual, not threatening. Though whoever built it surely had an eye to its defense. It seems impregnable. A strange place indeed.”

Such as it was, the harbor was simply a natural gap in the crust of the island. Fingers of dark, worn rock extended on two sides to embrace the slowing Slanderscree.

Except for some flat land to the right of the harbor, the entire island consisted of several sheer, jagged peaks that shot straight out of the ice to a height of four and five hundred meters.

Low vegetation struggled in the shelter of the shadowy cliff-face. A band of the ever-present pika-pina was just visible as they entered the harbor, extending from the west side of the mountains into the wind. The flat area to their right appeared to be under intensive cultivation.

Three-quarters of the way up the vertical basalt, cradled in a notch between the two highest peaks, sat an odd jumble of multi-tiered structures which seemed to grow from the naked stone. The architecture was elaborate, far more so than anything Ethan had observed to date.

Turrets and battlements he knew from Wannome, but these buildings also boasted spires, minarets, and even true domes—the first he’d seen on the planet. What looked to be a long, surprisingly spacious series of ramps and stairs began near the base of the cliff and ascended via a number of switchbacks to the lowest of the precariously situated structures.

The single dock gave every indication of being carefully kept and maintained, if not often used. There were no ships tied up to it and none in the harbor. But the preservation and nearby cultivated fields were signs that the place was inhabited. At least they’d have a place to tie up and could forgo the trouble of utilizing the bulky ice-anchors. In the lee of the skytickling crags there was hardly a hint of wind. It was almost calm.

September joined them silently, staring upwards until he risked a neck-crick.

“Whoever put that pile of vertiginous masonry together, friend Hunnar, spent more than spare time at it. Without the aid of lifters and impellers, and in this climate, I’ll not hesitate in calling it a tremendous piece of raw engineering. Going to be a respectable hike to the front door.”

“You think we’ll be going today?” asked Ethan. “I could not venture a prediction,” put in Hunnar hastily, before the big man could verbally commit them to another arduous enterprise. “But if you will lower your eyes you will see that our arrival has not gone unobserved.”

A figure was coming toward the dock from the base of the stairway. Apparently male, the tran’s stride was purposeful but not hurried. Open greeting, or forewarned is forearmed, mused Ethan. They watched the native with interest.

He seemed in no way unusual. While his beard was longer than Hunnar’s and whiter than Balavere’s, the welcoming committee of one showed no other signs of advanced age. He was of average trannish height and built slimmer than most of the tran on board the raft.

He wore only a long white fur, done up in a sort of toga arrangement, instead of the now familiar tran outer garment that snapped closed at the shoulders. It and its wearer were devoid of personal ornamentation—unless you counted the body-length staff in his right paw.

At first Ethan thought it was wood, but as the native came closer he saw that it had been carved from some porous green stone. More importantly, the tran didn’t seem the least bit afraid of them. That suggested once again either honest friendliness or the presence of ten thousand spearmen hidden in the rocks. As it developed, the more reasonable guess was correct.

The landing ramp was put across. Hunnar, Ethan, and September debarked while the sailors and soldiers on deck and in the rigging continued their tasks. Each kept a curious eye on their oddly-clad host’s approach.

Ethan was thinking it would be a good idea to have Ta-hoding present to handle any language difficulties. As it developed, the captain’s linguistic abilities weren’t needed.

“I am Fahdig, gentlesirs,” he said. “And this is the monastery of Evonin-ta-ban. You are welcome here.”

“Our thanks,” replied Hunnar. “I hight Sir Hunnar Redbeard, and these,” he indicated the two humans, “are visitors from a far place, noblemen of another land: Sir September and Sir Fortune. We ask to remain within your protecting harbor for a few days to effect needed repairs. If there is a harbor fee we can pay …”

The other gestured with the stone staff.

“There is no fee. The facilities of the monastery are open to any reasoning man. Few have ever been turned away wanting. But it is for the Brotherhood to decide and not I.”

“I didn’t know you had religious orders,” whispered Ethan to Hunnar. The staff-bearer overheard.

“Know I not what you mean, strange knight. The Brotherhood is an association of free spirits and minds, gathered in this place to preserve the knowledge and histories of the universe against the onslaughts of the Dark One. We are scholars, sir, not sycophants.”

“Starseeds,” mumbled Ethan. “Wait til Williams and Eer-Meesach find out we’ve stumbled onto a local society of researchers.”

September’s comment was blunt. “Frankly, I couldn’t give a damn about how they built rafts or grew pika-pina on this ice cube a couple of thousand years ago. That’s the sort of thing you’re likely to find in these old storehouses of ‘knowledge.’ Useless trivia. Religious nuts, all right!” All of which, of course, was declaimed carefully in Terranglo. “They just worship something other than a supernatural being, is all. Doesn’t change their style from religious fanaticism to enlightened guardianship.”

“Well, they don’t seem very fanatical to me,” Ethan countered in Terranglo, as Hunnar continued to exchange pleasantries and information with their host.

“Maybe it’s not obvious, but …” September grunted. He looked heavenward to where windswept towers and steeples had been hewn into the naked rock. “Anyhow I’d like a look-see inside their cubby. I admire good workmanship no matter what the source.”

September didn’t have to translate his request. Unbidden, Fahdig had invited them to accompany him to the monastery for the Brotherhood’s ruling.

“I hope they keep the haggling to a minimum,” September grumbled undiplomatically in Trannish. “I, at least, am still in a hurry.”

“The decision-making should take but a heartbeat of time, gentlesir,” replied Fahdig. “Only long enough for the Prior to satisfy himself as to your reason. Until then you are guests. The harbor is yours.”

“Before we start unpacking,” pressed September, “how long before the Brotherhood and your Prior can take action on our request?”

“Do but follow me and it shall be seen to as soon as we arrive.”

“Well, that’s fine! Just fine.” The big man turned, cupped hands to mouth.

“Hey, du Kane! Hellespont du Kane!”

The slim figure of the financier appeared at the railing of the raft.

“Yes, Mr. September?”

The big man switched to Terranglo again. “The lad, Hunnar, and I are going for a hike with his beardship, here! Seems we’ve run across a bunch of hermetic scholars! Harmless enough. We’ve got temporary permission to park here and make repairs, but we’ve got to make the walk-up to satisfy the local high mucky-muck we’re reasonable … whatever that means. Tell Ta-hoding to get cracking on his work and to keep an eye on the monastery … that’s what they call it. If he doesn’t see my coat waving in the next hour he can go ahead and work full speed. Got that?”

“I rarely misconstrue any information consigned to my care, Mr. September. Rest assured that I shall convey the message to the captain with the utmost precision. What if you should be detected gesticulating with your garments?”

“Then he’s to raise sail and get the hell out of here!” September snorted and turned to their guide, speaking in Trannish.

“All right, friend Fahdig, let’s go meet your Brotherhood.”

Ethan was quite sure that heights held no terror for him. He’d sipped cocktails on transparent balconies ninety stories above steaming swampland.

However, he’d been completely enclosed in a comfortable tower suite at the time. It was rather different mounting hundreds of steps with a sheer drop of hundreds of meters on your right, then on your left. Almost unconsciously he edged away until he was walking with a decided preference for the section of stairway nearest the mountainside.

The stairs themselves had been cut from the bare rock, an agonizing task that probably took more years than he cared to speculate at. At least it was broad enough for several men or tran to walk side by side. So he didn’t feel cramped. There was also a wide, if low, stone railing on the cliffside.

But as the raft, which now seemed to sit directly below them, and the harbor grew smaller and smaller, so did his stomach.

Halfway up he found himself beginning to pant. September still looked fresh, but Sir Hunnar was gritting his teeth at the pain shooting through his thighs and calves. The tran were not constructed for steady climbing. Fahdig, on the other hand, was clearly inured to the pain.

There was no guard at the simple, solemn archway which framed the entrance to the monastery. The door was of unadorned wood, through which Fahdig led them.

Ethan spared a last glance over the side of the stairway. They were now nearly five hundred meters above the harbor. The raft was a child’s toy resting on a plate of waxen crystal.

Then he was through the door and standing in a darkish, tomb-like hallway. Lamps glowed along the walls even though it was bright day outside.

“Kind of a gloomy atmosphere you fellas take to,” said September as they strolled down the hall.

“We are in the lower levels of the monastery,” their guide informed them. “As we go higher it will become lighter. Windows here are neither necessary nor would they be structurally sound.”

Fahdig was as good as his word. They soon found themselves walking through well-lit, high-beamed rooms and halls. Occasionally they encountered another of the Brotherhood, some older, some younger than their guide. A few were mere cubs. They reacted to the presence of the humans with a lot more open surprise than had Fahdig. A few stopped to stare after them long after they’d passed by.

“I didn’t see an ice-path outside,” September said to Hunnar. “On the stairway.”

“I am not surprised, friend Skua. There are limits to any tran’s skill with dan and chiv. Coupled with a tricky breeze and sharp turns, such a steep descent would tax the skill of the most accomplished soldier. Nay, even of a Dancer.”

“I thought so. But there could be other reasons why they’ve dispensed with it Aesthetic, maybe, or ascetic.”

“That is possible,” the knight agreed. “It may be considered virtuous among them to move only on foot.”

They hadn’t been walking too long before Fahdig bade them wait outside an iron-banded door. He disappeared within, reappeared several moments later.

“The Prior will see you now.” They followed him in.

Ethan didn’t know what to expect—another throne room, perhaps, like Kurdagh-Vlata’s. But the room they entered was plainly furnished, without being spartan. Only the wide, richly carved and polished table hinted at wealth of any kind. A few chairs completed the alcove’s furnishings.

They were obviously in one of the upper levels of the monastery now. Light poured in through windows set in the eastern and southern walls. But most of the illumination came from the skylight, another first for Tran-ky-ky.

The startling feature, however, was the walls. From floor to ceiling on all sides, save the one they’d entered from, the walls were solid with shelves, crammed row upon row with meticulously kept, neatly aligned books.

He’d encountered tough, long-wearing paper of pika-pina fiber in Wannome, but very little. The Sofoldians seemed to prefer vellum and parchment for writing, since the fibrous paper was difficult to write on without constant blotting.

Obviously the Brotherhood had solved that problem. Or else it had been solved for them, because the open books on the table were filled with neither parchment nor vellum.

He whispered to September. “We’d better reconsider before bringing Williams or Eer-Meesach up here. We might never drag them away.”

“Huh!” September gave the shelves a quick survey, “Wonder if they just collect and store them, or if they really bother to read any.”

The Prior himself turned out to be a placid-looking old tran. He sported a beard much longer than Hunnar’s. His mane was pure white and his manner pleasant and relaxed. If he was shocked by Ethan and September’s appearance he was too courteous to show it.

He also retained one of the ubiquitous staves. It rested against the table.

“You’ll forgive my not rising to greet you, gentlesirs. I am not in the best of health today.”

“We sorrow for you and wish your Priorship to recover vibrant as the winter wind,” Hunnar said smoothly.

The oldster smiled a little. “Fahdig has told me of your magnificent ship and your request to remain with us for a few days. And of your haste.”

“Especially our haste,” put in September. “Now, about this vote or whatever …” The Prior waved him down.

“It will not be necessary to consult the Brotherhood, to draw them from their daily labors on so simple a matter. You may remain as long as you wish. Our fare here at Evonin-ta-ban is simple but nourishing. Do us the honor of taking evening meal with us and enjoying our hospitality for a night!”

Hunnar nodded before either of the humans could speak, so Ethan assumed the knight anticipated the food’s being edible, if not up to the level of the royal chefs.

“Retire now, gentlesirs, and leave me to rest. We will talk more tonight, of your plans and needs and journey.”

They walked out.

“Thanks, Fahdig,” said Ethan sincerely, “for your help in speeding things through for us.”

“Your thanks are welcome but ill-directed, gentlesir. No one ‘speeds’ anything past the Prior. I merely repeated to him what you told me. He decided in your favor by himself.”

“You’d already agreed to let us stay the day,” declared September. “What if he’d overridden that decision and told us to leave immediately?”

Fahdig looked shocked. “He would not do that! Not even the Prior will counter a decision previously reached by a Brother. We live by reason and logic here. This trust in one another’s rationality is an integral part of the Brotherhood.”

“Yeah, sure. But let’s say he had … differed severely with your evaluation of the situation.”

“Why then,” said Fahdig, obviously struggling with an unfamiliar concept, “it would be good manners for me to withdraw my recommendation.”

“The Prior keeps a very impressive library,” put in Ethan to change the subject.

“Oh, that was not the Prior’s library.” Their guide seemed amused. “Twas merely the room in which he is studying today. There are a great many similar rooms in the monastery. All are filled with histories, studies, and scientific papers accumulated over thousands of years.”

“I see,” Ethan murmured. “There are two men with us of identical sentiment with the Brotherhood. One of your kind and one of mine.”

“Their profession makes them thrice welcome, then,” said Fahdig.

“Yes. What I want to know is, would it be possible for them to have a look through your libraries? They’d both be forever grateful.”

“Tis not often done with outsiders, but then few express the desire to share of our knowledge. Peasants! Most who stop at the monastery are of lower lifes, merchants and dealers with goods to barter.”

“I understand perfectly,” replied Ethan with a straight face.

Fahdig continued more cheerfully. “But if these companions of yours are true scholars, I am sure the Brotherhood would be pleased to have them enjoy the results of many years’ labor. Yes, consider it agreed!”

“Thank you, Fahdig. I’m sure they’ll be demonstrably grateful.”

“If knowledge is spread,” intoned their guide a bit pompously, “then that is thanks enough, for it holds back the encroachment of the Dark One!”

“Oh, absolutely,” agreed Ethan.

Fahdig accompanied them to the bottom of the switchbacks and said he would meet them there an hour before the sun disappeared behind the mountains.

Hunnar formally accepted the Prior’s invitation and they started back to the raft.

Ta-hoding’s anxious face conveyed more questions than a thousand words.

“Everything is fine, captain,” said September. “This place is run by a crowd of desiccated old bookworms. Didn’t see a spear or bow in the whole mausoleum. We’ve got permission to use the harbor for as long as we need. They won’t give us any trouble … Oh, one other thing.” He paused. “We’ve been invited to supper.”

Ta-hoding raised his eyes meaningfully. “Up there?”

“Did you think it was going to be catered?”

“Then,” the captain replied, “you will extend my regrets to our hosts for my absence. I must decline … until you return to us with another sky-boat. Your pardon.” He shuffled off and began bawling out a crewman who’d mistied a knot.

Their report drew a mixed reaction from the others. Balavere in particular found their isolated hosts too polite for his liking. But Hunnar reminded the General that the small farming and hunting villages they’d passed had seemed equally open and unmilitary. Clearly this area was not visited by such as the Horde.

“We’ve also been extended the services of the monastery for this night, at least,” he added. Ethan expressed his own pleasure at the chance to sleep in a real bed for a change. One that did not rock with the wind.

Hellespont du Kane professed indifference, but Colette was plainly as excited by the offer as Ethan. Even if it meant a five-hundred-meter ascent.

When they received the news about the libraries, of course, there was no holding the two wizards, just as Ethan had predicted. In fact, they insisted on leaving immediately and making their own way to the top.

Hunnar argued mildly that arriving early might be construed as a breach of local etiquette. But Ethan and September disagreed, citing the unfailing kindness and open helpfulness of the Prior and Fahdig. Without waiting for an official decision, both Eer-Meesach and Williams vanished up the nearest hatchway.

“That’s the last we’ll see of those two for a while,” said Budjir gruffly. Ethan was surprised. Rarely did either of the squires offer an unsolicited comment.

“Why do you say that, Budjir?”

“I do not understand those two,” he replied. “Their constant chatter hurts my head.”

“Don’t let it bother you, Budjir,” said September jovially, clapping the huge tran on the shoulder. “Sometimes I find myself in complete agreement with you. Now a tall tankard of reedle and a shapely female, eh?”

The squire grinned and the slitted pupils focused fondly on something in the far distance.

Ethan observed this comradely by-play and muttered, “Communication … it’s wonderful,” and turned to go to his own cabin to prepare himself for the overnight stay.

Work on the repairs proceeded steadily and at a relaxed pace. There was no need to rush the workmen. This time they could make a decent job of the foremast, too. And while the temporary repairs on the fore port runner had held up better than anyone had a right to expect, Ta-hoding was relieved at the chance to fix it properly.

Timbers and bracing had been set up beneath the bow and the metalworkers were already beginning to rebolt the recalcitrant skate to the raft hull.

That would be finished by the time it grew too dark to work. The broken spars, foremast, and bowsprit could be fixed tomorrow. On the open ice in an average wind the work would have taken at least a week. In the protective shadow of the towering crags they could finish the same task in two days.

The humans were not alone in their desire to experience a soft, stable bed. Most of the crew would have gone along too. But Hunnar and Ethan remembered the Prior’s comments about his “simple but nourishing fare.” Despite the old scholar’s obvious willingness to share all, there was no need to overdo their welcome.

So the overnight party consisted of the little band of humans, Hunnar and his two squires, and Elfa. The two wizards were already on their way up. Still suffering from his arrow wound, General Balavere elected to remain on board.

Fahdig awaited them at the cliff base. His clothing was the same white robe, but he carried a lamp in case, as he put it, “some among you should find the climb excessively strenuous and wish to turn back with some light.”

As it turned out, everyone finished the ascent. Colette’s fear of the black abyss to one side was openly evident. Ethan felt no shame in joining her in hugging the mountainside.

Much to everyone’s distraction, Elfa insisted on running and skipping alongside the inadequate stone railing, not to mention leaning over the edge and pointing out this or that unusual feature in the depths below.

Once, laughing, she even climbed onto the rail itself. She walked along the narrow stone coping, teetering on the lip of the drop. Ethan couldn’t watch her. It didn’t go on for long, because Hunnar threatened to tie her wrists to her ankles and drag her the rest of the way up.

She grumbled, but climbed down—to everyone’s immense relief.

Once they’d passed through the first dark hallway, Fahdig led them upwards via a different route than the one they’d first traversed. They passed a long, comfortable-looking room and he indicated the beds neatly lined against both walls inside.

“For tonight,” he informed them unnecessarily.

There was no wall fireplace. Instead, a central pit was sunk into the center of the floor and filled with logs and brash. Just above the pit a large wooden funnel lined with copper narrowed into a long black pipe that disappeared into the ceiling.

In one respect, then, these isolated scholars were ahead of the busy commercial port of Wannome. They’d developed a rudimentary form of real heating. It was more efficient than a fireplace—provided all the waste particles went up the funnel and not onto one’s bed. Several windows in the east wall would let in the morning light. Lamps and torches were mounted on the walls. With the single door shut it would be very comfortable.

“Very pleasant-looking dormitory,” complimented September. “Is this how you fellas live?”

“Oh no,” Fahdig replied. “Each of the Brothers has his own small vestibule. This is a study room.”

“With beds?”

“In a gesture of friendship, some among the Brotherhood have given up their beds for the night. They will sleep on pallets. Tis good for the body and the mind, now and then. Tables and chairs normally fill this room. They will return when you have departed.”

“That’s very considerate of you,” said Ethan. “We’re sorry to put you to so much trouble.”

“Hospitality is never trouble,” their imperturbable guide replied. “If you will come this way, please.”

They continued down the hall and went up one more level, where Fahdig motioned them into another room. They seemed to be in one of the highest levels of the monastery. Evening light poured in from the huge skylight that occupied most of the ceiling.

Ethan wondered if the beautiful skylights had been developed and built by the scholars themselves or if they were a bit of art once known but long forgotten in Wannome. There was no way of telling, and it might not be good manners to ask.

The table was long and simple. So were the foods that other members of the Brotherhood were setting on it. The Prior sat at the head of the table with several other elderly tran. Williams and Eer-Meesach were there to greet them. The little schoolmaster fairly exploded out of his seat when they entered. He walked straight to Ethan.

“My dear friend, you have no idea, no idea what a treasure-house this place is! Malmeevyn and I have been overwhelmed by one amazing volume after another. Some of the older books stored here go back literally thousands of years … or so Malmeevyn tells me. There’s much I can’t translate. The books themselves are astonishing. But the amount of pure information and data stored inside … it would take a hundred xenologists years with a good computer just to properly document and catalogue the material the Brotherhood holds.”

“I don’t want to dampen your enthusiasm,” replied Ethan, gazing at the fresh vegetables set in front of him with similar excitement, “but we’ll only be here another day. The repairs will be completed by then and we’ll be on our way back to civilization. You remember civilization?”

“Not with overwhelming fondness, Ethan. You’re right, of course. But the things we have discovered already … did you realize that at one time this world averaged a hundred-fifty degrees warmer? There was ice only at the poles. For some reason the climate changed suddenly. The seas froze and most of the land was pressed beneath the water. It was yesterday, geologically speaking.”

“That’s interesting,” agreed Ethan absently, his stomach growling for attention. He took a seat.

“And besides that …” Williams stopped, his tone changing to one of admonishment. “You weren’t even listening. You’re like the others, only interested in liquor and money and women.”

“Look, Milliken, I’m fascinated. But I’m also starving after those two climbs. Later, huh?” He fastened his gaze on the platter of steaming meat that magically appeared in front of him.

Williams ignored him and stalked away. He took his seat and seemed to forget the conversation entirely as he plunged into debate with Eer-Meesach. They might have been alone at the table.

They quieted, however, when the Prior raised a clawed old paw and gestured for silence. Ethan hadn’t expected a pre-meal prayer. What he got was just that, and a curious something else.

“We eat of the product of resourcefulness and thought,” said the Prior solemnly. “Our reason says that this is so. May the Brotherhood never falter in its purpose, nor its strength diminish, so that we may forever continue to hold back the ravages of the Dark One.”

That was all. Then the other Brothers—not servants, but members of the society acting in that capacity tonight—began to pass around the plates of meat, vegetables, and baked foods.

Ethan tried several dishes, found them bland but filling.

Hunnar and the two squires fidgeted noticeably at this polite departure from normal table manners. They were not used to eating in a restrained manner. Here, the “he who gets there firstest gets the bestest” theorem did not apply. They managed to keep from attacking the table and allowed themselves to be served like all the others.

For a while, then, no one did anything but eat. The members of the Brotherhood seemed willing to permit matters to continue that way.

But gradually, as stomachs were filled, thoughts other than of consumption occupied the minds of those seated around the table and they began to ask questions.

With Hunnar doing most of the talking, they explained to their attentive hosts how they fought and defeated the Horde, how they came to build the great ice clipper, and their subsequent use of a herd of thunder-eaters to destroy the remainder of the Horde.

When it came to the origin of the humans, Ethan thought a few of the Brothers looked more than just casually interested. One was unabashedly fascinated by the bowdlerized version of their initial landing and first contacts with Hunnar’s folk.

September chipped in with occasional comments and corrections. The du Kanes continued to eat and listen in silence. And the two wizards were off in their own private world, oblivious to human and tran alike.

“An amazing account,” commented the Prior finally, with becoming control. “And one that should be set down for the records … even though some of it taxes the credulity. Alas, you maintain you have not the time.”

“I’m afraid not,” said September, not at all contrite. “We ought to and will be on our way again as soon as repairs on the raft are completed.”

“What a shame,” the Prior added. He sipped easily of a mild brew from his large earthen mug. “Twould make a fine subject for a poem, would it not, Brother Hodjay?”

“Truly it would,” sighed Hodjay. “A pity existence is so brief. You are quite positive you cannot stay?” He looked at Ethan.

“I’m sorry, we really can’t. We should take advantage of the good weather, too.”

The Prior picked at something that looked like a baked pudding with his knife.

“How far have you still to travel?”

“Fifty or sixty satch,” said Hunnar. He added conversationally, “But first we have to reach the Place-Where-The-Earth’s-Blood-Burns.”

There was a crash.

“I … my clumsiness shames me,” said one of the Brothers. He pushed back his chair and knelt to help one of the servers gather up the shards of broken mug.

“Alas, Brother Podren’s development has gone wholly to the brain,” chuckled the Prior easily. The other Brothers made the tran laugh-equivalent. To Ethan it seemed a little forced.

The Prior continued as though nothing had happened.

“Do not be surprised at Brother Podren’s reaction. Not many folk travel to the Place-Where-The-Earth’s-Blood-Burns.”

“Why not?” asked September a little sharply, and then Ethan knew he wasn’t alone in detecting their hosts’ reactions.

The Prior spread his arms, opened his paws. “Superstition. The common folk say strange things about the great smoking mountain.”

“It is a volcano, then,” muttered Ethan to himself. They’d assumed as much all along, but it was nice to have additional confirmation.

“Could you elaborate, Prior?” September pressed.

“Surely. Those who pass too close are said to have their minds affected. Some report seeing odd visions, while others see nothing at all and remain untouched. Others, they say, are drawn toward the mountain as a starving being may be drawn to food. Again, their companions may experience nothing. There is no soil and little grows there. None would live there anyway.”

“Superstition is all that keeps them away?” asked Ethan.

“That, and the fact that the mountain throws out melted earth and choking black dust very often.”

“Oh.”

“But you’ve been there,” said September shrewdly.

The old tran nodded. “I have been close by the place,” he conceded. “I did not set foot on the ground.”

“Because of the superstitions?” September toyed with his pseudo-pudding.

“No. Because at the time it was throwing out melted stone in huge quantities and the heat was appalling. The danger was real and not imaginary. My spirit was quite safe, but there was a real danger to the body. So the ship I was on did not linger in the area. Hopefully, you will have better luck.”

“We expect to,” September replied.

“And now, tell me once more of your miraculous sky-boat and its unfathomable mechanisms. I did not understand the first time and probably will not this time either, but there is merit in trying.”

Dinner ended with a pleasant little liqueur. Conversation continued for another hour or so. Then Colette yawned widely, and Budjir confessed that he had to rise early on the morrow to help oversee the setting of the new bowsprit. So the Prior declared the gathering at an end.

The group of visiting humans and tran were guided back to their communal sleeping room. Ethan walked next to September.

“What do you think of our hosts?” said the big man.

“Hmmm? Oh, I guess they’re okay. A little dry and self-centered maybe, but okay. For a second there, when Hunnar mentioned our destination and what’s-his-name dropped his mug …”

“Podren.”

“Yes, Podren. I thought there was something very unfriendly in his expression. He covered it fast, though, and I’m sure no expert at interpreting alien facial expressions. On the other hand, it didn’t seem to affect the Prior at all.”

“He was probably right … our going to a place regarded as a home for devils and spirits and what-not, young feller. Leaking gases could explain the hallucinations and weird reactions among passing natives.”

“I suppose so. In any case, we’ll have the chance to find out for ourselves before long.”

They reached the room. The central firepit was crackling and spitting merrily, throwing welcome heat to every corner of the room. It had apparently been burning during the meal, as a respectable pile of coals had accumulated in the bottom of the pit. These added to the pleasant heat.

Ethan made his goodnights to everyone else. There were no dividers between the beds. It wasn’t a problem, however, since none of the humans had any intention of exposing their bare skin to the still-frigid air.

He climbed into bed. Hunnar and September split up and set about extinguishing the lamps that burned on the walls. Ethan would have helped, but they hung at tran height and that was a bit too high for him.

There were fewer furs and blankets on the bed than he’d grown used to. Their hosts, of course, had no way of knowing that the hairless strangers were far more affected by the cold than Hunnar and the squires and Elfa. Then, too, this was not the castle of Wannome, nor were they the privileged passengers on a great raft.

Hunnar and the squires took the beds placed farthest from the firepit. Elfa insisted on doing likewise, as did old Eer-Meesach. That was fine with Ethan. He had no desire to play the Stoic Terran. A place near the dying blaze was worth any moral oversight.

He drifted almost immediately into a deep, dreamless sleep.

It seemed minutes later when he awoke, but it wasn’t. He sat up in near total darkness to an uncomfortably familiar scream. The fire was gone, but there was enough light from the star-filled windows and the failing coals to make out shapes.

The room was filled with struggling, swearing, darting forms. The first scream wasn’t repeated, but there were plenty of yells and bellows of outrage. He could recognize Hunnar’s and September’s among them.

The half of the room nearest the doorway was full of white-robed, bearded silhouettes. A pair of muscular paws grabbed at him as he sat in the bed and pulled him bodily out of it. He fought in the tight grasp and got to his knees.

Leaning backward, he pulled hard. His proportionately greater body weight obviously startled his attacker. The clutching paws went limp in surprise as their owner was suddenly tugged off balance.

Something struck him on the right shoulder and he turned and swung blindly. He felt a bearded face under his knuckles.

Still frantically trying to blink the sleep from his eyes, he was knocked roughly sideways into a huge figure. He pulled at it.

“It’s me, young feller-me-lad, it’s me!” September pressed a still-warm log into Ethan’s hands and turned to swing at a dim shape.

They were shoved backwards by the sheer press of bodies pouring into the room. The Brothers also fought with clubs, but they seemed to be taking care not to kill anyone. However, that did not necessarily hint of compassion to come.

It did make things a bit more difficult for them, since no such compunction existed on the part of those they were fighting. But the tightly-packed crowd made it hard just to swing a club.

“This way!” came a cry from the back of the room. Ethan whirled, spotted Budjir leaning from the sill of one of the high east-side windows. He parried another blow, swung downward and felt the wood meet bone with a satisfying crunch.

Then he turned and ran. Hunnar was there to give him a boost up. The powerful arms of the big squire went under his. Another moment and he was through the window, standing underneath the impartial stars on a chill, pebble-topped roof.

Fortunately there was little wind. Dark, monolithic forms loomed to the west, the spires and steeples of the highest monastery. Elfa and Suaxus were already on the roof.

Another second and he was helping Eer-Meesach through. Ethan braced himself against the wall and the old wizard came up easily. His breathing was ragged. Aged eyes blinked in the darkness.

The sounds of fighting below seemed far away, surreal. Hunnar himself fairly shot through the opening. September followed close behind. One of the Brothers was wrapped around the big man’s left leg. It took several kicks from its powerful twin to dislodge the persistent scholar. Ethan was still in too much of a daze to ask questions. He glanced around and saw that their company was far from complete.

“Hey, where … where are the others? Milliken and …”

“Our pacific hosts got ’em,” September growled back. “I don’t think for the purposes of advancing the frontiers of beneficent research, either. They nearly got us all. Would have, if Hunnar hadn’t gotten up to put some new wood on the damned fire. So he was awake when the first of them came sneaking in.”

“I don’t understand it,” mused the knight, as stunned as Ethan. “There is no reason for this. They seemed so really decent and—”

“—schizoid,” finished September. “We’ll chat about their unfortunate aberrations later.” He knelt and stuck his head a little ways into the room.

“They’ve gone. I expect they’ll be out on the rooftops after us in a minute. Deity knows they’re more familiar with them than us. Now, there’s only one way down from this rockpile. And while our knowledgeable friends don’t appear to be militarily inclined … witness their performance in that room … sooner or later some bright boy among them’s going to realize that by blocking off the stairway they’ll have us trapped up here.”

The next minutes were a slow-motion dream-scheme of running, hurtling parapets, darting across rooftops, and dropping one level at a time. Hunnar and September assumed the lead. They all had to move fast and carefully. One wrong step in an unfamiliar place and they might step off the side of the mountain.

Ages later the two lead men returned to the group with a sign to keep silent.

“We’re just above the gateway,” September whispered. There’s a single Brother on guard there and he doesn’t look awkwardly tense about things.” Ethan looked past the big man, saw no sign of Sir Hunnar.

A minute later there was a short, sharp whistle from below. They ran to the edge of the building. September didn’t hesitate. He turned, grabbed the coping, and let go. Without thinking, or he might have hesitated, Ethan copied him.

The drop wasn’t bad, and the big man and Hunnar were there to catch him. Suaxus came next, and immediately took up a position next to the closed door. Lanterns burned on either side of the entrance.

Crying mournfully, the slight breeze flowed over the peaks and down into the black abyss.

Carefully, old Eer-Meesach was lowered to the stairs, then Elfa. Budjir hung from the edge for a second and then they were all gathered below. They turned to descend.

Hunnar held back a moment. He picked up the green stone staff of the unconscious brother, stripped off the white robe. Carefully he lifted one of the lanterns from its holder.

Transferring it from the staff to one paw. He whirled it once in a circle, arced it against the wooden door. Flaming oil splattered on the grain, flickered unsteadily for a moment, then sprang up brightly.

“That ought to keep their reasoning minds busy for a while,” he muttered grimly.

They ran as quickly as they dared in the darkness. Eer-Meesach had to be considered, too. The wizard was holding up well under the strain, but there would come a time when his body, no matter how strong his spirit, would fail him.

They made fair speed down the black stairs. Now fully awake, Ethan took a cautious look over the edge. The unending ice sheet shone unreal in the starlight, speckled here and there with ebon spires that were other, friendly islands.

A last glance behind showed a bright glow from the still-burning doorway.

By the time they reached the last stair, Ethan was puffing noticeably. Eer-Meesach, on the other hand, was near collapse. They moved the wizard into the shelter of some big boulders.

Budjir had gone on ahead to the ship. He returned and between gasps told them he’d seen tran moving on board the Slanderscree—and too many of them had beards, wore long robes, and carried green staves.

Simultaneous curses passed among the little assembly. Languages differed but sentiments were identical.

“Not quite as naive as I thought,” September murmured. “Gould you see any of our people, Budjir?”

“Not a one of the crew. They must all be trapped below-decks.”

“Couldn’t have been too hard,” the big man mused. “One man on watch, and him not expecting anything.”

“They couldn’t have overcome the whole crew,” said Ethan in disbelief. “Not with clubs.”

“Hah! I doubt if they even had to hit anybody, except maybe the watch. Quietly bolt all the hatches, what, and keep a look-see for anyone trying to break out elsewhere. Balavere and the rest probably still don’t know what hit ’em. How many’d you spot, Budjir?”

“Eight … perhaps nine. There may be more I did not see.”

“Not likely. That much know-how I don’t credit them with.” September looked thoughtful. “Ta-hoding and his bunch weren’t expecting them. They won’t be expecting us.”

Durnad was the one who noticed the tiny band coming toward the dock. He started. Fully six of the infidels were in the group. They trooped along, heads downcast, with their hands/paws clasped behind their backs. A single Brother followed behind.

“Come here, Brother Tydin.” Another white-robed figure joined Durnad at the head of the landing ramp.

“What, Durnad … oh!” He’d also spotted the approaching procession. “What means this?”

“Hail, Brother!” shouted Durnad. “What has happened at the Home? We saw a great light.”

The Brother’s reply was low, but intelligible.

“All fairs well. These are to be kept aboard their ship until the morrow.”

“That is strange, Brother,” said Tydin, clearly puzzled. The group marched up the ramp. “I had heard that all the infidels were to be dealt with in the great dome this very night. Why do you hide your face? Have you been hurt by these devils?” Tydin took an uncertain step backwards.

“There’s been a change in plans, Brother,” yelled September. He brought his clasped hands around and came down hard with the rock concealed in them. Tydin collapsed without a sound.

“Help, Brothers!” shouted Durnad. “We are tricked!”

As it developed there were nine of the Brotherhood guarding the Slanderscree—less Tydin. The odds were bearable.

The Brothers fought furiously, wielding their clubs and green staves like madmen. You’d have thought they were battling the devil himself. But they were not trained fighters. Without the advantages of surprise and overwhelming numbers, such as they’d possessed in the monastery, they were only a good exercise for the likes of Budjir, Suaxus, and Hunnar. Elfa swung a broken staff with as much skill as any of them.

Ethan used his surprising mass to bowl over a pair of opponents. It would be more even in an honest fight with a knowing tran, but this time the surprise was his. September had thrown one Brother halfway across the deck and was dismantling another like a pale chicken.

Ethan stooped and grabbed up a club dropped by one of the Brothers. His attacker pursued him and swung his staff again. Ethan ducked to one side, rammed the club blunt-end-first into the other’s midsection.

The Brother whoofed and doubled over. Ethan brought the club down hard and whirled to face the next attacker.

There was no next attacker.

Suaxus stood to one side, panting heavily. “What shall we do with them, Sir?” The expression on the squire’s face was typically noncommittal. But if he were asked, Ethan didn’t doubt he’d have a ready suggestion or two.

“Tie them up and dump them belowdecks,” Hunnar ordered. He paused, startled. “Belowdecks!” A sharp turn and he was over the nearest hatchway.

A simple pin and loop arrangement sufficed to dog the hatch cover down. Hunnar pulled the pin, released the loop. Up came the cover.

The anxious face of captain Ta-hoding stared up at him, blinking in the torchlight.

“We heard sounds of struggle above,” he grunted as he exited the hold. “We had hoped twould be you and our friends, Sir Hunnar.”

Sailors and soldiers streamed out on deck. They set about binding the white-robed figures. A few of the Brothers were beginning to regain consciousness. The men who’d been locked in the dark hold all evening were not particularly careful in their handling of the bodies.

“We were embarrassedly surprised, but none were hurt,” Ta-hoding informed them. “All is well now, then.”

“All is not well,” countered Hunnar as the two tran walked over to where Ethan and September stood. “Three of our friends are held still in the lair of these monsters.”

Ta-hoding sputtered. “Counterwind! We must mount an expedition, then! Besiege the place and—”

September shook his head slowly. “No, my good captain. It cannot be done that way.”

“Sir Skua is right, Ta,” said Hunnar. “Those virians above will probably assume we’ve been taken by their minions here.” Said minions were now being unceremoniously hauled below. “But even so, they will post guards upon the stairway. Not to do so would be an act of such cub intelligence that I cannot think they would fail to do it. A few could hold the entrance to the monastery against an army. Which,” he continued, turning to September, “worries me greatly, friend Skua. How are we to rescue our companions?”

“Frankly, Hunnar, I’d been too busy the last hour to give it much thought. Let’s see, now …”

“I suppose we’ll have to find a way around them,” said Ethan hesitantly.

“Sir Ethan,” reminded Hunnar a bit impatiently, “there is no way around. There is but the single carefully watched entrance, with a sheer drop on one side and, I venture to say, equal precipitousness on the other.”

“I agree,” said September. “It will have to be a small group in any case. Too many people … too much noise and movement.” He turned to Ta-hoding. “Captain, is there any climbing gear on board?”

Ta-hoding was obviously contused, and with reason. Mountaineering was not an art practiced by his folk.

“Climbing gear? Well … we have rope, of course, but I do not know what you mean by ‘gear.’ ”

“I see. Another problem.” September grunted. “My fault. I should have guessed you wouldn’t know a crampon from a creampuff. Glassfeathers!”

“Strange words,” said Hunnar. “More of your odd devices, friend Skua?”

“In a sense.” The big man stared thoughtfully at the deck for a moment, then back at the knight. “Do we carry any kind of solid, strong hooks on board?”

“Hooks?” The red-tinged mane shook. Then he brightened. “Why surely! We must have a number of fine boarding grapples, taken on the last attack. They would be in the armory.”

“Those would be perfect.”

“Suaxus!” snapped Hunnar. The squire nodded and disappeared down the hatchway.

“What do you think, young feller-me-lad?”

“Well, actually,” replied Ethan, who’d listened to the progress of the conversation with the fascination of a bird watching the approach of a king snake, “I’ve always been kind of afraid of heights and—”

“Nonsense, lad, nonsense! All in your mind. Just don’t look down … course, climbing at night’ll be a little rough, but there’s nothing to it, what?”

“Oh sure.”

September looked at them all intently. “Now, we’ll stop at the last bend in the stairway, just out of sight of the monastery entrance. If we’re lucky they’ll still be occupied with Hunnar’s fire. They won’t be looking for anyone to be dropping in on ’em from above. I’ll plant the first grapple … ”

XIV

THE ROOM WASN’T VERY large, and the members of the Brotherhood filled it to capacity. Each pressed close upon the other for a better look at the minions of the Dark One. Real infidels were rarely available for purging and none among the Brotherhood wanted to miss the infrequent, interesting ceremonies.

Light from lamps and lanterns surrounding the curved circular room threw dancing shadows against the dome. High braziers were filled with burning oil and wood. The stars shone brightly through the round skylight.

Three bronze basins with sloping bottoms flashed green-gold on the paved floor. Each contained a single body with head set higher than feet. Hellespont du Kane was the tallest of the three and his head did not reach the top of the basin. Like the others he was tightly bound with his hands fixed to his sides.

Milliken Williams occupied the basin to his right, with Colette to his left. She’d managed to break the bonds on her feet early and leave a number of very sore Brothers in her wake, but to no avail.

The Brothers had slowly been filling the basins with water, a bucket at a time, brought in from the melting room.

Since the room was not heated, the cold night air of Tran-ky-ky was gradually freezing each successive dose of water. The captives were now encased up to the shoulders in a jacket of diamond-clear ice.

Colette continued to rain verbal destruction on the gathering in several languages, none of which the Brothers understood. A small chorus of same continued to moan the same unmelodic drone they’d sung since the water-pouring had begun. Only their superb survival suits had kept the captives from serious frostbite thus far—and these wouldn’t help when the ice rose over their heads.

Colette looked from her father, motionless in both ice and trance, and then up at the watching Brothers.

“We’ve done nothing to you. Why are you doing this thing?”

The kindly Prior stared amusedly down at her. “Tch! That a servant of the Dark One should have the audacity to ask for mercy.”

“Listen,” she sighed tiredly, giving a little shiver. The cold was beginning to exceed her suit’s capacity to withstand it. “We don’t even know what your damned Dark One is! If you’re moronic enough to believe that we’re the disciples of some local devil of yours, I feel sorry for you!”

“No, She, it is I who must be sorry for you,” replied the Prior righteously. “Tis known to all that the Place-Where-The-Earth’s-Blood-Burns is the home of the Dark One himself. From whatever homeland people come, all know that. Twas fortunate that you inadvertently revealed your destination to us, so that we could take proper steps. We are not ignorant peasants here!”

He looked skyward into the night. “And as you shall partake of the Cold that has held our beloved home, lo, these many centuries, so shall the Time of the Final Warming be brought closer!” He looked back at her. “That is our end and goal.”

“Look here.” Williams was feeling the cold more than any of them and now he was having trouble speaking. “If we’re minions of this Dark One or not, freezing us isn’t going to heat your world.”

“Tis written in the Great Old Books that for every servant of the Dark One who is returned to the primeval cold, our world shall grow a little warmer, a little softer, a little greener. To this end is the Brotherhood pledged!”

“Listen,” continued the schoolmaster desperately, ‘Tran-ky-ky might be made warm and green again. My people know a process called terraforming that could conceivably melt this ice and raise the planetary temperature. But you couldn’t adapt if it were to happen in your lifetime. Besides, you’d all drown.”

“You lie most intriguingly, Evil One, but think not to deceive us.”

Two of the Brothers approached. They carried a large bronze kettle between them. Carefully, they distributed its load of water between the three basins. Colette tried to pull herself higher as they poured the ice water into hers, but it brought the water level up to her neck. The pair left for the melting room for another load.

Almost immediately a crust began to form on top of the water. Another few trips and the ice would be over her head. Or maybe the insulation on her suit would give out before that.

“We come openly, as guests, and you receive us with murder,” she said, a little frightened now. Any kind of reasonable, logical argument she could fend aside and handle. But religious fanatics! … “We needed your help, dammit!”

“We intend to help you,” soothed the Prior. He turned to the shifting, watching mob.

“Brothers! These poor, degenerate minds cry out to us for salvation! Let us pray for them, that their souls may meet in the next plane of existence uncontaminated by illogic and unreason.”

“Let it be so!” hummed the assembled Brotherhood. They joined the uninspired choir in its steady, dissonant drone, the noise broken only by Colette’s hysterical sobbing.

There was a sudden, violent crack from above. A deep voice moaned in terrifying, sepulchral tones …

“LET IT BE KNOWN THAT THE DARK ONE PROTECTS HIS OWN!” Rapidly, it added in Terranglo, “COVER YOUR EYES!”

Immediately all the trannish eyes in the room shot upward, while the trio of imprisoned humans bent their heads and squeezed theirs shut tight.

Explosion. Bodies flying. Those left standing made a concerted, panicked dash for the exit, trampling some of the wounded in an unbrotherly haste to escape. Above, the weird vox boomed.

“I AM THE POWER AND THE GLORY OF DARKNESS AND ALL WHO STAND AGAINST ME SHALL BE SLAIN!”

There was another explosion and more of the Brotherhood fell. A lesser crash sounded from above. It was followed by brilliantine tinkling as the skylight was shattered. A cable ladder snaked into the room. Before the bottom had unrolled, Skua September was already halfway down its swaying length. Ethan, Hunnar, and several soldiers followed.

The big man went immediately to the single doorway. He needed Hunnar’s help to clear away the bodies.

“Thank Deity for small favors!” he breathed. “It bolts from the inside!” Hunnar threw the latch.

“Tis not strong, Sir Skua. It will not stand against a determined rush.”

Ethan and the soldiers all had torches strapped to their waists. They were intended to provide light if the Brothers blew out lamps. Now they were put to a different use. A quick thrust into a hanging lantern and they were lit. Then they began the slow, dangerous job of trying to melt the trapped prisoners free.

Ethan was working on one side of the copper basin that held Colette.

“Hurry, please!” she pleaded. “I … I can’t feel my legs anymore.”

“How much time?” September asked Hunnar.

“One cannot say.” The knight stared at the bolted door. “These are not soldiers and do not react as such. Yet it will soon occur to the last of the escapees that we are far from supernatural in shape or form, and some might have recognized us.”

It took four of them to lift each metal coffin. Two tilted the heavy container upward. One at a time, the three prisoners slid free, each still encased in a block of ice. Now the melting could proceed at a decent pace.

“Tis a difficult decision for them,” Hunnar continued. “If we are truly servitors of the Dark One, as our ability to throw thunder and lightning might suggest, then I would not expect them to attack again at all. But they might consider us to be only mortal servants of the Dark One, deluded mortals, in which case—”

“Shove the Dark One! How much time’ve we got?”

There was a thump as someone tried the door, then a rattling of the latch. This was quickly followed by a series of heavy bumps, then silence.

“Well, that answers that,” the big man growled. He turned back to the center of the room.

The melting was nearing completion and Williams, Colette, and the motionless senior du Kane were almost free.

“You know,” said Ethan conversationally as he melted away the last of the clinging ice from her ankles, “you’d look absolutely awesome in a martini.”

“I could use one about that size right now,” she replied tightly. “Thank the Devices for these suits!” He started to rub her legs and she didn’t protest.

“I’m okay,” she said finally. “Help the teacher.” Ethan looked over at the senior du Kane, who lay still and quiet on the stone floor.

“Your father … is he …?”

“Watch.” She bent over him and Ethan heard her whisper in his ear. “Free credit …”

A hand twitched, then a leg. Stillness, and then the old man sat up, blinking, and looked up at his daughter. She put a big arm under his left and helped him to his feet.

“Well my dear, are we safe or are we dead?”

“It’s still a moot point, father, but we incline to the former.”

He sighed. “Ah well. Pity.” Click. “I was so wondering what kind of flowers they have in the next world.”

“Only flower-souls, I’ve told you that, father. Come on now, move around a little. That’s it.” At Ethan’s slack-jawed stare she replied, “Automatic protective trance. He goes into it whenever his system is overloaded. This isn’t the first time it’s saved his life.”

There was a loud crash and the door shook violently.

“We’ve overstayed our welcome,” suggested Ethan.

September stood facing the door, watching it silently. He held a small, tightly bound package of vol leather in one hand. It had a short, stubby fuse projecting from it and he nonchalantly tossed it from one palm to the other, back and forth, back and forth.

“Let’s step lively there, folks, what?” There was another crash and the door bulged inward alarmingly. Williams was being helped through the shattered skylight. Hellespont du Kane was halfway up the ladder and Ethan waited with Colette at the bottom.

“Let’s go,” he said finally.

She looked uncertainly at the swaying ladder. “I … I don’t know. I’m not built for this kind of exercise.”

“Would you rather be in that martini? Come on, go. I’ll help you.” She started up. He put a hand under her enormous rear—it felt like a cake of sherbet—and tried to give her weight a boost upwards. Then he mounted the ladder close behind. If she fell he didn’t know what he could do. While she climbed and grunted, he climbed and prayed. Hunnar was right behind him.

September walked to the bottom of the ladder. The crackle of splintering wood filled the room and the door exploded inward. A mob of howling, robed scholars piled into the entrance. They pulled up short at the sight of September standing calmly under the ladder.

A few carried knives this time, probably appropriated from the monastery kitchens. The Brothers were fast losing their intellectual detachment. September reached out and touched the fuse to a nearby lamp. He looked at it for a moment, then gently tossed it.

It landed at the feet of the unmoving Brothers. September continued to watch it with interest. The fuse shrank. Then in one motion he turned, leaped, and was halfway up the ladder before someone in the mob unfroze and threw the first club.

Ethan was peering anxiously down through the broken glass. He extended a desperate hand and Hunnar another. Together they yanked hard and Ethan fell backwards. September came out of the opening, tumbled onto the roof, and was followed by a geyser of dust and pulverized stone.

“Quite a banger,” he murmured, feeling his side where a thrown staff had grazed him. “Glad I saved that one for last.”

For the second time that night Ethan found himself running blindly over rooftops, dodging pillars and buttresses, dropping from level to level toward the stairway. Apparently the Brothers were too disorganized, or demoralized, to offer ready pursuit. Or maybe that last bomb had eliminated the sanctimonious Prior and several of his deputies.

At any rate, they met no opposition in their hectic scramble downwards. They reached the last roof above the stairway without being challenged.

To their left a long black streak extended back into the monastery, a charred wound. The results of Hunnar’s covering blaze set earlier that night. A large band of Brothers stood in front of the burnt entrance, armed with the usual clubs and staves.

They were expecting an attack from the front. Clearly no one had brought them the word about the return of the Dark One’s other servants. Not very military. Hunnar’s soldiers surprised them completely.

There was no pursuit as they started their second dash down the stairway.

“So much for rule by reason and logic,” September grunted. He was breathing heavily. The run down from the monastery had finally tired even him. But now they were safe on board the Slanderscree and there weren’t enough Brothers in the world to get them off it again. The big man was staring up at the monastery buildings, faint ghosts against the black crags.

“Well, it performed well enough—within their own tight little precepts,” Ethan countered. Behind him, Ta-hoding was sending the crew aloft, yelling dire threats at imagined slackers.

The Slanderscree began to move out of the harbor. Astern, a quartet of soldiers were ungently dumping the Brothers who’d taken the raft earlier. It was more humane than similar actions that had been performed on Terra ages ago, for there was no water for the captives to drown in.

On the other hand, the ice wasn’t especially soft.

The wind blew and the Slanderscree enslaved it, cutting west, then south, to take advantage of the slightest counter-breeze. Ta-hoding didn’t miss many.

A week later they saw the first smoke. It blew steadily to the east, black and sooty and well up in the atmosphere. From there Ta-hoding was able to ignore the compass and follow the black line. They made even better time. It was another two days before they had their first glimpse of The Place-Where-The-Earth’s-Blood-Burns, and another two before the base of the giant volcano came into view.

Mottled brown and black, splashed higher up with ice and snow—fourteen kilometers of vertical hell shrouded in polar ice and rock. It was magnificent, awesome, and a little bit frightening.

“Well, no hallucinations so far,” Ethan mused.

“How,” Colette snapped back, “could you tell the difference?”

Williams voice sounded behind them. “I’d very much like to land.”

Ethan turned. Eer-Meesach was there, too. “Really, Milliken, in light of the past weeks, don’t you think …”

A huge paw came down easily on his shoulder. “We did leave without properly fixing the bowsprit, friend Ethan,” said Hunnar. “Nor did the crew receive their promised chance for a rest on shore.”

“You’re not afraid the spirits and goblins will object?”

The knight didn’t smile. He gazed over the ice at the sky-rubbing cone.

“As a cub I might have been. As a younger man I’d have been uncertain. But the wizards have explained to me what it really is, a thing neither supernatural nor inherently inimical, and I am not afraid.”

They followed the jagged shore southward, searching for a place to put in. Hundreds of meters of broken, tortured rock fell in undisciplined cataracts onto the clear ice. But nowhere did it level off.

Just as they rounded the southern tip of the island-mountain, hitting into the wind again, the plutonic crust abruptly gave way to a smooth, level stone beach. Ropy lines of pahoe-hoe marched gently into the frozen sea.

They tied up half into the wind, still protected by the sheltering bulk of the volcano. Ice-anchors were used this time, set with care and precision under Ta-hoding’s experienced watch. Once again the repair crew set about their tasks—for the last time, one hoped.

Considering what they’d gone through the past weeks, though, there were none who blamed the craftsmen for an occasional over-the-shoulder glance. You couldn’t be too sure that the ground would not still deliver up yet another fiendish surprise, hey? So the carpenters and sailweavers worked a little slower, a little more observantly.

Roiling blackness. Distant night-stars of plasmoid terror. Vast spaces unmeasureable. False concepts of life and death. The living dark came, a loathsomeness of long licorice tentacles and soul-draining fangs.

It groped for him in the emptiness, reaching, twisting. He ran faster and faster on a sea of gurgling tar, an oil-sky overhead. The ocean grabbed and tugged at him. Down he looked and saw in horror that it wasn’t a sea at all. He was running on the back of an amorphous amoeba that humped and shook and laughed.

He tried to jump, but now fat greasy pseudopods held him firm. All about the nightmare, shapes flowed up and around. In the middle of each the faces of things not human chuckled and puckered at him.

Black fronds clutched tighter, enveloping, suffocating. He tried to scream and one of the inky ropes dove down his throat, choking him. They crawled over his eyes, under his ears, into his nostrils. Cilia brushed and tickled obscenely.

He couldn’t breathe. He coughed, gagged. The thing in his throat was curling into his belly, swelling, filling him with gravid blackness.

The interior of the cabin was dark, too. But it was a comforting, familiar, prosaic dark—not sticky, not malevolent, not full of nightmare shapes. Despite the cold he was sweating profusely and heaving like he’d just finished marathon.

Shaking, he reached for the lamp, then caught himself. His hand paused in mid-air, drew away slowly. No … no. It was a bad dream. Nothing more. Happens to everyone.

He put both hands on the bed, palms flat against the blankets and furs, and lay down slowly, staring at the bare outline of the ceiling. With a conscious effort he closed his eyes and breathed out, long and low. Then he hunched slowly on his side and fluffed the blanket under his head.

His last thought before falling asleep was that he hadn’t had a nightmare since childhood. He wondered about it, for a second.

Morning light bit like a mosquito. The volcano did not shine or sparkle in the false alpenglow. If anything, the black volcanic rock absorbed the light. Only at upper elevations did ice and snow work to do eye-pleasing things with the rich light.

A dark, brooding ziggurat, the mountain gave no hint of the burning core that steamed in its depths. Even the cloud-scudding black smoke was a cold coal.

There was nothing so palpable as an air of menace about the mountain, but neither was it pleasant to be near. It needed companion mountains, a sibling range around its base, before mere humans could relate to it. Alone, it was as impersonal and alien as a lost moon.

Ethan leaned on the rail and gazed at the ropy beach. He’d almost have preferred to stay on board, but there was always the thin chance that something interesting might turn up. He only stumbled once as they made their way across the ice and onto the rock. Small cause for pride.

On the frozen lava the humans had an advantage over their tran companions. The natives had to pick their way carefully on unclad feet over the nastier sections of aa and scoria.

The two wizards could have gone by themselves. However, someone had to go along to tell the two learned beings when it was time to return to the Slanderscree. Left to themselves, they would wander about the island til dark, get lost, and then there’d be a broken leg or twisted ankle and the hard work of carrying them back to the ship in the dark.

The slopes of the gigantic cone seemed to soar up and up into the opalescent blue until they merged at the artist’s vanishing point. You could tell there was a top only because of the black smoke that issued there from somewhere in the clouds.

Well, they could spend the morning picking around at the rocks in the shelter of the east slope, acquire a few specimens, and return to the ship. The rocks ought to keep Williams and Eer-Meesach occupied and out of trouble until they’d reached Arsudun.

Ethan didn’t expect any surprises—even Williams had enough sense to forgo suggesting an ascent—but he hadn’t counted on the cave.

It was well concealed by rock and low brush as he walked past the entrance. It looked no different from any other section of immolated stone. Only the early morning light shining straight into it gave any hint that it might be larger than the thousands of similar pockets which dotted the lava. He bent and peered inside.

It was large enough for a tran to walk upright in, so he called the others over.

“Fascinating,” said the schoolmaster, staring inside. Before anyone could stop him, the teacher had stepped carefully over a chunk of aa and was standing on the smooth floor of the cave.

“Get out of there, Milliken,” said September. “The whole business could come down on you any second.”

“Pish-tosh! This is a structure built by nature, not mere man, Mr. September. Once a tube like this has been formed, it will remain so until a violent upheaval cracks the set rock. My dear Eer-Meesach, you must see this!”

“What is it?” The tran wizard had knelt slowly and was staring into the hole now.

Williams’ voice floated back from some ways in. “The walls of the tube are lined with a luminescent lichen or fungi of some sort. I can see quite clearly even though I’m well away from the entrance.” There was a pause. “It appears to extend into the mountain for some distance.”

“Then by all means,” replied Eer-Meesach, scrambling over the lip of the hole, “we must explore further.”

Hunnar looked resignedly at September. “I’d as soon wait here, Sir Skua. But those two would surely lose themselves at the first pairing of passageways.”

The big man dug into a coat pocket and pulled out one of the small compasses from the survival supplies.

“I expect you’re right,” he agreed. “Might as well go myself.”

Hunnar hopped down into the tunnel, followed closely by Budjir and Suaxus. September went next, turned and looked back at Ethan.

“Coming, young feller-me-lad?”

He hesitated. The tunnel did not look especially inviting. But they could be watching from the ship. Colette had already confessed a fear of the dark; it was the only thing that seemed to faze her. Naturally he had to go in.

It was a good thing he had no time to work on the logic of his thinking or he wouldn’t have been terribly happy with the resultant picture.

They walked at a leisurely pace, moving deeper and deeper into the mountain. The walls, ceiling, and floor had been scoured almost slippery smooth. There were places where the ceiling rose to two and three times the height of a tran. And here and there there were vents of green clay. Green clay in volcanic vents. Now, where had he seen that before? He puzzled over it.

The glowing plant life grew no more luxuriantly as they moved down the tunnel, but it didn’t grow dimmer, either. And it supplied enough light to show occasional boulders and rocks that had fallen from the roof (green clay in volcanic vents?). The number was small, Ethan noted gratefully. He moved ahead to listen to the schoolmaster.

“Lava has gone through this passage fairly recently,” Williams explained, “which accounts for the smooth sides.”

“Now that’s a comforting thought,” grinned Ethan. He thought of the millions of tons of hot magma beneath their feet, whose outlet had once been the tube in which they now trod.

After an hour’s hike Hunnar finally declared a halt. The wizards gave no sign of tiring and the tunnel no signs of ending.

“Scientific exploration is all very well and good,” the knight said, crouching against the cold gray wall, “but we’ve brought no provisions with us. I do not believe further exploration of this hole, which could run clear through the mountain, is worth missing the midday meal.”

This opinion was seconded immediately by September, Ethan, and both squires. Outvoted, the two scholars capitulated gracefully.

“I, too, confess to being somewhat wearied and hungered,” admitted Eer-Meesach. “And we seem to have learned all that we might. Yet it would be interesting to know if this tube opens near the central vent itself.”

“I’m cold,” September quipped, “but not that cold.” He sat down across from Hunnar and began flipping pebbles against the far wall.

Ethan took a few steps forward and prepared to rest also. He squinted hard down the tunnel.

“Hey … it does seem to get a little brighter ahead.”

“Your eyes are tired from straining in this light, lad.” The big man glanced down the tunnel without getting up. “Looks the same to me.”

“No, really, it does,” Ethan continued. He took another couple of steps forward. “It does.” He started to walk down the tunnel.

“Don’t go too far,” September warned him. “Don’t go out of voice range. I don’t want you making a wrong turn into some endless maze. If you do, I’m not coming after you, what?”

“Don’t worry, Skua. I’m not going to go far.” The tunnel made a sharp turn to the right, just ahead. That would be far enough.

He turned and stepped into the chamber.

It was larger than the tunnel, perhaps three or four times as wide as the passageway and equally as high. There were no more phosphorescent plants here than behind him, but the light was blinding. Blinding, dazzling, overpowering—and green.

Now he remembered where he’d read of green clay in volcanic vents.

Ozmidine was mined in only two places in the known universe. One was on a tiny island in the middle of a lake on the thranx world of Drax IV. Drax IV was a hell world, a steaming, sweltering moldy ball of corruption that would drive a man insane if the Po’pione or Turabisi Delphius didn’t get him first. The thranx could survive the heat and humidity, but the local flora and fauna made no species distinctions when it came to dinner.

But there was ozmidine there, so they stayed.

The other lode had been found on Mantis, one of the first worlds settled by humanity after the discovery of the KK-drive. It had been discovered, not by lonely prospector, nor by mining combine, nor by official survey. A driller pushing a new subway tunnel through the heart of downtown Locust had come on the first deposits. Now there was an ugly, dark, smoky hole in the middle of the planet’s capital city. But the inhabitants didn’t mind. It made them rich.

On the scale of comparative hardness for minerals, diamond is the hardest at 10. Or rather, it was until ozmidine was found to have a hardness rating of about 14. And the crystals of the raw mineral were of a deep green shading to violet that made the finest emeralds look like soapstone.

Ozmidine was only found in igneous rocks, in vents of greenish clay.

Ethan stumbled forward, his eyes adjusting to the light thrown back at him from an endless hall of green hexagonal crystal. Ozmidine hung from the ceiling like stalactites. It grew outward from the walls like decorative swords, filled the floor with spikes and crushed crystals from the ceiling.

He’d once seen a picture of the Green Nova. The Green Nova was a piece of pure ozmidine from the Drax IV mine. It was as big as a man’s fist and had taken thirteen months to cut and facet by the finest stonecutter on Terra, using laser and ozmidine cutting tools. It had no price.

He stumbled, wincing at the pain in his toe. He’d tripped over a chunk of clear ozmidine the size of a basketball.

This wasn’t wealth—there was no way, no means of comparing this to normal human pursuits. The ownership of whole worlds lay in this tunnel. Power to alter the structure of governments, even enough to shake the Church itself.

“Hey, young fella! …” came September’s voice. “It’s time to … “

Dimly, Ethan recognized the voice of September and the others behind him. But he didn’t turn. He knew what they looked like.

Something shook underfoot. He felt it, ignored it.

“My dear Eer-Meesach, this is wonderful!” Williams whispered. “Such symmetry of form, such amazing variety …” He frowned. “Was that a tremor?”

“EEYAHOO!” bellowed September. He grabbed Ethan and danced in a circle while Ethan hung on for dear life, his feet centimeters off the floor. “Gods and Devils and broken hearts, and broken names, and all the lost promises down the trail of time!” He stopped, let Ethan down. Ethan felt himself to make sure no bones were broken.

He grinned up at the other. “My sentiments exactly.”

September bent to pick up a flawless piece of crystal as big as his thumb. He landed on his rump.

The earth shook.

Shards of priceless gemstone, any one worth a king’s life, pelted Ethan’s unprotected face. When the shaking stopped, he felt himself gingerly. He’d received some very expensive scratches.

Below, a steady rumbling had begun. There were demons afoot in the mountain.

Williams was backing toward the tunnel proper, a little of his scientific detachment gone. He watched the walls warily.

“I … I do believe it would be best if we returned to the ship. I think something may happen.”

His words penetrated the green haze surrounding Ethan. He was dimly aware that September was shaking him.

“Better do what he says, young feller. We can come back tomorrow … maybe. Time to leave.”

“Leave …?” Ethan stuttered. “Return …?” He looked up at the big man, blinked. “Leave this … no, absolutely no!”

“Now young feller …” began September.

“No, I won’t … I found it, dammit … I’m staying … you go!”

September chuckled. “All right, lad, have it your way.” He turned and walked past Ethan … and clipped him neatly on the jaw as he passed. He knelt, scooped up the slumping body, and threw it over his shoulder.

“Let’s go.” He took a last glance over his shoulder, muttered so low no one could hear him, “Shana … forgive me,” and started out of the tunnel.

The run back to the raft turned into a nightmare, with groanings and heavings and cyclopean creakings alternating with distant detonations. One was powerful enough to throw them off their feet. It bloodied September’s nose. He uttered a few choice curses, hefted Ethan higher on his shoulder, and continued forward at a jog.

If anything, their emergence from the cavern into clean daylight inspired them to move faster. They were met at the shoreline by Balavere and a party from the ship.

“All be thanked!” said the old General, clasping Hunnar by the shoulders. “We thought the mountain had got you.” Then he noticed the scrapes and bruises and Ethan’s unmoving form. “What did happen in there?”

“I shall tell you later, honored General,” replied Hunnar, “if I still believe in it myself, then.”

There was an awesome roar behind them and they were nearly thrown again.

“But if that interesting talk is to take place, we must depart this accursed island now. Quickly!”

They hurried to the ice. Two of the soldiers carried Ethan between them. They moved much faster on the ice than September could have.

“Put your men aloft, captain!” Hunnar bellowed as they boarded the raft. But it wasn’t needed. Ta-hoding had heard the explosions and was moving over the deck like a frightened k’nith, swearing tearfully that though he lived a thousand years he’d never see this befouled ship fully repaired.

The ice-anchors were brought in. Wind caught the sails and the Slanderscree moved.

Drawn by the noise, the du Kanes emerged on deck. Colette looked at the volcano and turned to question September. Then she saw Ethan’s unconscious form.

“What happened to him?” she asked casually—a little too casually, September thought. He squinted down at her as another explosion—they were growing more frequent—drowned out all possibility of communication.

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.

Mission To Moulokin

Book Two of

The Icerigger Trilogy

For Mike and Helen Green,

beloved Uncle and Aunt always,

and damn the indifferent genetics of it all …

Contents

Prologue

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter III

Chapter IV

Chapter V

Chapter VI

Chapter VII

Chapter VIII

Chapter IX

Chapter X

Chapter XI

Chapter XII

Chapter XIII

Chapter XIV

Chapter XV

Chapter XVI

Chapter XVII

Chapter XVIII

Prologue

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 …

I

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.

Five curving metal skates supported the great ice ship: two nearly forward, two nearly aft where the arrowhead-shaped vessel’s beam was widest, and a last at the pointed stern. Each towered nearly four meters, large enough to slice the cautious patrol boat in two if its driver wasn’t careful or quick enough to stay out of the path of the two-hundred-meter ice ship.

Ethan slid back the face mask of his survival suit without shifting the glare-reducing goggles he wore beneath and reflected on what he’d just yelled. From Sofold? He? He was a moderately successful salesman for the House of Malaika. Sofold was the home of Hunnar Redbeard and Balavere Longax and other Tran, natives of this frozen, harsh iceworld of Tran-ky-ky. From Sofold? Had he grown that acclimated to the unforgiving planet in the year and a half he and his companions had been marooned there?

Blowing ice scoured his burnished epidermis like a razor, and he turned to shield the exposed skin. A glance at the thermometer set in the back of his left glove indicated the temperature a balmy –18° C. But then they were not too far from Tran-ky-ky’s equator, where such tropical conditions could be expected.

A furry paw rested on his shoulder. Glancing around, Ethan found himself looking into the lionesque face of Sir Hunnar Redbeard. Hunnar had been leader of the first group of natives to encounter Ethan and his fellow shipwreck victims where they’d crashed, several thousand kilometers distant. Ethan studied the lightly clothed knight, envied his adaptation to a climate that could kill most unprotected humans in an hour.

The Tran bundled up in severe weather, but more temperate conditions allowed Sir Hunnar and his companions to shed their heavy hessavar furs for lighter attire, such as the hide vest and kilt the knight currently wore. Although he stood only a few centimeters taller than Ethan, the Tran was nearly twice as broad, yet his semihollow bone structure reduced his weight to little more than that of an average man.

Slitted black pupils glared from yellow feline eyes; shards of jet set in cabochons of bright topaz. They were split by a broad, blunt muzzle which ended above the wide mouth. Pursed lips and twitched-forward triangular ears combined to indicate curiosity. Hunnar’s right dan, a tough membrane extending from wrist to hip, was partly open, bulging with the force of the wind, but he balanced easily on his chiv, the elongated claws which enabled any Tran to glide across ice more gracefully than the most talented human skater.

While Hunnar’s reddish beard and rust-toned fur caused him to stand out in a crowd of his steel-gray fellows, it was his inquiring personality and natural curiosity that raised him above them in Ethan’s estimation.

“They want to know,” Ethan explained in Tran while gesturing at the small scout boat skittering alongside and below them, “where we’ve come from. I told them, but I don’t think they heard me.”

“Mayhap they heard you well, Sir Ethan, and simply do not know of Sofold.”

“I told you to stop calling me sir, Hunnar.” The titles the Tran of Wannome city had bestowed on the humans after the defeat of Sagyanak’s Horde still made him uncomfortable.

“Remember,” Hunnar continued blithely, “until you and your companions landed near Sofold in your metal flying boat, we had neither seen nor heard of your race. Ignorance is a two-edged sword.” He waved a massive arm at the scout boat. “It would be surprising indeed if your people here in this nearby outpost you call Brass Monkey, the only one of its kind on my world, had heard of so distant a nation as Sofold.”

A cry from above and forward interrupted them. It came from the lookout’s cage set atop the patriarchal tree which served now as the Slanderscree’s mainmast. Many months of living among the Tran had given Ethan the ability to rapidly translate the lookout’s words. After half a day’s careful travel down the frozen inlet from the vast ice ocean beyond, they were finally coming into the harbor of Arsudun, the Tran city-state where humanity maintained its shivering outpost on this world.

Ethan and Hunnar stood on the helm deck. Other than the three masts, it was the highest point on the ship. Behind them, Captain Ta-hoding hurled rapid-fire directions at the two Tran wresting the great wheel connected to the duralloy runner which steered the Slanderscree. In accordance with the captain’s orders, other Tran were manipulating the two huge airfoils at bow and stern to slow the icerigger still more.

Meanwhile the laborious and dangerous process of reefing in sails was proceeding rapidly. Ethan marveled how the Tran crew had mastered the rigging of the enormous ice ship. Only their claws and thick chiv enabled them to hold their footing on the icy spars above.

Though Hunnar slid easily over the icepath bordering the ship’s railings Ethan struggled to remain upright as they moved forward for a better look. The helm deck reached as far as the broad end of the main arrowhead shape of the Slanderscree. Standing just above the muffled screech of the port-aft runner, they could now look straight at the harbor, since from where they stood the icerigger narrowed to a point some hundred and seventy meters ahead.

Arsudun was a bubble-shaped harbor located at the end of the long strait leading from the ice ocean. Like the ocean, the strait, and all other free-standing water on Tran-ky-ky, the harbor was frozen solid. It was a flat sheet of many shades of white, covered with a thin layer of snow and ice crystals. Where the snow had been blown away, grooves marked the routes other ice ships had taken.

Ethan was eighteen standard Commonwealth months late arriving. Brass Monkey was just another stopover on the new territory he’d been assigned to cover. But his involvement in an abortive kidnapping aboard the interstellar liner Antares and the subsequent crash-landing near Wannome, Hunnar’s home city, had lengthened his stay considerably.

Arsudun was an island, larger than Sofold, probably smaller than some. As far as Ethan knew, Tran-ky-ky was a world of islands set like metamorphic hermits in a cluster of frozen oceans. Somewhere nearby was the humanx settlement of Brass Monkey, with its shuttleport and promise of passage off this inverted hell of a world. Andrenalin—Arsudun … they went together. What a pleasure it would be to stop playing explorer and return to the simple, gentle business of purveying manufactured goods from warm world to warm world!

He wondered about his companions, fellow survivors. Excusing himself, he left Hunnar and went to find them, searching the deck before entering the two double-tiered cabins set forward of the helm.

The would-be kidnappers who had abducted him were now dead. The individual principally responsible for their death was standing up forward, looking out over the bowsprit. Distance reduced even his impressive frame to a perpendicular spot of brown against the deck and the white ice ahead.

Of all of them, Skua September seemed most fitted for this world. Over two meters tall, massing nearly two hundred kilos, with his biblical-prophet visage and flowing white hair offset by the gold ring in his right ear, he resembled something that had slid off the front of a glacier. There having been no survival suit on the Antares’ lifeboat large enough to fit him, he’d resorted to native clothing. In hessavar fur coat and cape and trousers he looked very much like one of the natives, his glare goggles notwithstanding.

In the lee of the fore cabin, Milliken Williams stood chatting with his spiritual and intellectual soul brother, the Tran wizard Malmeevyn Eer-Meesach. The diminutive schoolteacher’s manner was as dark and quiet as his coloring. September might be suited physically to Tran-ky-ky, but Williams melded into it mentally. There was more he could teach here than in any Commonwealth school, and more to learn than from any tape. Williams possessed a silent soul. If the weather was not to his liking, the tranquillity of intellectual adventure surely was.

Somewhere in one of the two cabins slept Hellespont du Kane and his daughter Colette, the objects of the kidnapping. Colette was also the reason for Ethan’s present personal distress. She had proposed marriage to him; recently, bluntly. Despite her gross physical appearance, Ethan was seriously considering the offer. The prospect of marrying one of the wealthiest young women in the Arm was sufficient to overcome such superficialities as a lack of physical beauty. She was supremely competent as an individual, too. Ethan knew she ran the du Kane financial empire during her father’s periodic attacks of senility.

But one had to consider her acid tongue, capable of verbally slicing one into neat little fragments of shrunken ego. And hers was a very high-powered personality, accustomed to manipulating corporation heads and ordering about Commonwealth representatives. Spending one’s life with such an overpowering individual was something to be weighed carefully.

Somewhere below also slept the drugged Elfa Kurdagh-Vlata, daughter of the Landgrave of Sofold, who was Hunnar’s ruler/chief/king. The royal stowaway had snored through much of the dangerous and eventful voyage from Sofold, but when she awoke Ethan would have another problem to deal with.

Despite certain obvious differences in physiology, there were enough similarities between human and Tran for Elfa to have developed a distressing attraction to Ethan, much to his discomfort. It had caused unspoken but obvious pain to Hunnar. Both he and Ethan had managed to lay a veneer of honest friendship over that potentially explosive situation. The problem would crop up again when the royal offspring awoke.

Ethan had made his feelings in the matter known to Elfa. But that hadn’t discouraged her from attempting to change his mind. If she would sleep just a few days longer, he would be off the planet and spared the problem of dealing with her personally. That would be just as well, because despite his declared feelings, there was an unavoidable feline animalness about Elfa that …

Using information relayed from the masthead lookouts and the bowsprit pointer, Ta-hoding skillfully directed the Slanderscree toward an open dock protruding from the harbor shoreline. The dock was simply a wooden road built out onto the ice. Its pilings were necessary to raise it to iceship deck level, not to keep it above the frozen water.

Smaller ice boats were beginning to cluster curiously around the Slanderscree. They complicated the task of maneuvering the colossal ship up to the dock. But Arsudun owned a wide harbor, much wider than the Slanderscree’s home port of Wannome. Ta-hoding did a masterful job of maneuvering around and through the curious locals.

A few awed sightseers were warned off by the icerigger’s crew. Their stupified amazement was justified, Ethan knew. The Slanderscree was likely twice the size of any ice ship they had ever seen.

No doubt the crowd gathering on the shore included admiring shipwrights and envious merchants. They would be hard to keep off the ship, once it docked. Their natural curiosity would impel them to inspect the strange rigging arrangement, a modification of ancient Terran water clippers adapted by Williams for Tran-ky-ky’s ice oceans. Surely they would clamber all over the five massive duralloy runners on which the icerigger rode. Metal was a scarce commodity on Tran-ky-ky. The other, smaller ice ships Ethan had seen were outfitted with runners of wood and, more rarely, of bone or stone.

Some of the ship’s sailors cursed when the docking crew was slow to help them. The dockworkers too were dazed by the size of the Slanderscree. Mates had to direct their men to jump over the railings and down to the dock to man the cables and braces themselves, but once the process of tying up had begun, the land crew swung into action and began to help.

It was a tricky process. The Slanderscree was nearly three times the length of her dock, and no other docks in view were longer. There was no need for them. Ships the size of the Slanderscree simply did not exist on all of Tran-ky-ky.

Ta-hoding, however, was prepared to cope. As soon as his vessel’s bow was secured he ordered the stern ice anchors released. They locked in place and would keep the huge vessel from swinging tail-first with the steady aft wind.

Wind, wind and cold. Ethan slid the protective face mask back down over his goggles to shield his delicate human flesh. The lee of an island or indoors were the only places you were out of the wind on Tran-ky-ky. It blew here the way the sun shone on paradisical New Riviera or on one of the thranx worlds such as Amropolous or Hivehom. It blew steadily, varying but never wholly ceasing, across the empty places and frozen seas. It blew steadily down the strait against his back now, sucked inward by the rising, slightly warmer air above the island.

A few clouds scudded in puffy formation across a sky of cobalt blue. Ethan turned his gaze as he moved forward. Grizzled and goggled, a seamed face turned to look back and down at him, to smile with teeth white as chips of the harbor around them.

“Upon my word, young feller-me-lad, if we haven’t gone and made it in one piece!” Skua September rubbed one side of a nose as big in proportion to its face as the ship’s bowsprit was to the hull. He turned away to study the town, its winding icepaths forming shiny ribbons between the buildings, the busy Tran walking or chivaning along them. The locals who didn’t stop to gawk at the icerigger held their arms outstretched parallel to the street, the wind filling their membranous dan and scooting them along effortlessly.

Smoke curled skyward from a thousand chimneys. Multistoried gambreled structures swelled haphazardly up the gentle island slope until they crested against the stark gray bulk of a substantial castle.

While Arsudun seemed to contain a population considerably larger than Wannome, Ethan noted with interest the smaller size of the castle. Its diminutive proportions bespoke either the relative impecuniosity of the local government or the becoming modesty of its Landgrave.

Sir Hunnar offered a third possibility. “It looks not more than a dozen years old, Sir Ethan … Ethan. And it appears unusually well built.” Hunnar clambered awkwardly over the railing and down the boarding ladder. He relaxed visibly when he was able to step onto the icepath covering the center portion of the dock. Like all Tran, he was much more at home on the ice than on any unslick solid surface.

Ethan and Skua joined the knight and his two squires, Suaxusdal-Jagger and Budjir. The latter were discussing the town and the assembled crowd in suspicious mutters. They kept their arms tight at their sides, lest a gust of wind catch their dan and send them unexpectedly rocketing forward.

A voice called from the ship to the landing party. Squinting reflexively into the wind, although the suit mask kept his eyes safe, Ethan made out a rotund, survival-suited figure waving down at them from the bow.

“When you get to the port, use the number twenty-two double R if the authorities give you any trouble!” The voice was crisp, insistent, yet feminine for all its controlled power. Colette du Kane paused to murmur something to the wavering figure alongside her, then put an arm around her father to support him.

“That’s our family code. Any processor unit will recognize it instantly, Ethan. From a personal cardmeter to a Church ident. It will give us priority booking on the next shuttle off here and cut through any red tape.”

“Twenty-two double R, okay.” Ethan hesitated when she seemed about to add something else, but then her father bent over suddenly and she had to attend to him. They couldn’t hear anything, but the figure’s movements hinted at wracking, heaving coughs.

They turned, started for the town. Hunnar and the squires kept their speed down to a crawl to keep from outdistancing the humans. They were nearly reduced to walking.

“Strong woman,” September murmured easily. Hunnar spoke to a local who directed them to the left. Following the harbor, they turned in that direction.

“Yes, she is,” Ethan agreed. “But she tends to be a bit domineering.”

“Why fella-me-lad, what do you expect from a scion of one of the merchant families? ’Course, it ain’t fer me to say. You’re the one she proposed to, not me.”

“I know, Skua. But I respect your opinion. What do you think I should do?”

“You want the opinion of a wanted man.” September grinned broadly. Then the smile vanished and September became unexpectedly, unnaturally solemn.

“Lad, you can ask my advice where fighting is concerned, hand-to-hand, ship-to-ship, machine-to machine. You can ask where politics are concerned, or religion, or food or drink. You can ask my advice on any hundred matters, any thousand, and though I don’t know amoeba-spit about half that many I’d still venture you a reply.

“But,” and here he looked at Ethan so sharply, so furiously intent that the salesman missed a nervous step, “don’t ask my advice where women are concerned because I’ve had worse luck with them than fighting or politics or any of the thousand others. No, feller-me-lad,” he continued, some of his perpetual good humor returning, “that’s a choice you’ll have to make for yourself.

“I will tell you this: never confuse physical form and beauty with the capacity for passion. That’s a mistake far too many men make. Beauty ain’t skin deep … it goes a damn sight deeper.

“Now let’s hurry up the pace a bit. Sir Hunnar and his boys are practically fallin’ asleep trying to hang back with us, and I’m as anxious as you are to get to the port. …”

They topped a slight rise. Below and just ahead lay the humanx community of Brass Monkey. At the moment, Ethan had eyes only for three concave depressions scooped from the frozen ground and neatly lined with opaque, ice-free metal. Shuttleboat pits. Just their metal linings, those three perfect bowls, contained a fortune in Tran terms, yet none of them seemed disturbed or in any way vandalized. Of course, he reminded himself, that might be due to the fact that the Tran didn’t possess tools strong enough to cut through duralloy or metal-ceramic crystalloids.

Aligned in one of the pits was a small metal shape that bore a remarkable resemblance to the Slanderscree, save for the absence of masts and its more aerodynamic design. The little boat made Ethan’s stomach flip. He could be on it very soon.

An enormous wall of frozen earth and blocks of ice and snow had been heaped up east of the community to shelter it from the steady wind off the harbor. The port buildings lay close by the near end of the harbor, and the group started down toward an L-shaped, two-story edifice. Two glowing signs shone in recesses above the snow-free main entrance. One read: BRASS MONKEY—TRAN-KY-KY ADMINISTRATION. In jagged local script below it were words translating roughly as SKY OUTLANDER’S PLACE.

An intermittent stream of bundled humans and an occasional Tran were presenting themselves at that entrance. Glassalloy windows, thick enough to be used in starships, offered the building’s inhabitants views of the frozen world outside. Ethan could see in. Some thing was keeping the inside of such windows free from condensation.

“What do we here, Ethan?” Hunnar sounded uncertain. No doubt he was wondering if the strange humans in this place would have icepaths within their structures or if he would be forced to walk any distance.

“We have to book passage off your world. Back to our homes.”

“Your homes,” Hunnar echoed. “Of course.” The knight’s tone indicated a contradictory meaning. Ethan understood the language well enough now to discern such nuances. Hunnar was expressing sorrow at their imminent departure and at the same time, a profound gratitude. Or maybe he was just thinking of the sleeping Elfa Kurdagh-Vlata back on the Slanderscree.

Once more Ethan thought to reassure Hunnar that he had nothing to worry about in the way of competition for the favors of the Landgrave’s daughter. But booking passage should provide sufficient reassurance.

There was an icepath ramp leading to the entrance, bordered by smooth metal for human use. It was grooved for traction despite the present absence of ice. Two sets of doors barred the way in.

They passed the first easily enough, despite the rise in temperature. But when they passed the second set and entered the building proper, Sir Hunnar reeled and the moody Suaxus nearly fell. The cause was immediately apparent. The Tran liked to maintain the temperature in their dwellings perhaps five degrees above freezing. The temperature inside the building, set for the human optimum, was devastatingly higher.

It was then that Ethan noticed there were no Tran inside the building itself. Those they had seen entering had stopped in the area enclosed by the two sets of doors, a small lobby lined with windows. There, Tran exchanged packages or held conversations with humans at windows installed for the purpose. The area was kept cool there for them, and tolerably warm for the humans behind the windows. Even so, the Tran there concluded their business hurriedly to rush out into the comforting arctic air outside.

“With … your permission, friend Ethan, friend Skua…” Hunnar staggered erect. Without waiting for Ethan’s acknowledgment, the knight and his two companions turned and stumbled outside. Through the transparent doors, Ethan could see Suaxus sit down hard, holding his head with both hands, while Hunnar and Budjir gulped deep icy breaths and ministered to him.

“I can see where they’d get heat stroke quick enough in here.” September was rapidly divesting himself of his hessavar furs. Ethan didn’t have that problem. He simply slid back his face mask and goggles, plus the hood of his survival suit. The suit itself automatically adjusted for the warmer air inside the building, the suit material being naturally thermosensitive.

They walked to the information grid. Politely, a voice informed them of the portmaster’s name and the location of his office. Directions were displayed on the map set alongside the grid.

A small, olive-skinned man with tightly curled black hair greeted them in the office. He displayed an air of relaxed efficiency. His eyebrows rose slightly at their entrance, otherwise he didn’t appear too surprised at their presence. His gaze stayed mostly on September, which was no surprise at all. Skua had to duck to enter the office.

They were on the second floor of the building. Broad windows opened on side and back, showing the launch pits and the roofs of Arsudun. The contrast of frozen medievality and sleek modernity gave the windows the look of solidos, artificial and unlikely.

“Good morning, gentlesirs, good morning. Carpen Xenaxis, portmaster. We had a report from one of our harbor scouts that a large native vessel with humans aboard was coming in.” He stopped, awaiting confirmation.

“Yes, we were aboard.” Ethan introduced himself and September, then launched into a rapid explanation of their presence on Tran-ky-ky, the failed kidnapping of the du Kanes … and was cut off at that point.

“Just a moment … sorry.” Xenaxis turned to the tridee screen set into one side of his desk, chatted briefly and softly to someone unseen. Then he turned back to them with a pleasant smile.

“It was assumed the du Kanes had died during the misfunction of the lifeboat, which you now tell me was no misfunction. I just reported them alive and well. We’ve had many inquiries. A large number of individuals will be most interested in this news.” Xenaxis appeared suddenly uncertain. “They are alive and well?” Ethan nodded.

“The kidnappers themselves are dead,” September added. “I killed one of ’em myself. If there’s a reward I’d like to lay claim to it.”

“Naturally. That is your right.” The portmaster touched another switch, prepared to make a fresh recording. “If you’ll just give me your name, world of origin, home address and financial code I’m sure we…”

“Actually, that wouldn’t be the fair thing to do.” September gestured at his companion. “It was this here lad who was responsible for most of what happened. He deserves any credit.”

Ethan turned a startled look on September, opened his mouth to comment. An experienced salesman is a specialist in reading expressions. A multitude of meanings were available for interpretation on the big man’s face just then. To his credit, Ethan picked up most of them.

“If there is any kind of reward, I’ll worry about that later.” September relaxed ever so slightly. “The main thing we’re concerned about is getting off this place as fast as possible.”

“I can imagine.” Xenaxis sounded properly sympathetic. “I do not myself find the company of the natives particularly pleasant. One can do business with them, but it is next to impossible to socialize. Besides the differences in temperature each race is accustomed to, they are argumentative and combative by nature.” Ethan said nothing, maintaining a blank expression.

“The local trade is profitable then?” September somehow sounded as if there was more behind his question than just polite conversation.

Xenaxis shrugged. “Keeping the commercial end of this post open is my principal task, sir. There are three large warehouses here in Brass Monkey whose contents change frequently. Of course, I’m only a civil employee, straight salaried.” Ethan thought he detected a note of envy in the portmaster’s voice. “But some companies or individual entrepreneurs are certainly making money off this frozen wasteland.”

“What kind of trade?” Xenaxis shouldn’t find that question suspicious, Ethan thought. It was his business.

“What you’d expect.” The portmaster leaned back in his chair. Ethan heard the faint hiss of posturic compensators. Xenaxis had a bad back, it seemed. But he appeared anxious to talk. New faces were no doubt an infrequent sight in Brass Monkey.

“Mostly luxury goods: art works, carvings, furs, gemstones, handicrafts, some of the most remarkable ivory sculptures you’d ever want to see. The natives look clumsy, but they’re capable of fine work.” Ethan thought of a stavanzer tusk and what a good local artist might make of one.

“You know all about such things, of course,” the portmaster continued. “When a civilization grows as modern as that of the Commonwealth, excellently crafted machinery and the mechanisms necessary for day to day living become cheap. People have a lot of excess credit to dispose of. So they spend on luxuries and art works and other nonessentials.” His chair returned to the vertical, his tone to businesslike.

“As far as your taking passage off-planet, I’m assuming you require shuttle space for the both of you and the du Kanes.”

“And one other, a teacher, name of Williams,” Ethan said.

“Five. Should be able to manage that, given your unusual circumstances. I don’t know a shipmaster who’d refuse you space.” He turned to his tridee screen again and pushed buttons. “I’ll put out notification of your survival to anyone you want to know about it, place it on the outpost bill. You’ve probably both got friends and relatives who’ll be happy to hear you’re still around. Maybe you’re not as important to others as are the du Kanes, but you’re important to yourselves.”

Despite his possible dislike of the Tran, Ethan decided he liked the little portmaster very much. “I was told by Colette du Kane to use the code 22RR. She said it might help you expedite matters.”

“If that’s the family financial code, I’m sure it will,” agreed Xenaxis. He checked a hidden readout. “The next ship due in stop orbit is the freighter Palamas. I’ll make your boarding arrangements via satellite relay as soon as the Palamas is in range.” He sounded apologetic. “We’re not nearly big or important enough here to qualify for a deep-space particle beam. The Palamas is a border-run ship, if I remember right. But she eventually orbits Drax IV, and you can make passage to anywhere from there.”

“When’s she due in?” Ethan was startled by the lack of enthusiasm in his voice.

“Oh, six fifteen on the twenty-fourth.” Xenaxis studied the two blank faces a moment, then smiled slightly. “Sorry. I forgot you probably haven’t been aware of local time since you touched down.”

“A couple of us had chronometers,” Ethan explained. “They didn’t survive the crash. Those that did didn’t survive the climate. Mine survived both, but didn’t survive …” He held out his right hand, showed the portmaster where the gash in his survival suit had been patched from hand to shoulder.

“Lost it to a stavanzer.”

“You mean those shipsized herbivores that weigh a couple of hundred tons each? Never seen one myself, only tridees taken by the scientific survey.”

“We had to turn one around.”

“Yes.” Xenaxis eyed them both respectfully. “Palamas should break out of space-plus in a couple of days. Leave another two days, three at most for her to decelerate and insert. I’m sorry I can’t offer you passage out of here any sooner. We don’t even have a habitat station I can ferry you up to. But if I can break away from my own duties, I’ve a request to make.”

“What’s that?”

Rising and walking around his desk, the portmaster moved to the side window, stared out across the roofs of Arsudun. Snow skipped like fat white fleas across the insulated transparency. “I can see the masts of the ship you arrived in from here. It’s much bigger than anything we’ve recorded so far. I’d love to have a close look at it.”

“Talk to her Captain, Ta-hoding,” Ethan advised him. “I’m sure he’ll be glad to show you around. He’s proud of his ship.”

“He has reason to be.” Xenaxis turned reluctantly from the window. “I suppose I’d better get back to work. Forms to fill out.” He made a face.

“If you like, you can stay the five days until departure here in the post. We’ll make room for you.”

“Can’t speak for the others.” September was moving toward the door. “Myself, I think I’ll stay with our Trannish friends.”

“As you like.” Xenaxis resumed his seat, turned toward Ethan. “Just a moment, Mr. Fortune. As I recall, there are two or three small cases consigned to you waiting in Number Three warehouse.”

“My sample goods. One of them contains a dozen or so small, inert-element heaters. A year ago I’d have given a thousand credits for one. I guess I’ll try and sell a few over the next couple of days. Thanks for reminding me.” Odd, he mused as they exited from the portmaster’s office, how he’d completely forgotten his sale goods. For some inexplicable reason, things such as profit margin, customer acceptance and territory expansion seemed childish to him now. Had Tran-ky-ky modified more than his tolerance to cold weather?

II

WHEN THEY REACHED THE first floor, September put a restraining hand on Ethan’s shoulder, halted him. “Sir Hunnar and his companions won’t mind waitin’ a bit longer, feller-me-lad.” He pointed down the corridor, in the direction away from the main entrance. “Let’s go have a gander at your samples.”

“Skua, I’ve got so much fighting for attention in my skull right now I really couldn’t care less about those cases.”

“I don’t want you to open up shop in front of me, lad,” September spoke softly. “I’ve another reason for wantin’ to get inside that warehouse.”

Ethan eyed him curiously, but the big man had already turned and was moving down the hallway. Ethan hurried to keep up with him.

“Should be a heated tunnel taking us out to the storage complex, once we find the right lift. Warehousing should be above surface like everything else.”

Warehouse Three was a utilitarian rectangle of windowless metal. September was right about its location. Despite the cold, it was cheaper to build above ground on Tran-ky-ky. Easier to put up a prefabricated structure that could withstand the wind than to excavate the permafrost and frozen ground.

The warehouse was insulated but not well heated inside. Ethan would have been shivering without his survival suit. A glance at a wall thermometer indicated the interior temperature was just above freezing. Outside, that would amount to a severe heat wave.

Two guards were posted at the warehouse doorway. When pressed for an explanation of their rather incongruous presence, one explained readily. “There’ve been stories about the natives stealing anything they can get their paws on.” The man looked indifferent. “It’s a cold job, but what the hell ain’t on this world?”

“Have you ever caught a local stealing?” Ethan couldn’t keep the anger out of his voice, and the guard noted it.

“Hey, look, I don’t make policy, friend. I just enforce it, me and Jolene here.” The other guard put a self-important hand on her beamer. “Let’s see your authorization slip.”

“Call the postmaster.” Ethan wasn’t feeling too cooperative. Maybe the Tran weren’t the most outgoing people in the galaxy, but it didn’t seem to him that anyone here was making much of an effort to learn otherwise.

“Oh, dierd! What’s your name or crate code?” Ethan told him. “Yeah, your stuff’s about four rows back, then turn right. Section twenty D.” He stepped aside. September gave him a pleasant smile, his coguard a larger one. She didn’t smile back.

“I don’t understand this,” Ethan grumbled as they made their way back through the tall shelves of crates and packages. “All the Tran we’ve encountered have been honest; in fact, I never heard Hunnar or anyone else even mention thievery in Wannome.”

“They haven’t had sufficient interaction with the corrupting influence of an acquisitive civilization,” September commented half-seriously. They turned right at the fourth row.

Ethan found his three small seamless plastic crates. Only his sealkey could debond the molecular structure of the blue material forming the square shapes. The house of Malaika overseals looked intact and untampered with.

“I can pick them up anytime, Skua. What did you want to look at in here?”

“I’m already looking at it, lad.” September’s gaze was taking in the ceiling-high stacks of crates. “I’ve seen what I wanted to. Time to go.”

They left the chilly chamber, passing under the hostile eyes of the guards. September didn’t speak until they were nearly back to the main port entrance.

“Something bothered me about Xenaxis’ comments concernin’ the local trade,” he explained. “Now that I’ve seen inside, it bothers me more. According to the markings on those crates, the trade going on here strikes me as awfully one-sided.”

“One-sided how?”

“Lad, those crates back there were new moldings, and the markings on them confirmed it. There’s a lot more going off this world than is comin’ in. Course, it’s hard to measure how many duralloy or ceramisteel knives equal one carving. But I don’t think the Tran know the value of their exports. How much is a hundred liters of water worth to a man in a desert? For that matter, how much is a hundred liters of dirt worth to a man in an ocean?

“Someone’s making a lot more than an honest profit here, feller-me-lad. Your packages were the only ones I saw in the whole place with a merchant family crest on ’em. Someone else, maybe unlicensed, is running a fine little monopoly here, and cheating the Tran in the bargain. Of course, they don’t think they’re getting cheated, because they don’t know any better. But I know, and it makes me mad, lad. These folks are my friends.”

“Our friends,” Ethan said quietly.

“Sure, our friends … for another five days.”

“So what can we do about it? No, wait. I do represent the House of Malaika. I’ve never met the old man himself, but from what I know he’s a bit more honest than many of the family heads. The injustice of the situation here wouldn’t move him to action. Profits would. I’m sure he’d be willing to come in and make the Tran a better deal.”

“I’m thinking of something a bit different from spreading the lucre, lad. Tell you about it later.” With that the giant lapsed into introspective silence as they made their way toward the entrance.

Just before reaching the doors they passed a pair of thranx. The meter-tall insects who with mankind co-dominated the Commonwealth were bundled almost beyond recognition in survival suits designed for their eight-limbed bodies. Even within the building they wore specially woven fur-lined sleeves over their feathery antennae. Apparently they were willing to forgo a loss of sensitivity for acceptable warmth.

Hailing from hot, humid worlds, the thranx were especially uncomfortable here on Tran-ky-ky. They walked past, muttering to each other in High Thranx. Ethan wondered what horrible misdemeanor the two had committed to be assigned to this world. Tran-ky-ky would be a fair realization of the thranx concept of Hell.

“Wonder what’s going on?” September pointed outside as they passed the inner set of doors.

A crowd had gathered on the entryway ramp. There seemed to be an argument taking place in its center. The two men hurried through the outer doors.

It seemed as if a million lumens hit Ethan’s eyes photons-on. The exterior doors were chemically tinted to make the outside glare bearable. Passing through, Ethan had neglected to pull down his goggles. Quickly he lowered them, opened his eyes. Gradually his sight returned and he could discern something besides white. It still felt as if someone had taken a file to his optic nerves. He lowered his face mask, not quite fast enough to prevent a couple of tears from freezing solid on his cheeks. The face shield melted them away.

Words of the argument reached him as he followed September forward into the crowd. Some of them he couldn’t translate. The ones he could embarrassed him. A couple of Tran were expressing enormous dislike for one another.

One of them was Hunnar. The other Ethan didn’t recognize. The combatants faced each other in a small open space, exchanging imprecations with unfaltering volubility. Suaxus and Budjir stood nearby, fingering the hilts of their swords nervously, their teeth half showing. Those, in the crowd nearest them were murmuring threateningly.

“… off-spring of a crippled k’nith!” the strange Tran growled at Hunnar. Ethan noted with some surprise that the stranger was taller than the knight, though not nearly as muscular. In fact, he looked soft. Green and gold metal-fabric sashes were draped importantly across his chest in diagonal pattern, shoulder to hip below the dan.

Metal-fabric: imported trade goods, he knew. Strapped to the richly-dressed Tran’s left leg was a short sword made of stelamic instead of the barely adequate local steel that formed Hunnar’s blade. Its handle was made of intricately molded plastic.

“I will not fight with you.” The stranger tried to muster some officious dignity. “I do not fight with …” The last word he used had an ambiguous meaning, one which could identify any outlander, or indicate the lowest form of peasant.

“I hight Sir Hunnar Redbeard,” the knight replied with a half-snarl. “Conqueror of Sagyanak the Death, destroyer of the Horde, and knight of Wannome of Sofold.”

“Never heard of either,” someone in the crowd snickered. There was degrading laughter all around. Suaxus and Budjir tried to spot the quipster, failed.

“You will hear soon of it,” Suaxus muttered. “It will make a fine inscription for your wandering time.”

“Speaking of fertilizer,” Hunnar continued, “that is undoubtedly what your family trades in, to obtain those shiny trappings you wear and that flashing new sword. So new, in fact, it seems not to have seen use. But then what use has one who dabbles in shit for a sword?”

The Tran opposite stiffened. Ethan knew that on Sofold, at least, natural wastes froze instantly as soon as they were exposed to the outside air. They were then collected by people who dealt in such produce and resold to various farmers, to be reheated and spread as fertilizer. The precarious island ecologies of Tran-ky-ky were kept in balance only by rigorous recycling of any available soil nutrients. The necessity of the profession, however, did not mitigate the offense of Hunnar’s remark.

Everyone in the crowd recognized the insult. Snickers and comments gave way to angry mutterings and the movement of hands toward weapons. No adult Tran and few cubs were ever seen without at least a dirk attached to outer thigh. Though Hunnar and the squires were considerably more battle-trained and experienced than the mob of citizens, they were badly out-numbered.

September and Ethan stepped into the circle. “We are visitors here and we wish no trouble.” Ethan studied the assemblage. “These three are our friends.”

At that announcement a remarkable change came over the mob. The one Tran who had been arguing with Hunnar made apologetic gestures to Ethan. His manner changed abruptly from offensive to obsequious.

“May my cubs be taken by guttorbyn if I have offended you, sky outlanders! I did not know that these,” he almost used the word for peasant again, “others were your personal friends. Had I so known, this would not have happened. I beg my family’s forgiveness.”

“Well,” Ethan began, a bit confused by the unexpected speed of the other’s apology, “I forgive you, if that’s what you want.”

“Tell Hunnar you’re sorry.” September grinned.

The brilliantly bedecked Tran stared at September. For an instant Ethan saw a glimmer in the native’s eyes of something other than respect. It vanished quickly. “As the sky outlander desires.” He turned to Hunnar.

“I ask forgiveness, friend.” The last word was forced out like a recalcitrant belch.

“Finish it properly.” Ethan threw the giant a warning look. They’d obtained an apology, for heaven’s sake! What more did September want?

“My … my breath is your … your …” He looked uncomfortably at September, avoiding the eyes of the crowd.

“Tell him,” insisted September coolly.

Assuming a remarkable expression of distaste, the native put out both arms and approached Hunnar. Placing a hand on each of the knight’s shoulders, he exhaled toward his face. “My breath is your warmth,” he said quickly. Then he retreated into the crowd.

The sympathy of the onlookers, Ethan decided, lay with the departed and not with Hunnar. The knight wrinkled his broad muzzle. “Pagh! That smells of falf lard.”

“Anyone else have anything to say?” September stared at the crowd. With murmurs and mutterings, the assembled citizens began to move off. Like crumbs falling from a cake, they fell away in different directions and smaller and smaller groups. The murmurs included distinct apologies, but all had been directed to Ethan and September.

“What was that all about?” Ethan asked the knight.

Hunnar looked upset. “We were waiting patiently for you and friend September. Local people were going back and forth from the building you entered. Many of them made comments to us. None were pleasant to hear, Ethan. Some would have caused blood to freeze in the streets of Wannome.” He took a deep breath.

“But this is not Wannome and we did not wish to do something that might give you trouble or embarrassment. It was very hard, but we ignored all such comments. At least, we did so until that last pash made a reference upon my family line which could not be ignored.

“Had you not intervened, Ethan, I would have decorated the street with his insides.”

“You are quick to forgive,” Suaxus said softly. Hunnar turned and glared at him, but the squire looked back defiantly. Suaxus had always been fast to take offense, Ethan recalled.

“We hardly intervened,” he said, trying to mollify any discomfort Hunnar might feel for not having fought his opponent. “We were ready to fight alongside you if need be. Why did they all simply apologize and melt away as they did?”

September began scratching the earring-decorated ear. “I’m not sure myself, lad. None of the Tran in Wannome acted like that toward us. They were polite, but independent.”

Hunnar gestured at the locals chivaning to and from the building. “Not warriors.” He said it disdainfully.

“Skua, did you notice the other’s clothing?” Ethan asked.

“No. All I was watching was his face and sword arm.”

“He was wearing metal-fabric sashes and other off-world decorations, and his sword was stelamic.”

“Apologetic in proportion to commerce. Interesting.” September looked thoughtful.

“They think,” Suaxus said bitterly, “they are superior to us because of their association with your people here.”

“That’s ridiculous.” Ethan felt acutely uncomfortable. “Why should they?”

“It’s happened often enough in our own past, lad.” September divided his attention equally between Ethan and Suaxus as he spoke. “When the great, rich explorers from beyond, wherever beyond happened to be at the time, set up a trading post, the local natives were quick to consolidate the trade monopoly on their own behalf. Nor were they averse to showing off their trade wealth in front of their excluded brethren.

“So though someone else is making the big money off the Tran-ky-ky trade, the Arsudunites are quite content with their own small corner on the market. It makes them feel big and important, just as Suaxus claims.”

Budjir was as quiet as his companion squire was talkative, but when his spit hit the ground it possessed a certain nonverbal eloquence admirable in its conciseness.

They started back to the ship. The three Tran kept slightly to themselves, moving just ahead of the humans.

“I said inside the port, lad, that something else has got to be done to open up this world so all the locals benefit.” He nodded back in the direction of the port complex. “That little altercation back there between Hunnar and one citizen is going to form the pattern for inter-Tran relationships unless this local monopoly is broken. Both of ’em. The one the Arsudunites enjoy, and the bigger one behind it.”

Ethan slipped slightly, just catching his balance on the frozen ground paralleling the icepath. “You told me you had something in mind. Me, I’d set up another trading post with shuttlecraft facilities somewhere else, maybe on Sofold. From there trade could be conducted that would be fair to all Tran, giving them fair value for their goods while still making an honest profit in return.”

September shook his white-maned head. “No offense against our friends up ahead,” and he gestured at Hunnar and the squires, “but as much as we may’ve come to like ’em personally, inside they’re no different than any other Tran. Pretty soon Sofold would be just like Arsudun, jealous of its little monopoly. Oh, maybe Hunnar wouldn’t go for it, but there’re plenty of merchants in Wannome who’d fight to preserve it.

“No, something else is needed. Something that’ll prevent any fiscal insularity from even getting established. And something that’ll just incidentally slice this present unfair setup into pieces the size of those the Slanderscree’s runners cut out o’ the ice.

“Young feller-me-lad, the Tran need Commonwealth representation.”

Ethan halted. “That’s impossible, Skua! It would’ve been done by now if survey had thought it possible. Sure, associate membership would be wonderful for them. They could deal with traders on a world-wide basis, spread the wealth and advances they could obtain evenly across the entire planet. But it’s just not feasible.”

“Better to try than to leave them open to the kind of exploitation that’s goin’ on here, lad. I think it can be done. First we’ve got to talk to the local Commissioner. “But you’re leaving in a few days. No need to worry yourself about something you’re convinced is impossible anyway.”

“I’ve got a few days, like you say.” Ethan resumed walking. “It won’t give me a depressex if I tag along and see the Commissioner with you.”

The office of the Resident Planetary Commissioner was located in the main administration building, northwest of the port complex. Privately, Ethan thought it too ornate for a world where humanx population and interests were comparatively slight.

Five single-story buildings projected outward like the spokes of a wheel from the central structure, a three story pyramid of white and black stone done in checkerboard pattern broken only by windows. The five subsidiary structures were living quarters for the administrative staff.

The main entrance to the pyramid was another double-door arrangement with the halfway climate maintained between for interaction between human and Tran. That section was smaller than the one they’d previously encountered, and logically so. There was little need for Tran to come here, since all trade and commerce were handled at the port.

Inside the circular main lobby a small, glowing directory hung suspended in midair. The Commissioner’s office was located on the third floor. They had to wait their turn at the small lift.

At the top they discovered that the Commissioner’s suite was the third floor. They stepped from the lift directly into busy outer offices occupied by a great many large machines and two subsized humans, one male, one female. No one else was in sight.

Ethan’s first impression of excessive ornateness was reinforced by the carpet. A glance showed his trained eye that it was strictly luxury material, an import—probably from Mantis or maybe Long Tunnel. Genetic manipulation had produced a natural substance with the look and feel of grass, the resistance of rubber, and the durability of dilyonite. The result was a pleasant-smelling and remarkably buoyant floor covering. It was very expensive. And though he wasn’t conversant with diplomatic purchasing guidelines, somehow he didn’t think that verdidion weave was standard decor for minor offworld offices, even that of a Resident Commissioner.

A young man who looked as if he could stand a dozen good meals occupied the desk nearest the lift. His fingers danced over and across machinery and consoles with controlled jerkiness.

Ethan’s eyes rose ceilingward, encountered the expected mosaic. Four circles of equal size met to form a crude square. The two nearest him were marked with stylized representations of continents, showing both hemispheres of Terra. Tangent to these two, the other pair had similar maps inlaid. These represented the two hemispheres of Hivehom, the home world of humanity’s partner in the Commonwealth, the insectoid thranx.

Centered among these four larger circles and tangent to all of them was a single smaller circle. A vertical hourglass of bright blue, symbolizing Terra, was crossed by a horizontal hourglass of brilliant green signifying Hivehom. They formed the shape of the ancient Maltese cross, and where they merged the colors blended into aquamarine, the signet hue of the United Church. Since this was a Commonwealth and not a Church installation, the cross was surrounded by a field of crimson, the color of the Commonwealth.

The straw man seemed to take notice of them. He turned, greeted them indifferently, hands still jerking and darting as if hunting for a rest never to be granted.

“May I help you, sirs?” His eyes narrowed slightly then and he concentrated a touch more intently on them. “I don’t think I know either of you.” He had assumed a faintly disapproving air. “I thought I knew everyone in the outpost.”

“We didn’t arrive via the visual channels,” September said.

Ethan tried to make himself sound important. “We’d like to see the Resident Commissioner.”

The man wasn’t impressed. “Concerning?” He spoke to Ethan, but his gaze remained fixed on September.

Ethan thought a moment. “Possibly crucial developments involving native affairs.”

“What kind of developments? Are you two attached to the xenology team here?” A hand brushed back straight blond hair, rubbed at the side of a small sharp nose, moved down to pull at the hem of his shirt and work up the other side to brush once again at the unruly hair.

Actually, the itch was concentrated not in hair, nose, or shirt. Instead, it was permanently located in the man’s mind. Since he couldn’t scratch that very well, he settled as did many others for rubbing parts of his anatomy that had nothing to do with his condition.

“We’d rather tell it to the Commissioner,” said Ethan, trying his best not to sound difficult.

“Do you have an appointment? I don’t recall any appointments scheduled for this afternoon.”

“Blessed!” snapped the woman at the other desk, speaking for the first time. She was a stout lady who looked slightly older than September, and she sounded exasperated with her colleague. “If they’re strangers here, then they must have come in on that big native ship.” The straw man showed no reaction. “Didn’t you hear about it?”

“I’ve been at my desk for the last several days, Eulali. You know I don’t listen much to post gossip.”

“No wonder you never learn anything,” she sighed. “Anything they have to say could be important. Never mind that they came in on that ship. Just the fact that they’re strangers.”

“Okay,” the man replied doubtfully. “I guess they can see Trell. But I won’t break procedure.”

“You and your damn procedure.” Eulali turned back to her own complex instrumentation resuming her work.

“Procedure says you’ve got to have an appointment,” the man insisted, rubbing the other side of his nose.

“Oh, all right.” Ethan couldn’t keep the impatience from his voice. “We’ll make an appointment.”

Turning back to the console before him, the man punched a button. Scribbled words appeared on a display screen. “Don’t get excited. I said I wouldn’t break procedure, and I won’t. You can have an appointment for … five minutes from now be okay?” He smiled. It changed his face completely.

“That’ll do,” Ethan admitted.

“The nature of your business involves native affairs, right?” Ethan nodded once. “Names please?”

“Ethan Frome Fortune.”

“Your home world or planet of origin?”

“Terra.”

“Profession?”

“Salesman, general manufactured goods, small, representing the House of Malaika.”

“Thanks.” He glanced perfunctorily over at September. “Name?”

“Skua September.” The words were grunted out, reluctantly.

“World of origin or birth?”

“I don’t know.”

“Now look here …”

“I’m telling you honestly, son. I don’t know.”

“Well, what does it say on your cardmeter?”

“It identifies me as a Commonwealth citizen. That’s all.”

“I’ve never seen an ident like that.” The skinny interrogator chewed his lower lip, moved to tug the hem of his shirt and decided not to. “Profession?”

“Free-lance fehdreyer.”

Again the youth hesitated. “That’s not a Terranglo word, is it?”

“No, it’s not a Terranglo word,” September assured him.

“What is it in Symbospeech?”

“There’s no Symbospeech direct equivalent. It’s a phonetic rescription of an old Terran word from a language called yi’ish.”

“Oh well, it doesn’t matter anyway.”

“When do we go in?” Ethan eyed the large wooden door nervously. September’s replies were likely to provoke the skittish clerk if they continued much longer.

“I’ll check.” He touched another switch. “Sir?”

“I’ve been monitoring since you keyed me, Avence,” a rich baritone responded. “They can come in. Be careful, Mr. September. You may have to duck. Our ceilings are designed for average human beings and thranx, not athletes or sifters.”

Ethan looked startled, but September simply smiled, pointing to a spot in the ceiling between the Commonwealth symbols and the top of the wooden door.

“Don’t worry. I’m used to duckin’. And I’m neither athlete nor sifter.”

They rose and walked to the entrance. September’s finger continued to point until Ethan spotted the spy-eye in the ceiling.

“Then he’s been listening to and watching us the whole time?”

“Naturally, feller-me-lad. What do you expect from a good politician?”

The pyramid building had three sides, the room they entered three corners and walls. Both exterior walls were perfectly transparent, providing a sweeping and by now familiar view of the harbor and the city of Arsudun backed against uneven, white-clad hills. Between hills and harbor the steep-roofed houses looked like a vast spill of gray paint.

Much to Ethan’s surprise, the usual desk was absent from the room’s furnishings. Several large couches in freeform design were positioned around the three-sided chamber. Each was covered in a different variety of local fur. Without knowing anything about their durability, Ethan tried to estimate their worth on the open market based on color and thickness alone. It was substantial. Any life-supporting world as cold as Tran-ky-ky was bound to produce some extraordinary fur-bearing creatures. The treated skins in the room gave ample proof of riches no synthetics could match.

“I’m Jobius Trell,” the room’s sole inhabitant told them, moving to shake his visitor’s hands in turn. He was tall, quite tall, standing midway in height between Ethan and September. His mouth seemed positioned naturally and permanently in a gentle, almost boyish grin. That saved him the necessity of worrying about when to smile in ticklish situations. Blue eyes, a square face, small if unlikely dimpled chin, and thick gray hair combed straight back. Ethan estimated his weight at around a hundred kilos, distributed on the build of an ordinary athlete. That is, one blessed with no athletic ability other than what was provided by more than usual size and weight, coupled with average coordination.

Between the Commissioner and September, Ethan felt dwarfed in the room. A gesture directed the visitors to one couch. Trell took the recliner opposite. Ethan could now pick out numerous controls and devices, even thick tape files, set cleverly into the furniture.

A casual wave at September, and Trell spoke. “You noticed my small preview eye, Mr. September. Have you been familiar with espionage work and equipment in the past?”

“Nope. But I’ve been in the offices of a lot of politicians.”

The Commissioner not only didn’t take offense, his laugh sounded quite genuine. “So there’s a sense of humor floating around inside that enormous frame of yours. Good. Let’s see if I can save us some time.” Leaning back into the couch, he ticked off points on his fingers as he talked.

“One: I’ve already heard the report you gave the postmaster, so I know everything you’ve told him. Rest assured I agree with him completely on expediting your passage off this world. After what you’ve been through, it’s the very least I, as Resident Commonwealth representative, can do. You must’ve had a terrible time of it among the primitives.”

“Not as terrible as everyone seems to think.” September spoke easily, inviting challenge.

Trell chose not to accept, or perhaps didn’t perceive the giant’s comment as challenging. “Two, that ship you arrived in. I’ve had recordings made, solidos formed. Quite a piece of engineering.” His voice altered, became slightly more intense as he inquired, “Where did the natives get the duralloy for five runners of that size? Surely the locals haven’t mastered nuclear metallurgy somewhere out in the snow?”

“No.” Ethan explained. “They cut them as best they could, with our help, from the hull of our wrecked lifeboat.”

That apparently satisfied Trell. “I suspected something like that. While our Commonwealth charges here aren’t stupid, they’re much longer on muscle than brains.”

“Yes, that’s true,” said September.

Ethan shook inside. Instead of the expected protest at this slur on their friends, September had reacted with agreement and a beatific smile.

He thought furiously. Since September did nothing without good reason, it followed that he had one for concurring with the Commissioner. As Trell nodded in response, he saw that the Commissioner had been waiting for precisely the answer the big man had given him. But if their purpose in coming here was to convince the Commissioner that the Tran were worthy of associate Commonwealth status, they weren’t off to a very good beginning.

Or were they? Come to think of it, reacting emotionally instead of with reason would be the worst way to get the Commissioner on their side. “Longer on muscle than brains, but not stupid”, was an evaluation of the Tran with which Sir Hunnar himself might readily have agreed.

“Native affairs, you mentioned?” Trell looked at Ethan.

He rose. “We spent quite a number of months among them, sir.” Pacing the plushly carpeted room, he felt himself relax. As always, he was most at ease when punching a product he believed in. He believed in the Tran.

“Environment and ecology have conspired against the natives, sir. They’re widely dispersed, forced to cling to scattered, often barely accessible islands for survival. While they’ve adapted well to this harsh climate, their numbers don’t seem to be great. I don’t know why, but they aren’t as numerous as they should be. That also works to their disadvantage.

“And yet,” he continued enthusiastically, “Considering their extreme climate they’ve not only staved off extinction, but have advanced to a fair level of civilization. Their technology is unusually advanced in certain areas, such as iceship building and cold weather farming. Races inhabiting more pleasant worlds have not done as well.”

“I agree with you.” Ethan stopped pacing, astonished. First Trell described the Tran as having more muscle than brains, and now he was all but concurring with Ethan’s optimistic assessment of their accomplishments.

“Well then?”

“Well then what, Mr. Fortune?” Trell was watching him closely.

Ethan was forced to discard all the arguments he had mustered mentally to build a case for the Tran’s abilities and jump ahead. “If you agree with my assessment, sir, consider the benefits to this world of associate Commonwealth membership. They could send delegates to Council as observers. They’d learn a great deal and would be eligible for all kinds of government assistance for which they presently can’t qualify. That would raise the planetary standard of living, which in turn would …”

Trell raised a hand, and Ethan stopped short. “Please, Mr. Fortune.” The Commissioner’s gaze switched from Ethan to September, then back again. “Don’t you two realize that I would have been working for that very thing myself? Despite the natives’ obvious drawbacks, I admire them very much.” He gestured at his office.

“Look around you. I work here, relax here. Every item in this room not of an electronic nature is of local manufacture. The couches and chairs you rest upon, the decorative arts on walls and tables, everything. Personally I would enjoy nothing better than nominating my charges here for associate status. But,” and he shook an admonishing finger at Ethan, “though I agree with you where the locals’ scientific and artistic progress is concerned, let us objectively consider their handicaps. Social progress has lagged far, far behind everything else here.” He stood, unconsciously exchanging pacing territory with Ethan, who resumed his seat. Except that Trell moved straight to the nearest window-wall and stared out over town and harbor.

“You wish the Tran to have associate Commonwealth status. I wish them to have it.” He glanced back over a shoulder. “Which Tran, Mr. Fortune, do you refer to?”

Ethan started to reply, found his thoughts tangled by facts, and said nothing. September stared at him, silent and unhelpful…

III

“I SEE THE PROBLEM has struck home.” Trell turned from the window and the view beyond. “Arsudun was chosen to be the site of the Commonwealth outpost here because it was one of the larger islands located by first survey, and because it has a protected harbor which helps shield us here from the stronger winds off the ice ocean. However, further surveys could, I am certain, turn up forty other locations of equivalent suitability for Brass Monkey. Arsudun was lucky, not superior.

“Tell me … would it be fair to your friends from …?”

“From Sofold,” September told him.

“From Sofold. Would it be fair to them if all the delegates from Tran-ky-ky to Council were to be elected or appointed from Arsudun?”

“Of course not,” Ethan put in immediately. “All would vote and …” His voice trailed off.

Trell slumped back into his couch across from them. “Vote, Mr. Fortune? I don’t know if there’s a word in the Tran dialects for voting.”

“They elect Landgraves from time to time,” Ethan countered.

“Yes. When the offspring of former rulers are unacceptable. But you have a point, if what you say is true. I myself have never ventured from Arsudun. But if the sociologists who go out with the scouting parties are agreed on anything, it’s the Tran’s unwavering suspicion of his neighbor. They are belligerent and jingoistic.” He shook his head slowly.

“No. I’m sorry, Mr. Fortune. If the Tran are to claim associate status in the Commonwealth, they must present such a claim in some united fashion. There is no planetary government to deal with here. In fact,” he leaned forward, spoke with seeming excitement, “I won’t even require that. A dominant regional government would be sufficient, one comprised of a fairly diverse population and reasonable number of city-states. If that existed, then many of these other futile feudal states would fall into line. But you’re not going to find any such organization on this world. You’re just not.

“Hostility is a way of life on Tran-ky-ky. Not only don’t the inhabitants of one state care a k’nith’s hindquarters for their neighbors, what about these nomadic warrior groups?”

“We know about them,” Ethan admitted, thinking back to the siege of Sofold by the horde of Sagyanak the Death in which he and September and the others had participated in the destruction of that ancient enemy of Hunnar’s people.

“They’re entitled by the Commonwealth charter to fair representation also.” Trell stared expectantly at Ethan, as if the outcome of the discussion had already been decided. “Can you see the island dwellers allying themselves politically and culturally with those blood-hungry migratory bandits?” He shook his head again.

“No, I’m afraid not, gentlesirs. In a few thousand years, maybe even in a few hundred, they might mature enough to exchange breath with all their neighbors. But not now.” He threw up both hands in an unnecessarily melodramatic gesture.

“As things stand now there is no way I in my position as Resident Commissioner can recommend them for associate membership. Or even for wardship. They are too independent and advanced to qualify as charity cases. A large regional government even—but these bellicose little island states, no. It’s not workable or fair.” He rose. Ethan and September did likewise.

“I thank you for your interest, gentlesirs. I think that on reflection you’ll have to admit that personal emotion has played some part in your reasoning.” He was chiding them gently. “You’ve spent considerable time among these people. It’s only natural you’d want to help them. First, however, they must help them selves.

“Your ship will insert orbit in a couple of days, I believe. I’ll be at the port to see you off personally. If there’s anything I can do for you in the meantime, any service I can perform, please don’t hesitate to call on me.”

“Thank you for your time, Mr. Commissioner.” Ethan didn’t try to hide his disappointment. They shook hands all around once more.

Trell spoke as they were halfway out the door. “You’ll stay in the Administrator’s quarters, of course. At government expense.”

“That’s right kind of you, sir.” September smiled back at him. “Considerin’ the distance and dangers our hosts have brought us through, however, I think they’d be downright insulted if we didn’t spend our last few days with them. You understand.”

“Of course.” Ethan couldn’t tell if Trell was displeased by this announcement or not. “Anytime you change your minds, want to switch from the barbaric to the civilized, your accommodations will be waiting for you.”

“Thank you again,” Ethan said, closing the door behind them.

Jobius Trell watched the door for a minute, then resumed his seat on the couch. Fur tickled the back of his neck and he shifted his position slightly. His mind was occupied by something other than the room’s decor. Eventually he touched a nearby control, spoke into the room.

“Note: discuss visitor’s psychoverbal orientation with compudex file. Compare intensity gradient with recording of conversation with portmaster Xenaxis. Request computation of likely action tendencies, based on available data.”

Trell felt better after that, well enough to return to his real work. Always better to keep up with what he was supposed to be doing, so he could enjoy his apolitical machinations to the fullest.

Though the breeze off the harbor was comparatively mild, Ethan felt chilled through the artificial skin of his survival suit. Several local Tran sped past on the icepath they were paralleling. None turned to gawk. Humans were an accepted sight here on Arsudun.

“I guess that’s that, Skua. Give him his due, his arguments against granting status to Tran-ky-ky were strong.”

“They sure were, feller-me-lad. For instance, he was right when he said we were emotionally involved in this matter. What he didn’t add was that he’s equally involved. More than emotionally, I’ll wager. He said so with his face and his modukeys.”

“Modukeys?”

“Every word can be pronounced a lot of ways, lad. Each way carries an emotional key. I can recognize a few of ’em. Enough to tell me our friend Trell wouldn’t be too disappointed if the Tran stay just as divided and combative as they are now.” He had the facemask of his suit up. September liked to have freedom to grimace. He did so now.

“Tell me, lad. Who would stand most to profit from the present situation, from keeping Tran-ky-ky backward and unrepresented in Council? Who could keep a nice, private eye on every bit of off-planet trade and regulate it to suit his own personal accounts?”

“I didn’t get that impression from Trell at all, Skua.” Ethan kicked at the icepath, sent a few pale splinters flying. “That’s a strong accusation to make against a Resident Commissioner.”

“There’s an informal law, lad, about political appointees. The smaller the post, the less often they’re inspected, and the more opportunity there is for foolin’ around with the books.” He clapped Ethan on the back, nearly knocking him down. “Wouldn’t be the first time good manners have shielded a larcenous heart.” He frowned. “Course, he’s right about this feudal setup. We’ll have to do something about that.”

Ethan stopped, the snow swirling around him trying to find a way to penetrate his survival suit. “Do something about it? We can’t do anything about it. What are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking, young feller-me-lad, that we’ve several days left to think about it…”

“Three there are it is not possible to do.” Sir Hunnar Redbeard spoke with conviction as he gazed at humans and Tran seated around the long galley table of the Slanderscree.

“It is not possible to kill a stavanzer. It is not possible to stand against a westwind Rif. And it is not possible to keep the Tran from warring among themselves.” He turned his feline stare on Ethan. His voice was as cold and assured as the slight storm howling outside the ship, making squeaking sounds in the cracks between rafters and planks.

“What you propose, friend Ethan, cannot be imagined, far less can it be done. A union of islands, a confederation of states? A council of Landgraves?” His triangular ears switched nervously. “More likely it would be for water to run freely across the seas.”

“It has to be done, Hunnar.” Ethan was half pleading with the assembled knights. “Don’t you understand how things have been set up here? The people of Arsudun and more importantly, their leaders, have a monopoly on all off-world trade and information. They profit tremendously, unfairly from it. It should be shared equally among all the Tran.”

“Aye, the metal,” a gruff voice added. Eyes turned in its direction.

Balavere Longax was Sofold’s most respected living warrior. An older, stockier version of Hunnar, his gray fur turning to white in patches, he commanded silence on the rare occasions when he chose to speak. Though less excited than those of his colleagues, his words carried considerably more weight.

“The metal. Never have I seen so much metal as the people of Arsudun possess. Nor do they seem deserving of it.” That brought irritated murmurs of agreement from several other members of the crew. “Not only their weapons, my friends, but yea too their household implements, water pots, and others are pure metal.”

Ethan nodded enthusiastically. “And they’re still being cheated, I think. Stelamic is cheaper than duralloy.”

September pushed back his chair, making the floorboards creak. “Hunnar, if the Tran will spill blood for metal, why are you so damned sure they won’t cooperate to get it?”

“It is considered degrading to cooperate with people from a less noble state,” the knight replied, as if that explained everything. “Do you remember when Sagyanak’s Horde assaulted Wannome? The she-devil’s tribe was a threat to all states. How much help was volunteered to us? How much aid did our neighbors provide to help fight the common enemy?” He sat down, mumbled, “Profit is not sufficient reason for forgetting old hatreds and suspicions. Your own Commonwealth-thing, there is no word for it in our language. The closest I can come is family.”

“That’s just how you have to start thinking of all Tran,” Ethan interrupted excitedly. “You’re a family. That’s all any race is, an extended family. Like it or not, Tran-ky-ky is destined to take its place as a member of the Commonwealth. You can’t go back to Wannome and look up at the night sky from your homes without realizing you’re a part of something much bigger and grander than Sofold. You might as well gain the advantages that are yours by right, now.” A little out of breath and a bit embarrassed at the strength of his unexpected polemic, Ethan sat back down.

“Advantages which should be spread among all Tran,” September added more quietly, but just as emphatically.

“My good friends with whom I share my warmth, I recognize the truth of your words.” Hunnar looked despondent. “Would that I could will the spirit of this world otherwise. But the Tran are good at arguing with knives, not with words.”

“Then you must achieve the same end with knives.” Colette du Kane entered the room. She waddled gracefully to the far end of the long wooden table, placed both hands on it and leaned forward. “If reason and logic aren’t enough to cement this confederation you must make, then do it with knives. The end is justified by what you will gain.” She threw Ethan and September a rather disdainful look.

“Only profits have so far been mentioned, material things. Commonwealth membership will force you to mature as a people. Soon you won’t need knives to discuss with. But if you fail,” and she paused for emphasis, “you’ll remain just as you are, frozen in ability and evolution as well as in daily life. You’ll stay ignorant farmers and fighters and your cubs will grow up just as inefficient and deprived as you all are.”

Wind hammered insistently at doorways and portholes, the only sound in the room.

Eventually Hunnar spoke, choosing his words carefully. “You have ventured enough insults to result in a shortened tongue, woman. Yet you did so, I believe, in the hope of benefiting us. What you say is truthspeak.” Several of the other nobles now looked askance at Hunnar, then at one another. There were some unhappy mutterings and a few threatening looks in Colette’s direction.

“Listen to you all.” Ethan thought he had seen someone else behind Colette when she stepped through the cabin portal. Now that other person also entered.

Elfa Kurdagh-Vlata looked like a bewhiskered amazon in cloak and light robe. Her translucent dan caught the back light of oil lamps beyond and turned to curved sheets of orange flame when she raised her arms.

“You confirm what the human woman says every time you speak. She calls you ignorant and in response to her reasoning words you make stupid threatening sounds, like mewling cubs caught stealing vegetables.”

“We grant the wisdom of her speaking,” grumbled one of the other nobles at the table. “It was the manner of such speaking.” While Elfa was the inheritor of the Landgrave’s title, the noble had used no honorific in addressing her, Ethan noted. Such informality between rulers and ruled was one of the Tran’s most heartening characteristics.

“But would Phulos-Tervo or any of our other border rulers do likewise?” the noble finished bluntly. There was murmur of agreement from around the table.

“Perhaps not.” Elfa conceded the point readily. “But a total stranger might. Phulos-Tervo would be suspicious of anything my father might agree to. A stranger would know him not.” She gestured at the humans in the room, pointing at each in turn.

“Here are our offworld friends, proof of the truths we will seek to convince others of. No one can dispute their existence. Therefore it may be that others will accept their words as have we.”

“That is possible,” agreed a swaggering knight named Heso-idn. “If they will come with us.” He eyed Ethan expectantly.

“Oh, I’ll be staying.” Milliken Williams sounded surprised that any other possibility could be seriously considered. The ancient Tran seated next to him spoke through a white beard.

“Sir Williams and I still have much to discourse upon to one another. He could not leave now.”

“Of course I couldn’t.” Williams’ guileless enthusiasm did much to boost the confidence of the assembled Tran as he gazed blithely around the table. “You’re much more interesting than any of my old pupils, and there’s more here for me to learn. I couldn’t possibly leave.”

“You must realize, all of you, that as an educated citizen of fair achievement, citizen Williams is giving up a vote.” September sounded as solemn as he could. “That is something no qualified inhabitant of the Commonwealth does lightly, I can assure you.”

“What of you, friend September?” asked Hunnar.

“Oh, I guess I’ll hang around a while yet.” He picked at his teeth with a triangular fork left from the last meal. “Can’t say much for your climate, but the food’s good, the liquor is first class, and the company’s agreeable. Can’t ask for much more than that. Besides, nobody asks me too many questions.” He turned to his right. “What about you, young feller-me-lad?”

Ethan found he was the object of everyone’s attention, found himself wishing he was beneath the table instead of seated at its side. He gazed into his lap, fumbled for a reply.

“I don’t know, Skua … Hunnar.” His mouth felt like someone had suddenly substituted glue for saliva. “I have other interests, other obligations. There’s my contracted job and …”

“All is understandable, friend Ethan.” Hunnar smiled that simple Trannish smile, without showing his teeth.

For some reason, Hunnar’s timely words of empathy made Ethan feel even worse. Wasn’t he the sophisticated member of the advanced galactic civilization? Then why should he feel so devoid of worthwhile thoughts and meaningful feelings?

“Even if I could go with you, I’d only slow you down.” Colette du Kane looked back toward the doorway. “My father’s in our own cublicle, asleep. I can’t turn him loose to manage the family affairs, not while he journeys from one island of sanity to another across an ocean of senility. There’d be too many who’d take advantage of him. Someone is obligated to take care of business. That obligation devolves upon my shoulders—and I’ve got the shoulders for it.”

Even the Tran understood that joke, though Colette’s width was no greater than the average native’s.

“And there could be other obligations.”

Ethan did not look up, but he knew exactly where she was looking when she said those words.

“I will tell you all this. If you have the good sense and the ability to organize enough of a government to qualify for associate Commonwealth status, then the House of du Kane will establish itself on Tran-ky-ky immediately and will treat fairly with all who treat fairly with it.”

Elfa made a sign signifying agreement and compliments. The women had had run-ins before, both in Wannome and on the ship; but they could and had put their personal differences and feelings aside when logic dictated. Ethan wondered if the males in the room could do as well.

“It is settled then.” Hunnar assumed a pose expressing determination and challenge. “We will try,” he told Ethan, “because we believe in you and in what you say, friend Ethan. You have never lied to us in the past. I do not believe you lie to us now.”

There was a rumble like that of an underground transport as chairs slid back from the table and the various knights, nobles, and squires broke up into smaller discussion groups. Some talked loudly and with considerable animation while others chatted in hushed tones. Every so often one or two of the debaters would exit through the door opening onto the deck, admitting the planet’s eternal participant in all conversations—the wind.

Ethan left early, anxious for the solitude offered by his own cublicle. In a few days he could trade the poorly warmed box he shared with September for the cycle-heated atmosphere of a starship cabin. It was strange that the prospect no longer excited him the way it had when the Slanderscree had first entered Arsudun harbor.

Something like a hot summer breeze touched him on the shoulder, unnervingly warm and light in the chill air of the ship’s corridor. Whirling, he found himself staring down at Colette du Kane. Behind him, the voices of the arguing Tran, September’s intermittent bellow, William’s gentle but persuasive murmur—all faded and merged to form a distant background hum. Small crystals of emerald focused unblinkingly on his own eyes, verdant craters in that moon face. Despite the survival suit face mask her pink flesh had been tanned umber from occasional exposure to Tran-ky-ky’s harsh arctic sun.

For just a moment, he had a glimpse of sinuous beauty writhing to escape that gland-trapped coffin of fat. Only through the eyes could that exquisite self impinge on the world.

“Are you staying or coming?” No hint of coquetry there, no mock-embarrassed lowering of lashes. There was no room for it in a personality founded on bluntness. Though the door to the deck outside was closed, he felt something curl ’round him anyway, slowing his circulation, chilling his guts.

“Well? We’ve gotten along well these past weeks.”

“I know, Colette.” For one as perceptive as Ethan knew this woman to be, that should be answer enough. She elaborated anyway, rushing, hurrying her words so as to be rid of them as fast as possible.

“I asked you to marry me. Are you going to, or are you staying here?”

“I—I don’t know. I suppose I need more time to think. I’m not stalling you, Colette, I’m telling you the truth.”

She snorted derisively. “Every man I’ve ever known concluded any bad talk with that last homily.”

“I’ll tell you before the shuttle lifts, I promise.” He grabbed her shoulders, held her as long as he dared. She was warm.

“If that’s the way it has to be.”

He let her go. “That’s the way it has to be.”

She forced a slight smile. “I guess that’s better than an outright refusal. See you.” She turned, flounced out the door. A gust of wind brought a few ice flakes swirling inward, dying even as they struck his face. Two Tran knights followed her out, conversing easily as they ignored the bitter cold. To the natives they were reposing in a sheltered harbor, where they could stroll about outside almost naked. Only Ethan and the other humans had to hurry into their cabins before unprotected skin froze solid and crisp as a honeycomb.

It was an indication of the readiness with which the local Tran had accepted humanxkind and manifestations of its advanced technology that the natives in the shuttleport did not look up in awe when the shuttle’s braking engines fired and it settled snugly into its berthing pit, tight as a snail withdrawing into its shell.

As the engines died, the internal supercooling elements built into the skin of the delta-winged atmospheric craft went to work. Soon hull and engines themselves were cool enough to touch.

Suspensors moved out from waiting bays. Businesslike words were exchanged between the shivering shuttlepilot and the landing crew. Packages and crates began to move from concealed storage bins into the shuttle, while in return the tiny ship gave birth to a multitude of smaller sealed shapes.

Local handicrafts were traded off for knives and lamps and stelamic weaponry. Fragments of poor quality but still immensely valuable green ozmidine bought radios and tridees and hand communicators. Ethan thought back to the immense volcano known to the Tran as The-Place-Where-The-Earth’s-Blood-Burns and the cavern filled with ozmidine they’d discovered inside. He wondered what whoever was dominating the local trade would have thought of that breathtaking deposit of the ultraprecious green gem.

Nearby, Hellespont du Kane began chatting cheerfully with the physician the starship captain had thoughtfully sent down in the shuttle to attend his unexpected, famous passenger. Colette stood watching him, responding perfunctorily to September’s gruff and somewhat obscene good-bye and Williams’ more polite, deferential one.

Then there was nothing else to do, no one else to talk to, and Ethan found himself walking over. She moved to meet him.

Several silent moments passed. Perhaps the fact that his mind was now made up enabled him to match her stare more resolutely.

“How’s your father?” he finally said lamely.

“As well as can be expected.” She had to force herself to blunt her natural sharpness. “I keep trying to get him to consent to a body switch … he refuses additional revivifications. He won’t do it. I don’t think it’s a death wish. The psychostics say it’s not. But he won’t agree to it even when he’s senile, let alone during his occasional bursts of full lucidity. Keeps telling me it’s time I took over, that he’s held the reins long enough.”

“You are ready to take over, Colette.” Ethan spoke softly yet with enthusiasm. It was extremely difficult to sell Colette on herself. “I know how the merchant families work. I have to. I work for one myself.”

“Ready or not, I have to.” Her reply was so soft it was hard to believe it came from her. “What do you have to do, Ethan?”

He smiled. It wasn’t easy. “I’m sorry, Colette. Truly I am.”

“First they say they’re telling the truth, then they always say they’re sorry.”

“Colette, …” Ethan fought for words. “I’m not a teller, I’m a told. You were raised, trained to give orders. I’ve matured learning to take them. Advice I can offer, but never orders. I don’t think I’d be any good at it. I’d mess up any executive position you gave me, and then you’d be forced to cover for me. You’d have to explain me to my colleagues, the really qualified executives and compusymbs.” He shook his head dolefully. “I couldn’t handle the kind of snickering I’d be subjected to. And I won’t accept a life as an ineffectual parasite.”

“You have a peculiar conception of what being mated means.” She sounded almost desperate without appearing to beg. “You could do whatever you wanted to, anything at all. Travel, hobbies … it doesn’t even have to be with me.” The gaze lowered just a little. “You could … even have other women on the side, if you so desired. I’d fix it so you could afford the best.” She looked up again.

“You’re a good man. You could do what you wish, so long as you …” she hesitated, “came back to me.”

“No, Colette. I have something I have to see through, here.”

For an instant something flared in her eyes. “It’s that muscular teddy bear, isn’t it?”

“No.” Ethan’s denial gained strength from his honest, obvious surprise. “Elfa’s not a factor. I don’t know what she sees in me, but she’s a member of another race.”

“That hasn’t stopped people in the past,” she countered accusingly.

“It stops me. Where Elfa Kurdagh-Vlata is concerned, any interest other than anthropological is strictly one-sided. Her side. I gave you the real reason. I could never be a professional student, professional traveler, professional hobbyist. Or a professional husband.”

She seemed ready to leave, then grasped him so suddenly and hard he had to fight to regain his balance. She broke away just enough to plead, speaking so softly no one but Ethan could have heard. He found himself momentarily mesmerized by those metal-bright green eyes.

“You’re the first man I ever met who treated me like a human being. You were good to me, and you were honest with me. I know I’m ugly.”

“You’re anything but that, Colette.”

Her smile was full of pain. “For months I was the only human woman around. I enjoyed the isolation. I’m conversant enough with physiopsychology to read in your eyes my loss of five kilos for every month of that isolation. As soon as we reached any outpost of human civilization you’d see me for what I am, for what no doctor can correct. It’s happened since we’ve been here, at this outpost. I’m obese, sarcastic, and bitter to the point of dissolution.”

“The last two you need to survive the important position you’re going to assume,” Ethan told her. “As for the first, that’s an image you have of yourself.” He thought of something September had told him. “Physical shape and attractiveness have little to do with each other. In the dark, all mankind looks alike.

“No, the reasons I can’t marry you have to do with our mental makeup, not our physical.”

She let go of him. His arms would show red where she’d gripped him. “House du Kane has businesses and branches on most of the populous worlds and many of the colonies. If you ever change your mind, Ethan Frome Fortune, you can get in touch with me.” She grinned tightly. “Twenty-two double R, Ethan. It’ll expedite anything.”

“You’ll find someone else.”

“With my attractions? I can offer my cardmeter balance and my position. Those won’t buy what I want. I’ve asked and pleaded, Ethan. I won’t beg.”

“I know. Begging’s not part of your makeup, Colette.”

A steward was gesturing from alongside the motion lounge her father was strapped into. A faint voice called her name. It came from the throat of a powerful human relic.

“Time to go. Good-bye Ethan. Remember me if you change your mind. Remember me if you don’t.”

She spared him the worry of whether or not to kiss her by turning and striding purposefully toward her father, toward the people and machines helping him stay alive. He watched as the motion lounge maneuvered itself up the rampway leading into the access tube of the shuttlecraft. Snow speckled the window he stared through.

Fifteen minutes died. Then the exchange of cartons and packagings was complete. A muted chemical bubbling sounded through the thick glassalloy window. Red-orange streaks, like spilled oil paint, emerged from the stern of the shuttle. It rose rapidly until it had shrunk to a size no bigger than any of ten thousand other bright ice flakes swirling through Tran-ky-ky’s cold, cold atmosphere.

He rubbed his right arm where she’d clasped him, and thought.

IV

SEPTEMBER LET HIM STAND like that for nearly an hour. Then he moved to join him.

“Not easy, feller-me-lad?”

“No, Skua. Not easy.”

“Better this way, though,” the giant said cheerily. “Money’s not everything. She would have gotten tougher before sweeter as the years roll down. There’s a universe full of fledglings waiting to try their wings who are a good deal softer.”

“Skua.”

“What is it, lad?”

“Shut up.” He walked away, moving rapidly down the port corridor, hands jammed deep into his pockets. After a shrug, September followed, keeping the distance between them constant. There was a dark muddy wall raised around the young salesman, and it could only be taken down from within.

Sir Hunnar and his two squires were waiting patiently for them outside the shuttleport building. September had tried to argue them into coming inside to watch the liftoff of the shuttle from closer range. But the Tran had elected to forgo that pleasure, since it meant enduring the unbearably high temperatures inside.

“We saw it rise from out here, Ethan,” the Tran knight said. “It was bigger than the skyboat you came to us in.” A note of childlike wonder crept into his voice. “Does it truly chivan to a ship bigger still?”

“Much bigger, Hunnar.” Ethan was reminded by the Tran’s curious, open stare of the reason for his remaining here. One of those reasons, anyhow. “Let’s find a place in town and have a tankard of reedle.” At least the super pseudomead would salve his throat, if not his confused conscience.

The tavern they located had been smuggled in among more respectable looking two- and three-story structures on a narrow lane. It did not serve reedle, but they found an ample supply of nontoxic intoxicants. Most were derived from varieties of the omnipresent pika-pina or pika-pedan, a few from other plant life. All filled Ethan with an equally warm glow.

“How are we to proceed to form this necessary confederation, friend Ethan?” Suaxus-dal-Jagger sounded thoroughly discouraged, and the expedition hadn’t begun. “We know nothing of this country. No one from Wannome or Sofold has ever been this far from home.”

“So many satch,” murmured his counterpart Budjir.

“That can be to our advantage.” September hunched over the table. “The other states we will visit will know nothing of Sofold, but it’s possible they will have heard of Arsudun, and consequently, of the humanx station here.

“We’ve already seen indications that there’re entirely too many local goods goin’ off-planet to have come from Arsudun alone. That means the Arsudunites are trading with the surrounding states. What better way for them to make themselves look big and important than to constantly claim extratrannish wizards—that’s us—for allies?

“So how are they likely to react, when we show up and tell them they’d better confederate for their own good?”

Ethan put down the tall goblet of liquor, used the oversized spoon at his wrist to dip up another helping of the heavily spiced soup in front of him. He sipped at it carefully, the end of the spoon being too wide for his small human mouth. Soup had never been a favorite of his. He preferred more solid food. But Tran-ky-ky’s climate could make anyone a lover of hot food in any form.

“I would rather,” Hunnar replied petulantly, after considering September’s logic, “begin in the neighborhood of Sofold.” He pushed back in his chair, balanced on the two hind legs. Ethan knew the knight wouldn’t fall. He’d never seen a people with such perfect, innate sense of balance.

“No. I think we’ll have the better chance, Hunnar, here where we’re all strangers to the folks we’ll be tryin’ to convert, and where humankind’s dubious reputation has maybe preceded us.”

“Ta-hoding should have voice in this too.” Budjir put in a word for the Slanderscree’s captain. “It will be he who will bear considerable responsibility for taking us safely across uncharted ice, and for maneuvering us to safety should trouble arise.”

“That’s incidental,” September countered vigorously. “I’ll grant old Ta-hoding his piece, but it’s more important that we—”

“I detect an odd smell in here, Baftem.” Conversation at the table ceased.

The speaker was a richly dressed Tran standing very close to their booth. His dan spines were lacquered silvery chrome and pink, and he was nearly smothered beneath the impossibly thick fur of some slick white-striped and black-spotted creature. Next to him stood one of the largest Tran Ethan had seen, well over one and two-thirds meters tall and broad in proportion to a normal Tran physique. The latter had one paw resting lightly on the butt of some weapon banded to his left leg. It was dull white and gray and looked like the femur of some walking animal, possibly that of another Tran. Intricate bas-relief covered the club. Its knobby bottom end had been shaped into points.

“An offensive odor—I smell it too,” said the giant, smiling unpleasantly. Ethan noted that conversation in the tavern had dropped to a steady, low susurration. Most eyes were on them.

The wealthy local performed an elaborate gesture through the air in front of his nose, accompanying it with much expressive grimacing. Continuing to shield his muzzle from some imaginary olfactory offense, he made a show of searching the area around the booth, peering beneath chairs, sniffing the table, checking the floor. On all fours he approached Hunnar’s seat, stopped sniffing, and stood. For effect, he sniffed once more, loudly enough for all the onlookers to hear.

“I believe I’ve found the source, Baftem,” he told his companion. “Someone has had the bad manners to bring a castrated bourf into the room.”

The quiet became total. When no one at the table reacted, the giant wrinkled his own muzzle distinctively, squinted at Hunnar and made a disgusted sound.

“You know how the enoglids drain once they’ve been neutered. Awful smell!” He looked around the table, exclaimed in mock surprise, “Yet the source seems to be more than one.”

“Gentle, Baftem. It behooves a citizen to be polite, even to a fixed bourf.” He bent over the table, leaning between Ethan and Hunnar. “Would you get out?”

Ethan admired Hunnar’s control as the knight looked over his right shoulder, shouted. “Innkeeper, whose tavern is this; yours or his?”

With admirable prescience the innkeeper had already retreated to the vicinity of the cookroom doorway. In response to Hunnar’s query he made some incomprehensible gabbling noises and ducked inside before further elucidation could be requested.

“Perhaps you are the innkeeper after all.” Hunnar gazed nonchalantly up at the interloper. “Yet you look more like a rockworm to me.” His gaze dropped to the other’s feet. “But the slime you trail behind you leads from the entrance, not the back rooms.”

Stepping back and pulling his sword in the same motion, the offended citizen slashed down. Hunnar was still balanced on the rear two legs of his chair. As the blade descended he shoved back. The sturdy back of the chair hit the attacker in the midsection, sending him stumbling away.

Ethan had managed to slide from behind the table and draw his own weapon. It weighed more than a cardmeter, but he’d been forced to learn how to use this new persuader in the past months. He didn’t see the Tran who’d slipped up behind all of them, but dal-Jagger did. The would-be assassin threw Hunnar off-balance as he stumbled into him, clawing blindly at the squire’s dirk which protruded between his eyes.

Everyone in the tavern, it seemed, charged them then. Ice swords and axes of bone and metal flailed wildly at the newcomers. Ethan found himself on the floor, trying to avoid the lance a husky customer was thrusting at him. He rolled, and the lance point struck sparks from the stone paving. The lance wielder tried raising his weapon for another strike when a table hit him in the face.

After throwing the table, September found himself wrestling with the giant Tran who’d backed up the wealthy insult-monger. The enormous bone club thrummed through the air. September skipped agilely out of its path. It took a head-sized chunk out of the wooden wall of the booth.

September moved in, hitting his feline opponent hard in the midsection. The giant grunted in surprise but didn’t fall. He raised the club over his head, his expression turning from furious to foolish. September lifted the lightly-boned colossus into the air and threw him halfway across the tavern.

Knowing full well his own limitations where physical combat was concerned, Milliken Williams crouched low in the booth and did his utmost not to draw attention to his presence.

Ethan ducked a sword swing, grabbed the Tran by the neck and wrenched him off his feet. He struck the wall hard, went limp, and collapsed. Between the unexpected strength of the heavy-bodied humans and the professional fighting skill of Sir Hunnar and his squires, the large but undisciplined group of attackers was having a difficult time.

The aroma of blood began to be overpowering.

Ethan blocked a wide saber swing with his arm, felt the impact reverberate up to his shoulder muscles. Trying to bring as much of his weight to bear as possible, he swung his own sword over and down. His opponent parried, but the force of the blow knocked his blade from his hand. He knelt and recovered it before Ethan could strike again. But instead of resuming his assault, he backed away and hunted for help.

The most effective combatant of all proved to be not September, Sir Hunnar, or any of the rampaging citizens, but the innkeeper.

A massive circular band of black wrought iron hung from the rafters. It supported eight large oil-burning lamps. When September pulled it out of the ceiling and began to swing it as a weapon, the proprietor decided the time had come to make a stand for fiscal sanity. Being metal, the chandelier was the most valuable single furnishing in the tavern. It wouldn’t do to have it broken and bent. Risking his life, he charged across the battlefield and emerged on the other side unscathed.

The fight continued only a few minutes more, until, with admirable speed the innkeeper had located a group of constables. One of the combatants near the door announced their impending arrival and the interlocked fighters instantly separated and began searching out unorthodox exits.

“The kitchen!” Hunnar shouted.

“Why?” Ethan wanted to know. “We didn’t start anything.”

A hand shoved him forward. “Police are usually the same everywhere, feller-me-lad. Best to avoid them when you can.”

They raced through the malodorous cookroom, emerging into a back alley lightly carpeted with snow. Following Hunnar’s lead they ran a short distance to the left, then slowed.

“Why are we slowing down?” Ethan looked back expectantly. But there was no sign of pursuit in the narrow passageway. “We’re still fairly close to the tavern.”

“They will not come looking for us this way, friend Ethan.” Hunnar was panting steadily, his breaths much shorter and faster than that of the three humans.

“Why not?”

Hunnar indicated the surface they were traversing. With a clawed foot he kicked away the pale white veneer of snow to reveal stone blocks beneath. “There is no icepath here. No Tran in a hurry to go anywhere would leave a fast icepath. This idea I take from you.” His breath condensed, vanishing with mathematical regularity in front of him.

“We do not think of ‘running,’ as you are naturally wont to do,” he added. “Tran do not walk or run where they can chivan. The local authorities will not think of this, and will pursue those who chose the ice-paths.”

They continued to follow the stone-paving until they came to a wider road. There they blended into the daily traffic. Only their troubled thoughts distinguished them from the Tran moving busily around them, and they kept those as well concealed as their stained weapons.

Back on board the Slanderscree the other sailors and soldiers crowded quickly around dal-Jagger and Budjir, inspecting their slight wounds critically, all the while questioning them about the fight. Hunnar and the three humans moved off to the railing, staring back at the innocent harbor scene.

“They attacked us.”

“That’s pretty obvious, Milliken.” The schoolteacher shook his head impatiently.

“No, no—I’m not restating the obvious. I mean they attacked us… humans.”

“What’s so signif—” Ethan stopped, thoughtful. “I see. Ever since we’ve been here the locals have treated us with courtesy, even deference.” He glanced up at September excitedly. “Skua, remember that incident a few days ago when we first went to visit the portmaster? The crowd that confronted Hunnar outside but backed off when we looked ready to intervene? What happened to that protection today?”

“I can only think of one thing, lad.” September continued to stare at the town, one newly survival-suited hand picking at the ice on the wooden railing. “It was a preplanned attack. We were deliberately provoked. Or rather, Hunnar and his boys were, in the hope that you and I and Milliken would be drawn in—as we were. Somebody wants us dead, as well as Hunnar. I thought some of the customers fought awfully well for a bunch of spontaneously irritated townsfolk.”

“But why?” Ethan’s thoughts were as steady as the wind, which is to say, not at all.

“Have you not learned this truth by now, friend Ethan?” Hunnar glared at the city, his tone sardonic. “This is the kind of reception we will likely encounter everywhere we go with this plan of confederation. All Tran have a natural suspicion of outlanders. Only your presence might mitigate this, and if it does not do so here in Arsudun where your people are known as benefactors, surely it will do us no good elsewhere.”

“Sorry, Hunnar.” September ran his gloved hand up from the rail to grip one of the thick pika-pina shrouds. “You’re right about your people being naturally suspicious of strangers, but I doubt that’s why we were attacked.

“Someone thinks we’re dangerous—Ethan and Milliken and I. They’d like us out of the way. Why? That’s pretty obvious, isn’t it? Some folks here—maybe Arsudunite, likely both—have a nice little profitable monopoly on offworld trade. We’ve declared our intention of breaking up that monopoly. Some sailors must’ve talked.” His voice dropped. “Wasn’t sure it was important enough for someone to chance killin’ us, though. Not til this afternoon.”

“Then why don’t we report that, Skua?”

“Feller-me-lad,” September said gently, “don’t be naive. What does it matter if a few humans are killed in a local brawl? Oh sure, you and I know it was no accidental encounter, but how do we prove that to a thranx judge?” He shook his head. “Not much we can do except be glad they weren’t better swordsmen and step up our preparations for getting under way.”

“It was a fight to speak well of.” Hunnar’s eyes gleamed. “Five against twenty-five.”

Ethan looked with distaste at the blood-stained sword on his own suit belt. He’d tried wiping it clean in the snow, but the frozen red crystals adhered accusingly to the blade.

“You’re too proud of killing, Hunnar.”

The Tran knight cocked his head to one side, looking for all the world like an inquisitive tabby. “That be true, Ethan. I come not from your advanced civilization, though. You must find it in your heart to be patient with us.” Wind rose and moaned around them as he gestured back down the strait leading out toward the ocean.

“My world is perhaps not so conducive to gentleness and understanding as is yours. Here we fight best with our hands and not our mouths.”

“I didn’t mean to be insulting,” Ethan replied testily.

“That’s enough.” September looked disgustedly from human to Tran. “We’re supposed to be forging a great alliance on this world, not testing the puny one we already have.” He jerked a thumb at the harbor. Smoke rose from a thousand chimneys. “The sooner we leave here, the less we’ll be disturbed, I hope.” He eyed Hunnar.

“Where do we start?”

Hunnar grumbled a reply. “As it is so many satch back to Sofold, and since you are so set on beginning this great undertaking here, and since it is not my idea but yours, but most especially since I am certain we will have no better luck here than near home, I suppose we may as well look for our first allies in this part of the world.

“Besides, were we to return home with this bizarre conception, we would have difficulty keeping our crew. Men will not remain loyal when given a choice between reaching for a glorious madness or retaining their simple homes.” He spun angrily and chivaned away.

“You shouldn’t have made him mad, lad,” September chided his friend.

“I know. I’m just not used to sticking things in people, and have a hard time sympathizing with anyone who does.” He smiled crookedly. Odd, how the unexpected shoved its way into one’s thoughts at the most unlikely moments. “Colette would be better at it than I am.”

“If you feel so strongly about it, feller-me-lad, why are you staying here to help with this when you could be on your way to more civilized climes, where people only stick one another, as Hunnar said, with sharp words?”

Ethan thought just a moment. “So that some day Hunnar’s grandchildren won’t feel the need to pick up a knife to settle an argument.” Behind and above them on the helm-deck, Ta-hoding was conversing with several mates. “Let’s go arrange a course. We’re going to bring maturity and knowledge to this world if it kills us.”

“Which it very well is likely to, lad.” They started aft. “Hunnar’s probably right about the trouble we’ll have tryin’ to sell this confederation to the inhabitants of outlying city-states.”

Ethan walked faster, more assuredly. “That’s my business …”

Jobius Trell opened his mouth slightly inside the survival suit, listened to the candy laugh and smiled as he sucked. At the moment the flavor was persimmon, the laugh invitingly female.

The slim, mature Tran standing on the hillside next to him gave him a questioning look, puzzled by the obviously masculine human’s ability to produce such a lilting chuckle.

Pausing in his study of the work going on in the little vale below them, Trell flipped back the face mask of his suit and turned his face from the stinging breeze. Using his gloved hand he picked the remainder of the candy from his mouth and showed it to his curious alien companion.

“Giggle drop. Sweet food,” he explained.

“Igg-el drup.” The Tran stumbled over the unfamiliar phonetics as the Resident Commissioner popped it back into his mouth and resumed sucking. “But the sound I heard, friend Trell?”

“Candy’s formed in layers,” Trell told him with a sigh. It was so boring, having to constantly explain the most common features of Commonwealth civilization to these barbarians, even one as curious and quick to learn as his companion of today. His attention wandered back to the work going on below.

The earthquake generated by the explosion of the great volcano known as The-Place-Where-The-Earth’s-Blood-Burns had caused some damage, mostly to the native town but also a little in Brass Monkey. As Commissioner, it was his duty to supervise personally the necessary reconstruction work. Doing so also made him look good in the eyes of the locals.

That the collapsed native food storage house in the depression below constituted the only serious damage was a tribute to native engineering skills. But then, he reflected that even within Arsudun’s comparatively sheltered harbor, a normal Tran structure had to be built well to stand up against the daily weather.

“How can food talk?”

“What? Oh. As each layer of the hard candy-stuff dissolves in your mouth, it releases a different flavor and a different laugh.” He turned to, face the Tran standing next to him.

He was slimmer than most of his brethren. In places—long streaky patches and spots—his steel-gray fur turned to coal-black. Other dark smudges colored his left ear, muzzle, and left cheek, running like a splotch of soft tar down his side to disappear beneath his brightly dyed blue cape and vest. His comparatively slender build was very similar to the Commissioner’s.

These two had more in common than external construction, however.

Trell finished his explanation. “The laughs are recorded from real people—you’ve seen our recording devices throughout the port?” The Tran made a gesture of acknowledgment. “A computerized—a thought-smart machine—then sonically embeds the sounds in tiny bubbles of air which are not quite just air bubbles, as the candy food is being solidified. As each layer of encoded laugh bubbles is exposed to the air in your mouth, the sound is released.” He grinned behind his mask at the obvious discomfort this explanation produced.

“Tell me, why shouldn’t food sound as good as it tastes?”

“I do not know,” the Tran responded gruffly, “but it is a strange thought to me, and not altogether agreeable.”

“Perhaps, but we’ve brought many strange things to you and even the strangest have proven themselves profitable. We have an archaic expression—like my candy-food, money also talks.”

The Tran brightened. “Something both our peoples agree upon, friend Trell. ‘Money talking’—good, but I still think I like my own food to lie decently quiet.”

Any onlooker could have told from the Tran’s lavish attire—richly inlaid with valuable metal thread and thin, foil ornamentation in the vests, metal strips set in his dan that flashed when he raised an arm—that he was exceptionally well off even by Arsudun’s standards. What they might not have recognized as important was the band of metal encircling his neck.

From time to time a human aiding the locals below in the rebuilding of the storehouse would climb the slight slope in search of Trell’s instructions or advice. Occasionally the questioner would be a Tran. And the inquiries were not racially exclusive. Sometimes a human would ask the Tran for advice, while a native would address the Commissioner.

The storehouse had been constructed partway down the strait and close to the ice’s edge, where it had received more of the shock than comparable structures in the town. Several other buildings close by had been knocked slightly askew or had had windows cracked out. Only the storehouse had suffered complete destruction.

Trell knew that was because the Tran buildings were made mostly of stone and they had not yet mastered the art of constructing the dome. So any structure with a large open interior, such as the storehouse, was far less stable than those cut into smaller rooms and chambers whose inner walls served to support the roof. The Tran did not have the material for enclosing large areas.

Structural metals and plastics were required. The Tran knew nothing of plastics, and would never have considered wasting precious metal on construction, save for an occasional bolt or nail.

In fact, the only metal of consequence in any Arsudun building and possibly on all of Tran-ky-ky—except within the humanx station—was the double, solid brass door which now formed the entrance to the Landgrave’s castle built back of the town. When the sun was right, one could see reflection down in the harbor.

It had been an inspired gift on Trell’s part. The modest cost had been more than repaid in less tangible but far more valuable ways by the grateful Landgrave of Arsudun, Callonnin Ro-Vijar. Ways that ought to be preserved.

Trell turned to the Tran standing next to him. “I understand, friend Ro-Vijar, that some of my people, the newcomers who arrived on the great ice ship, were involved in a very nasty fight in a city tavern.” He indicated the harbor, where the towering masts of the Slanderscree rose above all other.

“I heard similar reports.” The Landgrave of Arsudun performed the Trannish equivalent of a helpless shrug. “Outsiders are not popular here. Does this news disturb you?”

“It does disturb me,” replied Trell. “It disturbs me, my friend, because it took place here, where news of it could reach other humans, including members of my own staff If harm befell any humans so close to the outpost, it could create trouble. I could be discredited among my superiors. That could lead to disagreeable meddling by my government in the salubrious commercial covenants we have concluded here.”

“That is to be avoided.” Ro-Vijar kicked at the light snow. Sharp chiv sent bright flakes flying. “It is rumored that these newcomers talk of organizing a large number of independent states to apply for higher status within your government, your Commonwealth.”

“So it’s rumored.” Trell smiled behind the face mask. Of course, it was he who had informed Ro-Vijar of the strangers’ plans, but both men enjoyed their subtle word-play. It was a good habit, just in case anyone else happened to overhear.

“If they were to succeed in such an endeavor,” the Landgrave continued, “would it not mean that any from the outlying regions could come and trade freely with many different representatives of your own island states?”

“Merchant families,” Trell corrected him, “not island states. But the effect would be the same. Personally, I don’t feel that’s necessary. The present commercial arrangements are satisfactory to all concerned. Unless you think someone other than myself can supervise our trade better.”

“I too, find the existing understandings agreeable.”

They fell silent then, each absorbed in furious thinking while ostensibly concentrating on the construction which continued below them. Noisy crews raised the first new wall, bracing the unfamiliar prestressed plastic against the wind. Once it was molded in place, the work could proceed rapidly behind the windbreak it would provide.

“What then is to be done, friend Trell? Can you yourself do nothing?”

“I’m afraid not, my friend. I can conceal credits and crates and alter listings and manifests. Three citizen corpses would be dangerous to try and make disappear. Yet we must do something … and not clumsily visible, this time.

“These three humans are strangers to Arsudun, but not to your world, Landgrave. They have lived among the Tran for many months. They are intelligent. Their grasp of your language and nuances is firmer than that of my own specialists. While I am informed that a union such as they contemplate is extremely unlikely, they should not be given the opportunity to prove my xenologists wrong. They should be discouraged.”

“Discouraged,” echoed the Landgrave, mimicking the human vowels as best he could. “But not here. I understand. As soon as they are fairly on their way, I will muster the best arguments at my disposal.”

“I’m sure they’ll be effective.”

Both turned back to watch as the second wall was raised into place and the human engineers commenced heat-sealing the corner where they joined. Nothing more was mentioned about the Slanderscree’s crusading crew. Nothing more needed to be. While they were of different races, they understood one another perfectly …

“What do you know about this Poyolavomaar?” Ethan held onto a shroud as he spoke to Ta-hoding. They were making their laborious way southward from Arsudun harbor, tacking into a stiff breeze.

“Only what the other captains on the icefront told me, friend Ethan. Four stars to port!” Responding to his command, the two burly helmsmen fought to turn the huge wooden wheel. A screeching sound slightly higher than usual came from the stern of the immense icerigger as the fifth duralloy runner, used to steer the vessel, cut sideways into the ice. Slowly the ship came around to a new heading.

For several days now they had been racing parallel to the island of Arsudun. They’d already covered, by Williams’ estimates, over a hundred kilometers. It was evident that Arsudun was many, many times the size of Sofold, Hunnar and Ta-hoding’s home island.

The lowlands around the city and harbor had long since given way to cliffs which rose steeply from the ice to heights of thirty meters or more. Trees and shrubs grew to the edge of the cliffs, forming an uneven fringe at their tops, making the weaving cliffline resemble the spine of a nervous green cat.

“You told me,” Ta-hoding went on, “we should begin our quest with some nearby yet important state. All of the captains and merchants I talked to agreed that Poyolavomaar was the most powerful in this region save Arsudun itself. It sounds like an interesting city to visit.”

Safely clear of other ships, Ta-hoding was feeling conversational. “According to Zho Midan-Gee, the captain who was most helpful to me, Poyolavomaar is a cluster of ten or more closely grouped and very steep islands. He said they are so near to one another that all but the very youngest cubs can safely chivan from one to the next. Having made two trips there himself in past years, he most remembers that these islands form a circle, enclosed island to island by great walls much like the one which protects our own harbor at Wannome.”

“It sounds very much like a place that could develop into a center of commerce,” Ethan admitted.

Ta-hoding made a gesture of agreement. “Trade is the most important business there, Midan-Gee told me. If the walls all have gates, a captain could take his ship out of the enclosed harbor in any direction he chose, without worrying about where he would pick up a trailing wind.

“Still we must remember that many of these captains produce much of their own wind,” Ta-hoding said portentously, blithely excluding himself from the company of ice-going prevaricators. “They like to boast of their abilities and expertise. This Poyolavomaar may be nought but a cluster of metal-poor villages. Yet I think Midan-Gee as honest as most and am inclined to trust him.”

“We have to trust someone,” Ethan reminded him.

Ta-hoding studied the setting sun. The thermonuclear candle was almost straight ahead, its flaming upper curve beginning to settle beneath the martingale of the ship. He glanced down at something set just behind the great wheel.

“According to compass, Ethan, we have been changing heading from south to southwest for the past two hours.” He gestured at the land mass of Arsudun, which was still to port. Only now port had become north instead of west.

“We have rounded the southernmost part of the island,” Ta-hoding continued. “As the winds on the open ice will become stronger and the day is almost done, with your permission I would suggest anchoring for the night.”

“You’re the captain, Ta-hoding. This ship is your charge. Do what you think best.”

“Thank you, Sir Ethan.” The portly Tran moved forward of the wheel, leaned over the helmdeck railing and shouted forward. Sailors turned immediately to listen. Ta-hoding was deferential and meek in private conversation. But when giving orders to his crew, he made certain his words were audible above the wind.

“Kilpit, Monslawic!” Two mates acknowledged. “Reef in all sails and prepare to anchor!”

These orders were voice-relayed back down the ship to the last sailor at the bowsprit. Each crawled his way up into the rigging. Once more Ethan marveled at the ability of the Tran sailors, who constantly had to set, adjust, and take in sails while walking on narrow spars in a perpetual gale.

When all the sheets were furled and the icerigger had come to a near halt, the fore and aft ice anchors were released. These clusters of metal thorns and spikes were usually set into a heavy globe of cast iron. Those of the Slanderscree gained additional holding power from the chips and shards of duralloy gleaned from the remnants of the cannibalized lifeboat in which Ethan and his friends had crashed.

There were nerve-tingling shrieks and crackings as the anchors snubbed themselves deeply into the ice fore and aft. The ship slipped slowly to the west, shoved by the persistent wind, until the pika-pina cables holding the anchors grew taut. The creaking and groaning ceased. The Slanderscree had come to a halt.

Immediately, blocking teams went over her side. They secured the ship by placing stone slabs in front and behind each of the five runners. Now the ship would not move unless struck by an abnormal wind. Guards at stern and bow were posted more to warn of such an approaching weather front than of any flesh-and-blood peril.

Ethan remained on deck, watching the last glow of sunlight shift steadily from yellow to red to purple.

“Not hungry, friend Ethan?”

Startled, his head jerked around. Yellow-framed black slits set in a furry face glowed back at him, flaming with sunset light.

“Not right now, Hunnar.” He turned back to lean on the railing and stare out across the ice. Tran-ky-ky’s two moons had risen. There was little snow or ice in the air tonight and just enough stratus cloud to mark the difference between atmosphere and deep space. Moonlight knocked double shadows off the trees clinging tenaciously to nearby cliff edges. The ice ocean itself had lost its daytime harshness, lay hard and unmoving while cloaked in ethereal blue-white moon glow.

Ethan glanced at his wrist thermometer. The exquisitely still landscape shivered in twenty-eight below zero C weather. By mid-morning dark, several hours before the sun rose once again, it would fall to minus sixty-two or three—plus the ever-present wind chill factor. He could remove his survival suit and blend fully with the land. His body would freeze in a couple of minutes.

Hunnar chose that moment to ask exactly the wrong question.

Pointing skyward, he inquired of Ethan, “Which of those is your home world?”

It was several minutes before the salesman could answer, and not all those minutes had been spent in studying the unfamiliar constellations overhead. “I don’t know. It’s far, unimaginably far from here, Hunnar.”

“How many satch?” the knight asked guilelessly, his own gaze roving the night sky.

“Too many to count,” Ethan told him, repressing a smile and wondering why they were both whispering. “The sun it circles is not a very big one.” He gestured upward. “It’s off in that general direction, too far and faint for us to see with our eyes. And there are other stars between yours and mine, some of which have worlds that my people and our friends the thranx inhabit.

He indicated a faintly reddish spot of light. “Far out from that star circles a land where water never freezes anywhere except in machines my people must make for only that purpose.” Hunnar shook his head in wonder.

“So warm. A terrible-sounding place.”

“My people don’t like it much either, Hunnar. But our good companions the thranx thrive there. It’s called Drax IV, and the land tries to eat the people. It’s a strange place. I’ll tell you about it some time.” He returned his attention to the silent wind-scoured ice sea. Snow and ice particles were scudding about, tiny whirlwinds twisting them in the moonlight. Ethan saw invisible dancers in gem-studded gowns prancing beneath twin moons.

“I think I am a little hungry now.” He slapped both hands on the railing. “I’ll join you for supper.”

They went down to the eating quarters for officers and knights inside the central cabin. When the door closed behind them, the only light on deck other than moonlight came from a few thick portholes. There was no movement except at opposite ends of the ship, where the weather watchers paced patiently, their faces muffled with furs. When the sun vanished, it grew cold enough in the night of Tran-ky-ky to chill even a native.

They were watching for dark clouds. They did not see the dark paws that grasped the railing amidships …

V

ALERT, NERVOUS EYES DARTED across the deck, looking and spying nothing animate. One hand temporarily let go its grip to make a gesture to figures below. Then the figure pulled itself onto the deck. It was followed by companion shapes, indistinct in the darkness.

They walked to center deck, between the two main cabins. Other shapes, coming up on the side opposite, met them there. Soft words were exchanged, firm intentions resolved. Several figures split off from the growing group and moved forward, another chivaned aft. It was quiet on the decks for several moments.

A choked scream sounded from the helmdeck. Within the large group amidships a leader cursed.

A door to the central cabin opened and a figure emerged, silhouetted in the light from inside. Looking about and seeing nothing, the figure turned to go back inside when a clanking sound stopped it. Drawing his sword, the sailor cautiously moved onto the deck to investigate. Then he saw something which made him shout.

“Boarders! The ship is boarded! Wind aboard, men of Sofold … ukk!” His screaming was silenced by a metal shaft which pierced him from sternum to spine.

But the alarm had been raised. In seconds the deck and cabins were filled with milling, cursing, shouting shapes. Figures continued to pour over the railings onto the decks. The situation looked bad for crew and passengers.

Three brown-suited shapes mounted the second story of the main cabin and surveyed the carnage taking place below them.

“Fighting too close-in to pick out friend from enemy,” September declared above the awful sounds of murder, “but if we can keep the rest of them from getting aboard … You and Williams take the starboard side, feller-me-lad. I’ll take the port.”

“I don’t like this.” Nevertheless, Williams unlimbered his own small beamer. They had acquired the three hand weapons through unofficial channels in Brass Monkey, not because it was illegal for humans to carry modern weaponry on Tran-ky-ky, but because September had insisted they’d be better off keeping their capabilities hidden until they knew who was on whose side.

Three shafts of bright blue light jumped down from the cabin roof, struck the ship’s railings and moved along them. The high-intensity coherent light beams swept incipient boarders from the Slanderscree’s sides, piercing one after another. They hardly had time to scream. They did not have time to get into the fighting.

Seeing this small victory produced a renewed surge of confidence in the crew, despair among their opponents. The sailors redoubled their efforts.

September shifted his beam from the charred top of the railing and played it intermittently on the ice. One burst revealed three ice craft mounted on bone runners waiting nearby.

Changing the intensity setting on his beamer he played it across the deck and sails of one icecraft. Flames lit the night, illuminating the other two craft and their now panicky crews. Those boarders still alive had to fight their way back to the railing. Some made their way back down the boarding ladders they had brought, others jumped and trusted to powerful leg muscles to absorb the shock of landing on the unyielding ice.

Ethan stopped firing, moved across the roof to grab September’s shoulder. “Stop it, Skua, they’re leaving.”

September sighted carefully, fired again. “Just a few more bursts, lad.” A distant scream penetrated the darkness. “I can get a couple more of ’em.”

“Skua, stop it.” Using both arms, Ethan managed to bring September’s gun arm down. The giant gazed back at him. For a brief instant another person stared out of those deep-set eyes and Ethan took a couple of uncertain, frightened steps backward. Then the unearthly glare disappeared and September was himself again.

“Sorry, young feller-me-lad. Been in so many similar confrontations I tend to forget myself, sometimes.” Ethan wondered if the giant meant it literally. “If we let them get away, they may try and kill us another day. However,” he shrugged amiably, “I defer to your gentler sensibilities.”

“Thank you.” Both men looked back to see a disgusted Williams clipping on his own weapon and hurrying below.

Ethan and September used the exterior walks to make their way down to the deck. They found the Tran wizard Eer-Meesach in intense discussion with Hunnar.

“I don’t recognize their trade insignia at all,” the elderly Tran was saying.

Hunnar grunted, nudged a corpse with his foot. “That is not surprising, so far from home. Emblems and insignia would naturally be different and carry different meanings.” He walked away, muttering to himself.

Hunnar joined the two humans as they moved to the railing. September used his beamer on low power wide beam to reveal an irregular path of crumpled hairy forms lying on the ice. Lightly stirred by the wind, they formed a grotesque trail leading toward the distant cliffs.

“The tip of this island would be a good place for raiders and pirates to lair,” Hunnar declared. “Here they could ambush commerce traveling from the west side of Arsudun and lands lying thereto en route to Arsudun city. I would not have thought they would be so bold as to attack anything the size of the Slanderscree, though.”

“Neither would I, Hunnar.” September scratched at the back of his head, trying to run his fingers through his hair, then remembered the new survival suit he wore now. “Maybe it was too much of a temptation for ’em. They would’ve done all right, too, if we’d only had swords to fight with.”

A mate approached Hunnar, chatted with him a moment, then moved on, holding a bandaged arm.

“Our losses are not severe,” Hunnar informed them. “We may encounter more such assaults, friends. I would hope such sacrifices are not in vain.”

“I hope so, too, friend Hunnar.” Ethan was glad it was night. He didn’t have to watch the sailors using meltwater to swab the blood from the decks.

Cleaning the decks produced three bodies who’d been offspring of Sofold. In accordance with custom, the deceased were carried into the body of the ship. They would remain in the unheated under deck until the Slanderscree returned home, preserved by the sub-freezing temperatures. Following departure ceremonies attended by their families, the corpses would be defrosted and reduced to a fine meal which would be spread across the cultivated fields of inner Sofold. Thus would the dead enrich the soil of their homeland which had supplied food to nourish them when alive. This was a necessary as well as spiritual tradition. The island states of Tran-ky-ky were not rich in natural fertilizers.

Tradition likewise deemed the bodies of the fallen enemy unhealthy. Being likely to spiritually poison the fields, these chilled torsos were unceremoniously dumped over the side. While the ship’s shaman repaired fleshy wounds, her carpenter set about fixing the railings where the sky-outlanders’ light knives had burnt through.

Repair operations under way, a far larger and more alert guard was mounted and the rest of the crew returned to their hammocks or supper, whatever they were doing when interrupted.

When everyone else had resumed downing cold food, an empty seat was noted in the chamber. The seat was the one located between Hunnar and Ethan.

“Who has last seen the Landgrave’s daughter?” Hunnar’s gaze met the curious stares of knights, squires and mates. Individual denials combined to create an air of anxiety in the room. It seemed that no one could remember seeing Elfa since they had first come to eat.

One sailor ventured that he’d seen her on deck fighting with the rest of the crew. Being occupied fully with preserving his own life, he hadn’t been able to watch her for long.

Hunnar rose. “Search the ship. Begin with the three cabins, then the interdeck storage bins, then the rigging.”

For a second time the meal was abandoned as the inhabitants of the chamber spread out across the vessel. Every centimeter of wood was examined, every yard and sail locker combed. What the last areas searched lacked in likelihood, they made up for in the unanimity of response they produced.

Elfa Kurdagh-Vlata was no longer on the ship.

It was suggested she’d fallen or been knocked over the side. Scrambling over lines and ladders, the crew flooded the ice around and beneath the icerigger. September, Ethan and Hunnar quickly joined the search. Oil lamps carried by chivaning sailors suggested a conclave of fireflies, darting and weaving irregular search patterns over the ice. Several followed the line of inert forms stretching unevenly toward the nearby cliffs.

Once more all reports were negative. Elfa was neither alive aboard ship nor dead on the ice.

“They would not—” Hunnar paused, collected himself. “They would not have taken her corpse.” His teeth showed and he was not smiling. “She would be of no use to anyone in any … capacity … if dead. We must assume she had been taken by those who escaped.”

Senior warrior among all the assembled Tran, Balavere Longax half-grinned in the direction of the dark island. “Sympathy to them, then.”

“Suaxus, Budjir, choose twenty crew, volunteers all, for an attempt.” Hunnar glanced at the quiescent icerigger. “We can spare that many and still leave the ship safely protected, should this abduction be a diversion to weaken our defenses.”

“You realize,” September growled, raising his voice to make himself heard above the wind, “that if they hole up in any kind of fortified camp, we’re going to have a helluva time worming her out.”

“Would you think of not trying?” Hunnar spoke calmly, but Ethan could see the knight was holding himself together with great effort.

“Of course not.” Ethan couldn’t tell if the big man was being sarcastic or not, and he couldn’t see his expression beneath the survival suit mask. He tapped the tiny weapon attached to his waist. “If you’re going to have any kind of chance, you’ll need our firepower.” Hunnar turned his attention to Ethan.

“This is not your fight, my friend.”

“Hunnar, in the eighteen months I’ve known you, that’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever said.”

Hunnar’s expression said thanks, his gratitude no less eloquent for being nonverbal.

“We must get the other things we brought with us from Brass Monkey,” Ethan continued. “It won’t take us a minute to get ready.”

“It will take time to assemble the party,” Balavere said.

The two humans reboarded the ship. On returning to the ice, they sat down and began to do strange things with their feet. Hunnar’s curiosity took his mind off Elfa for a moment.

“Williams will stay on board,” Ethan told him, puffing with the effort of what he was doing. “We should leave at least one beamer on the ship in case they try another attack.”

“I do not think they will,” said Hunnar, staring at Ethan’s feet. “But it is a wise man who leaves one trap by the door of his house when he goes hunting.” Unable to resist any longer, he gestured at September.

“What is it you do to your feet?”

Ethan stood, rocked awkwardly, but kept himself upright. “They’re called ice skates, Hunnar.” He bent, adjusted a strap. “They’re artificial chiv, that fit over our own chivless feet. These are kind of special. We found out some of the workers in Brass Monkey had them made in the station metal-forming shop. They have gyroscopic compensators built into the soles.”

“I do not understand this gyoscopek. But what do they compensate for?”

“For our clumsiness.” He stumbled, seemed about to fall, when his feet suddenly shifted fluidly to help him regain his balance.

Hunnar wondered if they would compensate enough. Perhaps they needed more gysocopeks.

The assembled crewmembers wore uniformly grim expressions.

“I think this expedition will run smoother,” September said, “if Ethan and I concentrate on just stayin’ upright.”

“I understand.” Hunnar called up to someone leaning over the railing. Several lengths of pika-pina cable were tossed over the side.

One end of both cables were braided together. Hunnar handed the thick joined end to Ethan. Two sailors picked up the other two ends, opened their arms. Wind filled their dan, and Ethan found himself starting to move forward. September was alongside, likewise making use of the tow.

And suddenly they were racing toward the cliffs at nearly sixty kilometers an hour.

Ethan gritted his teeth behind the mask. If he lost his balance or his grip at this speed, a rough place on the ice ocean might rip even the tough material of the survival suit, admitting air cold enough to freeze skin on contact. Somehow he managed, though his bent knees ached and his hands throbbed.

Suaxus yelled at him from nearby. “Ready, friend Ethan! We are going to turn.”

He tried to strengthen his grip, but his hands were numb from the strain and he couldn’t tell if his grip was growing any stronger. On command, every Tran in the group dropped his or her left arm, leaned to the right, and swerved sharply in that direction.

Ethan worried about the strain on the cable as he snapped around like a rock on a string. But the cable held, and so did his wrists. They were running toward the cliffs in a wide arc. A glance between his feet showed they were following the ice paths cut by the retreating survivors of the assault on the ship.

It was nearing midnight, and the incredible cold of the Trannish night began to penetrate the immensely efficient thermotropic material of his suit. Once he slid open the face mask of his suit just a fraction, and a thin blast of air hit him like a ten-kilo boulder. He closed it immediately, shivering not from the cold. How quickly out here his blood could freeze solid in his veins.

There were shouts from the head of the group. Suaxus, noting Ethan’s curious stare through his face mask, pointed upward. They were nearly below the cliffs now. Twenty-five meters above, the irregular silhouette of trees growing at the edge thrust black spines into the moonlit sky.

A small fortress rode the edge of a spire of rock. It was separated from the main island by a five-meter-wide gap spanned by a wooden drawbridge.

The group swung off into shadow. “We’ll try to go up an unguarded side,” Hunnar was saying. “There should be only one walkway cut into the rock, and it is bound to be watched.”

Such a walkway would be cut into the sheltered lee of the rock spire, on its eastern side. The little knot of armed Tran and humans decelerated on its dark, windswept, western flank.

Ethan let go of the cable, tilted his head back and struggled with feet intent on flying out from under him. The wall of the small fortress above was built of massive stone blocks. There were no turrets or peaked roofs for the wind to tear at.

“It does not seem possible,” one of the squires finally declared. “It is too straight.”

“No it’s not.” The squire stared at September.

“Do we fly up like the guttorbyn, sky-outlander?”

September walked—skated rather—to the base of the rock pillar. The stone tapered toward the top. “It’s only about twenty meters. We could climb it.”

“You mean, leave the ice?” Hunnar’s eyes widened.

It occured to Ethan that the Tran, who moved so easily and gracefully across the ice ocean but found even walking burdensome, might find the concept of climbing an unprepared surface terrifying. While their sharp chiv would give good purchase on the wooden spars and masts of a ship, they would only slide on smooth rock. And their comparative inflexibility would keep them from probing for a foothold the way the ape-foot of a man could.

“All right. Then Ethan and I will go.”

“Just a minute, Skua.”

“I’m open to suggestions, feller-me-lad.”

Ethan had to admit, finally, he couldn’t think of anything better.

“We’ll have surprise on our side, lad. Remember that.”

“We will if we don’t splatter ourselves all over the ice.”

“You are both crazy.” Hunnar exchanged shoulder grips and breath with both of them in turn. “We will trust your madness because we have no choice. Go with the wind.”

“Thanks, Hunnar. But not this time.” Ethan turned, removed his skates. Then he followed September up the first ledge, concentrating on where his feet and hands went and not looking down. The last thing he wanted was a steady breeze blowing him around while he was crawling like a fly up a wall.

But the wind turned out to be an ally. It blew steadily against his back, shoving him into the cliff. And the spire was not as sheer and smooth as it had appeared in the darkness. There were ample cracks and ledges where a human hand or foot could find a hold. They made steady progress upward.

Halfway up the granite wall Ethan waited while September hunted for an elusive handhold above. As he caught his breath and stared single-mindedly at the giant’s backside he found himself wondering what a moderately successful salesman was doing glued like a bag of meat to cold rock on this frozen and inhospitable world, trying to rescue an argumentative princess who was more manx than man. Perhaps there had been more truth in Hunnar’s appraisal of their scheme as madness than he’d been ready to admit.

September was moving again. Panting like an old engine, Ethan started up after him. It seemed the cliff extended, grew higher instead of shorter with each painful step upward. Once, he looked down. Dark blotches against the ice suggested the location of the waiting Tran. He missed a breath, forced his gaze skyward again.

He pulled himself up onto still another ledge, lay there for several minutes before he was aware that he was lying next to September’s recumbent bulk and that the giant was motioning for him to be silent.

Ahead, he saw square-cut stones fitted carefully together.

The ledge was two meters wide, the wall of the fortress set that far back from the spire’s edge. Looking up, he saw that the walls of the fortress, in keeping with its modest size, were not particularly high. There was no reason for them to be. The Tran would not consider a serious attack from this, to them, sheer side.

Holding tight to the stone and gravel ground, Ethan pulled himself to the edge and peered over the side again. Only bare ice was visible, which meant that the Tran had moved off toward the leeside stairway. According to plan, they would wait there until Ethan and September had cleared the way for them.

The two men moved to the base of the wall and began to crawl around the pinnacle, staying close to the stonework. The wall was five meters high, the drop off the edge considerably more.

Ethan considered their chances. Their assailants would still be treating their wounds. They should not expect an organized assault on their fortress so soon after their own attack. After all, as far as they knew, they’d only taken a single prisoner, and that was hardly worth risking a suicidal attack, was it? They should be tired from chivaning at top speed back to their base and climbing the stairway to it. They would have to have climbed, Ethan knew. No icepath could wind a practical course upward at the steep angle the hidden stairway suggested. Such a climb would be slow and painful for them to make. That same climb would also serve to discourage attackers. It would not have the same effect on more agile humans.

“We’ll use our knives where possible, lad, beamers only if we have to.” After disposing of the sentries guarding the pathway down to the ice, they’d signal Hunnar and the assault party, then hold the open walkway against any who might attempt to retake it.

So went the theory.

Five more minutes of crawling brought them around into the sheltered side of the fortress. They found themselves gazing at what had to be the top of the walkway.

On this side the pinnacle was several meters lower. Moving slightly away from the wall, Ethan could see stairs laboriously cut from the naked rock of the stone pillar wending their way down into darkness. Crawling to the edge of the cliff, he peered over. No sign of Hunnar and the others. That was as it should be. He felt confident they were waiting silently below, part of the shadows and hollow places, awaiting the human’s signal.

Two armed Tran flanked the top stair. Their attention was directed down and out, their lances pointed threateningly at the stairway. From his position next to the edge, Ethan was able to obtain a good view of the parapet directly above the entrance.

“No sentries above,” he whispered to the waiting September.

“Why should there be, feller-me-lad?” The giant was a brown-suited lump, just another rock buttressing the outer wall. “Sentries at the stairway and maybe at the drawbridge are guard enough.”

Ethan reflected again on the Tran inability to climb smooth surfaces. There was no place to hide on the length of exposed stairway spiraling downward. One Tran could spot an attack party, give the alarm, have breakfast, and return before the fight began. A few soldiers with bows and arrows or spears could hold off an attacking army.

September was whispering to him again. “I’ll take the fat one on the far side, lad. You take the other.” He was fumbling for the small axe at his belt. Ethan would use a dirk. He hoped they wouldn’t need to use beamers. Not that they would make any more noise than axe or knife, but the intense beams of light might be visible to someone within the fortress.

He crawled back next to the giant. Together they started to make their belly-scraping way toward the guards, keeping to the shadowy regions close by the wall. The wind helped to hide the noise of their passage; the Tran had excellent hearing.

Triangular furry ears flipped in their direction and one of the guards turned, squinted. The two humans became part of the landscape.

“Be that you, Smigere?” The guard’s double eyelids flickered against the wind. “You are not due on watch for three vate.” Ethan held his breath. The curious guard took several steps toward them. “Smigere, are you sick?”

Although the sentry was staring straight at Ethan, he apparently still couldn’t conceive of the possibility that any enemy could be behind him. The other guard was looking curiously at his companion.

There was no time for antique weapons. At such close range, it was impossible to miss with the beamers. Both Tran were punctured by thin ropes of azure light. Smigere’s friend went down with an expression of surprise and hurt on his face, as if he couldn’t quite believe what was happening to him. He looked down at the hole in his chest, dropped his lance, and stared curiously into the shadows. His eyes closed and he fell over onto his side. His beamed colleague had stumbled backward and tumbled over the side of the cliff.

After another glance at the moonlit ramparts above, September rose, walked over to the remaining body. He examined it briefly, then picked it up by one arm and leg. A single swing consigned it to the night and the ice. Wind and distance combined to prevent them from hearing the corpse strike the surface far below. That was fine with Ethan, though he wondered absently if the falling shapes had accidentally struck any of the waiting attack party. No time to worry about that now.

They ran to the doorway. Entrance to the fortress was blocked by a single outward-opening door of thick wood. It was large enough and wide enough for Tran to enter only in single-file. Any opponents fortunate enough to survive the stairway could be picked off one at a time if they tried to force their way into the keep.

Their task was only half finished. It was reasonable to expect a gatekeeper posted inside, if not another pair of guards. But no one had appeared to question the sudden manifestation of blue lights in the night sky. The sentries’ demise had gone unwitnessed.

September had replaced the beamer at his waist, redrawn his small axe. “No chance we can use beamers inside,” he murmured. “We’ve been lucky so far, but someone’s sure to see any lights inside the wall.” Ethan had his knife out already.

“What now? Do we just walk in and check for guards?”

“Mebbe we do just that, lad. No reason for them to lock the door. Plenty of time to do that when the stairway guards give warning.”

Ethan moved to stand with his back pressed against the wall flanking the door. September put a gloved hand on the horizontal lock bar of the gate, slid it out of its wall socket slowly. To Ethan it produced an abnormally loud screeching sound in the darkness. As soon as the bar was clear, September grabbed the single handle and pulled. When nothing happened, he pulled again, harder. Hinges creaked, but the door didn’t budge.

“Locked from the inside after all. Damn!” He was heaving with the effort he’d expended on the handle. “One more good try.” He handed Ethan his axe. Bracing his legs against the wall, he put both hands on the handle, pulled and shoved simultaneously.

Metal hinges groaned again. The door moved outward a couple of centimeters. Something went ping on the other side. The door came open a half meter, then a full meter … and metal flashed in a bath of moonlight.

“Lookout!”

September let go of the handle, fell back onto the paving as Ethan stepped clear and fumbled for his beamer. No time for a knife, since he couldn’t tell how many swords might be behind that gate. The giant was already on his knees, ready to confront whoever came charging out the forced door.

“I’m sorry … it’s hard to see in this light.” Elfa Kurdagh-Vlata put up the sword she was carrying, stared at the pair of startled humans.

“You!” Ethan blurted out.

She turned, glanced back at hidden sights, then looked anxiously from one man to the other. “I don’t see anyone inside. Where are the two sentries?” When neither human replied, she made a curt gesture of understanding. “Good. I’ve been huddled inside for ten vate, trying to decide what to do. I knew they were out here and could not conceive of how to cut two throats at the same time without raising the alarm. The guard will be changed soon, but now we have time.” She appeared to encounter a sudden thought.

“Forgive my preoccupation, Sir Ethan. I am remiss in manners. My thanks to you both for rescuing me.”

“I wouldn’t take credit for somethin’ you seem to have practically pulled off by yourself,” September replied. “ ’Pon my word, you’re a resourceful gal.”

“I do my best, Sir Skua.” But she was gazing at Ethan as she spoke, her yellow eyes glittering in the dim light.

He turned away hurriedly. “We’d better get moving. No sense tempting luck by hanging around.”

“One moment.” While Ethan and September exchanged questioning glances she vanished into the unseen courtyard. To Ethan’s immense relief, she returned a moment later. Something bulky and indistinct was slung over her right shoulder. Two extensions hung slackly from the rest. Arms.

“What… who’s that?” he asked.

“I was granted the opportunity to take a prisoner.” If the weight of the body was troubling her, she didn’t show it. “I believe he is a squire or higher. Would you not wish to learn who attacked us and why?”

“So you don’t think it was common piracy either?” September smiled at her, though she couldn’t see his grin behind the mask, not in the poor light.

“I do not know for certain, but I would like to.”

“So would I.” September started toward her. “Let me take him.”

She glared at him. “Do you not think I can manage a simple load?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if you couldn’t handle anything you wanted to, m’lady-cat. But you’re not designed for descending steps, and we’ve a helluva lot of ’em to make our way down in the darkness. If we were on open ice, I wouldn’t have opened my mouth. Do you not think,” he finished, mimicking her, “that we can make better time?”

She hesitated only an instant before passing the limp form over. “Rightness of your words, knight.” Her attention turned back to Ethan. “So brave of you to challenge the fortress alone.”

“We were the ones best built for climbing,” he said uncomfortably. “Let’s go.”

It was Elfa who had the foresight to close and bolt the damaged door behind them.

VI

“QUIET.” HUNNAR MADE SHUSHING gestures at the sailors assembled behind him. He peered around the curve of the pinnacle at the base of the stairway. “Someone comes.”

The noise of feet on stone sounded for a few minutes more, inaudible to human ears but clear to those of the waiting Tran.

“I recognize Sir Ethan!” one of the squires said, and then they were all rushing from concealment to greet the Landgrave’s daughter and her saviors. As they crowded around her, exchanging words and jokes, Ethan mused again on the informality between ruler and subject that was common among the Tran. In fact, he thought some of the joyful embraces between Elfa and sailors overly familiar. Hunnar didn’t take exception to them, so Ethan kept his peace.

“So keep you all the glory of this adventure to yourself,” the red-bearded knight said to Ethan. But there was no anger, only happiness in his voice as he spoke.

“Don’t give us credit for anything except clearing the way.” He indicated Elfa. “She was waiting for us at the door.”

“With this.” September dumped the unconscious prisoner onto the ice. At the sight of one of the kidnappers, angry mutters came from the fight-ready assembly. There was a gentle, dangerous surge toward the motionless shape.

Hunnar motioned them away. “If it is our pleasure we can kill him later.” He looked down at the unfortunate warrior. “And I think that will be our pleasure. A wise man can learn even from a burning book.”

A pika-pina rope bound the captive’s ankles together, a second tied his wrists in front of his groin. Two Tran picked up ropes attached to his feet, opened their dan, and started back toward the distant Slanderscree.

As they picked up speed, Ethan wondered at the strength and toughness of Tran hide. The prisoner’s back must be feeling the effect of friction between body and ice. He remarked on his concern to Budjir, who was chivaning alongside. The soft-voiced squire replied solemnly that the skin on the prisoner’s back was of no interest to anyone, so long as his mouth remained operative.

Considering the mood of the group, Ethan decided it wasn’t the time for him to insist on civilized treatment of the captive. He had enough to do keeping his balance as two other Tran pulled him over the ice.

He glanced at his wrist. It was sixty centigrade below.

Happy embraces and greetings were exchanged en masse when the little group reached the ship, greetings made doubly fervent at the news that the party had suffered not a single casualty.

Ethan had been expecting furious cries and shouts from behind for the past ten minutes. Evidently the guard still hadn’t been changed back at the unsuspecting fortress. Or if it had and Elfa’s escape had been discovered, the inhabitants were still debating what to do. By the time they made up their minds to attack again, if they did so, the Slanderscree should be far out of reach.

Ta-hoding was already directing the recovery of the anchors. While the captain didn’t like the idea of maneuvering the great ship at night and grumbled about it unceasingly, for once his icemanship took second place to military necessity.

Questioning of the captive began the following morning, when the icerigger was far from the cliffs of Arsudun Isle and the glaring sun showed only clean bare ice behind them.

Though Ethan was interested in most aspects of Trannish culture, he elected to remain far from the bow where the inquiry was taking place. The wind swallowed most of the screams that deck distance didn’t. As he fought to ignore those faint, ululating cries he found himself unable not to think of the gap that separated him from his Tran friends. That gap would not vanish, for all that he would have given his life for Hunnar and vice-versa.

Possibly Ethan’s great-grandfather many generations removed would have been more empathetic, would have participated in the questioning process with the same cruel indifference of Elfa and Balavere and the others. Such barbarisms were common enough to man’s past, up through the twenty-first century, old calendar.

On reflection, though, he was forced to admit that the differences between modern Commonwealth civilization and the feudal methodology employed by the Tran were not so very great. All that distinguished the former from the latter were some informal, mutual understandings known as morals and a few encoded as laws.

There were plenty of citizens in his society who ignored the first while trying to subvert the second. He ought not to raise himself too high, lest the hypocrisy of current civilization make him fall too far. At least the Tran’s methods had the virtues of directness and simplicity, even if they were messy. One particularly lengthy, quavering moan reached him across the deck and he found himself unable to repress a shudder.

Troubled, he mounted the steps parallel to the ice-path ascending the helmdeck. Ta-hoding, as always, stood like a part of his beloved ship close by the great curve of the wheel, staring forward. Occasionally he would snap a command to his helmsmen and the wheel would move, or he would shout to the nearest mate some instructions which found their way up the rigging to the sailors working there.

He was the fattest Tran Ethan had encountered, an easy-going, pacifistic sort, less blood-thirsty in manner than the common sailors or professional knights and squires.

“What are they doing to him?”

“The captive?” Ta-hoding kept his gaze on the ice far ahead, sliding beneath the bowsprit. “They are questioning him, friend Ethan.”

A faint hissing as of frying bacon sounded above the wind, the noise produced by the five huge duralloy runners slicing across the ice.

“I know that, but … how?”

Ta-hoding appeared to consider the question seriously before finally responding. “I do not know how it is with your people, or with the people here, but in Wannome and its neighboring cities the procedure for interrogating a war prisoner is quite standard ritual.

“To demonstrate his bravery and the strength and honor of his family, the captive will lie eloquently or refuse to answer at all. Thus he issues a challenge to his captors that he is more resourceful and courageous than they. Questions will be put to him, or her, with increasing intensity until the captive can no longer resist. He will then provide proper answers.

“The amount of time and effort the captors must employ to finally force those correct, honest replies will determine how much merit the prisoner earns for use in the afterlife.”

“What happens when there are no more questions?” Ta-hoding looked surprised. “The captive is killed, of course.”

“But that’s inhuman!” Ice crystals scoured his face mask.

Ta-hoding turned his gaze temporarily from the ocean ahead. “We do not lay claim to virtues of being human, friend Ethan. We are Tran. I saw your own sword turned red at the battle of Wannome. Tell me, how do you obtain answers from someone in your own culture who does not wish to cooperate with his captors, or authorities?”

“He’s put on a stress analyzer,” Ethan replied. “A machine. It monitors his answers painlessly and can always tell when a subject is telling the truth.”

“Suppose,” said Ta-hoding thoughtfully, “the prisoner refuses to reply at all?”

“In that case he’s bound over under constraint … locked up until he decides of his own accord to answer.”

“And if he decides never to answer?”

“He stays under constraint, I suppose.”

“And you never obtain the answers you require. Very inefficient. Our way is better.”

“Just a second,” Ethan said. “How do you know his final answers aren’t lies? That he’s only pretending to tell the truth after you’ve tort—questioned him?”

Ta-hoding’s surprise was greater than before. He looked and sounded deeply shocked. “A captive would lose all the merit he’d gained by his resistance. He would die without merit to carry him through the afterlife!”

Ethan changed his own questioning. “After he has answered all the questions put to him, honestly and truthfully, if what you claim actually is the case, then why kill him?”

“Not all are killed.”

“Well, why kill this one?”

“Because he deserves it.” Was there a note of pity for Ethan in the captain’s voice? Nuances of Tran speech could still give Ethan trouble.

He decided to say something, changed his mind. Better to drop the discussion when the subject of it was still undergoing ordeal.

Or was he? Ethan strained, heard only the rush of wind and sizzle of runner against ice.

September and Hunnar made their way onto the deck. Ethan wondered if his oversized companion had actually watched the procedure. At times he felt a tremendous fondness for the giant, for his easy good humor, his utter disregard for danger and willingness to risk himself for a friend. At other times …

Skua September, he reflected, was kin to the Tran in ways other than physical size. When those ways manifested themselves, they made Ethan and Milliken Williams more than a little uncomfortable. He viewed September’s personality as an apple. The skin of civilization was bright and polished, but very, very thin.

“Well, young feller-me-lad, we’ve learned what needed to be learned.”

“I’m sure you did,” Ethan replied, trying to keep his voice neutral. But he couldn’t keep himself from asking, “Who did the final killing? You, Sir Hunnar?”

The Tran knight looked upset. “I, friend Ethan? I would not break courtesy so! It was not my place, the honor of dispatching one who had gained much merit not rightfully mine. That was left,” he added casually, “to the one most offended in the matter.”

Refusing to allow Ethan to ignore the obvious, September finished with fine, indifferent brutality, “The girl did it. Who else? She wanted to do it slowly,” he continued conversationally, “but Hunnar and Balavere overruled her. Since the captive held out long and bravely, she had to be satisfied with cutting off his—”

Ethan put his hands over his ears beneath the suit, moved them only when September’s mouth stopped moving. He felt sick.

“You didn’t hear,” the giant said gently, “how they treated her.”

“What items of enormous value did you beat out of him?” Ethan muttered disconsolately.

September moved to the railing, looked down at the lightly snow-dusted ice whisking past beneath the ship. “That attack on us was about as accidental and unpremeditated as the one back in the tavern in Arsudun.

“Our prisoner held a rank somewhere between knight and squire. The commander of the fortress was not quite a full knight. They received orders—the prisoner didn’t know exactly when—to assault the Slander-scree as it rounded the island’s southern headland and take it if possible.”

“He did not know,” Hunnar broke in, “who sent the orders. His commander never told him. But when it was mentioned that you and friend September were aboard, human outlanders, there were questions from the common garrison. They had been taught that humans were not to be harmed.”

September, turning from the railing, continued. “For the purposes of this one attack, it seems that that special admonition was to be ignored. Such instructions suggested to our prisoner and to us that the order for the attack came from someone very important and influential, perhaps even the Landgrave of Arsudun. The prisoner refused to believe this.

“I suspect something more than that, feller-me-lad.” The railing groaned with his weight. “The Slanderscree’s a rich prize for any locals. But for the local Landgrave to countenance the murder of us happy hairless ones, he must feel pretty confident of his position. Matter of fact, he’d have to be almost positive that if the attack failed and word of it got back to Brass Monkey, he wouldn’t be subject to reprisals from the local Commonwealth authorities. Which suggests to me that there’s collusion between this Landgrave and someone mighty important inside the station hierarchy.”

“Trell?”

September considered Ethan’s suggestion uncertainly. “I dunno. He was nice enough to us. I’d think someone immediately below him, maybe even that portmaster Xenaxis. He supervises every kilo of trade. It could be anyone with a stake in maintainin’ the present monopoly on Tran trade.

“What’s important is this means we can’t expect help from anyone in Brass Monkey while we’re outside the station confines. It’s open season until the next Commonwealth ship arrives in orbit. That’s two months away. If we return and report now, we’ll spend two months fending off assassinations in one form or another. Now that we’ve been openly attacked, whoever’s covering for the Landgrave or high Arsudun native official will take steps to cover his tracks.” He glanced down toward the central cabin, where Eer-Meesach and Williams were engaged in frenetic conversation.

“I’d like more discussion, though, before we decide for sure.”

Ethan had to give September that. He wasn’t afraid to ask for another’s opinions, and to change his own if their arguments proved better.

“I think our best bet is to proceed with our original plan and try to get this confederation of island-states started. If we go back to Brass Monkey and present Trell with a fait accompli, I don’t think he or whoever’s behind all this will try anything. No point in killing us when the monopoly’s effectively broken. Leastwise, I hope he’ll be that sensible.”

“Of course, this may all be so much endophin-swill and it may’ve been a local attack pure and simple.” He looked astern, to where the southern cliffs of Arsudun Isle had shrunk to the size of a modest bump on the horizon.

“We would have taken the ship,” the half-angry, half-frightened voice insisted, “were it not for the intervention of the sky-outlanders. They had with them the short knives that fight with pieces of sun.” Disgust colored the voice now.

“Of what use is sword or arrow against weapons that can pierce shields and set rafts afire?”

Calonnin Ro-Vijar slumped against the back of the massively timbered armchair and gazed out the third-floor window of the castle. From here, he could see down across the irregular roofs of the city and out across the harbor, could see up the strait almost to the open ice sea. By moving to another window nearby he could study the strange, smooth buildings of the humans and the three glassy bowls where their tiny vessels touched down out of the sky, vessels which brought riches beyond conception every time one arrived.

Riches now threatened.

He became aware of the other’s waiting stare, turned to face the worried noble who attended on him. They were alone in the Landgrave’s private quarters. This was necessary. The words they exchanged now were too dangerous to be overheard even by the most trusted members of his court. Hence he chose to receive Obel Kasin here and not in the chamber of formal audience.

He knew his continued silence was increasing Kasin’s nervousness. Still he did not speak, but watched the slim noble, noting the bandage across the side of his neck, the ragged tear badly patched in the membrane of his left dan, the bare places on his body where fur had been cut away.

“Be at your ease, noble Kasin. You did the best you could.”

“I am not,” the noble asked unsteadily, “to be punished for my failure?”

“I so promise.” Using both hands to help himself rise, Ro-Vijar then walked to stand next to the window. The glassalloy pane stretched from floor to ceiling and framed him unintentionally. It was larger than any other single piece of glass either made or imported into Arsudun. It was larger than any piece of glass Calonnin had ever heard of or imagined. Yet it was here, in his castle, come down to him from the heavens in one of the humans’ sky-ships. And he had been told and had come to believe that though it was no thicker than his smallest claw, it was stronger than the walls that bordered it.

“As you said,” he finally continued, “we cannot fight with swords and shields against the sky people’s light knives.” He looked back over a shoulder.

“But for all that, we will have that ship, Obel Kasin of Arsudun. One day our flag will fly from its stern and masts and it will stand at the front of the Arsudun fleet.” He did not add that some day in the future even the Slanderscree could be dispensed with. There were dreams he could as yet share with no one.

“We will have to use caution, and time this next attempt better. I will now take charge of this enterprise myself, noble Kasin. On your way out tell my Minister of Appointments—third door on your left, second level—to ready the Rinstaster. That is our best ship. I myself will pick her crew. We will dog the stern of this monster craft until the right opportunity presents itself, whereupon I will take it for Arsudun’s glory!”

“Yes, your lordship. May you go with the wind.” Genuflecting properly, he departed the room.

Calonnin considered the noble’s absence. Kasin had tried hard. His wounds proved his loyalty. There was nothing to be gained by punishing the noble. He knew better than anyone the superiority of the humans’ technology. Had he known the three on the great icerigger possessed energy weapons, he would not have ordered the attack.

Excused and commended, Kasin would be twice as trustable now. Ro-Vijar would undertake the task of capturing the icerigger and killing her crew and the humans allied with them because he could not trust anyone else to do it. No one else had his reason or fervor.

Until now he had kept himself hidden in this matter. He could do so no longer.

Dreaming, he pictured the huge ice boat, saw again its human-metal runners which did not wear out or crack on the ice as did stone and bone and wood, saw once more the well-made pika-pina sails and rigging. He imagined it as he’d described it to Kasin, sails full of wind, pennants and insignia of Arsudun flying from her high places.

And if his plans came to fruition, some day that great ship would be but a toy to sneer at. For a while, however, it would be good to possess her.

Though he could not hope to overtake the craft, it must eventually stop someplace. That would be the time for capture.

Distasteful as it would be, he had first to talk to the human Landgrave before he departed.

Jobius Trell received the Landgrave of Arsudun in his office. As the temperature inside was adjusted for human norm, the near-naked Landgrave suffered in brutally hot temperatures.

Trell had altered his midday schedule to receive Ro-Vijar. He wore a light orange service tunic open to the waist, light braid at waist, sleeves, and ankles. He greeted Ro-Vijar alone.

The Landgrave had likewise left his personal bodyguard outside the human’s building. Both men felt more comfortable that way. It gave them privacy and confidence, since each felt himself more than a fighting match for the other.

Ro-Vijar chose a couch rather than one of the narrow human chairs. Sitting straight despite the invitingly curved back, he ignored the tremendous heat that suffused the office as he regarded his human counterpartner. This was a little game they played. Whenever Trell came to visit Ro-Vijar in his castle, the Landgrave took particular delight in opening all the storm-shutters and windows so that the freezing winds of Tran-ky-ky could pour through whatever room they were in. Since Trell had to lift the mask of his survival suit indoors in order to keep custom unblemished by showing his face to his host, Ro-Vijar could enjoy the human’s discomfort as his skin reddened from the chill—though Trell pretended to be as relaxed and at ease as Ro-Vijar did now.

It was a fair exchange of favors. Trell had one slight advantage in detecting discomfort, however. Having no sweat glands, the Tran did not perspire. So Trell could tell that the Landgrave was feeling especially uncomfortable whenever he covered his mouth with a paw, in an attempt to conceal his lolling tongue and his heat-shedding panting. If he tried to go an entire visit without panting, his overheated body would cause him to black out. Very undignified.

“So they got away,” Trell was saying, getting down to business after the exchange of pleasantries had been concluded. “That’s unfortunate.”

“Worry not, friend Jobius,” Calonnin said reassuringly. “They have accomplished nothing, nor will they. I myself will follow with a crew of my best and most trusted soldiers. They will have to tie up that great hulking ship of theirs sometime to spread their vicious treasons. When they do, I will let circumstances determine my method. Whatever I eventually choose, it will be quite final and efficient.”

Trell was nodding. “Good, good.”

“The noble I placed in charge of this first attempt did what he could. He was defeated by the hand weapons of the three humans on the ship.” Settling himself into the disgustingly soft couch back, he forced himself to appear monumentally indifferent to Trell’s response to his next question.

“If you could provide me with at least a couple of similar devices and instruct myself and my knights in their use, the success of our journey would be assured.”

Trell shook his head, smiled paternally. “Friend Calonnin, you know I can’t do that. Commonwealth and Church declarations strictly prohibit the distribution of modern weaponry to non-Commonwealth peoples. Even those races that have attained associate membership cannot obtain energy weapons except under special circumstances. Ownership is restricted to full Commonwealth members. This is not a rule of my making, but it is one I can’t risk breaking.

Trell hoped his friend understood his refusal.

“Until some future date you’ll have to make do with the weapons of your own civilization. In your skilled hands, I’m sure they’ll prove more than adequate.”

“I did not mean to imply they would not,” the Landgrave assured him. “Your light knives would make this business simpler and much quicker, though.”

Trell wagged a finger at him. “Patience is another modern weapon which you can obtain for yourself, Ro-Vijar. But when this obstacle to our future plans is removed, who knows what arrangements we might work out? Arrangements whereby even extreme edicts can be bypassed. But not this time, not today.”

“I understand, friend Trell.” Ro-Vijar stood, panting like an overworked hessavar. “I am leaving my cousin, Sir Das Kooliatin, as ruler of Arsudun during my absence. You may deal as candidly with him as you see fit. He is unimaginative and harbors no delusions about replacing me on the throne—a trusted relative.” This last was mentioned not to compliment the absent Kooliatin, but simply to forestall any idea, however faint, which the human Commissioner might entertain about dealing with someone other than Calonnin.

“Let’s not delay your pursuit any longer, then.” Trell pulled himself up, walked to stand next to the Landgrave. Round pupils met vertical ones. “The sooner this unfortunate business is concluded, the more easily I’ll rest.”

“I also, friend Trell.” Reaching out, he wrapped one huge paw around the Commissioner’s hand. Then Trell leaned forward, placed both his palms on the Landgrave’s shoulders and exhaled into his face.

“My breath is your warmth. Go with the wind, friend Calonnin.”

Ro-Vijar exited, exerting monumental effort to keep from breaking into a run to escape the hothouse hell of Trell’s office for the cool breezes outside.

The Commissioner waited until the Landgrave had left the outer offices. Then he resumed his seat. Touching several switches brought out recordings and the rest of the day’s work. As always, he allowed himself the pleasure of checking several private molecular files and smiling at the hidden bank accounts there. They were listed under numerous names and companies, but the credit was all his. This delightful activity concluded, he passed on to the more prosaic work of Resident Commissioner.

Calonnin would succeed in his mission. The Landgrave was a resourceful and dedicated individual, at least as greedy as Trell. He had great confidence in the native leader, in his imagination and enterprise.

But Calonnin Ro-Vijar was entirely too imaginative and enterprising to be trusted with anything as lethal as modern energy weapons. Nothing like a needler to give a primitive mind delusions of grandeur. No, Ro-Vijar would remain far more manageable, though never exactly docile, if his methods of violent argument were restricted to lance, arrow and sword.

That was important to Trell’s blueprint for the future development of Tran-ky-ky. Keep temptations from Ro-Vijar’s hands and he’d be less likely to conjure up awkward ideas. He touched a control which automatically imprinted his signature of approval on a request for certain materials for quartermaster division, then went on to the next tape.

Trell was perfectly correct in his overall assessment of Calonnin Ro-Vijar’s qualities, but he was wrong on one crucial point. The Landgrave did not need possession of modern weapons to inspire grandiose delusions. He had plenty of those already.

As he chivaned toward the harbor and his waiting craft, Ro-Vijar considered the details of his recent interview with the human Commissioner. If Trell would not provide him with light knives, he would obtain them somewhere else. Were there not three of the irresistible weapons on the persons of the humans he was going to kill? Once that disagreeable task was concluded, he could easily fabricate some clever story for Trell’s ears to explain the disappearance of the human’s weapons. Trell might be suspicious, but what could he prove?

If a cub could trip over a slithering megorph, could not a human trip over the future? These purveyors of wealth from the sky might be rich and wise. They were not omnipotent.

VII

THE OBJECT OF CALONNIN Ro-Vijar’s avaricious thoughts was at that moment nearing the equator of Tran-ky-ky. It was near noon. Ethan was studying the ice sliding past below.

No matter where they passed, the sun always seemed to bring out hidden patterns in the ice ocean’s surface. But what Ethan noticed now startled him more than any fanciful face or half-concealed monster thrown back from subsurface cracks and discolorations.

In places, a thin layer of water lay on the ice. Widely scattered puddles formed unexpected mirrors. Once, the Slanderscree shot through a depression filled with enough water to send spray flying rail-high.

Several hours later, the temperature had dropped enough for the isolated pools to freeze solid again, but the mere sight of free-standing liquid water on Tran-ky-ky was a considerable shock.

It had a much more deleterious effect on the crew. They were used to seeing running water only in their homes, after ice or snow had been melted down for drinking. Their reaction would be comparable to a human watching the ground beneath his feet begin to dissolve. It was overwhelming to learn that one’s world was not indestructible.

Williams and Eer-Meesach moved among the jittery sailors, assuring them that their cataclysmic speculations were groundless, that there was no danger of the ice ocean melting more than a few centimeters in this one exceptionally warm place on the planetary surface. Regardless, Williams told them, the Slanderscree would surely float.

It took him a while to explain the concept of floating.

As soon as the sun dropped a few degrees and the surface water refroze, however, even the most superstitious sailors were convinced they had nothing to fear.

Several warning cries sounded that afternoon from the lookout baskets attached to the top of each mast. Ethan rushed to the helmdeck, the nerve center of the great icerigger, to learn what was happening.

He found Ta-hoding yelling commands to his mates, directing the reefing of several sails. Pika-pina sheets began to shrink in the forest of rigging and spars. Ethan forbore interrupting the captain when he was obviously so busy and was soon able to make out the cause of their slowing for himself.

A green thread lying across the fore horizon grew to become a ribbon, then a deep, verdant band. It stretched as far as a man could see from left to right across the ice sea. The band became a broad swatch and soon they were sliding over an ocean of green instead of white.

The massive duralloy runners of the Slanderscree left parallel grooves in the emerald-rust carpet of their wake. Sir Hunnar moved to stand alongside Ethan.

“ ’Tis one of the largest fields of pika-pina I have ever seen, friend Ethan. ’Twould be a good place to live, were there any high land about.” Ethan knew the adaptable, prolific plant could live anywhere it could sink its traveling roots into nutrient-rich soil. The islands hereabouts might be only a centimeter or two above the surface. Or perhaps the fields’ taproots went deep through the ice to penetrate subsurface mountaintops.

In places the thick, triangular stalks tended to a deep, rich green, in others the color turned almost red or brown. Hunnar talked on about the agricultural wealth of this unexploited, icebound prairie.

He didn’t use a complex collection of consonants, but instead referred to the growth by its most simple, colloquial name, for the benefit of speech-poor humans. Occasionally the passage of the icerigger would stir up clouds of batwinged butterflylike creatures, little knots of black, purple, and gray fur supported by wings seemingly too delicate to cope with Tran-ky-ky’s ferocious winds.

Larger arboreals would then rise to pursue. These had long thin snouts, almost half the length of their bodies, which were filled to crowding with curved, pin-thin teeth. Flapping membranous wings, they would swoop in among the bat-butterflies, mouths moving like scythes as they snapped at their agile but tightly packed prey. Pincushion jaws nearly always emerged from the colorful moving clouds with one or two punctured prizes.

Hunnar’s attention wandered to Eer-Meesach’s more learned explanations directed at the school teacher Williams. Though diminutive and wizened by adult Tran standards, the aged native wizard still towered over his human counterpart, his white-gray fur contrasting electrically with Williams’ satin black beneath his face mask.

“So we see that the pika-pina’s regenerative powers are so great that though it is cut today, it will have grown in behind us by this time on the morrow.” The wizard gestured with a shaky paw at the tracks in the path of the ship.

“If it can regenerate so fast,” asked Williams, “why doesn’t it spread until it covers every square meter of ice on the planet?”

“It is not that simple, friend Williams.” And Eer-Meesach repeated the method of pika-pina growth which Ethan had come to know and marvel at.

Long burrowing roots laboriously melted or wedged their way through the ice just beneath the surface until they located a cavity, usually an ancient air bubble trapped by freezing. The root would expand there to form a thick nodule. Nutrients concentrated in such nodules—which the Tran hungered after—were difficult to locate and hard to excavate. When the nodule was rich and large enough, it would send out four, five or more new roots in quest of other cavities, while the nodule’s supply of nutrients was constantly replenished from other nodules and eventually from some distant landmass.

“Thus,” the wizard continued, “with many nodules nearby, the pika-pina can quickly re-establish itself behind our ship, since root-paths have already been cut through the ice here. But to expand further into new territory, it must dig new pathways for itself through the resisting ice. This is why—”

A yell from the mainmast interrupted the lecture. Ethan looked forward, to where the field of green was becoming a wall.

“Pika-pedan,” he murmured to himself.

Ta-hoding was already studying the forest through a crude but serviceable Tran telescope. “It appears to extend,” he told Ethan, in response to the other’s question, “as far to east and west as its tiny cousin.” He put down the glass, looked worried.

Pika-pedan was the giant relative of the smaller pika-pina, rising to heights of as much as ten meters.

Hunnar appeared on deck, folded his dan and skidded to a stop. “Weather and ice are your concern, Captain. Do what you believe best.”

“Poyolavomaar is through this,” Ta-hoding pointed out. “We do not know the extent of the field to east and west. My directions do not take detouring into account. If we try to go around, we could become hopelessly lost and never reach our destination.

“Therefore, we must try to go through.” He moved forward, to the front railing of the helmdeck. “Hello the deck!” Acknowledgement sounded instantly from waiting mates.

Ta-hoding ordered additional sail put on. There was good-natured grumbling from the sailors on spar duty as the sheets they’d just recently taken in were let out again, billowing taut in the steady wind.

The Slanderscree was once again traveling under full sail. She picked up speed steadily, massively.

“What would you have ordered, good friend Ethan?”

Startled, he turned to see Elfa staring at him. He hadn’t seen her come up on the helmdeck. Great searchlight eyes shone down at him, competing with the sun.

“We have to go through, of course.” He tried to sound as positive as Ta-hoding had.

“The bolder decision, but typical of you.” She favored him with a searing Trannish smile, then moved away to ask a question of Eer-Meesach before Ethan could explain that he was only agreeing with Ta-hoding’s decision.

Ethan turned, caught Hunnar glaring morosely at him. As soon as the knight saw that his stare had been noticed he turned away, chivaning down the ramp to the main deck.

Ethan considered following him, to explain, and then decided not to. Apparently repeated protests had done nothing to mollify Hunnar’s absurd jealousies. Repetition of his innocence would have no more effect than before.

A subtle jar shook the ship, forcing him to clutch at the nearest support. It felt as if the Slanderscree had rammed a gigantic sponge. The sweeping panorama of green fields and blue sky had been obliterated by the columnar emerald wall now sliding past on both sides of the ship. Moving at over ninety kilometers per hour, the icerigger had struck the pika-pedan forest and was grinding smoothly through it.

A glance astern showed a lengthening highway unrolling like a ribbon, the pika-pedan stalks cut off four meters above the ice by the speeding mass of the ship. Flat-sided green logs lay strewn across the stumps, fragments from the broom of a chlorophyllic colossus.

Without distant landmarks to measure by, it was difficult to estimate their speed. Ethan guessed the ship had slowed some since impact, but was still traveling steadily ahead at a respectable velocity. Water and pulp spattered his survival suit, and he had to turn away to keep his vision clear. Up by the bowsprit, he knew the situation must be far worse.

It seemed incredible that the dense vegetation would give way so easily before the ship. But while the pika-pedan looked more solid and treelike than its miniature relative, it was equally mushy inside, consisting mostly of water-soaked soft fibres which snapped instantly under the weight of the Slanderscree.

A harsh, husky screech sounded just to port. Ethan looked in that direction in time to see a pair of startled guttorbyn—winged, dragonlike predators—take to the air. For several minutes they paralleled the ship, hissing and screaming imprecations at the crew, before veering off southeast. A flock would have attacked. There being only two, and two surprised ones at that, they chose retreat over challenge.

The furry butterfly-things were abundant in the high vegetation, and once Ethan thought he spied something long and luminous, like a writhing sunbeam, slithering away from the ship’s path with incredible speed. Instead of screaming, it sang weird flute notes back at him as it vanished into the dense evergrowth, and Ethan never knew it was not the creature itself he had seen but its radiant shadow.

Below the tops of the pika-pedan, the wind penetrated fitfully. It was unusually quiet on board, not only from the absence of the familiar gale, but because each crewmember was attending to private thoughts as well as cooperative sailing. Ethan knew the Tran did not enter and explore the rolling forests of pika-pedan. They did not do so because of its usual impenetrability, and because of herds of a certain creature which fed within.

Yet this time the Tran had an advantage. The masts of the Slanderscree towered above the crowns of the forest. So did the spines of the animals they feared. From the several lookout baskets, those heaving backs could be spotted in time to give the ship a chance to escape.

Perhaps the lookouts were too intent on sighting that particular danger. Perhaps they might not have been able to spot the trouble anyway.

Suddenly the ship lost forward momentum with a violent shudder. Ethan and everyone else not holding on to something was thrown to the deck. Even as his bulging form was rolling around behind the wheel, Ta-hoding was shouting commands.

Accustomed to sudden, unpredictable gusts of wind, the sailors in the rigging had actually fared better than those on deck. None had fallen, though for several minutes a couple of those in the highest spars hung from a paw or two before regaining their footing.

Tilted twenty degrees to port, bow dipping drunkenly iceward, the Slanderscree continued to lurch awkwardly forward.

Back on his feet, Ta-hoding braced chiv against ice and bellowed orders toward the deck. The stern ice anchors were released. They immediately gouged a purchase in the ice and pika-pedan stumps astern. Several seconds of screeching, teeth-scraping progress slowed the out-of-control icerigger to a crawl. She came to a full stop when the last sail was finally taken in.

Ethan, September, Hunnar, Elfa and Ta-hoding went over the side, made their way down a pika-pina ladder. Detailed inspection wasn’t necessary. Something had knocked the port bow runner badly askew. It hadn’t been torn completely away, but the duralloy rods which braced it to the ship’s hull had nearly been wrenched from their moorings. Plates and bolts were missing, and the wood they’d ripped free of was torn and full of gaping holes.

While Ta-hoding began to direct repairs, Ethan and the others retraced the path of the Slanderscree. They followed the path cut by the disabled runner, forced to walk single-file between walls of four-meter-high pika-pedan stumps, constantly slipping and sliding over gelatinous globules of rapidly freezing watery sap.

They traveled less than a couple of hundred meters before coming on the cause of the crash. Small rocky spires, showing the mark of the broken runner on them, protruded from the ice. It wasn’t any wonder the lookouts hadn’t spotted them, buried as they were in thick vegetation. They were barely two meters high, too low to rip into the hull of the ship, but high and solid enough to wreck the impinging runner. Only good luck had saved the other runners a similar fate.

Hunnar bent, indicated a whitish groove in one frozen mass of granite. “See … ’twas here the ship struck. We were fortunate the islet was no larger than this.”

“Islet!” September grunted. “Why, we’re standin’ atop a mountain, friend Hunnar. These spires go down to the bottom of this frozen ocean we’re sailing across.”

“We can’t be sure of that, Skua.” Ethan struggled to visualize, say, six or seven thousand meters of mass below their feet. “These could just be very large boulders frozen in the ice, deposited by glacial or ice action. Or maybe the ocean here is only a few meters deep. We might be traveling across a shallow sea covering an old desert. These could be rocks on a plain.”

September looked disappointed. “Mountaintop’s better. You sure can take all the romance out of speculating young feller-me-lad.”

Ethan gave September a look which clearly said, believe what you want. He turned to go back to the ship, and fell flat on his face after taking only a few steps.

No one found it funny. For so short a journey, neither human had bothered donning his skates, but that wasn’t what had caused Ethan to fall.

Three … no, four, tiny cream-white tendrils had erupted from the ice and locked around his right ankle. Now they were stretched taut, pulling him downward. Ice began to crack in sheets around his prone form. Ethan fought for a grip on the slick surface. His hips were already vanishing beneath the surface when he managed to lock both arms around a pika-pedan stump. It broke off in his arms like rotten punk.

By then Hunnar and September had come up alongside him. Hunnar drew his sword, but September waved him away.

“For God’s sake, Skua, hurry up!” Perversely, Ethan clung to his fragment of pika-pedan, though it was no better anchored than he.

September, sighting carefully on a point just behind and slightly to Ethan’s left, depressed the stud of his beamer. There was the snake-talk sound of steam boiling away. It was followed, joined by a stench as of rotting pork. The tendrils wrapped around Ethan’s leg did not let go, but the pulling stopped.

Meantime, Hunnar had moved around to grab Ethan’s wrists. Digging his chiv sideways into the ice and using the stubby braking claw in his heel, he started to move slowly backward. Ethan came free of the hole in the ice. Attached by its tendrils to his leg, the almost-victor came out after him. It had a smoking gash in its side.

Others had heard the cries and the hiss and light of the beamer. A small mob of concerned Tran was bearing down on the three from the ship. Eer-Meesach, helped along by Williams, was among them.

Ethan, panting heavily inside his suit mask, turned on his back, sat up, and gazed in disgust and fear at the creature attached to his ankle. “What is it?”

Hunnar had his knife out and was slicing through the clinging tendrils. Ethan let out a relieved sigh when he saw that the powerful grip hadn’t torn his survival suit.

Pale white with gray blotches and spots, the thing was three meters long, not counting the tendrils. It showed four wide, plate-sized eyes, two atop the dorsal side and two on the ventral. The four tendrils were spaced evenly around the blunt end of the head. Between them, slack and open, was a circular mouth lined with triangular serrated teeth. The jaws were protruding outside the lips, showing wet and shocking pink against the whiteness of the epidermis. Ethan considered what those teeth would have done to his leg had he slid just a little farther beneath the surface.

“Tis a kossief,” Hunnar replied thoughtfully, studying the ghostly corpse. This translated very crudely to Terranglo in Ethan’s mind as an ice worm.

“They burrow just beneath the surface and wait for some unfortunate creature to stumble across their portion of ice, which they hollow out until only a thin layer remains above them.” The knight kicked at the rubbery body. “They strike upward, break through the thin ice and drag their prey down into their burrows. Then they exude water through this,” he indicated a protruding organ near the creature’s rear, “and reform the ice shell over them.”

Ethan studied the toothed worm with distaste as he massaged his leg where the beast had grabbed him. “I can see how they can cut their way through the ice, with those teeth.”

“Neatly, too,” said an admiring September. He was standing in the bow-like hollow that had been the creature’s home. His head was just barely even with the surface.

“Are there others that live beneath the surface of the ice?” Williams was examining the dead worm with as much interest as Ethan had shown disgust

“Many and various, my friend,” discoursed Eer-Meesach. “We see them little around Wannome. They are more prevalent at the other end of Sofold Isle, where the pika-pina fields grow. It is interesting to learn that they flourish also here, among the pika-pedan.”

“Can we take it back aboard?” Williams looked hopeful.

“Why of course, we must,” said the Tran wizard. Ethan said nothing. He gained some measure of satisfaction in learning that he wasn’t alone in his squeamish attitude toward the creature. The two men of learning had a hard time cajoling a pair of sailors to carry the rubbery body back onto the ship.

September had concluded his own examination of the kossief’s house. Ethan gave him a hand out and thanked him simultaneously.

“I’d feel better about acceptin’ your thanks, lad, if it’d been less of a near thing. I missed my first shot. The ice here is pretty clear, but I could see just the barest outline of a shape down there and forgot to allow for diffraction.” He glanced back at the ominous hole. “Let’s get back aboard—and let’s both watch our steps …”

It took four days to properly repair the huge runner. They were in a race with the cut-over pika-pedan, which grew in behind the icerigger to heights of six and seven meters and pressed insistently against the bottom of the raft.

Williams paced anxiously about, trying to form botanical and zoological expeditions to search out the secrets of the homogenized forest. Even Eer-Meesach had sensed enough danger to veto those suggestions. No man could tell what lurked in the depths of such dense aggregations of verdure. The horrors that were known, such as the kossief, were enough to keep a prudent man aboard his ship. No need for them to hunt up new, exciting ways to die.

The disappointed schoolteacher still found enough wild life nearby to keep him occupied. Like a child playing with a new toy, he watched fascinated as another kossief living near the first took a six-legged herbivore browsing among the dried-out stalks behind the ship. Its flat crab eyes rolled in terror as dull grinding teeth snapped futilely at the leather-tough tendrils dragging it downward.

Ethan watched also, his a fascination of a different kind. The herbivore’s scream was no less pitiable for its alienness. He had a chance to see what his own fate would have been had September not rescued him.

As soon as the kossief had sucked enough blood out of the hapless grazer to immobilize it, the burrower generated heat. Ice melted beneath them both, refroze above them, sculpted and filled by water from the anal nozzle Hunnar had pointed out. Safely protected from scavengers and nonburrowing predators by a meter and a half of rock-hard ice, the kossief settled in to enjoy its meal.

Ethan shuddered. Not a neat way to die. He made a personal promise never to venture alone where either variety of the triangular green plant grew.

On the last day the sailors sped their repairs at the news that a lookout had heard the distant, reverberant cry of a droom. Fortunately, the monster did not come near enough to be seen and the prevailing wind was away from the direction of the cry.

Small four-legged quns the size of Ethan’s hand roamed up and down nearby stalks of mature pika-pedan, burrowing and eating their way in and out of the thick trunks like mice turned loose in a king-sized cheese. They began near the crest of a stalk and munched their way downward, leaving nothing to waste. They preferred damaged or sick stalks, thus helping to preserve the vitality of the forest.

Ethan’s favorite was a thing Eer-Meesach called a meworlf. It had a sausage-shaped body from which dangled thin, jointed, two-meter-long legs. A sack ran the length of its cylindrical back. When inflated, the sack swelled to balloon size. Maneuvering on the subdued breeze within the pika-pedan, the meworlf would drift from stalk to stalk, anchoring itself with four of its ten wiry limbs to a selected trunk and using the other six to pluck away bits of plant and convey them to the small mouth. When finished feeding, the meworlf would remain bobbing lazily in the breeze or release its grasp and let the wind carry it through the forest, bouncing like a ball from one stalk to the next.

Fascinating as the extraordinary fauna of the pika-pedan forest was to Williams, it soon began to pale for Ethan. By the fourth day, he was as ready as any of the common sailors to be moving again.

But when full sail had been put out, the worst fears of the experienced icemen were realized.

“We’re not moving,” Ethan observed, concerned. He turned to the captain. “What’s wrong?”

“I worried much on this, friend Ethan.” Ta-hoding’s expression was glummer than usual. “We had no choice, though. The runner had to be repaired.”

“Of course it did.” Ethan indicated the gently billowing sails low on the masts, the gustily taut ones higher up, above the roof of the forest. “You mean, we don’t have the momentum necessary to get us started?”

He saw the problem now. While the Slanderscree was traveling at a respectable speed, she had enough energy to plow easily through the soft pika-pedan. But once stopped, with the thick green pseudopods practically growing over the railings, she couldn’t get moving.

“So what can we do about it?”

“We cannot back up,” said Ta-hoding solemnly, gesturing behind them. “The pika-pedan has grown too tall and thick behind us while we have waited here.”

“What about sending out a crew with axes and swords to cut a clear path ahead of us?”

“We may have to try precisely that, friend Ethan. But I wish I could think of another way. By the time our people could cut a path wide enough for the ship, a decent distance ahead of us, the pika-pedan they first felled would be growing up stiff behind them.

“However,” he said, executing a Tran gesture indicative of hopelessness mixed with resignation, “I confess I see nothing else to be done.” He waddled off to give instructions to Hunnar.

Everyone not immediately concerned with the operation of the icerigger was sent over the side and was soon frantically hacking away at the forest ahead of the ship with axes, kitchen cleavers, anything that would cut. The huge stalks fell easily, squirting water and sap over the frenzied group of foresters, who knew they were racing against the growing time of the stumps behind them.

Even Ethan, using his sword, could cut down a ten-meter tall column of pika-pedan in ten minutes or so, though the constant swinging was wearying to muscles not used to such activity. To provide a path expansive enough for a ship the size of the Slanderscree, it was necessary to fell a great many pika-pedan. They couldn’t stop. When the pika-pedan behind them reached underbelly deck level of four meters, they would have to retreat and try to break out as best they could.

As it turned out, they had to quit before they wanted to.

All eyes, on board and in the work party, went to the main-mast observation basket, whose wicker-enclosed lookout was screaming while pointing frantically to the east.

“Stavanzer!”

“How far?” roared Ta-hoding, cupping thick paws to his lips.

“Twenty, maybe thirty kijat,” the reply came back from the lookout.

“Coming this way?”

“It is difficult to tell, Captain, at this distance.”

“How many?”

“Again hard to tell. I am sure of only one.” A pause, then, “Still only one.”

There was no need to give the order to abandon cutting and return to the ship. At the news of a stavanzer in the vicinity, a retreat to the raft was a matter of instinct, not debate. Everyone was chivaning or running through the maze of felled pika-pedan stalks without having to be told.

“What now, Captain?” Ethan asked Ta-hoding when he’d made his breathless way back to the helmdeck.

Eer-Meesach was standing at the railing, peering forward out of old eyes. “To most it hints of death’s proximity, friend Ethan. But it could also be our salvation.”

“How can that be?”

“Consider if the thunder-eater passes close to us, Ethan. You know how the stavanzer travels by pushing itself across the ice. In so doing it smoothes everything in its path as flat as a metalworker’s forge.”

“I see. So we can go out the way it comes in?”

“More than that, friend Ethan.” Ta-hoding, overhearing, elaborated. “Once we build up enough speed traveling back down the thunder-eater’s trail, we can then turn the ship and continue in any direction we wish.”

“It is the building up of enough speed that is critical,” Eer-Meesach finished.

“Kinetic energy,” Ethan murmured, and then had to try and explain the unfamiliar-sounding Terranglo term in Trannish.

“It will be not easy.” Ta-hoding was talking as much to himself as to his listeners. “Even if we do pass successfully into the trail, there are other dangers to be considered.” Ethan didn’t press him for an explanation.

“We must make a decision. We do have a choice.” He gestured within an arm toward the bow, his dan momentarily billowing with wind. “We have cut a path a kijat or two ahead of us. We can reset sail and make a run at the forest wall. If that fails, we will then have no room to maneuver, and it will be most difficult to try and back up for another run. Also, I should like to keep that option open, should the thunder-eater swerve and bear down on us.”

“Seems pretty obvious to me what we do,” said a new voice. September mounted to the helmdeck. “We wait and try to slip in behind it.”

Ta-hoding’s gaze traveled around the little knot of decision-makers. His usual jollity was absent now. He was all business. “It’s settled, then,” and he moved to the railing to issue instructions.

Twenty minutes of waiting followed the final preparations. All sailors were at their posts, knights and squires ready to assist when and where they could. The quns had vanished into their holes, and a last meworlf battered itself like a crazed mechanical toy against the stalks as it sought to race out of the area.

Presently, a deeper sound rose above the wind-choir, a periodic breathy grumble like a KK-drive slipping past lightspeed. From his single previous encounter, Ethan knew the noise was caused by the stavanzer’s method of locomotion. Expelling air through a pair of downward-facing nozzles set in its lower back, it could also pull itself slowly forward across the ice on its lubricated belly by means of the two down-thrust tucks protruding from its upper jaw—though that rubbery formation could hardly be called a jaw.

The rumble grew deeper. The Slanderscree quivered steadily as the ice beneath it shook to the rhythm of a monstrous metabolism.

Ethan experienced an unlikely urge to climb into the rigging, to get above the wavering crowns of pika-pedan so he could see. But he stayed where he was, out of the sailors’ way.

Murmurs drifted down from those in the highest spars, their eyes focused on something unseen. Their companions hushed them. Ethan let his gaze travel forward.

At the far end of the crude pathway they’d so laboriously hacked from the rusty forest a great mass slid into view. It stood perhaps twelve meters above the ice, a black maw inhaling felled pika-pedan with Jobian patience as the horny lower lip/jaw sliced off the nutrient-rich stalks flush with the ice.

Once, the upper jaw lifted and the huge tusks came slamming down into the ice hard enough to make the kijat-distant Slanderscree rock unsteadily. Ice, roots, protein-rich nodules were vacuumed indiscriminately into the Pit: proteins and nodules and bulk to be converted into fuel and cells, ice to be melted and flushed throughout the vast metabolic engine.

Tearing unconcernedly into the wall of fresh pika-pedan ahead of it, the massive head vanished from sight. Like an ancient snowbound train, the dark gray bulk slid across their path. Parasites and other growths of respectable size formed a fantastic foliage of their own on the leviathan’s sides and back, a private jungle none dared explore. The fluctuating howl from the intake and expulsion of air was deafening now.

Fortunately, the thunder-eaters had poor vision and poor hearing. They had no need for these faculties, having nothing to be alert against. The beast slid past, its blunt tail-end vanishing in quest of body and skull, without taking any notice of the Slanderscree or its anxiously silent crew.

It was gone, though they could still hear it eating its endless meal as it moved steadily off to the west.

Difficult as it was to be objective when confronted with so over-poweringly grand an example of nature’s diversity, Ethan estimated its length at somewhere between seventy and eighty meters. A mature specimen, but from what he’d been told, not an exceptionally large one. He’d seen bigger himself. He doubted this one weighed more than two hundred fifty tons.

They should have waited another half hour, to be safe, before getting under way, but the sailors were growing restless. Fear that the thunder-eater would perhaps change its path (they were notoriously unpredictable in their habits) and charge down upon them poisoned the sailors’ blood with fear. Finally, even the patient Ta-hoding could stand the waiting no longer.

“All sail on, snap to the windwhips!”

The ice anchors had long since been hauled in. Ponderously, but with far more grace than the thunder-eater, the Slanderscree began to move forward. Ship’s bones groaned as the five duralloy runners broke clear their slight accumulations of drifted snow and ice.

The grinding of the runners became a slick abrasive noise as the huge ship picked up speed. Two, four, ten, fifteen kilometers an hour. Twenty. Thirty and a familiar whisking zing rose from where duralloy lacerated ice. They were nearing the end of the brief clearing the crew had bought from the forest.

“Hard a’port! Sparmen swing-ho!”

Both helmsmen strained at the massive wooden wheel. Inefficient muscle worked where hydraulics would better have served. A nerve-scraping screel came from the fifth runner, the steering runner, as it slowly turned. Sailors aloft fought to adjust sail and trim adjustable spar lines.

And steadily, with unexpected sharpness, the Slanderscree hove to port.

Both helmsmen struggled to hold the wheel steady as their feet left the deck. September threw his mass on the port side of the wheel and Ta-hoding added his. With four bodies straining, the runner stayed turned and the ship continued to come around even as her speed increased.

Then Ta-hoding and September could let go. The feet of the starboard side helmsman touched wood again as the extreme angle of turn was relaxed. They were racing down a broad avenue of clear ice cut by the stavanzer.

On command the two helmsmen let go the wheel, to allow the ship to settle on her own forward heading. With the westwind directly behind them now, there was no worry of swerving violently from the trail. The wheel turned freely to a halt, spinning fast enough to crush a man’s skull. The helmsmen resumed their positions, tested the wheel and found it handled easily once more.

At sixty kilometers an hour they rushed down the slough. Pika-pedan pulp stained the ice below the runners, and the unbroken growth paralleling them became a green blur on both sides of the ship. With the wind behind them, muffled by the surrounding forest, they seemed to fly below the surface instead of above it, submerged in emerald silence.

The quiet made audible to the relaxing crew the horrified shriek of the foremast lookout.

Ethan looked forward, ignorant of the loss of precious seconds. One, no two gigantic black pits like the mouths of caves were coming toward them, completely blocking the trail. As they raced nearer, a mysterious whisper became a fearful murmuring, then a tornado of roaring and bellowing that shook his teeth inside his head.

Ta-hoding desperately shouted instructions to the mates and the men in the rigging, trying at the same time to direct his helmsmen.

Again the steering runner turned, terror lending the Tran at its spokes a strength normal minds and bodies never possess. Again it dug and chewed at the ice. The Slanderscree angled to the south, slamming into the forest with a deck-sloshing spray of shattered stalks and sap. But now the ship was moving so fast the forest offered no real impediment. Pika-pedan trunks vanished on all sides as the weighty bulk of the icerigger slashed through.

They were off the occupied trail.

And several gray curves showed above the crest of the forest like islands in a pea-green sea.

“Turn!” Ethan found himself pounding the railing and yelling till his throat hurt. “Turn!”

There were commands, but the experienced sailors knew the chance they had to take and the action to make it happen. Everyone on the deck and in the rigging rushed as fast as he or she was able to the starboard side of the ship.

With the steering runner hard over until its bolts creaked, the sails properly trimmed, and all movable mass shifted to one side, the Slanderscree’s portside runners lifted with infinite slowness from the surface of the ice ocean.

A few centimeters, a half meter, two meters. A few sailors wrestled their way back to portside. The ship held, heeling dangerously far over on its right side, balancing now on two runners. The duralloy would hold, but what about the iron and steel bolts and wooden braces holding the runners to the ship? All sailors aloft held on for their lives. If they fell overboard now, into the forest, they knew they could expect no rescue.

Ethan saw wood and sky as he looked toward the left side of the ship. A voluminous black gullet like an empty place in space loomed over the far railing. There was the sound of an intimate thunder, and suction tore at him, then was gone. Two tusks, each thicker than the Slanderscree’s mainmast, caught the sun and sent it tumbling into his mask, temporarily blinding him.

“By the Servants of the Dark One, she’ll go over!” someone howled.

The tusks came down, fourteen meters of solid ivory, tons of beauty in the mouth of a demon.

But by that time the ship had already shot past. Ethan leaned over the railing to look back, saw the tusks strike ice and send ten-kilo splinters flying. A tiny wild eye, set back of that monstrous maw, rolled dully at him and he fancied he could see through it and into a ridiculously small brain.

Dimly, he was aware of mates shouting orders. Spars were realigned, sails trimmed. Slowly the ship settled back to an even keel. A dull thrrrump sounded, like a titanic belch, as the port-side runners smashed back onto the ice. A wooden brace somewhere below deck cracked audibly, but both runners held.

Everyone had expected the impact, held on through the violent jarring. No one was shaken over the side.

“Too close,” Hunnar muttered as he mounted the helmdeck. The knight was panting steadily, Ethan noticed. As for himself, he was sweating heavily despite the survival-suit’s compensators. Thermotropic material can adjust only so fast.

Ethan moved carefully down to the main cabin. Anything still intact in the galley and capable of being heated would taste good just now.

He encountered Eer-Meesach at the doorway. They entered together.

“ ’Twas a herd guide we first encountered, not a solitaire or rogue.” The wizard, for once, did not appear excited by an interesting encounter. “In a herd, the stavanzer will proceed and eat in parallel line. We ran back along the guide’s trail, right into their line, and barely did we miss the end guards.”

Ethan saw too clearly in his mind’s eye the final bottomless gullet they’d just avoided. It was probably only his fevered imagination, distorted in his memory by fear and terror, but the last stavanzer had looked big enough to swallow the entire ship and use the mainmast for a toothpick.

He’d done very little real work, but his body had burned plenty of calories. In any case, there was something reassuring and normal about eating.

He’d had enough of the extraordinary to last him for a while.

VIII

THE NEXT TIME THE lookouts cried out, it was in a more normal voice, tinged this time with excitement of a pleasured kind.

Minutes later, without warning, the green forest vanished and began to shrink behind them. They’d emerged from the pika-pedan and were traveling across pika-pina once more. Soon Ethan could no longer look astern and see the gap where they had emerged.

Three days more and they left furry butterflies and green ice fuzz behind and were again chivaning across open ice. Ta-hoding’s relief was palpable, that of his men almost too intense to bear.

When they passed a small trading raft, its single small deck piled high with strapped down goods, the cheers of the crew would have led an onlooker to surmise they had reached Trannish heaven. They had not, but the normal world of free ice and other ships was as much as the lowliest hand could wish.

The trader’s crew crowded its railing to stare in awe at the enormous icerigger. Clearly, they’d never heard of it, a measure of how far from Arsudun the Slanderscree had come. Both crews barely had time to exchange a few brief shouts and queries before the impatient wind separated them.

“Where are they going?” Ethan asked Hunnar.

“Not to Poyolavomaar,” said a disappointed Hunnar. “We will try to make more time for asking with the next ship we pass.”

That ship turned out to be another trader, one twice the size of the first they’d encountered, nearly thirty meters long. It even boasted a central cabin. Its crew’s amazement at the sight of the Slanderscree, however, was no less than that of the first raft they’d passed.

Although traveling on a course similar to that of the icerigger, the trader was not proceeding to Poyolavomaar. But its crew gladly gave confirmation that the great ship was traveling in the right direction.

They passed other vessels. Commerce here was not heavy, but it was steady. Several rocky islets grew, slid past. A couple showed signs of habitation. Eventually they grew so numerous that Ta-hoding ordered some sails taken in.

They were traveling through a region of many tiny islands. Smoke curled from chimneys of steep-roofed houses clinging like brown barnacles to miniature harbors or crawling antlike up talus-strewn slopes. Neatly laid out and carefully cultivated fields of pika-pina huddled in the lee of sheltering islets. Startled Tran would glance up as the Slanderscree flew past, set to murmuring by the wondrous ship they might or might not have seen.

Two weeks later, after negotiating undulating archipelagos and dangerously low-lying islands that were scattered like reefs in the ice, they reached Poyolavomaar.

Needle-topped crags and spires towered out of the ice, rising to some of the most impressive heights Ethan had encountered on Tran-ky-ky. A few rose three thousand meters into the clear blue sky. The sharp arrogant angles indicated a geologically youthful region, for such spires could not long retain their glory under the ceaseless assault of the planet’s eroding winds.

The lofty islands that formed the near-circle Ta-hoding’s captain friend had spoken of nearly touched the Slanderscree’s flanks, titanic stone dancers frozen forever only an earth-beat apart. Twisting around the granite needles, the wind acted strangely, as if conscious of the unusual setting it played in. Ta-hoding’s task looked difficult, until he saw they could simply follow one of the numerous rafts converging on the island necklace and trail it in.

Homes and other structures, including armed ramparts, crowded the afterthought slopes which muted the cliffs where they entered the ice. Connecting the visible islands, and probably all of them if the garrulous merchant back in Arsudun was correct, were high stone walls built onto the ice. Each had a wide gate in its middle to permit entry or egress. Fortunately, no arch covered the one they approached, or both masts and masonry would have suffered. As it was, there was barely enough room for the icerigger to squeeze through, while guards in the flanking towers gaped or shouted orders.

They made their way inside the ring of towering islands. Near the center of the frozen enclosure lay a seventh island, as unlike its companions as they were unlike Arsudun or Sofold. It was almost flat, rising to a peak of barely fifty meters at its highest point. All around, docking piers extended onto the ice from its shore.

Ethan had noticed docks on the surrounding islands also. But judging from the vast number of rafts tied up here, this had to be the center of commercial activity.

Crowning the high point of the island was a three-tiered stone castle as impressive as that of Wannome. Smoke drifted to the west from flues and chimneys.

“What a magnificent place,” Ethan murmured. He searched for better words, but they escaped him. Occasionally he wished for the tongue of a poet instead of a huckster.

“Aye, young feller-me-lad. A more perfect settin’ for a harbor would be hard to imagine. And all they’ve got to do is defend those connecting walls. No enemy’s going to climb over those mountains.”

Williams was studying the heavily forested slopes. “Lumber rich, too. Without transportation problems. They need only cut a tree down and it will slide most of the way to the ice.”

“Truly Captain Midan-Gee did not deceive us.” Ta-hoding was already hunting for an open landing. “This is a wealthy, powerful state.”

“A good place to begin the confederation,” Ethan added.

Hunnar snorted skeptically, stalked away. He still held only the slimmest of hopes for the human’s bizarre idea that the Tran could agree on anything except their hereditary fear, suspicion, and hatred of strangers.

Williams suddenly clapped his hands together, starting like a little boy who’d just found a coin in the street. The survival suit gloves muffled the sound of the clap and what wasn’t smothered was carried away unheard by the wind, but Ethan saw the movement.

“See something interesting, Milliken?”

“Not that, not that, Ethan. I just realized what this place is!” That unspecific announcement rekindled Hunnar’s attention. “Poyolavomaar is a caldera.”

“A what?” Hunnar, naturally, did not recognize the Terranglo term. But neither did Ethan.

The diminutive teacher tried to explain. “Some time in the past, Sir Hunnar, these peaks we see now rose even higher, and this circular harbor we now traverse was a solid mountain several satch high. It was a volcano, like the smoking mountain you knew as The-Place-Where-The-Earth’s-Blood-Burns.

“And like that volcano, this one too blew up in a cataclysmic explosion, leaving only fragments of its outside wall. A central cinder cone started to build a new mountain inside the hollow left by the old one, but never got started before the flow of magma—molten rock—stopped. The soft cinders wore down quickly, leaving the central island we’re heading for now. The original volcano was probably more than twice the height of the surrounding island peaks.”

It was discomfiting to realize they were traveling through the throat of a ghost mountain and that somewhere far below, plutonic pressures could even now be building up enough energy to erupt unexpectedly. Ethan was glad when the small, streamlined ice raft pulled up alongside them. It gave him something else to concentrate on.

One of the Slanderscree’s mates exchanged words with the operators of the small vessel, then reported to Ta-hoding.

“Harbor pilot,” said the captain with evident satisfaction. “They are sophisticated here, though the pier they have assigned us is barely half our length.” No matter. ’Tis a trouble we’ll likely face wherever we go.”

As sails were taken in, the great icerigger followed the pilot raft toward the northeastern side of the central island. Other ships gave them plenty of room, their crews crowding railings to stare as the huge raft chivaned past.

Once more the anchors were released, and the docking procedure employed successfully at Arsudun was repeated. The Slanderscree was pushed slightly westward by the wind before the anchors brought her to a complete stop.

Ethan, September, Hunnar, Williams, Elfa, and a soldier named Tersund assembled to greet the harbormaster, who didn’t take long to appear. He was short for a Tran, almost Ethan’s size, and wore a strange coat of archil and argent done in diamond patterns, the diamond shapes varying in size. Like all Tran torso-wear it was slitted at the sides to permit the dan to move freely, and fastened with silver braid at shoulders and upper thighs. Belts of some snakelike skin formed an “X” across his chest. He picked absently at his left elbow.

“I hight Valsht,” he said in a thin, reedy voice that nevertheless carried an air of authority, “master of Poyolavomaar commerce. I extend warmth and greetings.” He performed an elaborate weaving of paws which Ethan didn’t recognize.

Hunnar launched into introductions and explanations.

When the redbearded knight had finished, Valsht responded almost as if he were anxious to be rid of them, though it was probably only his naturally nervous character reacting normally.

“This confederation you speak of and the reasons for it are not for a simple servant like myself to ponder on. ’Tis a matter for Tonx Ghin Rakossa, Landgrave of Poyolavomaar, Bringer of the Fair Wind and Solace of the Six Peaks, to decide. I am instructed to conduct you immediately to the grand presence.”

That little speech, which sounded rehearsed despite Valsht’s evident attempt to make it appear extemporaneous, tickled warning thoughts in Ethan’s mind. He shrugged them away. Tran-ky-ky was making him suspicious of every stranger they met. If he’d been able to see that thought in Ethan’s mind, Hunnar would have enjoyed a knowing laugh.

The harbormaster relaxed slightly, straining to see into every corner of the icerigger. “You appear to have been on a long voyage.”

“A modest journey,” admitted Hunnar.

“We are a state of much commerce.” Valsht said this matter-of-factly, without boasting. “Ships come from many thousands of satch distant to trade and exchange their goods here in Poyolavomaar. We have,” and he rolled his brilliant yellow eyes in a manner which Ethan had come to know as the Tran equivalent of a sly wink, “many facilities for weary travelers. Reasons why our city is such a popular place to trade, for is not trading a tiresome business and respite after a hard day a necessity rather than a luxury? I am sure your crew would enjoy the sights and availabilities of our city.”

“Your hospitality is most welcome. We accept.” Hunnar turned, called up to the helmdeck. “Captain, we are given invitation! Give three-quarters of the crew leave to visit the city. They have earned it. The remaining fourth may go when the first quarter of leave-takers returns.”

Ta-hoding indicated his agreement. The order was relayed to the mates, who in turn dispersed it among their subordinates. Prolonged shouting and cries of delight echoed from various sections of the ship as each knot of sailors received word of their permission to go ashore and relax.

The decision to grant liberty having been made, the greeting party followed the harbormaster up the pier and into the town, Tran traveling on icepaths while the humans elected to leave their skates on board and walk alongside.

Shouts and insults, hellos and damnations, promises and lies filled the freezing air around them. They issued from booths, stalls, cabarets and cloaked doorways, knots of huddled Tran and isolated craftsmen and children. Even the beggars appeared well fed. Signs of prosperity and ruthlessness coexisted, and the average expression was one of mellow avarice.

“Something wrong,” September said with a grunt. Pessimism was part of September’s natural reaction to anything unfamiliar, and Ethan knew it. He didn’t mention his own initial suspicion of Valsht’s seemingly prepared greeting, having already dismissed that as unwonted.

“What’s bothering you, Skua?” He strayed onto the icepath, slipped, regained his balance while glaring at a covey of cubs who’d witnessed his clumsiness.

“Not sure, feller-me-lad. That’s what’s botherin’ me most.” He didn’t elaborate and Ethan, excited at the prospect of finally trying out their confederation proposal on a prospective government, didn’t pursue the conversation.

The slope they were climbing never turned steep, and the main approach to the castle was placed from the western side of the island so that the prevailing wind blew always from the back of anyone approaching. Thus, the Tran did not have to tack uphill, but were swept upward effortlessly while Ethan and September struggled to keep pace.

A central gate of dark wood bound with brass fittings admitted them to a wide courtyard. Guards stared at the humans and pointed, all the while chatting among themselves. The group passed the armory, which seemed unusually large to Ethan, then entered the main structure. A long iced ramp led to a floor, a hallway, and finally into a circular domed chamber.

It was quite different from the throne room in the castle of Wannome where Elfa’s father held court. Placed on a raised central dais instead of at the far end of the room were three high-backed chairs. The dais was mounted on a huge, carved stone disk which cleared the floor by a centimeter or two, leading Ethan to suspect it could revolve. Decorative mosaics and reliefs filled curving walls, alternating with windows that looked out onto island and harbor. They depicted the six surrounding crag-crowned islands.

Undoubtedly the Tran slumped into the center chair and staring at them was Rakossa, Solace of the Six Peaks and so on. Compared to the ruling Tran Ethan had encountered thus far, he seemed to be very young. There was no white in his gray fur, no crinkling of the skin beneath. He guessed the Landgrave to be, in human-equivalent terms, younger than himself.

Of the two other Tran seated on either side, one was an older male, the other a young female. Advisors, he mused, or perhaps queen and father. He examined the gargoyle-lined stone disk again, wondered at the mechanism that powered it.

All three were in turn studying their five visitors with obvious interest, though different expressions.

Valsht approached the throne, halted a correct distance from it. “Your pardon, sir, but I have duties I must return to.” The young Landgrave dismissed the harbormaster with a diffident gesture. Valsht turned, hurried past the visitors. As he passed, he favored Ethan with a brief, complex, inexplicable stare.

No one spoke or moved. Finally Hunnar stepped forward. “My breath is your warmth, sirs and madame. We come to you from a far distant land hight Sofold. We come to forge what we hope will be a union, a confederation of many island-states for the purpose of dealing on fair and equal terms with strange new friends from off-world. These friends,” and he indicated Ethan and September.

“They bring great promise and fortune to all Tran who will have the foresight, as your highness surely will, to join in this unifying proposal. I realize that this thought is …”

Without warning the Landgrave rose, thrust a trembling clawed finger at them. “Liars! Offspring of guttorbyn! You bring promise of naught but enslavement and poverty!”

Of all the visitors, only September was not so shocked that he couldn’t mutter: “That does it.”

Ethan whirled, staring dumbfounded at the giant.

“I knew there was something wrong, lad. When the harbormaster was escorting us here, we passed through the heart of town. And we were assiduously avoided. No one except the cubs gave us so much as a curious glance, except the soldiers here in the castle, and even they didn’t act too excited. Contrast that with the stares and inquiries we got from the crews of other rafts.

“Means there’s been other humans here before you and me. Or else,” and he glanced at the third figure seated on the dais, the distinguished looking older Tran whom Ethan had guessed to be an advisor or royal sire, “word of us.”

“That is the first truth you have spoken,” said the young Landgrave angrily. He gestured to the softly smiling Tran on his right. “ ’Twas fortunate that my good friend here, Calonnin Ro-Vijar, Landgrave of Arsudun, arrived but two precious days ago. He told me of your infamous plans to enslave and make servants of the independent peoples of my world, beginning with Poyolavomaar.”

Hunnar took a couple of steps toward the dais, his hand going toward his sword hilt. “Ro-Vijar, was it you who had our ship assaulted off your south coast and the Elfa Kurdagh-Vlata kidnapped?”

The older Tran stood, looked imperiously at them. He acted as cool as the air blowing through the open windows. “I did indeed wish you on your way to the afterlife, traitor, to prevent the spread of your evil intentions,”

If the confrontation had begun badly, it was still capable of deteriorating. Ethan moved toward the throne. “Your highness,” he said desperately, “it’s Ro-Vijar, who lies to protect his own monopoly and trade with my people, to poison your mind against us. He trades truth for money.”

“Silence and quiet!” Rakossa looked nauseated. “We will not credit the broken words of a hairless k’nith who masquerades as a true person. Your falsehoods do not touch us.”

Ethan saw the eyes of Rakossa, wild and fearful, dangerous and cunning. Yellow with cat-pupils, they were not human eyes, but there is something in the gaze of a madman that transcends shape, reaches across genetic distances. There was nothing to be gained by arguing with Tonx Ghin Rakossa. His mind was made up. Logic and reason would only antagonize him.

Only in the near-neutral expression of the female consort, who had not spoken, was there a hint of something else. It might be sympathy, it might be sadism. Ethan couldn’t tell.

Hunnar’s sword came half free of its scabbard.

Several of the mosaic walls moved inward, revealed compartments behind which disgorged dozens of armed Tran. Hunnar stopped.

“Fight and die here,” said a tight-voiced Rakossa, “or wait ’til you are properly judged.”

“Sounds like that has been done already,” Tersund murmured softly.

The Landgrave continued; he looked vastly pleased with himself. “Your ship is already taken, the sailors aboard already imprisoned. As are those who scattered themselves thoughtlessly throughout my city. You will greet them again in the dungeons below.”

Meanwhile Ethan was counting the surrounding pack. They filled the circular chamber until they stood shoulder to dan. Better to die here than …

He felt a hand cover his beamer as he moved to draw it. “No, young feller-me-lad. There are too many and likely more behind these. Life is chance, death the absence of opportunity. We’ve nothin’ to lose by waiting and hoping.”

“What chance will we have without beamers, Skua?” But he left the weapon at his waist nonetheless.

Ro-Vijar stepped off the dais and approached them. Without hesitation he undipped Ethan’s beamer, then September’s, lastly Williams’.

Other guards began disarming Hunnar and Tersund. Then they were escorted from the room. Tran bodies were packed so tightly around them they could hardly move without stepping on sharp-chived feet.

“Ro-Vijar’s the liar, your highness!” Ethan shouted over a shoulder. “He has money in place of a soul!”

Trying hard not to smile, Ro-Vijar whispered to the Landgrave. “Do not tilt your ears to the words of the sky-outlanders, mighty ruler of mighty state. They are truly more advanced than we poor Tran—in matters of falsehood and deception. You must constantly beware their subtle intonations.”

“Do not worry, friend Calonnin. We do not intend to pay the slightest attention to their degrading speech.”

“Why not,” the Landgrave of Arsudun suggested casually as the captives exited from the chamber, “kill them now and save space in your prison?”

With his usual unnerving quickness, Rakossa turned on Ro-Vijar. “We have listened to you because we believe in your good advice, friend and fellow ruler Calonnin. Do not think that because of our youth we will be impetuous instead of methodical. They will be granted fair trial.”

“That is only just,” Calonnin responded, barely hiding his disappointment. He was anxious to be on his way back to Arsudun. This distant trading city held only crude delights and he wished the more sophisticated comforts Trell had provided for him. “I meant no disrespect. It is merely that I despise these pale tricksters so.”

“No offense is taken.” Rakossa looked to the door where the prisoners had been taken, spoke thoughtfully. “They will be tried and judged fairly. Only then will they be killed.”

Calonnin had a pleasing thought. “There is a thing to be considered, your highness. There is much to be learned from those Tran who have been corrupted by the hairless devils. It might best be learned by myself, who has had the most experience with them. I would have one of the prisoners to question.”

“As you desire. Which of them do you wish?”

Calonnin permitted himself an ugly grin. It is amazing what unpleasant thoughts can be communicated between two decadents of similar mind by a mere gesture or grimace. The girl still sitting silently on her chair was able to divine Calonnin’s intent from her Landgrave’s responding smile.

She did not smile.

Hunnar temporarily lost his control when Elfa was separated from them and hauled off by a cluster of soldiery. Fortunately, their own escort was evidently under orders not to damage the prisoners, since they only knocked the raging knight unconscious.

Ethan counted three, perhaps four, underground levels as they descended. The location of the lowermost dungeon had an unexpected benefit which neither of the humans had considered.

Since their cells were located far below the surface, they were unaffected by wind or severe changes in air temperature. So the dungeon was actually warmer than the castle above. This made imprisoned Tran uncomfortable, the local concept of a miserable dungeon being one that was too warm rather than too cold.

The lowest stone and mortar level was filled with large barred cells. The bars were made of polished hardwood instead of valuable metal. Ethan tested one, using the waist buckle of his survival suit. It would take a long time for him to cut through the treated, supertough wood with the stelamic buckle. A prisoner using a bone knife would die of old age before completing the task. Each bar was as thick as September’s thigh. They were laid diagonally across the cell entrance.

Cries of recognition and despair greeted them when they reached the lowest level. The cells contained the crew of the Slanderscree, as Rakossa had intimated.

During the next several hours, other groups of protesting, complaining sailors were bought in. Some were wounded, some drunk. No matter their condition, they were shoved and kicked into fresh cells to join their sullen companions.

Ta-hoding landed in the cell apparently reserved for officers, knights, and hairless devils. He drew himself up and counted off the assembled prisoners. The entire crew was there. That meant no hope of outside rescue and little hope of inside escape.

“Where’s our better chance, our opportunity, Skua?” Ethan couldn’t keep the bitterness from his voice, even though he was fully aware that fighting in the throne chamber would have meant his death hours ago.

“We’re still alive, feller-me-lad,” September replied without rancor. “Patient you can be, if optimistic feels uncomfortable. Me, I’ve been in worse situations. A time with my brother, now …” He paused a moment before continuing again.

“We’re alive down here. That’s better than bein’ dead upstairs.”

“Ro-Vijar was behind everything all along: the fight in the tavern in Arsudun, the attack on the raft, and now he’s telling this Rakossa lies so he’ll do his killing for him.”

“You’ve got to admire the beauty of it,” said September. “If any peaceforcers come snooping around, Ro-Vijar can blame our passin’ on this Rakossa fellow, who doesn’t strike me as dancing with both feet.”

“But how,” Ethan asked morosely, “could he win Rakossa over to his way of thinking so quickly?”

“I fear ’tis not difficult to imagine—sief, my head.” Hunnar, having regained his senses, sat wearily against a cold wall. “Ro-Vijar is a Landgrave himself. If he could prove such to another, ruler like this Rakossa, as he evidently has succeeded in doing, it would give much credence to his claims. His opinion would be much respected. The more so since he is older than Rakossa.

“Also he is Tran. Though it pains me to admit, my people are more likely to believe one of their own than some strange being such as yourself, friend Ethan, who could as likely be a daemon or a servant of the Dark One.” He shrugged, suddenly tired.

“Then too, it is not hard to imagine the creature Ro-Vijar offering this creature Rakossa a share in Arsudun’s offworld trade. So he is safe both ways, to his way of thinking. He strikes me as ambitious and a bit mad.”

“He doesn’t need to do even that,” September said. “Rakossa already has gained the Slanderscree. Oh, Ro-Vijar will argue that it’s rightfully his, but he’ll let Rakossa argue him out of it, in return for killing us. He’s after bigger stakes, Ro-Vijar is. Don’t forget, he’s got three modern hand beamers. They’re worth a damn sight more on this planet than two ice riggers.”

Hunnar crawled over to the bars, stood, and kicked at them. His sharp chiv barely produced three parallel scratches in the wood. There were many, similar sets of scratches.

“What do we do now?” Ethan couldn’t stand to watch Hunnar stubbornly, hopelessly expending his strength on the bars.

“Young feller-me-lad, I don’t know.”

The giant moved to a back corner. Though of considerable size, the cell floor had been well matted with pika-pina fragments. September stretched out on them, put his hands behind his head, and stared at the ceiling.

“Fer now, I’m going to sleep.”

“How is it,” Ethan said wonderingly, “that you can always sleep when your life’s in danger?”

September closed his eyes, shutting out cell and companions. “Well for one thing, lad, if they chose that time to kill you, you’d never know it happened.”

Ethan would have argued, but he was as exhausted as he was discouraged.

The old matting proved unexpectedly comfortable.

IX

“WAKE UP.”

Rolling over, Ethan opened one eye. He was lying by himself near the bars. Who could be talking to him in the middle of the night?

“Wake up!” The voice was more insistent.

Dried pika-pina fiber crackled like burning bugs as he got awkwardly to his knees and stared out into the dim light of the passageway. Torches illuminated cells and walkway between.

The voice hadn’t sounded like that of the cellkeeper, a phlegmatic Tran who appeared periodically to make certain the outland daemons hadn’t burrowed free of their prison by some unknown magical means.

But a dimly silhouetted shape was pressing against the bars close by. It was a Tran, which was expected. It was also female, which was not. Yellow cat eyes glowed by torchlight.

“Please,” the voice said anxiously, the eyes turning briefly to glance down the corridor. “There will be a change of cellmaster before too long. We must use every minute.”

Having decided that he was not dreaming, Ethan climbed to his feet. As he approached the bars, he finally recognized the speaker.

That gave him his biggest shock yet.

“But you’re Rakossa’s queen? …”

The girl expectorated, following it with a degrading word. “He calls me his concubine. The court refers to me as royal consort. I am his chiv-stool, for he wipes his feet on me.” Her voice held more hatred and bitterness than Ethan imagined possible. Each word was soaked in vitriol, every sentence washed with venom. Yet she spoke quietly and with control.

“I hight Teeliam Hoh, outlander. I was purchased to be less than a pet. Queen?” Fury kept her from laughing. “I am a thing he uses, plays with, like a favorite sword, yet the sword is cared for and treated better than I.”

Ethan was looking down the corridor himself now. “You mentioned a change of cellmaster. What about the one on duty now? He’ll be coming—”

“Nowhere,” she finished for him. “He and the other guard are dead. I cut their throats.”

Her hands fumbled at the old metal lock which sealed the cell. Mumblings and questions sounded behind Ethan as the noises and activity woke others.

“Then you believe us,” Ethan said excitedly, watching her hands work the heavy, ornate key. “You know Ro-Vijar for the liar he is.”

“I do not know the Landgrave of Arsudun for anything but the trail a dung crawler leaves behind itself after a meal.”

“If you don’t know whether he’s lying or not, then why are you doing this for us?”

Her bared teeth shone at him. “You think I do this for you? I do it for her.” She gestured up the corridor, returned to the lock and key.

Ethan looked in the indicated direction, made out the shape of a second figure. “Elfa.” Something clicked and then the door swung open easily. Tran in other cells were awake now, watching and murmuring tensely. Teeliam moved to free them.

Ethan moved toward Elfa, smiling happily. He stopped a meter away, and stared. Just stared. His disbelief was too great for him to curse the reality of what he saw.

The beautiful cat face was bruised and marred, one eye swollen almost shut. There were large patches of smooth fur missing, and places singed and blackened as if by fire. Elfa did not smile at him. In fact, her attention seemed rooted on the floor, though it was in a different place altogether. She held both arms tight around herself. The clothing she wore was simple, not what she’d been wearing when taken away from the rest of them.

Teeliam Hoh, having given the keys to other Tran, had come to stand next to Ethan. He turned a wordless, open-mouthed gaze to her.

“I know the inner passages of the castle,” she said, less bitterly now. “I knew one of you had been brought for questioning. Through a chink I saw how this Ro-Vijar asked questions, how nothing he said or did could be credited to a true Landgrave-protector.

“While I could not know the truth of what he said about you, I did know that everything else he claimed should be treated as a lie, for he lives and that is an untruth of itself.” She looked away from him, at the floor, then at Elfa.

“Rakossa was with him, watching, relishing the spectacle. After a while, he deigned to participate.” She shuddered. “I have had to endure his foul imagination for two years. Would that I could have gone mad.”

“Why.” Ethan swallowed, tried again. “Why did you stay here? Why didn’t you try to escape him?”

Now Teeliam found reason to laugh. “I do that several times a year, sky-outlander Ethan. Always I am caught, or bought back from those who find me. What Rakossa then does to me drives out all thoughts of escape for day-times. As will doubtless happen again after this. If I did not resist him, he would tire of me and kill me, for none can have a woman that Rakossa has had. And when I resist, he … imagines things.”

“It won’t happen again, woman,” said a deep, angry voice. September had come up behind Ethan and was staring compassionately at Teeliam. He had already examined Elfa professionally and chose not to stare at her.

“It does not matter. I would have done this only to anger him no matter what you do for yourselves or me, no matter what had been done to her.” She indicated Elfa, who had not moved.

“There is another thing. I believe you would wish to have these. I stole them.” She swung the small pack from her back, brought out their beamers.

“How long until the new cellmaster comes on duty?” Ethan clipped his own weapon back to his waist, tried to peer through sooty darkness up the corridor and stairs. Teeliam mentioned Tran time-units. “Maybe that’s long enough for us to slip up the stairways and fight our way back to the ship.”

“Are you offworlders truly the fools Ro-Vijar claims?” Teeliam eyed him disbelievingly. “You cannot go back through the castle. There are soldiers on every level above. You could not reach the courtyard before every warrior on the island had been assembled. I do not think your magical weapons which Ro-Vijar whispered of to Rakossa would be enough to repulse a thousand or more fighters in close quarters.”

“Gal’s got a point.” September bent his white-maned head down to her. “What you have in mind as an alternative?”

“I will cut the face of my father into his back and he will curse his manhood,” said a voice cold enough to match the atmosphere above ground. Elfa spoke at last.

“Surely you will.” Sir Hunnar had been standing in the shadows for an indeterminate length of time, watching Elfa. Now he moved into the light, speaking gently as he took her arm. “But not now, later. We must free ourselves first.”

She tried to pull free of his grasp. For a moment the green cloak and wraps she was wearing slid loosely aside. Ethan saw scars and markings he wished he had not.

“I will remove his fur one hair at a time,” she continued, in a tone that chilled Ethan’s heart. She made no move to cover herself.

“Yes, but later, later. I promise.” Hunnar fixed her cloak. How he kept his voice low and easy was something Ethan was never able to figure out. Now he slid an arm around her shoulders.

With an effort, Teeliam replied to September’s question. “Faint hope lies this way.” She started down the corridor, toward the cells farthest from the stairway. Ethan and September followed. With Hunnar’s support, a glaze-eyed Elfa stumbled uncertainly in their wake.

At the far end of the dungeon they found another doorway. It was low for a Tran, blocked up with masonry and cordoned off with braided pika-pina cable.

“It is told that in ancient times the worst offenders of the laws were put through there. A tunnel lies beyond. Where it leads to is not spoken of. But it is a place far from here.”

“Good enough for me,” said September, approving the plan. “Why is it sealed up?”

“Four Landgraves ago, the histories say, it was decided the punishment was too severe for even the murderers of children.”

“Wonderful,” Ethan murmured, eying the doorway as if some inconceivable horror might at any moment burst through the stones to devour them.

“Where does it go?” A prosaic query from the Slanderscree’s reluctant, but ever-curious Captain Ta-hoding.

Teeliam turning, told him. “It goes down to Hell.”

“Fine.” September smiled, “then I don’t expect we’ll be followed. At that moment he looked a bit like a daemon of the underworld himself. “Stand away.”

After adjusting his beamer, he turned it on the sealed portal. The blue energy beam dissolved stone, cement, and pika-pina cable alike. There were mutters of awe from the Slanderscree’s sailors. They had seen the light knives of the outlanders in action before, but they hadn’t known they could burn through the unbreakable, fire-resistant pika-pina.

Once he’d cut several horizontal lines in the barrier, September turned off the beam to conserve its charge and kicked out the remaining stones. They fell through with surprisingly little effort, though, as the old knight Balavere Longax commented, there was no reason for a really solid barricade, since no Tran would want to go through that doorway of his own free will.

Ethan took one of the torches from its wall holder, stuck it through the opening. “It looks higher inside. There’s a tunnel, all right. It slopes downward.”

An uncertain susurration sounded from the tightly packed crew-members. Hunnar faced them. “To stay here is to die. All who wish certain death may remain. Those who desire a chance for life, and revenge, may follow. Our human friends say there is no danger. They have not lied to us before. I do not believe they do so now.”

Turning, he took a second torch and ducked beneath the low lintel.

“I never said there was no danger,” Ethan told him.

“Nor did friend September or Williams,” Hunnar replied, moving his head so as to see further down the tunnel. “I am not worried about danger ahead. Our sailors and knights will fight when they have to, but it is more dangerous to let them stew in their own imaginings.”

The two started downward. They were quickly followed by September and Williams, Ta-hoding, Balavere, and Hunnar’s two squires. When Teeliam and Elfa went in turn, the murmuring among the crew changed from fearful to embarrassed. In twos and threes, they grabbed torches, muttered of lost hopes, and followed after.

The tunnel was just high enough to permit an adult Tran to walk upright. Though an icepath led steadily downhill, the crew did not take advantage of it to move rapidly. They picked rather than chivaned their way downward and were quite content to follow the cautious pace of the chivless humans. Huge stone blocks formed walls and ceiling.

Without references, time rippled—it became blurry and indistinct. “How deep do you think we’ve come?” Ethan asked Williams later.

“Hard to say, Ethan.” The schoolteacher missed a step, caught himself, and stared meaningfully at the ceiling. “Sixty, maybe seventy meters below the castle. Maybe more. And we’ve come a fair linear distance as well.”

Continuing to descend sharply, the tunnel showed no sign of ending. They stumbled on and on. No mysterious spirits of the underworld materialized to torment them. A breeze blew steadily at their backs, pungent with the odor of the now distant dungeon.

Unexpectedly, the character of the tunnel changed. The roof overhead and the walls flanking them gave way from hewn stone to a material the color of creamy ceramic. Ethan touched the wall nearest, scraped at it with a gloved finger. It came away in reluctant splinters: ice.

He could see the stones behind the layer of ice. Once again the sailors began conversing worriedly among themselves. They were a brave group, but they were walking into the nightmares of their cubhood, and it shook the most stalwart among them.

“Nothing to be gained by going back,” said September quietly. He pulled his beamer and they continued downward.

Several times the marchers paused to rest. Hunnar and Balavere were convinced it was safe to do so. Even if their escape had been discovered, the Poyos were unlikely to organize pursuit, convinced that the denizens of the underworld would rid them of their former prisoners. That belief was shared by the majority of the Slanderscree’s crew.

Before long they began moving again. “No telling how deep we are now,” Williams muttered to himself. “Pressure appears unchanged.”

September halted abruptly, his head cocked to one side. He had his face mask open and appeared to be listening intently. The line backed up behind him.

“Hear something, feller-me-lad?” Ethan strained to pick out an unknown sound from the background noise of several hundred respirating humans and Tran.

The sound he settled on was difficult to distinguish because it sounded something like breathing itself. A faint, distant groaning and gurgling. “We can’t go back now.” He took over the lead, extending his torch ahead of him. The noise grew louder. Despite knowing better, he had to admit it sounded very much like a sleeping daemon softly snoring.

They reached a bend in the tunnel, turned it. The pathway leveled out. Ethan stopped. Anxious queries came from behind him. Turning his beamer on, he set it for the widest possible, most diffuse beam. It lit up an incredible sight.

At some unguessable time past, tremendous heat had melted out the vast cavern they gazed upon. Columns of ice did not so much support as decorate the ceiling; which was festooned with dead icicles. The roof itself was only five or six meters above their heads, but it stretched off into distances unreached by the blue glow of the beamer.

No snuffling efreet or djinn lay waiting to greet their eyes. The sound came from black water—unfrozen, liquid, free-flowing water that stretched off to merge into a black horizon with the far reaches of the ceiling. It lapped gently, echoing through the cavern, against an icy beach a few meters away. Ethan identified the subtle odor that he’d been smelling for the last several minutes: salt.

Williams’ gaze was focused on the ceiling formations. “We’ve come down through the ice sheet and emerged outside the island proper. There must be one or two hundred meters of solid ice above us.”

Terrified, childish mewings were coming from some of the crew members. A few dropped to their knees and began imploring whichever gods they believed in to take pity on them. Ethan saw resignation and the anticipation of death in several furry faces.

Even the knowledgeable, unsuperstitious Eer-Meesach was shivering with fear. It is one thing to dismiss stories and legends of fanciful places as inventions utilized by adults to frighten and compel children. It is quite another to confront them as reality.

Balavere Longax, Sofold’s greatest general, announced easily, “We shall all die.”

“Not unless we have to swim.” September’s habit of confronting danger with humor hadn’t left him. The greater the threat, the more irreverent his comments. He left the tunnel and strolled carefully across the ice to the water’s edge. “Maybe it’s hell to you, but I find the quiet and openness kind of attractive.”

To his surprise, Ethan had discovered he was also trembling. The giant’s words brought him back to normal. This was a Tran conception of Hell, not his. It was only a cold, dark place.

Holding his torch firmly he moved to join September. A glance over the frozen berm showed nothing but fluid blackness. It was as if he were staring upward at the night sky instead of down into the bowels of some primeval ocean. And like the night sky, this subterranean sea blazed with stars and nebulae of its own.

Thousands of tiny luminous creatures darted and jerked their way through the inky water. Green, hot pink, bright yellow, crimson, and cherry red—every imaginable color indentified some small blazing bit of existence. Compared to this well of magnificence, where every creature no matter how small was cloaked in gems, the atmospheric world above seemed drab and dull.

Ethan grew aware of another figure come up alongside him, but did not shift his gaze from that shimmering palette of life. “How can they live down here, Milliken, beneath the ice?”

“Perhaps there is vegetation which releases oxygen slowly, or volcanic production of gases.” The teacher shrugged. “Evidently there is enough to sustain a multitude of forms.”

“It is very beautiful.” Ethan spun. Elfa was standing behind them, peering almost shyly into the glassy blackness. She smiled hesitantly at Ethan. He couldn’t help but smile back. She was not fully recovered, but she was no longer in shock.

His gaze traveled to the glistening icicles, false stalactites, to the columns that exploded torchlight into a thousand tiny replicas of its source, none of which could match for diversity and beauty the swimming bead-shapes of the water dwellers. How lovely is Hades, he mused, when it is other than one’s own. Why, it was neither hot nor fearsome here, and there was no wind at all.

A whirlpool of luminescent life eddied ecstatically in the pale blue light of his beamer. He turned it downward, piercing the water to a depth of several meters. It was as if the beamer were a vacuum, sucking up ever more delirious dancers from the depths below.

The water erupted, sent them stumbling or falling backward.

Ethan saw a mouth. Rubies and emeralds, tormalines and topazes, ozmidines, ferrosilicate crystals mirror-bright decorated the cavern within a cavern. Stalactites and stalagmites of vitreous, transparent teeth lined the jaws. Around it was a face wide and fat like a toad’s, with a single searchlight of a mad vermilion eye above the bejeweled mouth. Black, slick flesh rippled in folds around eye and mouth, a pulpy envelope to hold organs loosely in place.

Whatever it was, it had been drawn from familiar depths by Ethan’s bright beam. Brave as they were some of the sailors fainted in place. Others forgot discipline and command in their rush to squeeze themselves back up the tunnel.

September and Williams already were firing at the apparition with beams tighter and more deadly than Ethan’s, while he strove frantically to readjust the setting on his own. Each time a blue beam touched the creature’s flesh the hallucination-made-real produced a gargantuan grunt. The humans fired as they retreated back toward the tunnel.

Mouth and eye rose roof high above the water and, hunched after them. Several more bolts struck it. The tumorous shape came down on the ice beach with a crash that echoed energetically ‘round the cavern, generating a low splintering sound. It lay still and unmoving, quartz teeth shining in the torchlight, the single round eye with its absurdly small black pupil staring blindly at them.

Screaming still sounded from up the tunnel, however, Hunnar had his sword out and was trying to force his way through the panicked mob.

“Cowards of Sofold! The daemon is dead, slain by the light knives of our friends who are half your size!” The mad rush upward slowed, ceased. Screams became anxious or uneasy murmurs. “When you are finished whimpering, you may rejoin us.” He sheathed his sword and deliberately chivaned downward at top speed, showing blatant disregard for what might await him within the cavern.

Gradually the sailors drifted after. They spread out below the tunnel mouth to gaze in delicious horror at the hellbeast resting on the ice. It was no less fearsome and not the least bit comical for having a body that was one-third head.

Displaying utter indifference to post-dying reflexes, September strode up to the creature which Eer-Meesach had already dubbed Kalankatht (which translates from the Tran roughly as “beast-which-is-all-teeth-and-no-tail”) and stuck his head into the gaping mouth. Frozen open, the upper jaw was still a meter above his hooded head.

Though two meters long on average, the transparent teeth were no thicker around than a man’s finger. There were hundreds in the chamber-sized maw. Short, delicate-looking fins projected from back and sides, while the blunt tail was flattened vertically for swimming and steering. It could not be very fast in pursuit of its prey, but it could bite at a lot of ocean.

Williams was examining the corpse with fine scientific detachment, though as a strong believer in the lingering independence of certain muscular functions he chose not to stray so near the jaws as had September. “Eye, mouth, and stomach. No waste space or organs.” He moved behind the nightmare, out of sight.

Ethan and Hunnar had joined September before the gaping mouth. “What more natural than that there be devils in Hell?”

Hesitantly, the knight reached out to touch the wet black skin. “Then you believe it a daemon of the underworld also?”

“Skua likes to fancify,” said Ethan. “There are similar, natural creatures living in the deeps of my own world’s seas. Some are bigger than this one, though none quite as outlandish.” As life-fluids ceased flowing within the body, the phosphorescences around mouth and sides were beginning to fade, lights and life going out together.

“This water is only part of your liquid ocean, the same kind of water that forms the ice above us, the ice that rafts chivan across, and that surrounds Sofold.” Ethan touched his torch to the floor, tasted of the water it produced. “Ice to liquid, just as you drink it aboard ship or back in Wannome.”

“Then the philosophers are right,” the knight said. “The inside of the world is fluid.”

Ethan smiled. “Oddly enough, that’s right; but the liquid is metal and not water. Williams can explain it better than I can.” He turned, called out. “Milliken?”

“This ends our exploring the sea.” September clipped his beamer back to his waist. “Next cousin of this mobile mouth we lure up is liable to be bigger still. What’re you yellin’ at, young feller-me-lad?”

“We can’t find Milliken. I thought he’d be studying this body, but …”

“Over here!” They looked to their right. The teacher was standing at the far edge of the cavern, where the ice gave way to sloping rock. As they moved toward him, he ducked back out of sight.

“Another cavern?” Ethan wondered aloud. Other Tran moved to follow them.

When they turned the bend he’d vanished behind, Milliken was still further ahead. The ice remained several meters from the gravel and stone.

“What is this?” September looked at the nearby ice wall curiously. “Another tunnel?”

“No.” Puffing, the schoolteacher had run back to rejoin them. “It seems to continue endlessly in a general northwesterly direction. In places the ice draws nearer to the island, in others it moves farther out. It may run around the entire circumference of the island.” He gestured back toward the now hidden cavern.

“At this depth, in this particular region anyway, volcanic heat from the island’s interior has spread outward instead of upward. We are probably at a level parallel to some horizontal flow of magma.”

“Then if we follow the curve of the island,” September pointed out, “we could come out under the harbor where the ship is moored.”

“Of what good is that?” asked Hunnar.

Ethan checked his beamer. “Our weapons are still three-quarters charged, Hunnar. We can cut our own tunnel upward. We couldn’t manage it through solid rock, but we’ve plenty of energy to melt ice.” He faced Williams. “Think you can judge when we’ve come near the Slanderscree, Milliken?”

“Dear me. I don’t know. The angle of our descent from the castle … I really don’t know.”

“Do the best you can. No matter where we come up, we’ll have a chance.”

When communicated to the rest of the crew, strung out back into the cavern, this information raised spirits considerably. Tran who had long since conceded soul and spirit to the Dark One found hope in the prospect of again confronting flesh and blood enemies.

The open corridor wound its way around the sunken shore. In one place the earth was so warm that the ice turned to black water nearby but the sailors refused to wade through it. Ethan and September had to use precious energy to cut a dry path upward through the ice, then down to the corridor again. They proceeded carefully. It wouldn’t do to lose contact with solid land and start cutting their way out into the enormous ice sheet which covered the ocean.

They rested, some of the Tran feeling confident enough to express a desire for food. Hours later, Williams said cautiously, “Here.” He raised his left hand, pointed upslope at a modest angle. “Cut here. If we melt our way upward at forty-five degrees we should come out beneath the ship.”

“How sure are you, Milliken?”

The teacher looked glumly at Ethan. “Not very.”

“An honest answer. I’ll start the cut, feller-me-lad.” September adjusted his beamer. After several tries he located the setting which best combined a fairly wide beam with enough power to melt the white ceiling overhead rapidly. Water ran beneath their feet, uncomfortable to Tran and human alike, if for different reasons.

Following immediately behind September, Ethan discovered his heart pounding harder than the climb demanded. His breathing was quick and heavy, his eyes darting around the circular tunnel. He found that shutting them relaxed his breathing and the hammering in his chest. Williams touched his booted foot and he jerked.

“Claustrophobic?” Ethan; looking back without opening his eyes, nodded vigorously. “Try not to think about it. Don’t think about anything. Think music to yourself.”

Ethan did so, dredging up a lilting popular tune from his adolescence. His heartbeat fell to near-normal and he discovered he could breathe without effort. Concentrate, he told himself. Concentrate on Merriwillya night a burning, a-burning, Merriwillya a-yearning. Not on the tons and tons and tons of ice over your head, below your hands and knees, pressing in on your sides, pressing, pressing …

He couldn’t take his turn at cutting. He didn’t freeze or faint, but the sight of solid ice in front of him while knowing there were hundreds of anxious Tran blocking any retreat was too much to handle. They showed Hunnar how to use the beamer and he took Ethan’s place, saying nothing as he crawled past the half-paralyzed salesman.

Fortunately, the tunnel lengthened as fast as they could climb. Intense energy kept the little stream flowing steadily around ankles and knees.

The time came when September turned off his beamer, started to trade places with Williams, and then paused to glance upward. “Light above … there’s light coming through the ice!”

Joyful shouts rang deafeningly through the tunnel, until the knights and ship’s officers thought to quiet their men. September looked sympathetically at Ethan.

“It’d be better, feller-me-lad, if we break surface after the sun’s well down. If you can’t take it, we can—”

Ethan settled his back against the tunnel wall, hands clasping knees, his head resting between them. “I can wait,” he said curtly. September merely nodded.

The information was passed back down the tunnel. Sailors settled themselves for fast sleep in awkward positions, while others worked overlong on cleaning claws and chiv, the only weapons they had.

Hunnar was talking in low tones with Elfa and below her, with Teeliam Hoh. Ethan, catching an occasional word, decided they were talking about what had transpired back in the castle. He turned his attention away from them, having no desire to learn the methodology of certain barbarisms. It was enough to have seen the scars and bruises on Elfa’s face and body, to have listened to the mental scarring of the royal consort. Bad dreams enough plagued him already.

When darkness above was assured, the sleepers were shaken awake. All torches were extinguished. “Let me.” September looked appraisingly at him, then exchanged places.

“Keep your beam short and low, feller-me-lad.”

“I’m not completely helpless, you know.” Ethan turned to the ice above, began melting with barely a suggestion of blue issuing from the lens of the beamer. September did not reply, in doing so saying much.

A kind of petrified illumination showed ahead. Ethan turned off his beamer, raised both gloved hands, and pushed hard. Splinters fell past his face mask as he broke through the surface.

Cautiously, he raised his head out. Like a vacationing friend now returning, ever-present wind buffeted the back of his skull.

A low wooden wall lay ten meters or so to his right, lining the shore of Poyolavomaar. He twisted around. Piers lay ahead and behind him. A couple of small ice rafts were tied up to each. There was no movement, and lights on only one. With the temperature already a brisk minus thirty C. and falling, sailors and merchants alike would seek refuge in warmer taverns and cabins.

Huddled together in the distance above the shore wall, the lights of the town flickered brightly. An occasional shout rose above the wind.

Ethan looked back, ducked down into the tunnel. Anxious faces, masked or furred, stared back up at him expectantly. “We’re in the harbor, between the ends of two piers. But I don’t recognize anything, and I don’t see the ship.”

“Let me through.” With much squirming and wiggling, Hunnar slipped past Ethan. Elfa, Teeliam, Tersund and another sailor followed him, their musk strong in the confined corridor. Hunnar looked back down at Ethan.

“My strangely clothed friends, you must remain here. Both you and your wondrous weapons are too conspicuous.” Then Hunnar spread his dan, hunched over, and let the wind take him away.

Minutes became hours of worry. What if they were captured? Worse, what if some wandering Poyo soldier discovered the hole in the ice? These and a dozen other deleterious scenarios played on the stage of Ethan’s mind before Hunnar’s voice whispered above him.

“We’ve found the ship. ’Tis two piers over. There are but a few sentries aboard her and they sleep the dreams of the bored and ordered-about. Some sleep sounder than that. Come.”

Remaining silent, but obviously glad to be back on the surface again, the crew of the Slanderscree emerged from the tunnel. Ethan knew that the sentries who were “sleeping sounder than that” were the ones who had unwittingly provided Hunnar and his companions with the swords and lances they now carried.

The prisoners assembled beneath the low underside of a thirty-five-meter merchant raft. It was broad enough of beam to conceal the entire crew.

“We could do no better than to chivan as fast as possible for the ship and raise sail before the city patrols can react.” Hunnar hefted his sword. “We have weapons enough.”

“ ’Tis so!” growled a sailor nearby, flexing furry fingers armed with sharp, stubby claws.

“This meets your approval, my friends?” Hunnar looked at the three humans.

September nodded. “I’m not much for subtle strategies either. Let’s do it.”

All three readied their beamers again, hoping they wouldn’t have to employ the revealing energy weapons. Hunnar moved out into the moonlight, and then in groups of five the crew raced silently across the ice toward the waiting icerigger.

With their skates lockered aboard, the three humans used the simplest method of making the dash across the slippery surface. Sitting down, each extended his arms back over his head. A sailor grabbed a wrist in one hand, a second the other. Spreading their dan, they took off across the open stretch of harbor.

Ethan could only lament his undignified position and pray the tough material of the survival suit held. It did so, but even the friction generated by such a short journey raised a portion of the suit’s temperature above what its compensators considered comfortable.

All boarding ladders were still draped invitingly over the railings. Spreading out beneath the vast underbody of the icerigger, her crew commenced a half hysterical climb upward, utilizing every available ladder.

There wasn’t a soul on board. “Apparently,” September murmured, “they decided freezing out in the night a bad choice with so many inviting taverns nearby. But wouldn’t they wonder at their companions whom you dispatched, Hunnar?”

“I imagine,” the knight said with a wolfish grin, “that they left for warmth and drink because they assumed their absent fellows had already done so.”

“The Landgrave has great confidence in his dungeons.” Ethan relaxed gratefully. There would be no fighting here.

“Why should he not?” said Teeliam, looking around for someone to kill and evidently disappointed at finding no one. “None have ever escaped from them in memory.”

“No one has ever traveled through Hell before, either.” Elfa spoke in a way that indicated she was referring to more than just their journey through ice and ocean.

“Quick now!” Ta-hoding gave rapid orders to his crew. “Up sail and quiet about it!”

With the prospect of imminent freedom to energize them, the sparmen assaulted the rigging like birds. Sails began to unfurl, filling silently.

Spreading his dan, which in the light night breeze were barely adequate to carry his porcine body up the iceramp, the captain chivaned his way to the helm-deck. From there he shouted in low tones to the sailors astern to hurry in with the ice anchors. Other crewmembers were at work on the pier, quietly and with feverish efficiency slipping pika-pina cables from cleat and capstan.

Though the Tran moved with the silence of a tribe of sock-footed ants, so much activity could not remain unnoticed forever. Before long a voice called out in the darkness.

“Who’s there? Who’s on board the prize?”

Sailors on deck and shore desperately tried to spot the caller. A minute passed, and then it did not matter.

“Help! The prisoners have escaped!” There was as much astonishment as urgency in that cry. “Guard to the ships, guard to the ships, and ware devils the—”

There was a twang. One of the sailors had armed himself with a crossbow from the ship’s armory. Now he let fly from the mizzenmast and the alarming words changed to an indecipherable gurgling. There was the faint, distant flump of something striking the ground.

Too late. Other voices sounded now on shore, called querulously to one another and to the unresponsive shapes moving about the great raft. Ta-hoding, dropping all pretense of concealment, moved to the helm-deck railing and roared instructions liberally laced with invective at the crew.

Ponderously, with adjustable spars turning, the Slanderscree began to gain sternway and back clear of the pier. Sailors still on the dock saw armed figures chivaning at them, jumped aboard. There was not enough time to loosen all the cables.

A concatenation of bizarre clangings, rips and tears, groans and inanimate protests sounded from the dock. The incredible pika-pina cables held, but the dock did not. Pinions and cleats ripped free of their sockets, flew toward the massive raft, while Poyos on the pier turned about and tried to protect themselves from flying bone and wood.

On board the Slanderscree the boarding ladders were brought in, several with sailors still clinging to them. Looking as if they would sweat if they could, Ta-hoding’s helmsmen threw the great wheel hard over. The icerigger continued to move backward, her bow swinging steadily around to the north. As soon as it cleared the outermost pier, the spars would shift and the westwind would fill the sails from behind.

They could see oil lamps massing along the shore, spilling out onto the ice. Shouts of outrage and confusion flared as unevenly and brightly as the flames. A few arrows and a couple of spears flew at the great, ghostly shape of the icerigger. Most fell short, a pair stuck into the rear of the helmdeck as it swung landward.

Within the waking city, horns were droning like undertakers. Drums howled more urgently, and edgy soldiers loosed arrows at the moons.

“Over spars!” Ta-hoding bellowed. “Over spars!” echoed his mates. The Slanderscree’s sails came around, there was a whiplike crack, sheets plumped out like the prow of a woman September had once known, and the icerigger began to move ahead, picking up speed with every second.

Her crew was much too busy to shout with joy. Both moons were high adrift in a cloudless sky. The sextuple crags of Poyolavomaar’s circling islands cast quilted shadows across the harbor as the foremast lookout yelled a warning. “Pilot raft ahead!”

Ta-hoding looked grimly at Ethan. “Small pleasure would it be if Valsht the harbormaster, excrement in Trannish form, were to be aboard it.”

Seconds later Ethan heard a faint crunching sound and rushed to the edge of the helmdeck. Shards of cut wood were sliding beneath the ship. The rear runners further reduced them to splinters. His gaze shifted aft, to show tumbling bits of wood and softer fragments strewn in the wake of the icerigger.

“The gate is closed!” shouted the lookout again. Ta-hoding stood his place, simply reminding the helmsmen of their course. They held a touch tighter to the wheel, as everyone else on board braced himself as best he could for the expected collision.

Ethan imagined disapproving, forbidding faces frowning down at them from the flanking mountain-tops. He fell to one knee as the deck shimmied beneath him. Then they were through, and he rushed back to the railing for a look astern.

Angry lights danced futilely on the walls linking the two isles. A pair of huge wooden gates lay smashed and fragmented on the moonlit ice. Four huge blocks of stone bounced lightly in the icerigger’s wake, their unbroken pika-pina cables still firmly secured to each.

Damage reports came back from the bow. The Slanderscree would have to do without a bowsprit for awhile. If their maneuverability was slightly impaired, their speed was not. They were flying across the ice now, the powerful westwind shoving them with a giant’s hand from behind, their first attempt at initiating a union of Tran island-states a dismal failure that receded rapidly astern.

X

“YOU MUST GO AFTER them, your highness.” Calonnin Ro-Vijar filled his voice with urgency as he addressed Rakossa of Poyolavomaar.

Crowded around him in the Landgrave’s personal quarters were the high knights and generals of the city. Most of them would rather have been anywhere but within verbal range of their storming, blood-thirsty ruler.

Rakossa seemed not to hear his royal counterpart. “They must have her! Her body is not in the dungeon or on the ice, not in the hell place or the tunnel—the tunnel wrested by the devil-weapons she stole.”

A subordinate officer, in charge of the castle’s armory, was not present to confirm or deny what most in the room knew to be true. For his laxity in allowing himself to be seduced and then knocked unconscious by the absent royal consort, he had already been returned to his family. As the officer’s family was scattered about five of Poyolavomaar’s seven isles, it was necessary for him to be returned in the equivalent number of pieces.

“When we catch her this time, we will …” Rakossa unreeled a long list of imaginative and shuddersome proposals. While doing so he waved his longsword about with complete disregard for where it might impact, much to the discomfort of those officials in the forefront of the attending crowd.

“It seems incredible, my lord, that they dared travel out through the old bore,” the chief jailer observed, wondering why he had not enjoyed the same fate as the armory guard.

One of the knights safely concealed near the back of the group murmured, “ ’Tis unwise to pursue those who can kill demons in Hell.”

“She will wish she stayed her hand from aiding them!” Rakossa swung his sword, destroying a priceless ivory carving adorning the back of a chair. “We are through playing with this one.” He showed gleaming fangs. “She shall not return to embarrass us further. We will make a hell for her she will not have to climb down to, a new hell every day, different and stimulating!”

“Would it not be simpler, my lord,” asked the same knight who’d spoken a moment ago, “to take a new and more willing consort?”

“Who speaks? Who tells Rakossa what to do and how to judge?” The knight did not answer, bent his knees to sink a little lower into the crowd.

“No sheslug defies us or gains our better. We will instruct her in the meanings of Hell.”

Another official whispered that after serving as consort to the Landgrave for several years, the vanished woman no doubt knew the meanings of hell already. Fortunately, Rakossa did not hear or he might have been inspired to begin a mass murder of all assembled merely to insure the disposal of his single insulter.

“It is only just that you pursue her—and them,” said a comfortingly acquiescent Ro-Vijar. Rakossa’s anger subsided somewhat, the Mad which had held him fully let clearer thoughts have room in his twisted brain.

“That is truth, friend Ro-Vijar. We must follow her and those who aided her.” How neatly, thought Ro-Vijar with distaste, he changes things in his mind to fit his mind’s bent. Now it is the escapees who are guilty of assisting the woman, not the other way around. Then he grew tense, aware that the madman was eyeing him coldly.

“We have taken your word in much of this, Landgrave of Arsudun. Of the three offworld devils’ intentions and of their Tran friends.”

“I tell only the truth, sire, of what needs doing. You defend all of us. Your name will be remembered as mighty.”

“We wonder,” Rakossa muttered calculatingly, while Ro-Vijar strove to appear unaffected by his ferocious stare, “just whose purposes are truly being served in this.

“However,” he said more briskly, taking his gaze from the silent Ro-Vijar, “We will have that witch back. As she is served by those you believe need be destroyed, it seems to pursue one we must pursue all.”

“They are devils and destroyers, Lord Rakossa.”

“Devils they are. Destroyers seek destruction, not escape. Yet only a few died in trying to prevent their flight. We wonder—we will have her back!”

He turned on a stiffly posed officer. “Talizeir, ready the fleet for pursuit. All ships, all officers, all crew to the ready, for we leave by first light.”

“As my Landgrave commands,” the tall, dignified Tran replied. He pushed through the others toward the door.

“You are dismissed,” Rakossa told the rest. “Those who are to chase, prepare yourselves.”

“We will have her back,” he murmured, alone now in the ornate chamber. “And we will have that ship, that magnificent ice ship for our own, though this strange Landgrave Ro-Vijar wishes it for himself.”

As for the outworld devils, perhaps when they were recaptured he would listen a little more to their words and a little less to those of the Landgrave of Arsudun. He was older, this Ro-Vijar, more experienced, his words as devious as his true aims. His purposes clashed somehow with his speech.

Blood and bone awash in a sea of shrieks inundated his thoughts, and he thought again only of the consort Teeliam Hoh, as the thick blood bubbled from her laughter.

Wind howled mournfully across the deck of the Slanderscree. Ethan blinked behind his face mask as he emerged on deck, shutting the cabin door tightly behind him. Elfa, Hunnar, and September stood conversing near the mizzenmast. As he drew nearer he saw Teeliam among them, hidden partly by September’s bulk.

“Warmth and wind this morning to you, friend Ethan,” Hunnar called happily. “We debate on what to do next.”

“We still can’t return to Arsudun.” September spoke through the diaphragm of his own mask.

“Our first try at establishing a confederation certainly didn’t work out very well.” Ethan sounded depressed.

“What confederation speak you of, friend Ethan?” asked Teeliam. He explained their idea to her.

“That gives meaning to the lies of the false Landgrave Ro-Vijar,” said the former royal consort of Poyolavomaar. “The only Tran he seeks to protect is himself.”

“We could return to Wannome,” Hunnar suggested. Everyone looked to him with varying expressions of dismay or shock and he hastened to protest. “Not I, ’tis not I who wishes to do so. But I felt it but fair to certain of the crew to relay their desires.

“For myself, I admit I was skeptical at first, my friends. Now, the more we travel across my world and the more I see how such as Ro-Vijar and Rakossa conspire for their own benefit, pitting Tran against Tran, state against state, the more convinced am I of the Tightness of this plan. This union you have outlined is a worthy end to be fought for of itself, no matter what distribution of trade and benefits it also produces with your government, friend Ethan.”

September commented approvingly. “Nothin’ like some outright treachery and double-dealing by politicians to convince the citizenry they need a new form of government.”

“There are still many good men and women of the crew who feel differently.” Hunnar gestured at the ship around them, the populated rigging above. “They became homesick long since and talk more of mates and cubs and mistresses than confederations and politics. Adventure is growing wearisome to them, nor has our failure at Poyolavamaar inspired aught but despair. They wish for familiar faces and home hearths.”

“They’re not alone,” Ethan said, feeling a tug toward a hearth more distant than the knight could imagine. “Are you suggesting the possibility of mutiny?”

Hunnar executed a violent Tran gesture indicating absolute negativity. “Ta-hoding is too observant and too good a captain for that. Never would he permit dissension to advance that far. Where other captains might put disgruntled crew members in chains, he can disarm them with a laugh or a sailor’s jest.

“I wish merely to say that for this journey to show profit, we will have to have some success capable of raising the spirits of our less far-sighted shipmates.”

Ethan studied the parallel grooves the runners cut in the ice behind them. “We can outdistance any pursuit from Poyolavomaar. The question is, where do we go now?”

“Your pardon.” All eyes turned to Teeliam. “I care not whither you go so long as it is not back to Poyo. But I have listened well to your talk and believe you have the best interests of all in mind. As you have failed at Poyolavomaar through the wiles of its ruler and not its people, so should you try another state at least as wealthy and powerful, if not as aggressive.” She nodded forward.

“I am no sailor, but I know directions and locations.” She made a spitting sound as she spoke. “This is necessary when escape to elsewhere becomes one’s obsession. Less than two hundred satch to the (Tran equivalent for south-southwest) lies fabled Moulokin.”

“Two hundred satch—a fair journey to seek a myth.” Hunnar laughed and even Elfa looked dubiously at her savior. “There is no such state as Moulokin.”

“You’ve heard of this place?” Ethan eyed the knight in amazement. “You never heard of Arsudun, yet this place which sounds still farther from Sofold is familiar to you?”

“Moulokin is a mystic name on Tran-ky-ky, friend Ethan.” The knight was still grinning. “Many of the finest ice ships were supposedly built there, in its shipyards. Yet not I nor any I know of have conversed with has ever seen Moulokin, nor even a Moulokinese.”

“If they’re only a myth, what about the ships?”

“Friend Ethan,” Hunnar said as one to a cub, “all owners are proud of their vessels. The finer the vessel, the greater the pride. To claim Moulokinese origin for a raft is to claim a credit few dare to match. ‘Moulokin’ may be naught but an honorary title given the best ships built in many shipyards and bestowed at their launching.”

“Moulokin is real.” Teeliam refused to be dissuaded.

“You have been there?” asked Hunnar.

“No,” she said, suddenly subdued.

“Do you know anyone who has been there?”

“Not of myself. I do know of some who say they have traded with some who have been there.” Hunnar made a disgusted sound. “Its direction is known,” she said defiantly. “Moulokin must be more powerful even than Poyolavomaar, for it is said never to have been sacked by a horde.”

“Absurdities, friend Ethan,” Hunnar added gently. “The richer a city, the more attention it would draw from the ice nomads. They would band together temporarily until no city could stand against them. Not Poyolavomaar, not Arsudun before your people granted it protection, not Wannome my own. They could not withstand greater and greater attacks forever. The more attacks a state withstands, the wealthier it grows, and the wealthier it becomes, the larger and more frequent the attacks it invites.

“ ’Tis kind of you to try and help us, Teeliam, but Moulokin can not lend us the help it does not have.”

“What do you propose we do instead?” Elfa asked, challenging him.

Hunnar seemed a bit taken aback by the vehemence of her query. “There should be other states we can try, elsewhere.”

“In lieu of the most powerful?” She turned that uncomfortable feline stare on Ethan. He turned to Teeliam.

“How sure are you of this Moulokin?”

“Myths do not have directions.” She raised a furry arm, pointed just south of the bow. “There lies Moulokin, if it lies anywhere. Does it not behoove us to try for it?”

September watched a distant gutorrbyn glide by, eying them hungrily. “We can do both. If Moulokin exists, we’ll find her. If she doesn’t, we might as well search south for our next potential ally as any other direction.”

“I agree,” said Ethan. He looked back at Teeliam. “One more question, though. Two hundred satch is a long way from Poyolavomaar. Long, but not impossible. If Moulokin is so worth visiting, why hasn’t anyone from your city gone there?”

“It is a dangerous journey.” She paused, then added more quietly. “I would not hide that from you.”

“All journeys across the ice are dangerous,” Hunnar cut in emphatically. “How so is it known dangerous to Moulokin?”

“It is told that devils work between Poyolavomaar and Moulokin.”

“You’ve seen devils before.” Ethan patted the beamer clipped to his waist. “You’ve seen what our beamers can do. We can kill any devils.”

“Perhaps, but you cannot kill the sea.”

“What?” He frowned.

“These are sujoc devils who are invisible. They too live mostly in Hell. But between here and Moulokin they cavort close to the surface. Where they do, they bend the ocean.” She looked frightened now, for all her hard-shelled bravado.

“That’s not possible,” said Hunnar.

“That is what is rumored.”

Elfa looked accusingly at Hunnar. “If Moulokin be real and not a myth, why should not a bent ocean be equally real?”

Deductive logic was not Sir Hunnar’s strong point. “I do not know,” he replied angrily, “but the ocean cannot bend.”

“We’ll find out, because I guess that’s the way we’ll keep going,” said Ethan.

“As always, Sir Ethan, you choose boldness over caution.” She all but purred at him. Hunnar growled noticeably and stalked away sternward.

The good knight took it personally every time Elfa supported one of Ethan’s decisions over one of his own. But perhaps this time the redbearded warrior was right.

Ethan found himself puzzling over Teeliam’s words as he relayed the course to Ta-hoding, found himself repeating her comments over and over again in his mind as he hunted for a flaw in his translation.

Of course there was no such thing as a bent ocean, anymore than there were devils who caused it. But he had seen a “devil” and fought it.

Suppose this other myth also had basis in fact?

Hunnar lay in the sun out on the new bowsprit, tracing lines in the wood with one claw while contemplating the ice shushing past below. Days had passed since they’d swung around to follow the girl Teeliam’s imaginary course toward its imaginary destination. The sun was not yet much above the horizon. Early morning cold chilled even a Tran.

Light turned gray, solemn ice to a more cheerful white as the sun rose. His attention lay on the sun’s ascension only vaguely. Nor was he thinking of the strange mission to which his off-world friends had converted him.

Instead, his thoughts were for the daughter of the Right Torsk Kurdagh-Vlata, Landgrave and True Protector of Wannome and Sofold. On the way the wind rippled her fur, so thick and smooth. On the noble gray down of her brow, which crested above eyes capable of more expression and emotion than most women’s lips.

Inside himself he knew well that the friend Ethan meant no harm toward his desires and surely harbored no intention toward the lady. Certainly Ethan had voiced such of himself, many times. Yet it seemed that the two of them were thrown into argument often and that the tiny but incredibly heavy (solid bones, the wizard Eer-Meesach had said, not hollow like the Tran) human won all of them when Hunnar wished most to impress his lady. And Elfa would end up congratulating and cooing approval of the hairless dwarf instead of himself.

More than all the glory of battle, riches of trade, or the accolades of the Tran he led, he craved a few words of praise from her.

The grooves in the wood grew deeper with his thoughts. What was she trying to do by favoring the alien over him? Perhaps Ethan’s disclaimers were spoken honestly, but could Elfa have some unnatural attraction to a male of another race? To a being who expressed his hatred of fighting whenever given the chance, who without his artificial chiv-skates would fall flat on the ice like a newborn cub?

He growled under his breath. No matter how he approached the situation, no matter the angle or forethought, he could not see the childishly simple explanation.

Double eyelids flicking, he found himself staring curiously at the horizon. An unusual ridging serrated the far-distant surface. They must be nearing another island. He performed some slow calculation in his head. It could not be Moulokin, if Teeliam’s estimate of two hundred satch were correct. They were still too far away by a third. Yet whatever was there grew larger as he stared. Another island, and the morning light glowed most oddly bright on its slopes.

Elfa faded from his mind, far enough anyway for him to concentrate ahead. It was as if the rocks and soil of the growing isle were polished like a mirror. Sunlight shattered crazily from it as from jewels in the Landgrave’s formal scepter. In this equatorial region snow was usually absent from surface lands. It had been so in Poyolavomaar, but did not seem to be that way here.

There was no sign of an end to the island as the icerigger raced nearer. Indeed, the ocean appeared to blend without a break into the island itself. A few minutes later his eyes widened in sudden realization of what was about to happen. With no land expected, the lookouts had grown lax. But now the one in the foremast basket saw the approaching mass and roared a warning to the ship.

“Come down speed … collision course!”

Hunnar was already chivaning back the portside icepath toward the helmdeck, yelling instructions as he went. The rigging began to quiver like a spider’s web as sailors swarmed aloft.

One sailor lay asleep across the path. Hunnar bent, kicked, and soared over the prone figure to land on the icepath beyond.

Ta-hoding was not yet awake and on deck, but a second mate named Fassbire was. He relayed instructions of his own as he coordinated with Hunnar’s information. Sails were trimmed and spars angled. The Slanderscree commenced to slow. A worried glance forward showed Hunnar that it was fast enough. Ice anchors would not be needed.

Dream-dull eyes showed as the morning crew stumbled out onto the deck. Cries of consternation came from those emerging from the fore cabin as they saw what was bearing down on them.

Ethan appeared on deck, followed closely by September. So acclimated to Tran-ky-ky had the humans become that their hoods were off and face masks down, exposing them to the chilly morning air, twenty-five below with a sixty kph tailwind. They soon had hoods and masks up, however, the danger of frostbite being too real to tempt.

Hunnar noted that Ethan was panting as he sealed his face mask, and had to remind himself for yet another time that the humans panted because they were short of wind, not to cool their bodies.

Spying Hunnar in the captain’s position, he ran toward the helmdeck. “What is it, Hunnar?”

The knight, all thoughts of ludicrous romantic competition now forgotten, pointed forward, then to starboard and port where the phenomenon extended.

“Teeliam’s myth is correct thus far, friend Ethan. ’Twas fortunate I was awake and … alert, for the lookout was sleeping or looking elsewhere, I think.”

Ethan ran to the railing, sliding across the icepath, to study the remarkable barrier ahead and the quilted reflections it shot at his eyes from wrenched and tortured ice. “The bent ocean,” he murmured in amazement. He repeated it to Hunnar after mounting the helmdeck.

“You find it pleasing, friend Ethan? Would it not unsettle you to see the ocean of your own world bent and twisted so abnormally?”

“A liquid ocean can’t be bent, Hunnar. Not in this fashion, anyway. I don’t know what it’s called, but I’ve seen fax … pictures of it on other worlds. Maybe some were taken on my own. I don’t know. It’s ice, exactly like the ice we’ve traveled so many satch across.” They continued to slow as they came close to the ridge of jagged ice blocks and spears, frozen girders and sparkling white boulders.

“But the ocean is bent,” Hunnar insisted, with the tone of someone describing a round globe as flat.

“Not exactly bent,” explained Milliken Williams from the other side of the helmdeck, “as much as compressed. This is a pressure ridge. Ages ago, this must have been one of the last areas of open water on Tran-ky-ky. Last minute freezing by two bodies of ice moving toward each other created this wall of broken floes. Clap your paws or hands together in a bowl of water and it will shoot up between them. That’s what has happened to the ocean here, Hunnar. It was created by hydrophysics and not by devils or daemons.”

“Did I say it was created by devils?” Hunnar spoke with great dignity. “Do you take me for a superstitious fool of a common sailor?”

“I’m sorry. I meant no insult,” the teacher replied plaintively. Hunnar accepted the apology gruffly, then quickly changed the subject.

“The concern should not be what name to give it, but how to pass through.”

Ethan studied the eerily regular ridge. “It can’t be more than twenty meters high. Surely we can get across somewhere.”

Scouting parties were sent out east and west, to locate a break in the ice the Slanderscree could navigate. Reluctant knots of sailors left the ship to explore the ridge itself, but only after being presented with anti-devil amulets rapidly sculpted by Eer-Meesach.

The icerigger lay facing the ridge, sails furled, awaiting their return. When the first explorers came chivaning back, Ethan and the others awaited their reports anxiously. They were not encouraging.

According to the scouts the ridge ran in an unbroken line almost due east and west. It extended as far as a Tran could see to the distant horizons. In some places the monstrous chunks of ancient ice rose considerably higher than the twenty meters they presently faced.

Having met no devils, the ridge climbers returned equally unharmed and equally discouraged. While the ridge was barely a hundred meters wide, it was as solid as the ship’s runners.

“We can’t go around it, and we can’t go over.” Ethan was standing on the crest of the ridge, staring at the inviting expanse of open ice ocean on the far side. “We certainly can’t go through. The Slanderscree’s no thermprow.”

“What’s a thermprow?” Hunnar asked, his chiv digging deeply into the ice, holding him steady against the wind.

“In the arctic regions of other worlds they have ships with powerful heat elements built into their bows and sides to melt the ice. I’ve seen pictures on the tridee.” He glanced back at the icerigger. Sailors were moving listlessly about on deck and aloft, trying to keep busy to stave off discouragement. “If we had sufficient recharge capacity we could melt our way through with our beamers.”

“Come now, young feller-me-lad.” September indicated the massive ice blocks surrounding them. “It would take us a hundred years using these bitty little beamers to melt a Slanderscree-size traverse through this ridge. What we need is a proper shipyard torch.” He gazed westward, ice particles buffeting his mask. “All to move a few blocks of ice.”

“Blocks.” Ethan stamped a foot. “How much would you say this one we’re standing on weighs? Ten tons … twenty?”

September eyed his young companion, then looked back at the anchored Slanderscree. “Might be possible at that. If the wind holds steady.”

“Have you learned naught of my world?” Hunnar spoke critically, but gently. “The wind is always steady, day and night, year and shayear. If the wind dies, Tran-ky-ky turns upside down.”

“Never mind the theology, Hunnar. Do you think it can be done?”

“ ’Tis not for me to judge, friend September. Best to put the question to the Captain …”

“If Ethan and September and Williams believe this thing is workable, who are we to disagree? Besides, I think it a most excellent idea,” said Eer-Meesach.

Ta-hoding made a gesture of concurrence to the Tran wizard, then set about giving the necessary orders.

Pika-pina cables were wrapped tight around the lowest boulder in the ridge opposite. Meanwhile several intricate maneuvers had turned the great icerigger stern-first to the ice barrier. Cables were tied aboard, back of the helmdeck, made fast to the members of the raft’s hull.

Ethan and September stood with the cable party on the ice nearby, watched as spars and sheets were adjusted to catch maximum wind. The Slanderscree strained, groaning and creaking like an old man. Cables hummed in the wind, dug at a single chunk of ice that weighed a good fifteen tons.

“Think they’ll hold?” Ethan spoke without turning, watching the ship.

“The cables?” September snorted. “From what I’ve seen of pika-pina properties, it ain’t the cables I’m worried about. The cables’ll hold, but the ship’s only wood.”

Timbers moaned within the ship as the icerigger remained motionless. Her runners might have been welded to the ice for all the progress she was making.

It made the glass goblet splintering sound of the ice block all the more startling when it suddenly loosened from the ridge. Towing a mass the size of a shuttle-craft, the Slanderscree began to move ponderously northward.

Those sailors not immediately occupied let out a cheer. Sails held. So did the cables and the deck to which they were bound.

The icerigger started to slow. Ta-hoding bellowed a command. Spars were shifted. Now the ship swung ten, fifteen degrees north-eastward from its initial heading, putting pressure on the ice block from a different angle.

With a crackling that sounded like a headstone being uprooted, the block came free of the ridge, following in the wake of the icerigger. It was several minutes before Ta-hoding could order sails furled and spars reset to cut the Slanderscree’s mounting speed.

Humans and Tran skated and chivaned to examine the enormous frozen mass. White and irregular, it rose as high as the underside of the raft.

Williams was gazing at the extensive gap in the pressure ridge. Ethan was reminded of a tooth knocked from its socket.

“Better than we could have hoped for,” the teacher was saying. “In pulling free this block from the bottom we dislodged a not inconsiderable quantity of ice above.”

Indeed, several other massive white monoliths had fallen onto the flat ocean surface. They could be towed aside far more easily than the first block.

The Tran worked cheerfully at looping and securing the cables around the next chunk, now at least half certain that the ridge was not the road traveled by Jhojoog Kahspen, Daemon Lord of the open ocean, as some particularly imaginative members of the crew had first tremblingly suggested.

XI

SEVERAL DAYS LATER A path wide enough for the Slanderscree had been nearly completed through the ridge. A few last blocks of intervening ice were all that kept them from the open ocean beyond.

Ta-hoding worried some about his ship and the strain the constant break and tow was placing on her superstructure, but he’d gained confidence as block after multiton block was torn free and pulled clear without any visible damage to the raft’s stern.

Three or four more tows of comparatively modest-sized chunks and they would be through. Cables were being readied for securing to one of those last blocks when work was interrupted by a frantic cry from the mainmast lookout.

“Rifs! North northwest!”

Working with the cable-setting crew, Ethan heard that threatening word too. Like his nonhuman companions, he stopped working as if stabbed, whirled and glanced in the direction from which the danger approached.

They’d encountered a rifs only once before, one time too often. A rifs was a meteorological anomaly peculiar to Tran-ky-ky, the manifestation of extreme weather forming over an ocean that was cold and solid instead of liquidly warm. September had described it as a linear hurricane, packing winds of over two hundred kph force.

Moving awkwardly on his skates, September followed the rest of the cable crew back down the path through the ridge. By the time he emerged, a black line made innocuous by distance was visible off to the northwest. As he watched, it grew larger, overwhelming the horizon.

That black line was the aerial equivalent of a tidal bore, a sooty sky-swelling wall of wind compressed like an atmospheric sponge. It could scour the ice clear of life save for tightly rooted vegetation such as the pika-pedan or massive life-forms such as the stavanzers.

Neither well-rooted nor massive, the Slanderscree had to do what all other life-forms did before a rifs—run.

“ ’Twill never be cleared in time,” complained one of the anxious Tran standing by the stern port runner of the ship.

Ethan slipped free of his skates, mounted the nearest boarding ladder. He found Ta-hoding, Elfa and Hunnar in animated discussion on the helmdeck. Williams and September were nowhere around.

“We must loose the cables and run ’til the rifs blows itself out,” Elfa was saying.

“A rifs can blow for many days. We waste time,” Hunnar argued.

She sneered at him. “Better to waste days than the ship.”

“Perhaps,” put in Ta-hoding, desirous of serving as peacemaker while keeping one eye on the rapidly nearing storm, “But I think Sir Hunnar has another suggestion.”

“I do.” The knight gestured back aft. “We must move off, gather our speed, and try to break through.”

“ ’Twill be the ship that breaks, not the ice.” She noticed Ethan watching nearby, changed her tone completely. “What do you say, Sir Ethan?”

Abruptly he was aware of many eyes on him, sailors and captain, squires and knights. They did not cease their frenzied work, but they listened for his reply nonetheless.

Good. They’d all hear. “I think we should do,” he said loudly enough for everyone to understand clearly, “whatever Sir Hunnar decides. The rifs is a foe to be fought, and in matters of battle his judgment is always best.”

Hunnar stared at him for a long moment, mumbled almost as an afterthought, “We have no choice. We must try to break through.”

“ ’Tis settled, then!” Ta-hoding looked relieved, set about giving the appropriate orders. The crowd which had edged its way to the helmdeck scattered to stations. Hunnar and Ethan continued to eye each other for several minutes, until Hunnar half-smiled and broke for his own favored position.

Was he grateful—or angry at some suspected condescension? Ethan had no time to reflect on the knight’s state of mind. There were cables to stow, lines to straighten, sailors to reassure.

Commands reverberated around the deck. The icerigger commenced making a wide circle. Their course would take them in a curve eastward, then north, into the front wave of the storm. With its wind at their backs, they would hurtle back toward the nearly completed gap in the ridge and smash through the remaining ice blocks.

There were other scenarios, other possibilities, which Ethan preferred not to consider.

As raftsmanship, the plan made excellent sense. Emotionally, it did not, for the storm seemed to reach out for them as they neared the halfway point of the circle.

So close to the bore front the sky was a vast sheet of black cast iron looming ominously on their left, ready to tumble down and smash soft wood and softer creatures to multicolored smears against the ocean. If they had miscalculated and the rifs struck the ship broadside, it would surely capsize her, splintering masts, cabins, deck and crew.

Like gold thread in a velvet cape, lightning found its way downward through the boiling darkness. Rumbles and crashes, the war cries of inimical weather reached the crew and impelled them to faster work, stronger efforts to bring the ship around.

The first touch of the rifs fumbled for the ship. Not violent yet, but not like the steady, friendly every-day winds of Tran-ky-ky. No longer did they blow steadily to the west. Disturbed zephyrs slid in confusion around Ethan. Idle gusts scudded dismally past him, twisting and darting in and upon themselves like frightened rabbits hunting for a hidey-hole.

“We’re going to cut it mighty close, feller-me-lad,” said September in as grim a voice as Ethan had ever heard him use. The giant had both arms wrapped tightly around a pair of mainstays. Ethan chose the more solid wooden railing, locking a leg around one supportive post, arms around the railing top.

As the Slanderscree came full around onto a southerly heading, the rifs, in a desperate grab for its prey, jumped onto them.

The sky turned from blue to black. Thunder battered ears curved and pointed. Great shafts of electric death hunted for the fleeing raft. They reminded Ethan of nothing so much as the pulpy, luminous cyclops-creature they’d fought below the surface when escaping from the dungeon of Poyolavomaar. Glowing eye, gigantic black mouth filled with jagged teeth. Only now the teeth were kilometers high and yellow-gold instead of transparent.

Ethan’s gaze turned with difficulty from the nearing ice ridge to the helmdeck. Looking more like a chunk of gray granite than their fat captain, Ta-hoding stood braced against the center of the huge wheel, struggling to aid his two helmsmen. They were already racing along at close to a hundred twenty kph, he guessed. Another blast of the full body of the rifs struck the ship, punching the sails still further outward and accelerating the craft’s motion.

If they missed the gap at this speed, they wouldn’t have to worry about the rifs any longer. The icerigger would smash itself against the ridge. There wouldn’t even be smears left of her crew. Even if they struck the gap but angled too far to one side or the other, jagged ice boulders could tear away stays, bring down the masts on top of them, or even shatter the sides of the hull.

There was black overhead and white rushing toward them; Windborne particles of ice and snow whizzed like projectiles from a million tiny guns across his mask, making vision difficult. By then the roar of the storm seemed to originate somewhere between his ears, numbing his senses, playing tricks with perception. Hadn’t they reached the ridge yet?

A chalcedony tunnel obliterated much of the blackness as the Slanderscree entered the gap. He braced himself for the ultimate impact as did everyone else on board. There was a horrible crunching noise. Whether the ship had struck the jagged walls speeding past on either side or had been struck by lightning, he couldn’t tell. The icerigger rocked crazily for a second.

Then they were through, the white ramparts gone, clear ice vanishing beneath the ship’s runners. Fighting the wind, he looked astern and saw the pressure ridge from its southern side, receding behind them. His gaze went forward, toward what he knew he would see. Somewhere, the fates had determined the Slanderscree should not travel with a bowsprit. Otherwise the icerigger seemed to have handled the impact well. Masts had not fallen, no crevasse had appeared in the deck.

Something irritated his mouth. He parted his lips, sucked in salty fluid. With his face shielded from the wind, he nudged open the mask. Icy-gloved fingers probed at bare skin, felt the flow of blood from his nose. It did not feel broken. It felt worse, and the blood was making a mess inside his suit.

Looking around he saw other members of the crew picking themselves off the deck where they’d fallen or been thrown by the impact of smashing through the remaining ice blocks. How those aloft had kept from being thrown from the rigging was a miracle he chose not to question.

Sails straining to hold to the spars, spars to masts, masts creaking in their deck sockets, deck groaning on its five runners, and crew straining in prayer to whatever personal gods they worshipped that the whole should not return to the parts of its sum, the Slanderscree flew southward at a hundred sixty kilometers per hour.

A Tran knelt in the gap in the pressure ridge. Furry fingers collected several nonwhite, nonice fragments. They were mostly slim and irregular. One pricked his finger and he cursed. He had enough anyway. Raising his arms parallel to the ice, he tacked his way back to the group of Tran waiting impatiently at the far end of the passage.

There he dropped his arms, closed his dan, and slid to a neat stop. It would not do to stumble or fall before so many important ones.

“These were a few of what I found, sirs. There are many other such fragments at the far end of this passageway.”

Tonx Ghin Rakossa, Landgrave of Poyolavomaar, accepted the several bits of shattered wood. He studied them, avoiding the one which had pierced the scout’s finger.

“Many such fragments? Enough to comprise part of a large ship?”

“No, sire. I saw no such large amounts of debris.”

Rakossa threw the splinters angrily to the ice. “They have escaped the rifs, then.” He gently fingered the bandage over his left eye. “Though not undamaged.”

“The five grooves of their runners continue southward outside this passage, sire,” the scout added helpfully, currying favor.

Rakossa ignored him. “Would that we knew the extent of their damage. Yet it took them time to make their way through this ridge.” The masses of ice nearby showed how the icerigger had made that passage, and Rakossa marveled greedily at the power of a ship that could move such weight.

“They are delayed.” He knelt, brushed at the powdery ice lining the runner grooves. “This has not blown away completely, even with the force of the rifs. They are very near, and yet will now widen the distance between us once more.”

“Nevertheless, we will catch them, your highness,” said Calonnin Ro-Vijar.

“Yes. We will catch them, and the mocking strumpet as well.”

Rakossa turned to gaze at the ships waiting behind them. They were a reassuring sight, with sails half-furled and pennants flying. They pursued with a small forest of masts—those that hadn’t been torn away by the storm. And they had caught only the fringe of the rifs.

“But we will catch them with thirty ships instead of thirty-five. Three are so badly damaged their captains inform me they will never sail again. Two are nearly as bad off, but they can limp home with the crews of the abandoned three. Five ships lost already, Ro-Vijar.”

“All the reason more to seek revenge upon those responsible, my friend,” responded the Landgrave of Arsudun, trying to turn calamity to mental advantage. It was Rakossa’s emotional state that was critical, not the condition of his ships.

“Perhaps.” Rakossa spoke thoughtfully. “We waste time here.” One foot descended, three chiv sectioned a fragment of wood the scout had recovered and marked the ice beneath.

Two weeks after leaving the pressure ridge, the Slanderscree came upon the plateau. A hundred meters of sheer cliff, it stretched off to east and west in unbroken basaltic glory. It was a barren-looking place, devoid of rim-clinging trees such as decorated the cliffs of Arsudun.

Teeliam was brought on deck, shown the impenetrable ramparts reaching across the ice ocean. “There lies Moulokin,” she said with evident satisfaction.

“Moulokin? Where?” Hunnar didn’t try to hide his sarcasm. “I see naught but ice, rock and sky. In that order, without exception.”

“Nevertheless, this is the region of Moulokin.”

“And where is the fabled city?”

“Could it be atop the plateau somewhere, Teeliam?” asked Ethan softly.

“No, that is absurd.” The former royal consort of Poyolavomaar took little notice of Ethan’s courtesy, as opposed to Hunnar’s skepticism. “How could a state famed for the ships it builds be located many kijat above the ocean?”

“The thought had occured to me,” said Ethan drily. “I was just pointing out that I see no sign of any city.”

“Moulokin is here somewhere.” Teeliam’s conviction was unfazed. She faced the stone barrier. “Somewhere within this land.”

Ethan and Hunnar exchanged glances. Then Ethan asked, “Which way? We must be off in our calculations.”

Teeliam considered stories and rumors and legends. “ ’Tis told the sun sets late in Moulokin,” she muttered to herself. Then she pointed westward. “I would suppose that way.”

“As you will.” Hunnar executed a Tran shrug. “ ’Tis this way or that, as well one as the other.” He relayed instructions to a mate, who conveyed them to another, who shouted them to the helmdeck.

The icerigger turned laboriously to the west, commenced making difficult progress into the wind.

Despite Ta-hoding’s best efforts, their progress was slow. Cliffs grew near, then receded as the Slanderscree tacked away from them, though never so far that land was out of sight. It wouldn’t do to slip past their destination while making distance into the wind.

Occasionally there would be a sharp dip in the crest of the plateau where a hanging valley emerged. When the icerigger was on a starboard tack, the lookout in the mainmast basket could see into such gaps in the rock wall. Some held trees that apparently shunned the top of the plateau itself, but none showed any sign of habitation, not of the fabled ship building city of Moulokin or of a single Tran hermit.

Days became a week, the week two, without a break in the cliffs. From time to time the plateau would reach outward or ripple inward, forcing them to alter their heading slightly. But never did it vanish or vary its general east-west orientation.

By the beginning of the third week, however, the plateau began to curve gradually southward. Ethan mused on the distance they had come to the west. Nor was there any way of telling how far the cliffs extended westward.

“According to the mestapes I took long ago, back on the ship traveling here,” Ethan was telling September, “survey work had been very limited on this world. Arsudun was the largest populated island the first team found, so they put the humanx station there. But this,” and he gestured expansively at the towering ramparts, “it’s either an island-sized continent, or a continent-sized island.”

“It’s plain enough, feller-me-lad,” the giant commented, “that we’ve found no mere mountaintop stickin’ its head above the ocean.”

Hunnar joined them, braking to a halt on the starboard icepath, turning his chiv at the last moment so as not to shower them with ice. His excitement was evident from his expression and the fact that he almost forgot to lower his dan. September caught him as he stumbled forward, nearly fell. He was so preoccupied he forgot to produce an excuse for his clumsiness.

“We have found the tracks of a ship! They travel parallel to this high land also, but they approach from the east before turning south.”

“Maybe someone else’s calculations were a little off,” said an equally animated Ethan.

“Mayhap.” Hunnar regained some of his usual dignity. “This may mean only that another raft is exploring or lost.”

“Sure. But if the Moulokinese do most of their trading with peoples to the south and west away from that pressure ridge we crossed, it would explain why we’ve encountered no tracks before now, and why they’re so little known in Poyolavomaar.” Hunnar’s excitement had proven infectious. “Not to mention in far-off Arsudun.”

“All possible, all possible.” The knight’s eyes flashed in the midday light. “We shall see.”

The next day they came across two additional sets of ship tracks. Like the first, these approached from the east before turning south.

“If Moulokin does lie along this plateau,” Ethan was saying, “then any shipmaster knows he only has to encounter it before turning south or north.”

The actual discovery, when it occurred, was anti-climactic. One moment the Slanderscree was racing southward, its speed faster now that it wasn’t running into the wind. The next, the fore lookout was yelling loudly to any who could hear.

Off-duty crew rushed to the port rail for a glimpse of a myth become real. From the day they had first encountered the cliffs of the plateau, it had taken them nearly a standard month to reach their present position. Ethan couldn’t estimate how far they’d come. But it was far enough to convince him that Tran-ky-ky could now boast at least one true continent in addition to its thousands of islands scattered spice-like across its endless ice seas.

At the same time he understood why those islands rather than this landmass of considerable but inexact extent were chose by the Tran for their towns and cities. Islands offered easy access to fields of pika-pina and pedan, access to the ice ocean on which all commerce moved. Everything they had seen of the broad plateau hinted at an interior as barren as the lowliest tundra.

Like everyone else, the cries had roused Ethan from his cabin and sent him running to the deck to learn what all the shouting was about. As he snapped his suit closed he noticed sailors up in the rigging taking in sail.

“What is it, Skua?” he shouted at the giant as he ran to the railing. Then he didn’t have to ask because he saw it for himself.

As though cleft by the axe of a god, the cliffs had been split from rim to ice just off the port bow. As they drew nearer, the extent of the chasm could be estimated. Ethan guessed it was not quite two hundred meters across. It maintained that width as far down the canyon as he could see.

There was no sign of a city, but there were numerous signs of its nearness. September leaned over the railing, pointed wordlessly down to the ice.

Despite the light dusting of ice particles and snow, Ethan could clearly make out many sets of parallel grooves running through the smooth surface. They were the tracks of ships which had passed this way. While they crossed and cut over one another, all converged on the chasm in the plateau wall.

September, had his tiny monocular out. He’d flipped up the protective mask of the survival suit and was holding the compact telescope to one eye.

“What do you see, Skua?”

“Sheer rock, feller-me-lad. Rock no different from that forming the cliffs we’ve been pacing for weeks. Not a sail, not a building, nothing. Maybe the canyon takes a tight turn and hides the town.” He slipped the monocular back into the sealocket in his suit, squinted at the plateau. “One thing’s certain … all these tracks lead somewhere popular. I wonder at the clouds inland, though. Even if the wind’s less there, you wouldn’t think they’d linger so thick in one place.”

It did seem that the interior of the plateau immediately behind the canyon was home to a dense mass of oddly whitish clouds. Blue sky around and above made the cloud-forms stand out sharply. Ethan thought briefly of volcanic smoke, such as could be seen from Sofold’s steady-burning peaks. Only this smoke was much too light to be volcanic in origin.

“If it’s such a busy port, why don’t we see any other ships?”

“That gal Teeliam did say this Moulokin’s primarily a ship-building and manufacturing center. Poyolavomaar, Arsudun, Sofold—they’re all trading ports. Maybe no one visits here unless they’ve a finished raft waitin’ for them. Or maybe the Moulokinese are superstitious and only trade certain times of the year. Be interestin’ to see what they make of us.”

Cries sounded from the helmdeck immediately behind them. Ta-hoding was gesturing busily to mates and assistants. Gracefully, sails were drawn up and tied to spars. The Slanderscree continued its cautious approach to the canyon.

Something pressed against the face mask of Ethan’s survival suit. He raised it cautiously, then shut it fast. His suit thermometer indicated it was minus twenty outside, but it wasn’t the cold that made him hastily shield his skin.

They were traveling almost due east. That meant the untiring westwind was directly behind them. Yet they were making little progress. The icerigger rocked slightly, and he saw that Ta-hoding was tacking. That was crazy: nobody tacks away from the wind!

“Strong gale blowin’ down out of the canyon,” observed September with interest. A glance upward showed the sails flapping uncertainly against the spars. Occasionally the wind off the plateau was strong enough to shove pika-pina sail material back against the masts. At such moments the ship shuddered as if reluctant to continue. But under Ta-hoding’s careful and expert guidance, they kept making steady progress forward. Very soon they entered the mouth of the canyon.

Walls over a hundred meters high towered on both sides of the ice ship. As they progressed up the chasm, the sheer stone ramparts rose steadily higher, though the canyon showed no sign of narrowing.

At a hundred seventy meters high the cliffs leveled off, only then the canyon walls began to press inward slightly. There was less room to maneuver. Ta-hoding and his crew worked hard to keep the zig-zagging ship from smashing into unyielding canyon sides. He was making shorter and shorter tacks, threatening terribly if a sail crew was seconds too slow in shifting a spar.

Once, the sailors manipulating the foremast tops misinterpreted a mate’s order and swung their spars starboard instead of port. With a lurch, the Slanderscree continued on course to starboard instead of swinging around to cross the expanse of ice in the channel. Ethan stared, frozen, as they lumbered steadily toward the nearing gray cliff.

Sailors fought frantically to correct the error, compensate for the mistake. There was a dull, patient grinding noise. Fortunately the icerigger was now traveling so slowly into the headwind that the impact did no more than crack the railing and splinter a couple of deck planks.

The ease with which the planking splintered turned Ethan’s attention to the treeless rims high overhead. How stable were they? In the event of a slide there was no room to escape in the narrow confines of the canyon.

He was worrying needlessly again. The crash of ship into stone hadn’t loosened as much as a pebble from the clifftop.

Strong comments were relayed from helmdeck to foremast crew via the midship’s mate. They were intended to relax the atmosphere on board while chastising the foremast sailors. Instead, the invective only added to the general tension, did not produce the laughter it would have in less threatening surroundings.

The mystery of the mythic city-state, the narrowing canyon walls that shut out the clean sky, the skate-scarred ice they were traversing, in conjunction with their unfortunate experiences at Poyolavomaar, combined to test the mental stability of the crew. Ethan knew it would be better if they encountered something—hostile, friendly or even inexplicable—before many more minutes passed.

It occured to him to wonder what they would do if Moulokin proved as unreal as it had proven elusive and the canyon simply continued to narrow, perhaps to a lonely rock-face dead-end. The many ship tracks might signify nothing more than a convocation of religious worshippers at a favorite shrine, or indicate a well-used refuge from storms.

Such visitors would have no trouble turning their ships around and racing back down the ice-filled canyon with the inland wind at their backs. But the canyon was as narrow as the Slanderscree was long. She could not possibly be turned ’round in so slim a space. They might have to backsail, traveling stern-first and steering in a fashion unthought of.

September had theorized a bend in the canyon. All at once it turned sharply southward. The crew had to struggle with lines and spars to swing the icerigger safely around the twisting walls.

The wind continued to buffet them from off the plateau, but it was gentler now. The ice raft could proceed up canyon on a softer tack.

Except that the canyon was blocked.

At first he thought it a landslide, tumbled down from those cliffs so stable in appearance. As they drew nearer it was clear that the obstacle was Tran-made, its great stones and blocks neatly piled with mortarless masonry to form a wall stretching across the ice strait like a granite web.

It was perhaps thirty meters high, deeper than he could casually guess without a higher view. As was the custom on Tran-ky-ky, the colossal double gate was constructed of wood. It rose nearly as high as the stone walls themselves and was flanked on either side by a triangular tower.

The structure puzzled him. Impressive as they were, these could not be the gates to fabled Moulokin. Behind the barrier the cliffs rose high and close together as ever. There was no room for a city behind the wall. And if any such did exist there, he reminded himself, surely it could be seen from the lookout cage on the mainmast.

The wall itself was a typically solid piece of native engineering. It looked well-nigh impregnable. But something lay behind that gate. The quilt of grooves in the ice now ran straight toward the double gate.

They were very close when the sound of a horn reached them. It brayed three times and then was silent. Ethan ran for the bow, discovered Elfa, Teeliam, Hunnar, September and many others already there, staring forward.

A voice from one of the towers hailed them. Its tone, so crucial to the precise meaning of many Trannish phrases and words, was neither hostile nor openly inviting. “Who are you, in the great ship? From whence do you come, and what do you wish of the peaceful folk of Moulokin?”

This development produced an excited muttering as word spread through the crew, made its way up the masts and into the cabins. Moulokin existed; Moulokin was real! At least, an unseen presence on an impressive wall had laid claim to the reality of a rumor.

Hunnar replied. “We come from a far state, Wannome, to the northeast of you. We desire to parlay with your Landgrave and council on a matter of great importance to all Tran. And we have three important visitors with us.”

“Step forward, lad. Time to show ourselves.” September slid back his mask so those hidden in the wall would have an unobstructed view of his furless visage. Williams and Ethan duplicated his movement.

“They are from a world other than Tran-ky-ky.” Hunnar pointed skyward. “A world from the ocean of black ice.”

All at once there was movement on the ramparts. Ethan could see Tran soldiers emerge from concealment, gesturing at the icerigger while talking among themselves with apparent excitement.

So the appearance of the three humans was a surprise to them. Now he could relax some. Calonnin Ro-Vijar had not conjured up a skimmer or other modern vehicle to carry him here in advance of their arrival, to stir up trouble and spread the lies he’d sown so effectively in Poyolavomaar.

“They have much of importance to impart to you, as they have imparted to us,” Hunnar continued. “Important things which can benefit all Tran.”

“These Tran are of Moulokin and for Moulokin first,” responded the voice from the tower, sounding noncommittal. “But … we will talk with you and mayhap even listen.

“As to your own plans and desires, know that many have tried to sway Moulokin with weighty promises erected on thin ice. We make no promises of our own. Will you still talk, given these words? We will open the gates to you.” A pause, then, “I believe your vessel will pass between. Marvelous as are the shipwrights of the city, they have created nothing half so grand.”

“Happily will we share our knowledge with all.” Lowering his voice, Hunnar faced those grouped around him. “What think you, friend Ethan?”

Uncomfortable as always with so many eyes on him, Ethan replied softly. “Everything points to the real Moulokin lying somewhere beyond that gate. Whether it exists or not, we seem to have found some Tran with self-confidence and a willingness to listen. That’s a valuable combination we should try and enlist.”

“Leastwise they haven’t told us to turn around and take off back the way we’ve come.” September was gazing expectantly at the wall barring their path. Shrouds and stays snapped around them, singing in the down-canyon breeze. “We should be careful, and we should go in.”

“ ’Tis settled, then.” Hunnar called out the command to the midship mate, who relayed it crisply to the helmdeck. A prompt reply came back. Ta-hoding felt he could negotiate the narrow gateway in the wall.

“We will come in,” Hunnar shouted back to the listeners assembled on the wall and in the two towers, “and with thanks for your friendly welcome.” The last was offered as much in hope as certainty.

Like the snores of a restless giant, the thick wooden gates drew back on stone slides. Ta-hoding rumbled cautious orders. The Slanderscree started forward, tacking minimally under slight sail.

Ethan was too busy to decide whether the anxious expressions of the guards gathered on the walls were due to curiosity, awe, or nervous tension. The stone wall contained a surprise. It was much thicker than he’d expected, varying from ten to twenty meters in depth. Cabins and barracks were built into and on top of the immense rampart.

Ta-hoding employed his fanciest maneuvering to turn the ship to starboard once her stern had cleared the wall. As the icerigger began to edge slowly around the sharp rightward bend in the abyss, a cry of dismay sounded from the bowsprit lookout. Other cries sounded from the bow.

Intending to discuss the difficulties of negotiating the slim channel with Ta-hoding, Ethan heard the shouts, stopped, and reversed his course. By the time he readied the bow, the Slanderscree had come to a halt. A glance showed the cause of the crew’s consternation.

Around the canyon headland and before them lay a second wall. It looked just as impregnable and well-tranned as the one behind them. There was a double gate in it, and the gate was closed.

A creaking noise turned his attention to the stern. Working frantically, the guards on the first wall had succeeded in closing the portal they’d just passed through, after having oiled the stone slides to keep the ponderous gates from screeching and warning the icerigger’s crew. Now they were draping thick green-red cables across the gate and securing them to the bracketing towers. Spears, lances, and bows formed a threatening fringe along the wall top. Expectant yellow eyes gleamed behind them, shining brightly in the dim canyon light of afternoon.

“So much for local hospitality.” September studied a furious Sir Hunnar. The knight was showing clenched teeth, examining the armed walls, instinctively gauging an opponent’s strength. “Much as it pains me to admit it, friend Hunnar, I’m tempted to come ’round to your way of thinking. First Poyolavomaar and now here. Doesn’t look like Tran folk even like to speculate on cooperatin’.”

“Raft coming!” called the mizzen lookout, stimulating a rush toward the stern. Everyone clustered at the icerigger’s widest point, over the starboard stern runner.

A very small icecraft was fluttering toward the Slanderscree from behind, having emerged from a dock attached to the inside of the first wall. It looked like a brown leaf scudding uncertainly across the hard whiteness. Three Tran manned it: one steering, one handling the single sail, the last standing at the bow-point gazing curiously at the icerigger which towered above him.

One of the sailors peering over the railing growled. “They carry no weapons.”

“And fly no pennant,” said Hunnar, adding admiringly: “They said they would let us past this gate, and that we would talk. Talk we will, though ’tis not the setting for a parley I would prefer.” He glanced over at one of the assistant mates. “Vasen, what are our chances of backing sail and breaking through that gate?”

The mate replied as if he’d already considered the question carefully, “As thick as the wall is,” Sir Hunnar, I would care not to try. We might crack the wooden gates despite lack of room to build up proper speed. But the pika-pina cables appear well secured to the stone towers. They would not snap, and I would not care to chance pulling their moorings free from the wall.” He thought a moment before speaking further.

“With the aid of our crossbows and the light weapons of our human friends, we could perchance overpower the guards on the wall. But we would still have to unkey and drop the cables barring our retreat.” He gestured toward the bow and the second wall up canyon. “I cannot judge how many soldiers might be waiting out of sight behind that wall. They could attack us from behind and overwhelm us with numbers.” He executed a Tran gesture of disappointed negativity. “ ’Twould be prudent to talk first. We can then always slit the envoy’s throat before attempting to escape.”

Hunnar responded with a snarl. He disliked having to wait. Patience was not a Tran trait. The humans had chided him about that before. Well, he could be as patient as any hairless human, and would chat pleasantly and politely with this envoy.

As Vasen said, they could always cut his throat later.

Someone finally thought to throw over a boarding ladder. It clattered against the side of the icerigger. The tiny raft pulled up alongside. Clasping the ladder cables in both hands, the Tran in the bow climbed toward them, moving smoothly for a biped balancing awkwardly on three sharp chiv instead of a flat foot.

Then the Tran was standing on the deck, confronting half a hundred hostile stares with an aplomb and air of assurance Ethan could only admire.

He was skinny to the point of emaciation, being no broader than Ethan himself, though he appeared healthy enough. After surveying his audience with a rigorous half-smile, his gaze settled on the three humans. Double eyelids blinked against winddriven particles of ice.

“ ’Tis true? You are truly from a world other than this?”

“It’s so,” Ethan shot back. “We prefer not to be thought of as strangers, however. We’d much rather be thought of as friends, though appearances suggest you feel otherwise.”

“Contraryso, offworlder. We would wish it similarly. I hight Polos Mirmib, Royal Advisor and Guardian of the Gate.”

“Which gate?” Hunnar’s tone made his response sound like much more than a question. “The one we were invited to pass safely through, or the one that has been used to entrap us?”

“The gate to Moulokin, of course,” replied Polos, appearing unaffected by Hunnar’s hostility and avoiding his insinuations diplomatically. “That is a gate made not of stone or wood, but a gate mostly of the mind.”

A belligerent voice sounded from close by Hunnar: Suaxus-dal-Jagger. “I’d heard that the Moulokinese were famed as shipbuilders, not philosophers.”

Mirmib executed a smile. “Recreational metaphors are a personal affectation. Do not ascribe such wordplay to my people as a whole. They are for the most part stolid, honest, not especially imaginative folk, who wish nothing more of life than to enjoy a good day’s work, a hearty meal and warm fire at day’s end, and the love of their mates between days.”

His voice took on a slight sharpness as he continued. “To outsiders, Tran and otherwise, these things may seem a peasant’s way of life, simple and uninspiring. We enjoy being uncomplicated.” The sharpness disappeared. “Enjoy we also guests, visitors who bring to us news of the strange places to which we of Moulokin rarely venture.”

“Because you’re afraid to?” challenged a voice from up in the rigging. A mate shushed the sailor.

Mirmib had the control as well as the diction of a diplomat. He did not grow angry, as he would have been justified in doing. “We do not travel because we find in the stories travelers tell to us all we wish to know of far regions. As none we are told of sound superior to fair Moulokin, we see no reason to leave it. Better to remain and let others perform the arduous task of travel for us.”

His gaze focused on Ethan. “As travelers from a place so far distant I cannot comprehend it, you must have still more exciting tales to tell us.” Ethan started to reply, but Mirmib raised a paw to forestall him.

“Before that can be done, before we can greet you freely as guests and friends, that simple way of life I have described to you must be insured against violent disruption. So that the second gate may be opened to admit you to our home, to my home, I would ask that you pile your weapons here before me where they can be collected and stored safe for you by the gate patrol, to await your departure.”

He added a few additional words, but they were drowned out by the angry and uncertain outcry this request produced among the sailors who had gathered about.

XII

BALAVERE LONGAX FINALLY STEPPED forward. His presence quieted the crew. “From where I was raised and have lived a long life, no Tran will enter yea even the home of a neighbor without retaining at least a knife.”

“You must be mistrustful of your neighbors.” Mirmib sounded unperturbed, but did not modify or drop his demand.

“Suppose,” Hunnar ventured pragmatically, “we refuse?”

Mirmib made the equivalent of a shrug. “I will be saddened by what might happen. You are trapped here between walls even this wonderful vessel cannot break. In seconds I, or others if I am unable, can call on large numbers of waiting soldiers to rally against you. You may still be able to escape, though I think not. In any case, many would die, of mine and yours. I would rather not speak of such unpleasantness. As Guardian of the Gate, I give my warmth in promise: none of you will be harmed and you will be welcome as proven friends.”

He turned to near-pleading. “Surely this custom seems strange to you. ’Tis a requirement for strangers we insist upon. On subsequent visits to Moulokin such will be not required. You are an unknown and judging by this ship, powerful factor. My people are insular and suspicious. This request has preserved us in the past when prevaricating, jealous visitors would have pillaged us. Please, I implore you, execute this gesture of good will! We wish your friendship, not your blood.”

Hunnar seemed ready to reply. Ethan hastily put a restraining hand on the knight’s arm, felt the tenseness beneath the fur. “It’s time for us to take a chance, Hunnar. If they really wanted a fight, why send a single unarmed representative to advise us of their intentions? That’s poor salesmanship. They could have attacked as soon as we passed through the first gate.”

“Why attack if they can win the Slanderscree without a fight?” the knight protested. “This thing is unheard of. To enter a strange city is difficult enough, but to do so without weapons is to invite justified murder of all of us, fair retribution for such stupidity.” He growled at the human. “No, it is not a thing to be considered!”

Ethan spoke anxiously. “Hunnar, this whole long trip we’ve taken together, from Sofold to Arsudun to here, was not to be considered either. Yet we’ve done it. The idea of a confederation of Tran city-states was not to be considered, and here we are trying to implement that. Each day you, Balavere and the rest of the crew do things none of your people imagined doing.

“Now is the time for boldness and risk-taking, not for reverting to primitive superstitions and dying customs.” He paused, aware that Balavere, Elfa, and the rest of the assemblage were watching him steadily, some without affection. He kept his poise, and kept his eyes on Hunnar’s.

Mirmib spoke into the ensuing silence. “I understand not all of what you refer to, offworlder, but your position I can naught but concur with. I believe strongly that we will be friends.”

“Spoken firm if not well.” Hunnar shook Ethan’s clinging hand off, turned to glare at Mirmib. “Be this an excuse for treachery, know that my companions and I have walked into Hell itself and have returned after spitting at the inside of the world. Even unarmed, we would not go like k’nith to the slaughter.”

“You talk too much of slaughter.” Mirmib looked sad. “Having much to protect, we of Moulokin are no strangers to killing. But we are less fond of it than outsiders seem to be.”

“Where do you want them?”

Mirmib looked across at Elfa. She had her own sword out, ready to turn it over. The diplomat’s voice turned deferential.

“Here will be sufficient, noble lady.” He indicated the section of deck in front of him.

Sailors and knights trooped by, dropping off bows, crossbows, swords, axes, weapons of every kind. Ta-hoding invited Mirmib to inspect cabins and below-decks storage holds for additional weapons. The Moulokinese declined politely, accepting Hunnar’s word that the entire armory of the crew was being deposited at his feet.

Ethan reflected that while Polos insisted he belonged to a simple working people, they were more than sophisticated enough to have evolved an inflexible, efficient procedure for dealing with potentially bellicose strangers. He didn’t doubt the diplomat’s claim that his people were no strangers to killing. Mirmib had likely overseen this turning in of weapons many times in the past.

As steel and bone rattled unmelodiously on the ever-mounting heap, Hunnar moved to stand next to Ethan and whisper. “Your proposed confederation and your own life may end with your blood steaming on the streets of this city, Sir Ethan.”

“Even in my business, you eventually reach a point where you have to trust someone, Hunnar.”

“You speak highly of trust, Sir Ethan,” Hunnar said wryly, “yet I notice that neither you nor your companions have stepped forward to place your weapons of light on the pile before us.”

“As long as this fellow doesn’t recognize them as weapons, there’s no need to overextend ourselves where we don’t have to.” Ethan’s rationalization sounded unwieldy as he muttered it. “In my business, it’s also a good idea to have an ace in the hole.”

“Would that we had a hundred such aces,” Hunnar agreed, expanding on the analogy without understanding it. “ ’Tis interesting to note that you do not regard trust as an absolute, but as a term with definitions which vary according to the situation.”

“I didn’t mean—” Ethan started to argue. But Hunnar, trying hard to conceal his evident pleasure at this revelation of human morality, walked away before the salesman could reply.

Polos Mirmib studied the imposing heap of weapons as the last sword was laid atop the metal and bone pile. Edges and points gleamed in the dim canyon light.

“For those who profess to offer naught but friendship, you travel well-armed.”

Elfa offered a candid response. “We also have much to kill for.”

“Well put, my lady.” Mirmib executed a light gesture of modest admiration.

“What now?” September’s impatience made him sound nervous, which he wasn’t. “We just push the lot over the side? Or do you have somebody waitin’ to come pick them up and tag them for us?”

“Neither.” Mirmib showed the giant his widest non-tooth smile. “Your willingness to so comply with a custom of gravest imposition is sufficient proof of your good faith and, I hope, true intentions,” He gestured idly at the armory. “You may repossess your weaponry. Your actions have told us what we wished to know.” While those of the crew standing around stared stupefied at the diplomat, he turned and walked to the railing. A mild gust of Tran-ky-ky’s unceasing, arctic winds made him stumble and Ethan reflected again on the other’s fragility. Like many sentients of great character, Mirmib wore his steel and iron inside.

He shouted to the two Tran waiting on the tiny raft alongside. Ethan caught only isolated scraps of sentences. The accent used here was thick and slippery.

One of the Tran blew several indelicate notes on a horn. This mournful baying was answered by a jubilant blare from a horn on the first wall. Another horn sounding from the second wall, up ahead, was followed by several more, until the canyon reverberated like a thranx concert at mating jubileejee.

When the final mellow flat had retreated into crevices too small to return it with audible force, Ethan was able to make out cheers from the Moulokinese soldiers lining the massive walls ahead and behind. The small raft moved away from the Slanderscree’s shadow to assume a waiting position near her bow.

“Where is your captain?” Mirmib asked. Sliding his own sword back into its sheath, Hunnar used his free hand to point to the high helm deck. Ta-hoding stood staring curiously down at them. “I will join him, to aid in directing you to our city.”

Ethan joined several others in following Hunnar and Mirmib up to the wheel. While Ta-hoding received instructions and conferred with Mirmib, Hunnar drew Ethan aside.

“See, the cables barring the gates fore and aft have been taken in. We could break the gate behind us and escape.”

Ethan eyed his massive, hirsute friend. “Is that what you wish to do?”

“I do not. You accuse with your questioning, friend Ethan.” It was Hunnar’s turn to walk away for a different reason.

Ta-hoding had the necessary sails reset. Slowly the icerigger moved toward the second gate, swinging delicately through the tight bend in the canyon. As they squeaked through the gate, the soldiers on the walls studied the ship and its occupants intently. Unlike the Slanderscree’s passage through the first gate, however, the watching warriors jostled one another and chattered freely among themselves. Their weapons hung easily from paws or lay forgotten against walls and rocks. A few even exchanged hesitant questions with members of the icerigger’s crew.

The canyon grew no shallower as they followed Mirmib’s raft up the ice. Sheer basalt walls towered steadily higher above them. Before long the canyon wound around to the east and started inland again. The walls hemming them in seemed to lower slightly, and breaks where a man might climb upward began to appear in the hitherto vertical cliffs.

Now that they were facing the interior of the plateau once more, Ethan could see over the bow the dense clouds they’d found so intriguing from out on the ice ocean. They continued to hover persistently in one place, succumbing to the dispersing effect of the wind only with reluctance. Their initial familiarity now came home to him.

Similar clouds clung possessively to the plutonic highlands of Sofold, Hunnar and Elfa’s home island. That puissant grayness was a great upwelling of steam, not smoke. Issuing forcefully from volcanic fissures and vents, it would renew itself as fast as it could be blown away. That explained the illusion of the “hovering” clouds.

Volcanic heat provided the base for Sofold’s foundry and much of its wealth. So in addition to a reputation for fine shipbuilding and an impregnable canyon locale, Moulokin also enjoyed this additional important resource.

He moved to stand next to the diplomat Mirmib. “ ’Tis true there are foundries up there,” the emaciated Tran admitted, “but they are neither owned nor operated by us.” In response to Ethan’s look of surprise and consternation, he explained, “We have an agreement with the people who operate the foundries.”

“They’re not Moulokinese?”

“No.” And he formed a peculiar expression Ethan could not interpret.

He intended to pursue the question, except the Slanderscree abruptly turned hard to starboard. They were proceeding up a side canyon. Sailors fought with spars and sails, but for a new reason. Now that the icerigger was traveling southward and no longer heading inland, the wind from the plateau all but vanished as soon as the ship had fully entered the branch can yon.

The wind faded to a gentle, almost earthlike breeze. Tentatively Ethan cracked the mask of his survival suit, hastily shut it again. There was no paradise ahead. The wind might have died, but if it was warmer than minus fifteen outside his protective clothing, the outraged cells on his face had lied to him. Moulokin would be no Trannish Shangri-la.

The canyon took several twists and turns. Ten minutes later it opened into a vast natural amphitheater. The dark cliffs arced out to east and west before curving smoothly southward again. They were moving across a cliff-walled bowl at least a dozen times wider than the mouth of the canyon.

Ahead lay Moulokin, looking very real.

At the southern end of the canyon the cliffs had crumbled and eroded away, mounting upward in uncertain stages, forming levels. Much of the city was constructed on these levels, giving Moulokin a terraced look.

Several thousand roofs shone in the sun. Ice-paths were filled with black specks like splinters of chocolate which darted up and down the white streets. Far back from the harbor’s edge, built into the topmost level with a thirty-meter-high wall of sheer rock behind it, was a substantial-looking fortress.

There was ample room now for the Slanderscree to maneuver. The magnificent ice harbor could easily have contained as many ships as that of Wannome. To the west, docks marched like brown worms out onto the ice. Ice canals and strange buildings dominated the far western edge of the harbor, running up to the cliffs themselves.

“Our shipyards,” Mirmib explained with a touch of pride in his voice.

“I’m beginnin’ to understand why this place’s never been taken,” September rumbled. “A few could hold those two walls we passed against an army. No way up the plateau from outside to outflank ’em. And the way that wind blows down the canyon, any attacking rafts would have the devil of a time trying to tack up-canyon against them while carryin’ on a runnin’ fight.”

As the icerigger edged toward a long, deserted dock under the joint direction of Mirmib and Ta-hoding, Ethan’s attention traveled to the southeast. Between the city and the western canyon wall, the cliffs gave way to a gradually rising sub-canyon filled with the densest growth of coniferous-type trees they’d yet encountered on this world. No doubt they matured to such heights here because of the protection the canyon provided from the steady eroding winds that scoured the rest of Tran-ky-ky. Seedlings here could add height and breadth without being torn loose by hurricane-force winds, and seeds might find accumulated soil in which to take root, while larger trees would not have the earth ripped away from their surface roots. In that immensely valuable stand of mature timber lay Moulokin’s greatest source of wealth.

As they maneuvered into the dock, Ethan saw Mirmib temporarily free and asked him again about the operators of the distant, steam-shrouded foundries.

The diplomat appeared uncomfortable, tried to divert Ethan’s attention to the neat storehouses and homes cut into the cliffs forming the harbor.

“Is there some reason why you can’t tell me?”

“None written. They guard their privacy and …” Mirmib stopped, his expression changing to one of reverence. You are friends: there is no reason I can think why you should not know of the Saia.”

“The Saia?”

“People of the Golden Saia, offspring of the fires they tend. They know of things ordinary people do not. Ordinary people they are not.”

“You worship them, consider them gods?” Ethan pressed. If he’d hoped to get a revealing reaction from Mirmib, he failed.

“I did not say either of those things. No, they are not gods. They are simply different. To know them is to respect them. This is a tradition as old as Moulokin. We pride ourselves on our independence.” For the briefest instant, Ethan detected a hint of the rabid tribalism of which all Tran seemed to be guilty.

“But we keep the bargains they set.”

“Out of fear? Why not just take the foundries from them? Or at least strike your own bargains.”

“It is not a question of fear, my friend. You know naught of the Golden Saia. We fear them not, but we respect them mightily. And we would gain nothing even could we wrest the foundries from them, for we could not run the mines and smelters as well as they do, nor fashion such intricate metal parts for our homes and rafts.

“Where they live and play, it would be death for one of us to work. ’Tis difficult enough but to go briefly to trade with them.”

“It’s warmer where they live, then?”

“It is not to be believed,” said Mirmib solemnly. Of course, what was unbearably hot to a Tran might be wonderfully comfortable for a human or thranx.

But if that was the case, then what were the people of the Golden Saia?

“There are plants and creatures living among the Saia which would interest a curious traveler, did he not die of the heat while examining them. They grow nowhere else that we have heard.”

“What kind of plants?” Ethan and Mirmib looked to their left. Milliken Williams stood there, the diminutive teacher reluctant to interrupt but finally too intrigued to forgo a question or two.

“I will not describe them to you. I cannot describe them to you. They are pieces of dream.” Mirmib looked thoughtful. “I have been to the head of the main canyon but twice in my life, and have no desire to go again. When I finished conversing with them, though they met our party on the very outskirts of their lands and the region of fire, I was so exhausted and weakened that I lay unconscious for two days each time before my body had recovered.”

“Dehydration,” murmured Williams.

“And now, if you mind it not overmuch, I would rather talk no longer on them.” He indicated a group of staring Tran making their way toward the ship via the dock icepath. “There are matters of official greeting to be taken care of. My presence is required.”

Mirmib left them to join Ta-hoding, Hunnar, Elfa and September. While Moulokinese protocol was conducted in the universal fashion of such matters—which is to say, with teeth-clenching slowness—Williams and Ethan spent a few relaxed moments watching two cubs as they chivaned dangerously but gleefully in and out among the runners of the busy icerafts in the harbor, ignoring imprecations hurled in their direction by disapproving adults and tired sailors.

There were few such vessels to play among. As the legends had insisted, Moulokin was a center for building and manufacture, not commerce. Trade here was in intense bursts rather than a steady flow.

Williams slowly raised his face mask, letting his skin grow accustomed to the near-windless cold. In the absence of the usually omnipresent blinding ice-whiteness, he also popped out his protoid optical contacts and exchanged the high-glare configuration he normally wore for regular implants from a small black case. He had to wear the implants anyway, and they saved him the necessity of bothering with the regular goggles that the others wore beneath their suit masks.

A few lost snowflakes touched lightly on his dusky skin. “Ethan, what does this canyon remind you of?”

Carefully Ethan examined the surrounding harbor. Moulokin lay ahead, the canyon opening behind them. To either side, the locals who dwelt in the caves chivaned down icepaths cut into the lower cliff sides with breathtaking disregard for the precipitous drops lining each path. Blue sky overhead and thick wool-gray clouds toward the interior completed the scene. None provided an answer to the teacher’s question—except perhaps the terraced topography of the city itself.

“I’d guess it reminds me of some old river canyons I’ve seen, where the water level had dropped drastically.”

“Yes, a river canyon, certainly. Only parts of it don’t fit.” Williams spoke with a curious intensity. “That’s not enough, somehow.” His gaze turned to the canyon exit. He rested his elbows on the high railing, his chin in cupped hands, and did not go into what parts he was referring to.

Ethan shrugged. Williams’s obsessions differed from his own and September’s. Then as if on cue, a familiar bellow sounded from the main deck. He moved to the helmdeck edge, stared down to see the giant beckoning to him.

“Come on, young feller-me-lad. The local Landgrave deigns to chat with us. ’Pears we’re going to get our chance to enlist the second state in the union of ice.”

Leaving Williams alone at the railing, contemplating ancient geologies, Ethan joined the party assembling on the dock.

Moulokin was much like Wannome, save that it rose in steps instead of the smooth incline of Hunnar’s home. Icepath switchbacks formed the way from one level of the city to the next.

As expected, curious crowds came to stare at the newcomers. Black pupils expanded on yellow fields as the humans passed, looking more alien than ever in their brown, shiny survival suits.

“Tell me, Mirmib,” Ethan inquired of the diplomat leading them, “you and your people have done well for yourselves here. Apparently these Golden Saia have done likewise up at the canyon’s end.” He gestured hesitantly at the cliffs surrounding them.

“But what of all the land around here, behind the Saia? The forested canyon on our right looks as if it runs right up to the edge of the plateau. There are no cliffs there barring settlement of the interior. Who lives on all that land?”

Mirmib regarded him with surprise, great furry brows twisting. “Why, no one, friend Ethan. That is to say, no one to the knowledge of Moulokin. And Moulokin,” here he gestured at the city, “has been here as long as there are records to read and legends to precede them.”

“Then you can’t be sure no one lives in the interior?” He smiled at the antics of several fascinated cubs fumbling along in his footsteps and eying him as if he were a refugee from a bad dream. “Has anyone ever been in there?”

Mirmib spoke gently. “Friend Ethan, you question me thus in your search for others to join in your idea.” Ethan nodded, added a yes when he remembered that the gesture would be unfamiliar to Mirmib. “You will find none in there. Yes, we have been above the canyon’s rim. There are no natural ice paths up there, no ice ocean.” He raised one foot off the ice to show his sharpened chiv-claws.

“How would we travel and explore? We could melt ice and let it refreeze to form icepaths as we do here in the city. But to journey any significant distance inland would require more labor than ’tis worth.”

“But you said some of you had been above the rim?”

“Yes. Despite the difficulties. They tell of flat, barren lands with little vegetation and no game. There is naught to eat but a low, thin form of plant, not nearly as rich as the pika-pina we harvest outside our own upper canyon. Nor are there trees worth cutting. They are stunted and scattered. There is little enough ice to melt for drinking, let alone to spread out and form paths to travel upon.” His voice dropped and he looked away.

“Besides, there are spirits that haunt the inlands. They feast upon the minds of those who venture within, and it is told that the farther one goes from Moulokin, the faster his thoughts melt like drinking water. Enough.”

They had reached the castle. Ethan forced aside the visions of the inner continent his considerable imagination had conjured up. They had another new Landgrave to confront, and they’d best have better luck here than in Poyolavomaar.

Smoke and distance had obscured their view of the castle from the harbor. Up close, Ethan found it unexpectedly modest in dimension. It was not built on nearly so grand a scale as the stone massif in Poyolavomaar nor even as that of Elfa’s father back in distant Wannome. Its location high above the city lent it a grandeur it would otherwise not have had. Also, it was far wider in proportion than it was deep, basically a long rectangle of cut rock.

So shallow was it that the thirty-meter high cliff rising to the edge of the plateau which backed against it appeared ready to tumble and demolish it at the first strong wind.

The guards lining the entrance in expectation of their arrival looked more solid than the structure they defended. A high main gate admitted them to a narrow courtyard. From there they entered the main interior building. Only after they’d walked a substantial distance without stopping, and windows had given way long since to torches, did Ethan and his companions realize that most of the castle was hewn out of the cliff face.

They’d hardly adjusted to this surprise when Mirmib directed them into a room distinguished only by its lack of ornamentation. A few furs covered the walls, torchlight adding to their exoticism. Hunnar, Elfa and Ta-hoding looked unimpressed. When informed by Mirmib that they stood in the throne room, the visiting Tran could not believe it.

The barbaric magnificence of Elfa’s father’s throne room in Wannome, with its brilliant banners and dominating stavanzer tusks, was absent. So was the spacious ostentation of the throne chamber of Tonx Ghin Rakossa of Poyolavomaar.

The feeling here was intimate instead of overpowering. In addition to the pelts and torches, the only color was in the floor. It was a crazy-quilt pattern of pentagrams, triangles and other geometric shapes, each made from a different wood. The inlays ranged from a rich, almost space-black through the darker shades of brown to one deep-grained square that was nearly yellow.

The throne itself bore closer resemblance to the Trannish version of an easy chair than that of an impressive seat of state. Ethan, having absorbed his impressions of the room in a few seconds, now directed his attention to the figure seated in that chair. It raised both paws and slid back the hood which had been shadowing its face as it stood to greet them. Finely woven robes clung to unexpected curves.

Never intimidated by position, September murmured an appreciative comment. There was no real reason for the surprise Ethan experienced, he told himself. The power positions of women within the Commonwealth were so commonplace that they were never remarked upon. Anything else would have seemed unnatural. But it was not so in many primitive societies, particularly those of a feudal/barbaric inclination.

Yet had not the leader of the Horde which he and September and Williams had helped Hunnar’s people to defeat been female, the repelling Sagyanak the Death? And wasn’t Elfa the one who would inherit title as Landgrave of Sofold?

Leaving the throne, the Landgrave of Moulokin came to exchange breath-greetings with them each in turn. Mirmib performed the individual introductions. The Landgrave did not hesitate or shy away when she came to the two humans.

The Landgrave (Landgravess? Ethan wondered) was named K’ferr Shri-Vehm. She had the typical broadness of all Tran, though was slimmer than the other females present, Elfa and Teeliam. Perhaps the Moulokinese ran to unusual thinness. They did if their Landgrave and guardian of the gate were any indication. Her slimness by Tran standards made her appear almost human, save for her height. She was nearly as tall as Hunnar or Skua September. September might find her attractive, in a bizarrely alien fashion, but to Ethan she was merely intimidating. Her sequinned dan could envelop him completely.

Her smile when she greeted each of them seemed genuine. Despite her beauty and presence, reflected in the admiring gazes of Hunnar, Ta-hoding and Balavere, nether Teeliam nor Elfa appeared apprehensive. Possibly it was due to K’ferr’s aura of authority. She seemed neither male nor female so much as Landgrave. This despite being the youngest Tran in the chamber, excepting Teeliam.

For reasons he never quite understood, it fell on Ethan to tell the tale of their accidental arrival and crash-landing on Tran-ky-ky, of the presence of a humanx outpost at Arsudun, their various adventures in reaching this point and their joint interracial decision that the best way for all Tran to improve their status was to form a Trannish government including many city-states which could then petition for admittance to the Humanx Commonwealth.

K’ferr absorbed this barrage of new ideas and concepts quietly, listening with both pointed ears cocked intently at Ethan. Occasionally she would make a small gesture of agreement or disagreement, or mutter something softly to Mirmib, who stood close on her right. She said nothing to anyone else until Ethan came to the part of their story where they were greeted and then betrayed and imprisoned by Rakossa of Poyolavomaar, who acted in collusion with the Landgrave of Arsudun, Calonnin Ro-Vijar. Before Ethan could finish, K’ferr rose and began pacing the open area between her throne and the assembled visitors. Her chiv clacked on the wooden floor, making her sound like a nervous tapdancer. Ethan studied the inlaid wood, wondering if the chiv marks were polished out after each audience or if the chamber was simply little-used.

When Ethan related the lies Ro-Vijar had employed to sway the mind of the unstable Rakossa, K’ferr’s soft voice angrily launched into a list of old grievances Moulokin held against Poyolavomaar.

“But Moulokin is a half-legend in Poyolavomaar,” said Hunnar.

“And their mendacity is legend in Moulokin! Tis true,” she continued furiously, “we have no contact with them. But they have contact with many peoples who trade with us. Though they cannot match the skill of our shipwrights, out of jealousy they try to keep others from contracting for our rafts. Their merchants are known as arrogant and their traders bully many who would deal with us. They are fat with power, from cheating at every opportunity. Yet we are told others are afraid not to deal with them. The capriciousness and evil of their Landgrave is well known to us.” Teeliam Hoh murmured a comment which none could hear clearly, but Ethan could guess at its substance.

“This Rakossa is famed for the taxes he wrings from his people. However,” she said more easily, lowering her voice, “you are here and not in Poyolavomaar.”

“And grateful for it, my lady,” added Hunnar.

K’ferr slid with a remarkable hirsute sensuousness into her chair, leaned on her left arm. The claws on her right paw appeared, vanished, reappeared, a nervous Tran habit Ethan recognized immediately.

“Tell me of this idea, this plan you have for our world, outlander-man. This—what did you call it, Mirmib? This confederation you call a union of ice.” She glanced sharply at Hunnar. “I have never heard of this Sofold, nor know any who have. Yet you subscribe to this proposition made by a few of another race. You can speak for your city and assure me that you will keep the peace if we eventually agree to become part of this union?”

Confronted abruptly with the reality of an idea coming true, both Hunnar and Elfa looked questioningly at Ethan. He said nothing. Finally, Hunnar replied. “We had not considered that we might so soon have to commit our state to this proposal, my lady.”

“So you are willing to agree in principle, but not with your own selves.”

“I did not say that,” Hunnar hastily corrected her. “ ’Tis only that I …” He paused, drew himself up impressively as he could. “I am a knight. I have no authority to make treaties.”

“I can.”

K’ferr turned lidded eyes on Elfa. “And you are also a knight of this distant land of Sofold?”

“I am the Elfa Kurdagh-Vlata, daughter of Torsk Kurdagh-Vlata, Landgrave of Sofold. One day I will be Landgrave, upon confirmation of the knights and nobles of Sofold. I give my warmth as forfeiture in the event Sofold should ever act belligerently toward our friends in union, the people of Moulokin. We will join in peace forever, for the betterment not of two small city-states, but of all the people of all Tran-ky-ky.” Aware everyone was staring at her, she continued less imperiously, “In so doing we but implement a larger vision from friends who exist in a greater universe than our own.”

K’ferr came forward, grabbed Elfa’s wrists with her paws. Elfa did likewise to her counterpart, and they exchanged breath, to brief but animated cheering from the others. It had all happened a bit fast for Ethan, used to dealing with the intricacies of Commonwealth bureaucracy. Once more, the informal nature of Tran government had shown its value.

It did not at all feel like a critical moment in the history of an entire world.

XIII

“THERE IS JINADAS, WHICH lies forty-three satch southwest of Moulokin,” Mirmib was telling the now relaxed visitors. “They might well be willing to join in this union, especially if we send representatives along with you to assure them of its efficacy. And we have good friends in Yealleat, a most powerful state lying some hundred satch to the west.”

“We forget ourselves, Polos.” K’ferr Shri-Vehm looked solemn yet pleased with herself. “You must all remain several days now. An event of this magnitude and importance cannot be consummated properly without much feasting and celebration.” Topaz eyes flickered in the torchlight. “We Moulokinese seize readily upon any excuse for a holiday.”

“I don’t know.” Ethan tried to sound apologetic. “It might be a good idea if we hurried on our—”

“We’d be glad to stay awhile,” September cut in anxiously, with a sharp look in Ethan’s direction. “After the last couple o’ months, we could do with a bit of celebratin’. Couldn’t we, feller-me-lad?”

“Skua, don’t you think we ought to—”

“That’s settled, then.”

“ ’Tis agreed.” Mirmib entwined his fingers in a gesture indicating extensive satisfaction. “Preparations will commence. Meantimes, I would inspect this wondrous vessel of yours.” He directed his next query to Elfa.

“How did you manage such an enormous raft?”

“ ’Twas made possible by the special metal which our human friends call dur’loy, and which Sir Ethan insists can be supplied to us in quantity and at fair trade rates.”

The diplomat swung his fur-framed gaze toward Ethan. “Is this truth, outlander Ethan?”

“Commerce is the life-blood of the Commonwealth, friend Mirmib.” As he spoke it, Ethan wished for something less trite than that ancient government aphorism. He was better dealing with specific items than generalities. At the same time he wondered at Polos. Mirmib’s title. He’d called himself Guardian of the Gate, but his presence as K’ferr’s sole advisor here hinted at a much more powerful role. Was he chief minister, perhaps? Or father, or consort? Given the uncertainties, Ethan thought it best not to risk a breach of courtesy by inquiring. At least, not until the new Trannish confederation had been in existence somewhat longer than a few minutes.

“I’m sure something can be worked out,” he added.

“It promises abundances for the peoples of Moulokin and Sofold,” the Lady K’frr agreed. “And to our friends in Yealleat and Jinadas if they too will join, as I believe they will.” Her easy-going manner and beatific expression lulled Ethan completely, so that her next words were twice the shock they’d have been if he’d been expecting them.

“There is one thing, an obvious trifle, that all should agree to, of course. The treacherous inhabitants of vile Poyolavomaar must naturally be excluded from this.”

Ethan’s heart skipped a beat. Hunnar shook his woolly head and regarded the salesman with eloquent silence. The slant of his lips, the narrowing of double lids, said as plain as words, “See now? No matter how accommodating or friendly these folk of Moulokin are toward us, there will always be hatreds among the Tran which a mere idea cannot obliterate.”

“Details of the confederation can be worked out later, my lady.” It was a desperate attempt to forestall a possibly crippling argument. “For now we should return to our ship and prepare properly for Sir Mirmib’s visit.”

Either K’ferr sensed his discomfort or else he’d genuinely taken her mind off the subject of Poyolavomaar. “There is no need for you to trouble yourselves with special preparations for us, for I am coming also.” Mistaking his attitude of discomfort, she added, “But if you desire to rest yourselves and warn your crew, I fully understand. We will await word of your readiness.”

They made formal gestures of leave-taking and were preparing to exit the room when a Moulokinese soldier came running in.

The mere action was indicative of the importance of his message, for the Tran disliked running and avoided it except in extreme situations. Their sharp, long chiv were magnificently adapted for chivaning, or skating, across the ice. Running was awkward and dangerous, but this soldier came clip-clopping into the room at an impressive pace.

While the visitors stood grouped to one side and politely pretended to ignore the soldier’s anxious words, Ethan strained to overhear. Not only the soldier’s method of locomotion, but his manner and the rapidity of his speech hinted at news of some urgency.

As was the case with all Tran they’d observed thus far, the panting soldier did not prostrate himself before his ruler, or perform other time-consuming obsequious gestures. He simply approached the throne and began talking, pausing every so often only to catch his breath.

“My Lady—outside the first gate … a ship. And beyond, near the mouth of the canyon, many ships!”

“Conserve thy warmth, soldier,” said Mirmib quietly. “Now, how many is many?”

“Twenty to thirty, minister,” the exhausted messenger poured out, ignoring Mirmib’s admonition to relax. “All filled to the railings with armed soldiers.”

Ethan’s imperative whisper broke into the conversation between Hunnar and September.

“What is it, feller-me-lad?”

“Just listen.” He gestured surreptitiously toward the throne. Elfa, Teeliam and the others also stopped chatting, strained to hear.

“They say they come from Poyolavomaar,” the soldier continued.

“Speak of the devil.” September looked atypically upset.

“They say they know that—” he looked around the room and finally focused on Ethan and his companions, “—they are here.”

“How can they know that?” K’ferr’s nape hairs were bristling.

“From the depth and sharpness of the marks their ship’s runners leave in the ice, my lady.” Mirmib nodded sagely. “They demand that these visitors, their great raft, and the woman among them hight Teeliam Hoh be turned over to them. This done, they will quit their position and leave us in peace. Otherwise, they threaten to take the city.” At the close of this the soldier’s voice, despite his evident fatigue, took on a note of disbelief.

K’ferr stood abruptly, raked the left arm of her chair with sprung claws. “The arrogance. To come thus to our gate and demand by virtue of arms that we surrender any visitor. I would not turn over to such children an injured k’nith!”

The soldier unabashedly admired his ruler’s stand. “It seems incredible, my Lady. He insists he will destroy us if we do not comply.”

“He? Who is he?”

“Their Landgrave, Tonx Ghin Rakossa, leads them, my Lady.”

“Does he deign to allow us time to consider his generous offer?” she asked sarcastically.

“Four days, my Lady.”

“So much time? Why do they grant us so much?”

Taking her question literally, the soldier explained. “They realize, their representative told us at the gate watch, that it may be a difficult decision for us to make, going as it does against traditional laws of hospitality. We should be permitted time to consider. However, it was made clear to us that as long as their fleet blockades the canyon entrance, no ship of ours nor any other can move in or out to trade.”

“Or to escape,” added an unperturbed Mirmib. “Tell me, soldier, what is your name and profession?”

“Cortundi, minister. I am a leathersmith by trade.”

“What would you do, Cortundi?”

Common soldier regarded ruler and minister. His paws tensed into digging mode. “I wish only to return to the first gate, my lady and sir. I expect I will be needed there.”

“A siege would be long Cortundi.”

The soldier-craftsman smiled, showing pearly fangs. “There mayhap be better hides to cure, sir.”

“A pleasant thought.” K’ferr returned the panther-grin. “Wait outside, Cortundi.” The soldier turned and left.

“My fault, ’tis on me alone.” Ethan heard the disconsolate whimper, turned to see its source—a downcast Teeliam standing back against the wall. Torchlight turned the fur on her head and shoulders to singed silver.

“I should not have come with you when I helped you to escape,” she continued. “I ought fair to have killed myself cleanly then and prevented this. Rakossa is mad.”

“He is mad indeed,” said K’ferr, “to think he can take Moulokin. He cannot reach the city, nay, cannot breach the first wall. Truly he is driven not by common sense but by insanity.” Ethan forebore from mentioning that some of Terra’s greatest generals, ancient and modern, had been thought quite mad.

“ ’Tis me alone he seeks out,” Teeliam went on sadly. “He cannot stand the thought I may finally have escaped him. I would kill myself here save that he would be more furious still at being deprived of the pleasures he doubtless has spent these past days planning.” Fur rippled nervously as muscles tensed.

“Come what will, in fairness I must go back to him.” Her gaze rose, traveled from human eyes to Tran. “If I do this, he may depart.”

“I do not understand,” said K’ferr slowly, gaining more knowledge from something behind Teeliam’s eyes than from her words. “It was said that Rakossa demands also crew and ship of you.”

“Yes, he desires them, but will be satisfied with me.”

“He may be,” Ethan admitted, sounding more heartless than he intended, “but Calonnin Ro-Vijar will not.” He tossed a brief explanation over his shoulder to the staring Mirmib and K’ferr: “Ro-Vijar is Landgrave of distant Arsudun, an ally of Rakossa’s in spirit if not material.”

“It is not right that an entire city risk war for one person.” Teeliam sounded resigned. “I will suffer whatever Rakossa has concocted for me.” She made the Tran equivalent of a resigned shrug. “It cannot be worse than what I have endured before.”

“We will not,” Hunnar said tensely, “turn you over to the madman. Sofold does not sacrifice the innocent for the sake of expediency. Besides, as Ethan says, doing so may not sate Rakossa anyway. Of course,” and he turned to face the throne, “ ’tis not properly our decision to make.”

K’ferr had left the throne and was pacing once again. Almost absently she said, “This business of turning over your companion to Rakossa is a waste of time. We would never consider such a thing, nor permit you to do it even should that be your wish. There are more important matters to discuss.” She looked to her minister.

“So the Poyos would challenge us here, at our own door, in our canyon, on our ice. Further proof of this Rakossa’s insanity. Arrogance dilutes sense as vouli thins strong drink. If they are in truth foolish enough to attack the gate, we will give them a welcome they will not outlive.”

“If you’re determined to fight, we’d better ready our own people,” Ethan said. “With your permission, and our deepest thanks, my Lady, we’ll return to our raft.”

“Do we permit them to enter the first gate and trap them between, or stop them at the first with arrows and spears?” The compassionate Landgrave was deep in discussion of life-shortening methods with her minister. Mirmib had presence enough to dismiss the visitors.

Ethan rose from his place at the long table in the Slanderscree’s galley-cum-conference room. “We can’t let them have Teeliam, and it doesn’t seem right to let the Moulokinese fight and die over something they’ve had nothing to do with.” Teeliam was not present to object to the first part of his statement, having been excluded from the meeting over her protests. She was too biased to render objective suggestions, Hunnar had informed her, a bias which even extended to condemning herself to death.

“Me, I’d rather welcome a chance to dally with this Rakossa and his pack.” September leaned back in his Tran-sized chair. Not designed for his greater weight, it creaked alarmingly beneath him. He rubbed his pinnacle of a proboscis.

“I know you would, Skua. Sometimes you act more Tran than human.”

September grinned, moving the hand from nose crest to white mane, and scratched. “Lad, when you’ve seen as much of the galaxy as I, you’ll know there’s nothin’ especially flattering about laying claim to being part of mankind.”

“No, friend Skua.” September looked with surprise at Elfa. The Landgrave’s daughter had seemed anything but pacific. Now was an odd time for appeasing attitudes to surface.

Appeasement was not what Elfa had in mind, however. “Ethan is correct when he says this is not the Moulokinese fight. We cannot ask them to die for us.”

“But didn’t you see the way that K’ferr cat was actin’?” September argued. “She’s spoilin’ for a confrontation and bloodshed.”

“Surely, my lady,” said a disbelieving Hunnar, “you cannot be thinking of turning Teeliam over to the monster?”

“Quite so, noble knight. I cannot be.” Elfa’s eyes swept over the table. “But suppose Rakossa and Calonnin knew the Slanderscree was not here?”

“Not wishin’ to appear condescendin’, gal, but you heard what that soldier said back in the throne room.” September’s nails were mere stubs compared to Tran claws, but he etched a shallow groove in the hardwood table nonetheless. “No ship could make the chiv marks in the ice outside the canyon that the Slanderscree could.”

“No known ship,” admitted Elfa. “Yet there are many regions of this world that the Poyos, much as ourselves until recently, know nothing of. This would be true also of distant Arsudun. How could they be certain our tracks are not those of another ship, say a great towed barge long since dismantled for its wood by the Moulokinese?”

“Not impossible, my lady,” put in Ta-hoding. “But how could we convince the attackers of this?”

Elfa looked embarrassed. “I had not considered that far. Could we not hide our craft while representatives of the Poyolavomaar fleet inspect Moulokin’s harbor?”

“Hide this vessel?” Hunnar executed a high Trannish laugh.

“No, let’s think this through, Hunnar?’ September appeared thoughtful. “The lady, she has a point.”

“What if,” Ethan said after a moment of introspective silence, “we took the ship apart. Yeah, took it apart and put the sections up on the plateau. The Poyo representatives would never think of looking up there.”

“And with good reason.” Hunnar tried hard not to sneer. “ ’Tis a most marvelous proposal, friend Ethan, save that it would take the whole population of the city in addition to our own crew working several weeks to accomplish such a task, even if the Moulokinese have heavy engines enough to raise the large timbers and masts. We have but four days.”

“No, wait a minute, now.” September leaned forward, speaking with controlled excitement. “What the lad suggests makes sense, but in a different way. We need to get the rigger up on the plateau, and a really fair distance inland in case the Poyos do insist on lookin’ there, something this Rakossa is likely to try. Since we can’t do it in sections, we need to move her intact.”

Murmurs of polite astonishment came from several of the Tran seated around the table.

“Suppose we sail her to the upper end of the main canyon, Captain.” His attention was directed at the intent Ta-hoding. “I’m kind o’ curious to meet these Golden Saia folks myself.” Ethan threw him a questioning glance. Had Skua, despite his initial disclaimers, been as intrigued by the mysterious Saia as Ethan and Milliken Williams?

“Now with all the forces actin’ on the land there, it’s a fair assumption that the land of these Saias slopes fairly gently inland.”

“Given that it does, friend September, and I intend no disrespect, but—what of this?” Hunnar waited to be convinced of he knew not what.

“I was on a world once,” the giant said reminiscently, “similar to this one. Only the oceans were covered with grass—sort of an anemic pika-pina, Hunnar, like they say grows inland here—and there were sailin’ ships akin to the Slanderscree. They sailed easy over those green oceans, on wheels instead of skates.”

“What,” inquired Hunnar blankly, “is a wheel?”

Ethan sat stunned. The Tran had achieved such a high level of civilization that he’d taken an invention as basic as the wheel for granted. Now that he thought back on it, nowhere in Sofold could he recall seeing a wheeled vehicle; not a cart, not a wagon, nothing. Everything traveled on chiv, or skates. Dry land transport was by means of sledges, used as little as possible. And they had no need for wheels, after all, in a land where icepaths were easily constructed and frozen seas surrounded every city-state.

He finally found an example to serve as illustration. “Like the millstones, Hunnar, you use for making meal from dried pika-pina and juice from its pulp. Like the,” and he had to use the Tran term for steering control to refer to the Slanderscree’s own great ship’s wheel. “You place them apart like so, with a supporting beam between like those that connect our ship’s skates and they carry you smoothly across unfrozen lands.”

“This is surely an awkward way of traveling,” Hunnar admitted, brows contorting in confusion, “yet if you say the thing works, it must be so.”

“It’s a proven method,” replied Ethan without smiling. At least Hunnar and the other Tran had the idea now.

“We will need,” Williams began, already drawing designs and measuring stresses in his head, “additional axles to place beneath the ship. While the five duralloy skates now positioned beneath us are sufficient to support the icerigger’s mass, I have less confidence in stone or wooden wheels, and that is the best the Moulokinese could construct. They have good quality timber. Perhaps they can be metal-reinforced, if the work of these Saia is as fine as they claim.”

“Why not just make metal wheels?” wondered one ship’s mate.

“Assuming these Saia are indeed not gods, they would do extraordinarily well to manufacture one wheel of such size in only four days,” Ta-hoding pointed out gruffly. Gentle of demeanor when speaking to his superiors or the three humans, the icerig-ger’s captain could be harsh whenever he thought one of his own crew guilty of stupidity.

“With stone or wooden wheels then,” the teacher continued, calculating all the while, “we’d need additional axles for additional wheels.”

“Plenty of trees big enough,” September agreed. “They’ll be a lot easier to cut and attach than takin’ the ship apart would be. Of course,” and his excitement grew tempered by thoughtfulness, “this is all assumin’ the Moulokinese are willing to make ’em for us. I expect they will. I’m sure most of ’em would prefer to work a little harder rather than fight. A saw usually sheds less blood than a spear.”

“You speak a truth which I suspect extends beyond my own world, friend September.” Hunnar regarded the giant somberly. “There are those who do not share your opinion and mine of fighting.” He looked around the table. “There is also the question of obtaining permission from these Saia, whatever they may be, to travel through their lands. Given all this, I will defer a personal desire to shed Poyo blood.”

K’ferr Shri-Vehm also had to be convinced. It took considerable persuasion by minister Mirmib to talk her out of opting for the bloodthirsty path. That accomplished, orders were issued for an orgy of work to commence.

The industrious Moulokinese took the enormous assignment as a challenge to their skills. When the first evening fell, lights were brought out to permit the work to continue. The central shipyard reeked of old oil. From a distance, it looked as if the Slanderscree rested in a pool of fire.

Huge trees, cut and stored for use as masts on other rafts, were already available to serve as subsidiary axles. Metal bolts made by the Saia were brought out and used to help pika-pina cable secure axle to ship. Four new axles were emplaced between the fore and aft pairs of duralloy runners beneath the motionless icerigger.

Hours passed, became days. The metal-sheathed and reinforced wheels were bolted onto the four new axles. Then the runners were removed, first the pair fore and then the two aft. Wheels slightly larger than the eight already attached were placed on the runner shafts. Finally, the fifth runner, used for steering, was replaced by a steering wheel.

As expected, a brief experiment revealed that the resultant hybrid was as maneuverable on ice as a greased two-year-old. There was no way it could make any distance upcanyon against the steady, powerful winds that blew down off the plateau. The wheels would simply spin in place as the icerigger was shoved into the first cliff behind it.

Seven of the largest rafts in the harbor—and the Moulokinese built respectably big ones—were detailed to tow the helpless Slanderscree upcanyon, to the end of the ice. To the land of the Golden Saia. From there it could begin its slow journey inland.

Mirmib, however, could not give assurance to Ethan and the others of safe passage through the thermal regions. A representative hastily dispatched to acquire such assurances had returned, typically dehydrated and exhausted, to report that the Saia chose not to comment on the question. They had not given guarantee of safe conduct, nor had they denied it. Their sole response had been an indifferent silence.

In the absence of denial, it was decided to proceed.

“They have strange powers and commune regularly with the spirits of the interior,” a solemn Mirmib informed the readying travelers. “You would do well to treat cautiously with them, and to avoid conflict at all costs. In addition, they might offer much more information on the true conditions you can expect inland, though they abhor it more than we do.”

It was night as Mirmib addressed them. They were standing on the long dock paralleling the almost-finished, almost converted icerigger. Ethan and Hunnar were alone among a rushing current of preoccupied craftsmen.

Winches were carefully loading the last of the five removed duralloy runners aboard the ship. Hopefully, they would find another sloping canyon far away. Ethan found himself shivering as the minus sixty temperature pressed at his survival suit’s adjustive potentials. On locating another such canyon they would once more replace the duralloy runners, remove the wheels, and set off for a new location, perhaps distant Yealleat. As Ta-hoding had pointed out, the stars were a Tran icemaster’s principal guide to navigation, and the stars remained constant over land as well as ice.

They were loading final stores the next morning when a small raft came racing into the harbor, heeling dangerously to port as its crew hiked to maximum for top speed. She disgorged a single officer, who hauled himself up a boarding ladder with impressive speed despite the blood filtering through the fur over his left eye. The four sailors sprawled exhaustedly on the deck of the little raft looked equally battered.

“The Poyos have not waited,” the officer explained to the rapidly growing group of listeners clustering around him. “This is the fourth day and they attacked two hoid ago, no doubt hoping to catch us. offguard and by surprise.” The bleeding soldier permitted himself a vicious smile. “They did not, though they are stronger than we thought.” He recognized Hunnar among the assembled Tran.

“It would be well for all if you were on your way as soon as possible.” He took in the seven jostling tow-rafts, the cables stretching taut between them and the icerigger. “I must return to my post. Our warmth is with our new brothers. Go with the wind.” He was over the side before anyone had a chance to ask questions.

Ta-hoding was already heading for the helmdeck. Cranes and lift cables were disengaged in a flurry of commands. Slanderscree mates and harbor pilots of Moulokin took up positions in the bow. Sails began to billow, a blossoming of blue-green and gray, flowers of speed.

Word of the Poyolavomaar attack spread rapidly among the icerigger’s crew and those of the towing vessels. The Moulokinese hurried their last-minute preparations. They wanted to return as quickly as possible, to help defend their city.

Settled in arrowhead formation around the Slanderscree’s bow, the seven tow rafts exchanged signals and orders. Sailors stationed astern of each turned single-minded attention to the braces where the thick cables ran out to the icerigger. Pika-pina cables had never been known to snap, but they’d never been employed to pull so massive an object as the Slanderscree. If one did break, given the tension that would exist between dead weight and tug, the flying cable could decapitate an unwary sailor. Those stationed to watch the cable braces were all volunteers.

Ethan worried more about the effect of the plateau winds on the huge icerigger. Even with her sails furled, if the winds obtained a grip on her, she could be smashed against a down canyon wall.

Raft by raft, each of the towing craft let out its own sails, adjusting position to catch the gentle breezes sweeping down Moulokin’s protected canyon. The cables grew taut, hummed. There was the sound of pottery breaking beneath a heavy weight which muffled even as it broke. The icerigger ponderously started forward, sliding out of drydock as neatly as any clean birth.

Ta-hoding was in constant verbal communication with relay mates stationed along the length of the ship. Shouts rang out constantly, darting from towing raft to icerigger to raft as all concerned fought to maintain equal tension on all cables. It seemed an impossible task, but the Moulokinese proved themselves as skilled on the ships they built as they were in the shipyards. The cables thrummed and sang of uneven pressures, but none snapped—not even during the most dangerous maneuver, when the seven towing craft turned up the main canyon and the forceful interior winds struck them and their massive ward.

Tacking as one, they pulled the great raft steadily inland.

Ethan rushed to the portside, found to his relief that the second wall which barred passage downcanyon showed no sign of warlike activity. That meant the Poyos were still being stopped before the first wall. So far, the confidence K’ferr of Moulokin had displayed earlier seemed justified.

Great walls of dark stone drew close beside them, the roofless hallway of some ancient cataclysm. At times Ethan found himself impatient for more speed, for their progress seemed abysmally slow. It was not a journey that could be hurried, however. Not when seven ships had to maneuver as one.

On the fifth day, the ever-present walls began to shrink. Small side canyons, some hanging above ice-level, began to break the cliff edges. Some were smooth as they vanished into the plateau, while others dropped in steps similar to Moulokin’s topography. Their own little canyon-born zephyrs contributed to the difficulty of maneuvering.

Soon they were passing between cliff walls no more than twenty meters high. The lookouts on the Slanderscree’s fore and mainmasts could see over them and study the terrain beyond. They reported seeing only yellowish, wind-swept, inhospitable near-desert.

On the frigid morn of the eleventh day, when the canyon had ceased to be a canyon but was instead a river of ice bordered by gently sloping banks, they entered an area where clouds of steam and mist blotted out vision for all but a few meters in any direction. When they slid close to the banks, those on board the rafts could make out thick, towering trees whose crowns were lost in gray water-down, boles more massive than the largest growing in Moulokin’s side canyon.

Before long a cry came from the lead raft in the triangular formation. They had reached the end of the frozen river. Cables were cast off and neatly coiled aboard the Slanderscree. Finally the last was disengaged and all seven tow rafts had moved carefully downriver from the icerigger.

The wind here was dispersed, indecisive. Quickly, Ta-holding had sail put on as the huge raft slid slowly but aimlessly on the ice. Orders were given, spars adjusted. A sound new to the ears of Tran sailors penetrated the mists: a deep, impressive rumbling. The icerigger was now traveling on land.

It stopped.

Lookouts forward reported that the first two sets of wheels were resting on a gentle beach of gravel and grass-covered rock. Ta-hoding considered. Obviously, they had to put on more sail. But he was still leery of sailing on naked soil. Williams, who was standing nearby on the helmdeck, did his best to reassure him.

The plump captain remained skeptical. “I would rather have good, solid ice beneath my runners than,” he made it sound obscene, “bare ground. Still, we must gain more wind.”

Additional sail was unfurled, positioned. The strongest, steadiest breeze came from the north. Ta-hoding ordered the necessary shift in sail position. Fresh sheets of woven pika-pina billowed out to match the captain’s belly. An incredible creaking and groaning rose from beneath the raft’s hull, startling unprepared sailors who were used to traveling across silent, smooth ice. The crunching of stone under massive wheels was a disturbing new sound to them. It reminded some of a ship’s timbers breaking loose.

However unaesthetically, the third, fourth, fifth and eventually the sixth set of wheels moved inland, followed finally by the single steering wheel. There was a modest cheer of appreciation from the watching Moulokinese on the rafts astern as the Slanderscree rumbled awkwardly but steadily upslope.

Gaining confidence, Ta-hoding ordered a few additional small sails unfurled. The icerigger picked up speed. There was a cry and gesture of fond departing from the bow of the nearest tow ship. Ethan and Hunnar returned minister Mirmib’s arm action.

“I wonder if we shall see them again,” said Hunnar fondly.

“Not if, but when,” Ethan commented with surprising confidence. “Sofold and Moulokin now belong to the same confederation, the union of ice, remember?”

Hunnar looked abashed. “New ideas take root slowly on my world, friend Ethan. It is still difficult for me to comprehend the meaning of so many new and strange things, all of which have taken place since your arrival in Sofold such a short time ago. I suspect that as we have more and more contact with your people, with the peoples of other worlds, events will change still more rapidly for me and for all Tran.”

“I expect they will, Hunnar,” Ethan confessed. The knight’s words raised conflicting emotions within him. Had they chosen the right course in trying to rush these people into a galactic government? In their own way the Tran struck him as being reasonably happy with their place in the universe. Who could predict what influence some of the less lofty elements of humanx civilization would have on this proud, self-sufficient people? Despite all safeguards, such elements would find their way onto Tran-ky-ky as surely as any parasite infects an unwary host.

And what was the justification for their actions thus far? The threat of a little commercial exploitation on one corner of a vast, frozen globe? Such exploitation would, if unchecked, eventually smother the hopes of this world of course, but still …

Then he thought back to the killings, to all the horrors he’d heard about the nomadic hordes of Tran-ky-ky. Of the depredations they made on innocent city-folk, of whole cities wiped out and the intermittent rule of true barbarism on this planet. He considered the individual cruelties practiced by hereditary rulers unfit for their positions of power, Tran leaders the like of Tonx Ghin Rakossa of Poyolavomaar and Calonnin Ro-Vijar of Arsudun.

No, on balance, the ledger rode high on the side of their intervention. He, Ethan Frome Fortune, absolved himself of wrong-doing. What he and his companions were attempting was done not as Counselor Firsts of the United Church, nor as ministers of the Commonwealth, but solely because they were the ones unexpectedly afforded a chance to Do Something.

It was being done by a salesman, himself. By a teacher who was as gentle and considerate a human as he’d ever met. By a reclusive giant who was something more than a cabinet minister and less than a saint. These three were committed to helping the Tran, and the Tran were now committed to helping themselves. If many more meetings like the one which had joined Moulokin and Sofold took place, their personal decisions would all be justified.

Such lofty thoughts kept away the brutal alien cold outside his survival suit, kept him from musing on another likely possibility—that he might die in a lost cause on this distant, unnoticed, and wholly inhospitable world.

XIV

THE ICE RIVER HAD long since vanished behind them, and the sailors of the Slanderscree continued to exclaim in wonder at the thickness of the mists. They were familiar enough with the phenomenon. Volcanic foundries were located atop the mountain crests dominating their home isle of Sofold. But not in such profusion as this. Boiling pools and streams ran downslope wherever they looked. The quantity of freely flowing water was as alien to the Tran as a river of liquid oxygen would have been on Terra.

To everyone’s relief, the terrain, which proved the least of their problems, continued to incline gently upward, smooth earth and gravel interrupted only by the occasional pool or stream. The broadest volcanic fissure they had to cross was less than a meter wide. There were no crevasses or secondary canyons.

As if to compensate for the unexpectedly regular topography, obstacles were provided in the form of occasional trees too massive for the slowly advancing icerigger to push down. These grew thickly enough so that at least twice a day the raft would be forced to halt while a crew went overboard to cut down the upcoming barriers. At least the bottom of the hull was high enough to clear even the broadest stump.

They also either passed over or ground inexorably through a profusion of ground cover as foreign to the Sofoldian Tran as was the running, steaming water. Bushes and small trees, ferns and bromeliads smothered the surface wherever sufficient soil had collected to support extensive root growth. These were the strange plants of which minister Mirmib had spoken to Ethan when they’d first entered Moulokin harbor.

Such vegetation could exist in this place solely because of the heat and humidity furnished by the volcanic springs. Ethan and Williams debated extensively on the origin of the grotesquely anomalous tropical vegetation, as to whether it originated because of the conditions existing in this region, or was some holdover from a warmer climate in Tran-ky-ky’s distant past.

Great wheels plowed through rotted, fallen logs, scattering hordes of tiny crawling things and sending pulped fungi flying. Twelve wheels kept the raft from bogging down in the occasional softer areas.

Williams tried to estimate how much altitude they’d gained, but discovered that the mist and steam made accurate calculation impossible. His guesses at linear distance traveled were more precise. The fog made standard navigation impossible. Ta-hoding simply kept them headed eastward and hoped they were still traveling up the main canyon.

In places where the terrain leveled, out they encountered not only bushes and ferns, but berries and the first flowers Ethan had seen on Tran-ky-ky. Though the blooms fascinated the Tran, Ethan thought them pretty but familiar. Williams was utterly absorbed in speculation on how they were pollinated, not to mention explaining the process itself to the Tran wizard Eer-Meesach.

“It is the heat which makes such growth possible,” the teacher explained to the elderly Tran.

“So you have insisted. Tell me more about this pollination. You still have not fully explained what is a bee?”

As he spoke, the wizard removed his last vestige of clothing. Nakedness had become the norm on board, a general divesture of attire to which crewmembers male and female ascribed without comment. It had become not a question of modesty, but of survival.

In fact, the temperature had now risen to a point where the three humans could move about without their survival suits, which were given a much overdue airing-out. Moving about in underclothing was a pleasure for Ethan and his companions, but the heat was becoming a matter of concern for the crew.

Some of Ta-hoding’s sailors began experiencing an affliction with which they were completely unfamiliar: heat prostration. Ta-hoding himself ceased his cooling panting only when he had to speak, and then he kept his orders to a minimum. As one sailor after another had to reduce his work time, schedules were juggled until the Slanderscree was operating with a dangerously small crew. If they did not enter a region of cooler weather soon, the time might come when they would not have enough active bodies to control the ship properly.

When the weak cry sounded forward, Ta-hoding and everyone else at first ignored it, thinking it only the frustrated shout of another overheated crewmember. But the second yell: “Ahoy the helmdeck!” was insistent. It was definitely not just the voice of a fractious, heat-logy crewman.

A midshipmate, tongue lolling, relayed the message. Dehydration could not keep the amazement from his voice. “Captain, bowsprit lookout reports there are people to port.”

Ta-hoding ordered all sails furled; Grumbling sailors aloft struggled drunkenly to comply. Ethan had heard the report, too. Soon a modest crowd had assembled above the first axle, just above the portside wheel.

Standing on the ground below and gazing up with casual interest at the gaping faces lining the ship’s rail were three of the Golden Saia. Ethan stared at them without thought of politeness. He was no less fascinated than Ta-hoding, Hunnar, or any of the other Tran.

It put him in mind of their first meeting with Hunnar and his scouting party, after the lifeboat had crashed on Tran-ky-ky. Hunnar had believed Ethan and his fellow humans to be some peculiar, hairless variant of the Tran norm. And here, where they had no right to exist, were those very variants Hunnar had speculated upon.

For while the three bipeds below resembled the standard Tran in most respects, the differences were significant and striking.

All were males, built much as any member of the Slanderscree’s crew. But instead of the longer, steel-gray fur sported by Hunnar and his brethren, the Saia were cloaked in short, thin fur sparse enough to let bare skin show through in places. The lighter coats were buttery-yellow instead of gray, with isolated spottings of brown and amber.

When one raised a spear and then leaned on it for support, there was a simultaneous exhalation from the Tran lining the rail. These creatures had no dan! The wind-catching membrane all other Tran sported between lower hip and wrist was totally absent. Such a shock made the next discovery seem almost anti-climactic. The Saia stood on sandaled feet. That was an impossibility for normal Tran because of their extended chiv. Instead of the long, powerful skate-claws, the three natives below showed claws on their feet no longer than those on their hands.

Yellow and black cat eyes were identical, as were the pointed, nervously shifting ears atop the head. But the absence of chiv and dan coupled with the short, light-colored fur seemed to suggest a variety of Tran as different from the average as a Neanderthal from Cro-Magnon man.

“Quite astonishing, friend Ethan.” The salesman looked uncertainly at the teacher standing next to him. Williams thought a moment, then looked embarrassed; He’d spoken in Trannish, out of habit, and in so doing had used the formal familiar honorific in referring to Ethan.

“They appear to be a specialized variant of uncertain age,” he hurried on, “adapted specifically to existing in this hot, thermal region. This may be the only tribe so modified on all of Tran-ky-ky.”

Conversation on board was stilled as one of the three below said, loudly but not clearly, “Greetings.” The accent was radically different from any Ethan had yet heard, so much so that the word verged on incomprehensibility. It was less guttural, closer to Terranglo than to Symbospeech, than was usual Trannish.

The Moulokinese had not exaggerated the special qualities of the Saia, he mused, as he prepared to climb down a boarding ladder to confront the triumvirate waiting patiently below. Mentally, he scoffed at the suggestion that they might possess mystic powers or knowledge. They were less hairy and less mobile, but that was all.

Even so, Ethan felt better when he touched ground and could turn to face them. Sir Hunnar and Elfa, who followed behind, were less comfortable, though it was the solid ground and not the presence of the Saia that was responsible.

Hunnar walked toward the three, moving like a clumsy newborn on the springy grass. It smashed and ran beneath his sharp chiv, staining them with green juice and giving him a crawly feeling he was hard pressed not to show. When the three offered nothing at his approach, he turned and looked expectantly at Ethan.

Speaking slowly so as to be understood, Ethan ventured the traditional Tran greeting. “Our breath is your warmth.” This struck the three onlookers as amusing. They murmured among themselves like people at a party sharing a private joke.

“We come from a far place,” Ethan continued firmly, ignoring the local levity he had produced. “We come with the blessings of the Moulokinese, our good friends. They say that you are their friends, and hope you will extend this friendship to us.”

All three Saia stared quietly at Ethan out of black pupils that seemed somewhat narrower than those of normal Tran, though it was probably only Ethan’s imagination that made them appear so.

Eventually the one in the middle turned to his right-hand companion and said audibly, “What a strange being that one is. So small, and with less hair even than ourselves.”

“Yes, and there are two others.” The second speaker pointed in the direction of Williams and September, who were among those clustered along the ship’s railing. “And how different they are! That one,” and he had to be indicating September, “is of proper size, but equally hairless. The other is even smaller than the one who speaks to us, yet his covering is dark brown instead of gold or gray.”

It was the last of three who stepped forward. “We welcome you as friends of our friends in Moulokin,” he said to Ethan and Hunnar, then glanced disapprovingly back at his companions. “Have you no manners?” He placed both golden-furred paws on Ethan’s shoulders, but did not breathe into his face as was customary.

“In many ways,” he said, dropping his paws and studying Ethan curiously, “this one resembles us more than our cold brothers.”

With a start, Ethan realized the truth of the other’s words. Lacking dan and chiv, and with a coloring closer to gold than gray, he and September did look much like the Saia. At first glance, a new observer might take Saia and humans as relatives rather than Saia and Tran. Not that the Saia were anything but a hothouse version of the inhabitants of this world. The duplication of eyes and ears, of body and extremities, proved that.

“We come,” Ethan began easily, launching into a by-now familiar tale, “from a world other than this one.” The loquacious Saia’s immediate response was anything but familiar.

“That is obvious.” As if he were discussing something quite ordinary, he leaned on his spear and rubbed idly at the finely woven vest he wore. “From which star, and how far away?”

It was not lack of vocabulary that rendered Ethan momentarily speechless. When his thoughts stopped whirling he thought to gesture at the billowing steam. “Your land must always be like this. How do you know of other stars when you can’t even see the sky? And what makes you think other people live out among them?”

“Legends.” The Saia shifted his position slightly. “We have many legends. They are our heritage. We regard them properly.”

There was truly, Ethan thought, something of a vanished grandeur about these people. They carried themselves differently than the average Tran, as if conscious of their specialness, of a uniqueness that extended beyond mere physical differences.

Had high civilizations once existed on Tran-ky-ky? If so, were these Saia remnants of such civilizations? Or were they perhaps simply recipients of knowledge handed to them by other peoples, now extinct or else from offworld? Did that make Hunnar and his people—and all other Tran—degenerate offshoots of a higher species instead of the pinnacle of Tran evolution?

Manner and alterations in form were not sufficient proof of superiority, however. Hunnar and his companions probably regarded the absence of long fur, dan and chiv as deformities, not as evidence of advanced evolution. And what of the attire of these Saia? Simple vests and skirts, a well-formed but basic metal axe slung at one hip, spears—nothing to hint at knowledge of advanced technologies. They seemed as barbaric in achievement if not attitude as any other Tran.

It was only that—Ethan hunted for the right concept-—that they appeared more advanced psychologically. They were open and friendly, instead of as withdrawn and suspicious as other Tran. Many primitive peoples refined the characteristic of seeming to know more than they actually did. It would be to their advantage, especially if they were numerically weak, to cultivate such an impression. Claims of supernatural abilities or lineage to powerful ancestors would help them awe more warlike relatives such as the Moulokinese. Protective coloring can be verbal as much as physical, he reminded himself, without losing its effectiveness.

Not that they were weak and helpless. The axe and metal-tipped spears looked efficient if not advanced. At least their metallurgical skill hadn’t been exaggerated by the worshipful folk of Moulokin.

“Whither do you go, strangers?” the middle Saia inquired, after efforts to identify a Commonwealth star or two met insurmountable semantic barriers.

Ethan pointed south westward. “To the interior of this land, and further. To explore and hopefully find another canyon similar to this one.”

“Do you know of such a place?” Hunnar sounded harsher than he intended. Alongside these graceful, confident people he felt inexplicably clumsy and overbearing.

“We know of no such.” The center Saia was apologetic. “We can travel no more than a few kijat outside our lands. The cold affects us faster than the heat subdues our thick-furred brothers.” Ethan noted that they employed the same units of measurements as other Tran.

“We are not equipped to live elsewhere than here. We know naught of the interior by sight of our eyes. By legend we know it to be haunted.” At a questioning glance from Elfa, he added, “Foul spirits of the long dead, who died unclean. Did you not know?” He looked in amazement from one companion to the other, then back to the visitors. “Where do you think the spirits of the dead go when they die?”

“Our legends,” explained Elfa firmly, “say they go to the lands of the dead, where they exist in peace forever. A place of singing and gentle winds.”

“Perhaps that is true.” Whether the Saia genuinely believed this or was merely being polite, Ethan couldn’t say. “If so, it is true only when such peace is not disturbed by the living. That is why we would not venture into the interior even were we able.” He regarded them warningly.

“When they are disturbed, the vengeance of the dead is unimaginable.” He raised his spear, gestured inland. “Go that way, to the land of the unclean dead where spirits dwell in aimless, milling anger. They may focus on you, the living. Or they may not. We will not stop you. We would not if we could. But we will lament your passing as friends.

“They will not,” he concluded significantly, “like being disturbed. Every Tran may choose his or her own death. As for ourselves, the day has light to spend and we have hunting to do. Farewell.” He smiled a Trannish smile at Ethan. “Farewell, furless friend. Our legends lie not.”

Back on the raft, they were surrounded by excited sailors and knights who had been unable to hear the conversation. When Ethan concluded his brief resume of what had transpired, Williams danced about like a man possessed by a vision—which in a sense, he was. “We’ve got to follow them! I must have a look at their village, learn how they’ve adapted to a climate so radically different from the rest of this world. We must record their legends, and interpret—”

“We have to,” September interrupted him in no-nonsense tones, “get inland and find another way off this plateau as fast as we can, Milliken. This isn’t a scientific expedition.”

“But a discovery of this magnitude! …” Williams wailed. Abruptly, he killed the pleading in his voice. “I must formally protest, Skua.” He put his hands on hips, glared defiantly up at the giant.

September weighed more than twice as much as the diminutive schoolteacher. Ignoring the other’s belligerence, a product, no doubt, of a year’s survival on Tran-ky-ky, September replied humorlessly.

“Okay, now that you’ve gotten that out of your system, we’ll be on our way.” When it looked as if the teacher’s rising blood pressure might do him more harm than September ever would, the giant added consolingly, “Milliken, I’m ’bout as curious as you are concernin’ these folks, but we’ve considerable more people to try and help, remember?”

“ ’Tis true, friend Williams,” Sir Hunnar added. “We should be on our way.” The teacher turned desperately to Ethan, who half-shrugged.

“They’re right, Milliken. You know we—”

“Barbarians. I am surrounded by barbarians. Where’s Eer-Meesach?” He stormed away in search of his only intellectual colleague, mounting to the doorway of a second-story cabin like a hyperactive sloth.

Ethan smiled as he watched the teacher ascend the steep rampway paralleling the wider icepath. When they’d first crashed on this world, the smaller man’s muscles would have strained to mount that ramp at all, let alone propel him upward at such respectable speed. Tran-ky-ky hadn’t done much for their credit balances, but they’d built up other assets.

He had to think thus because the cloying mists, the rich greenery surrounding them here, were all too reminiscent of lands and worlds more receptive to human life. This place was too friendly. Go a few thousand meters or so in any direction, he knew, and the ambient temperature would drop a hundred degrees or more.

“Our friend classes us with you, Hunnar.” September regarded the knight expectantly. “Let’s be on our way, then. Or are you afeared of these spirits and night-creeps the Saia seem so fond of?”

Hunnar looked insulted. “We will deal with what ever we may encounter, friend Skua. Be it Rakossa of Poyolavomaar or the ghosts of my fathers.”

“Those who have traveled into Hell are not easily dissuaded by the tales of heat-softened hunters.” Elfa said with admirable confidence. She lowered her voice then, so that only those immediately around her could hear. “Still, it would be as well not to speak of this to the crew.”

Ethan and the others agreed readily. Though Elfa and Hunnar and a few of the more educated Tran were equipped to combat superstition and rumor, the average sailor was not. Tell them that according to the Saia they were about to enter the lands of the dead and confront the spirit world, and the Slanderscree might find itself moving in the wrong direction. Whether man or Tran, a storm is easier to combat than the fears dwelling in the depths of the mind.

Sails were reset and once again the icerigger commenced rumbling uphill. Two days later the mists started to thin. Once Ethan thought he spied an ellipse formed of neatly crafted wooden houses. They were nothing remarkable, but they were radically different from the familiar heavy-beamed, stone dwellings of all other Tran. He did not mention the sighting or his observations to the still sulking Williams.

The mist did not disperse gradually. They reached a point where it stopped clean, a slightly oscillating wall of steam. From then on they saw no more signs of the Golden Saia. Some day Ethan would return and listen to the long legends of a misplaced people. So he told himself. He was not honest enough to admit that once back in the comfortable hub of Commonwealth civilization, he would likely forget all but memories of Tran-ky-ky.

For now, he forced his attention outward. They had a confederation to expand, a union of ice to cement, and they did not have a lifetime in which to do it.

Grass turned yellowish and scraggly. Trees gave way to bushes, and ferns and flowers vanished behind them. The Slanderscree had emerged on a high, rolling plain. As they lumbered across bare gravel and tormented grasses, the wind began to rise, an old companion back from unwilling vacation. Soon it was blowing at familiar strength. The Tran found it comforting.

None of the crew had been lost in the transit, though Eer-Meesach was still treating the most severe cases of heat-stroke in the central cabin. The temperature fell and the humans had long since redonned their survival suits, the Tran their heavy hessavar fur coats.

They received no visits from the spirits of the dead or otherwise. The most notable spirits aboard, those of the sailors, had risen considerably with the return of a congenial climate. The rolling landscape mounted into steep hills to the north and east. After consultation with Ta-hoding, it was decided to turn southward. They would eventually reach the western edge of the plateau. Then they could begin hunting for a way down.

As the wind increased, so did their speed. Before long they were traveling at a pace short of breathtaking but quite respectable. It didn’t take long for everyone on board to grow accustomed to the domesticated thunder of the twelve huge wheels.

Yellowish grass continued to speckle the plain, fighting to stay rooted in the sparse soil. The raft’s chief cook tried some in a meal one night, and though it was pronounced edible by all who tried it, there was no rush to harvest. It proved tough, tasteless, and hard to digest.

In days of traveling they saw nothing that resembled a tree. The closest approximations were widely scattered, meter-high bushes which looked like umber tumbleweeds. Their tightly intertwined branchlets had the consistency of wire. Ethan wanted to use a beamer to cut a sample and for a change, it was Williams who protested. Eying the isolated, unimpressive clump he said, “Anything that can survive in this desolation deserves to remain unharmed.” And Ethan put his beamer away.

The wind was steady and predictable. That gave the sailors needed time. They learned fast, but handling a ship the size of the Slanderscree on land was a different proposition from doing so on ice.

Ethan spent much time watching the parade of distant hills and thought of the Golden Saia. Taken theoretically, he supposed it was possible for the spirits of the departed to linger in some outrageously incomprehensible mode—that they would congregate like so many conventioneers seemed impossible. And if they were so inclined, why choose a region as unattractive as this? True, the Saia had remarked on their desire for privacy, and this vast plateau would certainly provide that, but—

He stopped himself in the middle of a thought. Endless days of dull landscape had lulled him into compensating with steadily growing rococo imaginings. There was nothing out there but scattered wire-brushes and poverty-stricken grass.

Nothing.

“Enormous ice-raft? What enormous ice-raft? Truly are your fantasies entertaining, my guests!”

K’ferr Shri-Vehm, Landgrave of Moulokin, eyed her visitors pityingly. “You make senseless demands of me and my people, you attack us at the first gate, and now I find the basis for these actions are only dreams of wandering minds. Your information is false, visitors.”

“Hedge not with us.” The voice was edgy, nervous, dangerous. “Where have you hidden them?” Rakossa of Poyolavomaar sent quick, jerking glares around the modest throne-room, as if the Slanderscree might be tucked in a corner or secreted behind a chest.

K’ferr made the Tran equivalent of a laugh. “Hidden, my lord Rakossa? Hidden such a great vessel as you describe? Where would we conceal such a craft?”

“You could have dismantled it, moved the sections somewhere.”

“In less than four days? I venture, my lord, you have an imagination second to none.”

An officer of the Poyolavomaar fleet chose that moment to enter the chamber. “The ship we seek is not anywhere in the harbor, sires. ’Tis nowhere to be found, nor, as some suspected, is there a cave in the cliffs large enough to hide even part of such at large raft. We also ventured far up the main canyon and saw no sign of it.” What he said was true; what he didn’t know was that the Moulokinese had used scrapers and torches to obliterate the tell-tale tracks marking the Slanderscree’s passage. “I do not think, sire, that—”

“We are not interested in what you think!” a furious Rakossa shouted.

“Did you not see,” K’ferr continued, “the great raft we ourselves are building? That is what formed the tracks outside our canyon you seem to find so absorbing.”

“We saw,” said a different voice. Calonnin Ro-Vijar stepped forward. “Wooden runners of that size will not support a vessel of a size necessary to make them worth constructing.”

“Our profession as a city-state, and one for which we are justly famed, is raft-building.” Mirmib stared condescendingly at Ro-Vijar. “What you say may be true, but we often begin such new raft shapes and sizes by way of experimentation. We learn much that is valuable to us in our trade, even if the actual concept eventually proves unworkable. Is this Arsudun from which you come also a specialist in the construction of rafts?” “No, but—”

“Then do not presume to pronounce judgment on a craft with which you are not conversant.”

Ro-Vijar started to say something, then hesitated. When he spoke again, it was in a surprisingly apologetic fashion. “ ’Tis evident we have made an error in offending and accusing these people, Lord Rakossa. We may best continue our hunt elsewhere.”

“The tracks lead here!” Rakossa threw arms and words about careless of who they struck. “They are here somewhere, magicked or otherwise.”

“Do you think they rose into the air and sailed away thusly, my good friend?” Ro-Vijar asked. The comment, made in jest, inspired a horrible thought in the Landgrave of Arsudun. For an instant he thought the humans might somehow have obtained one of their powerful sky-rafts and transported it here. He had been told by the human commissioner, Jobius Trell, that the skypeople possessed vehicles capable of transporting an object even as massive as the vanished icerigger through the air. While he had never seen such a device, he was inclined to believe whatever Trell told him about human technological capabilities. Trell had undoubtedly lied to him about many things, but not about that.

But if he didn’t get this idiot Rakossa out of the throne-room before trouble began, they would waste valuable time in a needless battle.

“She’s here somewhere.” Rakossa prowled the room, heedless of common courtesy. “We know she is.”

“She?” inquired Mirmib puzzledly.

“The concubine, who has bewitched us. We require her. She is present. We sense it!” He took a couple of threatening steps toward the throne. “Where are you hiding her, woman?”

Two burly guards, big even for Tran, stepped forward between the throne and the raging Landgrave. Each held a weighty metal battle-axe before him. One let his sway back and forth just above floor level, a pendulum of death.

“My liege and friend Landgrave,” said Ro-Vijar earnestly, stepping forward but remembering not to touch the hypersensitive Rakossa, “we have already heard ample explanation. These good people have ne’er heard nor seen the vessel or woman we seek.”

“Again I say, this is truth.” K’ferr leaned forward. “Considering your hostile actions toward us, I believe we have been extremely courteous and patient with you. Before any irrevocable insults are exchanged, I suggest you take your leave of Moulokin.”

“So it would seem best to do, my gracious lady.” Ro-Vijar tentatively reached out, chanced a grip on the wild-eyed Rakossa’s left arm. The Landgrave of Poyolavomaar did not react angrily. He turned seemed to see Ro-Vijar clearly for the first time since entering the throne room. Then he shook off the other’s hand, whirled, and stalked out of the chamber, muttering slyly to himself.

“Our pardon for this most grievous mistake, my lady, good minister Mirmib.” Ro-Vijar made a gesture of profound obeisance. “It was a matter of great importance to us, and we acted in haste instead of good sense. I am convinced of your sincerity.”

“You are excused by your ignorance.” K’ferr indicated the now vacant exitway. “The actions of your colleague explain much. May your search continue more profitably elsewhere.”

“May your warmth remain constant all the days of your life. Rest assured we will eventually find those we seek.” With that, Ro-Vijar turned with the Poyo officer and departed from the chamber.

When they were many minutes gone, K’ferr turned to Mirmib and asked, “What do you think they will do now?”

“If ’twas up to this Ro-Vijar, they would give up and sail home.” The minister rubbed the back of an ear, looked thoughtful. “Or perhaps the calmer of the two is in reality the more dangerous. So blinded by hatred, or love, for this Teeliam woman is the other he cannot think straight. If he ever could.”

“You saw the woman in question, Mirmib. The scars. Why would this Landgrave risk his power, his armed might, to find and torment her further?”

“Some rulers take not well personal affronts, though rarely do they react in so extreme a fashion as this Rakossa, my lady. Hate can be as powerful an eldur as love. Often is the line between the two indistinct.” They exchanged a glance unfathomable to outsiders. “I do not know what transpired between this girl and this Landgrave, and can but speculate. One thing I can say confidently, though. Should they eventually meet again, one or the other will surely die of it.”

That petty matter did not occupy Calonnin Ro-Vijar’s mind. If they returned to Arsudun now, he would have this second failure to report to Trell.

The critical question was: had the Slanderscree actually been within the harbor of Moulokin? If so, he could envision several fanciful possibilities to explain what had happened to the great icerigger. Though he badly wanted to, his “escort of honor” had kept him from talking to, or bribing, any of the townsfolk. In the absence of direct information he would have to extrapolate. That was something he was very good at, something which made the games he played with the human Trell interesting.

With stakes as high as they were, he was not about to leave Moulokin until he knew the truth of what had happened to their quarry.

XV

ENOUGH DAYS PASSED FILLED with the same rolling gravelly ground and spare vegetation to make Ethan wish for a spirit or two to liven up the journey. Their sole excitement was provided by a two-meter-wide crevasse that ran east and west as far as chiv-sore scouting parties could determine. Numerous methods for traversing the obstacle were proposed. One mate suggested removing the duralloy runners from where they had been secured to the deck and using them to bridge the gap.

For a change it was Ta-hoding who provided the solution. Though he had only modest confidence in himself, he’d come to feel boundless enthusiasm for his new command. Despite Ethan and Hunnar’s apprehension he ordered all unnecessary personnel off the raft. The Slanderscree sailed in a wide circle and bore—down on the crevasse with all sail flying, wind directly behind it.

At the last instant, spars and sails were aligned to obtain as much upward lift as possible. Like some obese bird the front end of the enormous raft rose skyward. Only the two fore axles completely cleared the gap before the bow began to settle surfaceward again, but it was enough. Mass and velocity were sufficient to carry the entire ship across the narrow abyss, though the rear axle and wheels dipped dangerously inward.

Ta-hoding explained that they carried spare axles and, in the event that his ploy had failed, could still repair any damage. The threat of being halted in this chill, moody land was sufficient to inspire even the cautious captain to daring.

They reached the edge of the plateau the following day. The longing of the sailors for the boundless ice ocean out of reach two hundred meters below was evident to all the mates and officers. They felt the ice-pull themselves.

Continuing southward, the icerigger raced parallel to the sheer cliffs. Barren terrain continued to unravel from an infinite brown thread to port, gleaming ice and blue sky above shining daily off to starboard.

Ta-hoding and his crew had grown so skillful in their handling of the ship that Ethan no longer worried or turned away when they hove unnecessarily near to the breathtaking drop. All this activity kept the crew from succumbing to the worst kind of mental fatigue: the kind induced by unrelieved boredom.

“I’m beginnin’ to worry a bit, young feller-me-lad.” September clung to a yard nearby, his face showing disappointment beneath the transparent mask. “Hunnar and the others are starting to feel likewise, and with reason. We haven’t come near findin’ another canyon resembling Moulokin’s. It just don’t make sense, lad.” His tone was tense but quiet. “That there’d be just a single canyon of that type cuttin’ into this continent, I mean. Got to be others.”

“I’m no geologist, Skua, but I admit it seems peculiar to me, too.”

September made a face, an expression centering whirlpool-like on that sharp, hooked beak of a nose. “If we do have to circle back the way we’ve come, it’s a good bet the Poyos will’ve completed their inspection of Moulokin and, not finding us there, gone off elsewhere after us.” He brightened somewhat at the thought.

“At this point that just might be our best course. Think I’ll go have a chat with the captain and Sir Hunnar. Stay sane, lad.” He started to head sternward, halted as Ethan gestured toward the bow.

“We may not have any choice tomorrow, Skua.”

The steep hills that had marked the north and eastern horizons since they’d emerged from the land of the Golden Saia were growing closer, curving around ahead of them and threatening to cut off easy progress to the south. That left them only the path behind.

The slopes ahead looked more precipitous than the ones they’d been running alongside for many days. Signs of erosion, indicating possibly unstable hillsides and talus falls, were becoming visible. They would almost certainly have to turn back unless a clear pass could be found through these new obstacles. The Slanderscree had proven herself landworthy, but she could not climb much of an incline.

As Ethan predicted, they reached the first of the low but steep-sided hills that evening. They decided to make a semi-permanent camp in the sheltering lee of the tallest minimount. Scouts would be sent out on the morrow in wheeled lifeboats to try and find a passage to the west that the icerigger could negotiate. Both scout groups would be gone a maximum of five days. In that time, the crew would busy themselves with making minor but bothersome and necessary repairs to the ship, and try to keep busy until the scouts returned.

Sinahnvor was patrolling his foredeck position, cold in the near cloudless night, when something flickering on the hillside caught his eye. He blinked double lids, but the flickering remained. It looked like a fat eye winking in the night.

Fortunately Sinahnvor was not particularly imaginative. Nevertheless he shivered with something other than cold. Who would be off the ship this time of no-light? There’d been rumors of one of the humans and the Landgrave’s daughter, but such tales propelled more rafts than did the winds.

The watchman lifted his oil lamp slightly higher, extending the pole to which it was slung over the side of the raft. It was his imagination after all—no, there it was again! A definite intermittent gleam part way up the steep slope, no higher than the topmost spar of the foremast.

Rumors of a less amusing kind filtered through his brain. If this were truly a land of spirits, might that not be some nightwraith come to snatch him from the deck? And who would know the manner or time of his abduction?

It made him glance around anxiously. The two moons were high aloft, an indication that it was nearer morning than eve-time. He saw no movement anywhere. Would his relief find only lamp pole, clothing, and weapons? Surely a spirit would be interested only in his body.

Monont should be on center deck watch now. He could remain silent and confront that mysterious glint, waiting for his soul to mayhap be stolen out his mouth, or he could seek the comfort of a comrade’s company. Lamp pole swinging, he descended from the bowsprit to the deck and moved past the fore cabins.

“Clean ice and wind on your neck,” came a husky voice in the darkness. Sinahnvor swung his pole around. It lit the face of a curious Tran.

“What are you doing away from your post, Sinahnvor?” asked Monont, concerned. “Should the night-mate catch you, he could make you—”

“Be silent, Monont!” Sinahnvor whispered hastily. “There is an eye in the mountain!”

The other lookout studied his colleague carefully. “You have been chewing too much bui extract.”

There was conviction in Sinahnvor’s voice, however. “As you doubt me, come and see for yourself.”

“I should not leave my post.”

“Who is to know? The night-mate will not appeal until watch-change time, and our nearest enemies are at least a hundred satch behind us.”

“That is true. I will come, but only for a moment. Foolishness,” Monont muttered as he followed the other sentry to the foredeck.

Motioning his companion to silence, Sinahnvor extended his light pole over the railing, moved it about slowly as he searched the mountainside. For several seconds there was no sign of the shining and he was more afraid of the story Monont would tell the others come the morn than he was of any spirit they might arouse. But then the spark showed once more, unmistakably. It remained as steady as the lamp pole. “See? Did I not tell you?”

The more prosaic Monont eyed the speck of light. “Truly is there something, but I think it is no spirit. Who ever heard of a spirit with only one eye? They have at least four each.”

“Shssh! Do not insult it!”

“That is no spirit, idiot-friend.” Monont mounted the railing, swung a clawed foot over the side. Sinahnvor watched him worriedly.

“Where are you going?”

“To that hillside.”

“You are mad! Don’t do it, Monont. The spirits will draw you into the mountain and drown you in dirt.”

“I thought the spirits of Hell would take us when we went under the ice and down to the inside of the world. The humans and Sir Hunnar Redbeard said such tales were mere superstition. Then they killed the devil that came up from the waters of the night. It stunk like a slaughtered hessavar. I find it hard now to believe as I once did in spirits and daemons.”

He slipped over the side, used a boarding rope to drop quickly to the ice.

“Monont—Monont!” Sinahnvor raised his lamp higher. In its shallow glow he saw the dim outline of his friend reach the hillside and begin an awkward ascent. The outline faded to shadow, then a memory of a shadow. Moments passed, silent moments broken only by the moan of the tired wind. But while he heard no cries of triumph, neither did any screams drift back to him.

It was with considerable relief that he picked out the returning figure of the other sentry, apparently unharmed.

“What was it, then?” He extended an arm and helped Monont back on deck.

“Here is your spirit eye. I had to dig it out.” Sinahnvor, much to his surprise, recognized the object immediately. “Why, ’tis only a purras, a common mixing bowl much as my own mate uses. Odd how it shines. The wood must take a very high polish.”

“Take it,” urged Monont. “ ’Tis not wood.”

Sinahnvor accepted the object … and nearly dropped it. It was made of thick, dense metal, badly tarnished in places, still flashy in others. He did not recognize the metal.

Both sentries exchanged glances. What people lived here in this iceless desert who could afford to make common, everyday kitchen utensils out of solid metal? Metal was hoarded for use in weapons and nails and tools, not mixing bowls.

Sinahnvor did not understand. Not understanding, he said, “I think we had best wake the night-mate early.”

The officer was no less startled by the bowl than the two lookouts had been. He chose to wake the second mate, who in turn roused Ta-hoding, who alerted the three humans and Sir Hunnar and the others of the icerigger’s informal decision-making body.

Before long most of the crew was awake and hacking at the nearby hillside, their lamps looking to those remaining on the Slanderscree like a convocation of stultified fireflies.

None of the humans took part in the digging. Their survival suits could barely cope with the nighttime temperature of seventy below, with a wind-chill factor nearing instant death. A crude digging tool could make a substantial gash in a survival suit. Insinuating itself into the cut, the outside air could freeze human skin solid almost as efficiently as a spray of liquid helium.

With such a large party working, it wasn’t long before several bags of trophies were being examined on deck. Peering through his mask (no need of the secondary goggles during the night), Ethan saw spread out among wood and soil a treasure trove of metal objects. On most worlds these would have been dismissed as nothing remarkable, but on metal-poor Tran-ky-ky they hinted at a vanished civilization of immense wealth. There were knives, utensils of all kinds, buckles and braces, engraved and broken drinking vessels, even metal buttons and pins. Hunnar fingered several of the last. Until now he’d never seen a pin made of anything but bone.

“Enormously rich or enormously wasteful,” he murmured, letting oil lamp light create argent patterns on the ornamental steel. “We will dig with more discipline in the morning.”

“Who could have lived here?” Ethan wondered aloud.

“Not Tran nor Saia.” The knight turned his attention to a delightfully intricate metal bottle wrapped in fine wire scrollwork. “ ’Tis too desolate and iceless for us and too cold for the Saia. But this is not spirit work.” Cat-eyes strove to penetrate windswept darkness. “Someone lived here…”

The next day different sections of the hillside were marked off according to how promising they’d proven the night before. The excavation parties turned up a steady stream of new artifacts. Some were made of familiar materials, wood and bone, but most were various alloys, including several neither September or Williams could identify.

Unexpectedly, the wooden artifacts were what the teacher found most intriguing. When Ethan asked him why, he replied, “Because they mean this region cannot have been deserted very long, in geologic time. While it’s true the cold air would preserve cellulose materials for a while, it is not desert-dry. Nor is the soil devoid of minute organisms and bacterial agents, which would also act to break down the wood—though they are scattered through the soil and nowhere very populous.

“This wood is in far too good condition to have lain buried for any great length of time.”

They decided to remain several days and unearth all they could. But a new discovery soon altered their plans.

The two scout parties sent out to search for a passage through the hills returned. Their crews babbled out an impossible tale, so laden with gestures, expressions and adjectival phrases that Ethan and his friends were hard pressed to make sense of any of it.

While they debated uncertain terms among themselves, Ta-hoding and his crew launched feverish preparations to get underway. At that point, Ethan cornered Hunnar and refused to let him pass until he explained what was happening.

“Suaxus, my squire, was in the first boat,” the knight said, trying to control his obvious excitement. “They found a pass through the mountains. Only, they aren’t mountains.”

“You’re not making sense, friend Hunnar,” September prompted.

“They traversed this pass and emerged on the other side of this range. It seems the wind blows harder, or steadier, or both, on the other side. What is buried here lies revealed there.” He turned, indicated the partly excavated hillside.

“These are not mountains, they are buildings.” And he broke away to perform some important task before Ethan could think to ask anything more.

Only Williams accepted this news calmly. “It makes sense, not to mention explaining the preponderance of artifacts we’ve found.” The icerigger was already racing for the recently discovered pass. “There are similar buried cities on many Commonwealth worlds, Ethan. The same winds which would cover an ancient metropolis could later uncover it.”

“Assuming that’s what we’ve found—who built it?”

The teacher eyed Ethan, pursed his lips. “Who knows? The Tran obviously don’t, nor do the Saia, who are supposed to know so much about this land. If we’re lucky, maybe we’ll find out. Perhaps they are people who no longer survive on Tran-ky-ky but who gave the Saia their legends of other worlds.”

The pass turned out to be much wider and smoother than anyone had a right to expect. So straight was the gap between hills that unnatural forces were suspected. Ethan wondered if they excavated straight down, would they eventually strike pavement?

Once through the slopes they turned east, inland and away from the cliffs. They did not have to travel far. Dirt and rock were piled here also, but much stonework could be seen rearing planes and angles toward the sky, reminding Ethan of a partially eroded graveyard. Here it was the bones of dead buildings which stood revealed to the air.

The ground rose skyward not in a smooth slope as on the other side, but in graduated levels. “See?” called Williams, pointing out different stone work and designs on each level. “This is not one building, as the scout parties assumed, but new structures raised atop the old. As each older structure was buried, it formed a foundation for the next building erected on the same spot. One town on the skeleton of the old.” His hand swept eastward.

“We are looking at an ancient series of cities, not a cluster of monumental buildings. We can only guess at how far it extends. Since we’ve been paralleling similar rises nearly all the way from Moulokin, it’s possible similar towns are buried beneath each of them. They may all form part of a single lengthy metropolis at least several hundred kilometers long.”

The crew furled all sail and anchored the icerigger against the wind. Everyone not on watch scrambled over the side to marvel at the colossal architecture.

“One thing I don’t understand.” Williams tried to rub an eye, remembered his mask, raised it slightly to admit a comforting finger. “It would be natural to expect the topmost structures to be the most sophisticated in design and execution. Yet from what I can see the architecture is nearly identical from top to bottom, town to town.”

“I’d like to know who’s responsible for all this.” Ethan scrambled carefully across the fine but slippery talus. “Now I’m even more positive it’s not the Tran. Look at those arches, those wide windows.” He balanced himself on a partly buried rectangular block that must have weighed several tons, pointed upslope and to his right.

“And that building almost exposed over there. The roof’s too flat to resist snow buildup, and it’s lined with what looks like glass to me. A skylight, on Tran-ky-ky? Not with the quality of glass the Tran make. A decent day’s wind would blow it to splinters. Unless, of course, it’s something more than normal glass.”

“Perhaps the Saia did build this after all, and have just forgotten about it, young feller-me-lad,” ventured September. “A selective memory about such matters would keep ’em from gettin’ embarrassed about letting so much knowledge slip away.”

They uncovered one building after another: homes, warehouses, public meeting places, even what seemed to be an open amphitheater. An open stadium, on Tran-ky-ky!

It didn’t take thirty years experience or several scientific degrees for Tran as well as humans to postulate a climate completely different from the present.

Having come to that realization, Williams left the archeology to Eer-Messach and others. Using the primitive Tran navigation instruments and the inadequate but useful ones included in each survival-suit’s kit, he devoted himself to a night-time examination of the stars. Not the most intricately formed metal cup or detailed inscription cut into stone could dissuade him from his sudden fanatic interest in astronomy. Vacuum-clear skies, Tran navigation charts and old tales seemed to reinforce his determination to keep at his lonely cold night studies. Ethan could imagine what the teacher was trying to prove.

He was only partly right.

The teacher was deep in conversation with Ta-hoding when Ethan finally sought confirmation of his suspicions. “I don’t mean to interrupt, Milliken, but I’d like to know for sure—why this sudden interest in local astronomy? I’d think you’d be grubbing away in the cities instead of freezing out on deck at night. “You’re trying to find proof that the climate here was once much warmer, aren’t you?”

“Not just here, on this plateau.” Williams was only stating what to him was obvious and not being in the least insulting. A less sarcastic human being Ethan had never met. “Everywhere on Tran-ky-ky. The physical evidence inherent in the buried metropolis coupled with what little I’ve been able to calculate tells me that this was so. More importantly, it indicates to me who built these successive cities.”

“Don’t keep me in suspense, Milliken. Who was it? The Tran, the Saia, or some now extinct people? I’ll bet it was the latter, and when the climate turned cold everywhere, the builders died. The Saia were contemporary with them and keep their memory alive in legends.”

“Plausible, but I think, incorrect.” He adjusted the calculator built into his sleeve. “These cities were raised by both the Tran and the Saia.”

Ethan couldn’t forestall a grin. “That’s crazy,

Milliken. It’s too cold here for the Saia now and if they built these cities, surely they’d remember. And it’s too desolate now for the Tran and, assuming the climate was warmer, too hot for them before.”

“That reasoning misses the point. It’s because …” Williams paused, took a preparatory breath. “It’s not simply a matter of its once being hot, now being cold here, Ethan. I think Tran-ky-ky has a perturbed orbit of predictable periodicity.”

“I hardly know what to say.”

“I’ll try to explain. Any competent astronomer would have noticed it after a week’s study, with the proper factual input. But the only astronomer to visit this outpost world was the initial survey drone which first located it. The Commonwealth government would be interested first in the fact that it was an inhabitable planet with a stable climate, flora, and fauna. Relatively long-term alterations will show up in the files on Tran-ky-ky, but there’s no reason to act on them until the next period begins.”

“What next period?”

“Of warm weather. I’d estimate, very crudely, so many standard years of cold, followed by a briefer period of warm weather as it passes nearer its sun. Say, ten thousand years. The transition from cold weather to hot takes place comparatively rapidly, since as. Tran-ky-ky swings close by its star, its orbital velocity, would increase, slowing as it swings out into the cold zone again. It’s a peculiar situation and I’m not certain of the details or mechanics, but that’s what I believe takes place.

“Think what that would mean for this planet.” He spoke distantly, his gaze centered on events far away in time and place. “During the hot period the ice oceans melt, and rapidly. The sea level would rise to submerge island states such as Sofold and much of Arsudun. Sofold is in reality built atop a seamount, while the mountain-tops of Poyolavoniaar would become true islands.” Suddenly he dropped his gaze, looking embarrassed.

“That was what puzzled me so about Moulokin canyon.” Ethan thought back, recalling the teacher’s confusion over the canyon’s geology and his feeling of half-recognizing its source.

“It’s not a river canyon at all, though it resembles one closely. Rather, it’s a dry undersea canyon, the kind that slices through a continental shelf down to the edge of the abyssal plain flooring the ocean. The cliffs of the plateau we sailed alongside for so long are actually the old continental shelf. Now,” he said with satisfaction. “I’m ready to go digging for artifacts. But not in the cities. Right here, beneath the ship.”

“Wait a minute. What do you expect to find under the ship? And what did you mean when you said the Tran and the Saia both built the metropolis?”

“Tell you in a couple of days, young feller-me-lad,” he said, mimicking September.

It was two days, exactly. What the teacher uncovered were far less spectacular and much more important than any objects thus far uncovered in the buried structures.

He spread them out on a table in the central cabin, where human and Tran alike could see. “Look,” Williams began, “insect eggs over there.” He pointed to a pile of eddy-shaped, tiny white beads. “Try opening one. The casings are tough as stelamic. I had to use my beamer to assure myself of the contents.

“Animal eggs.” He pointed to some similar objects, only they were larger and multi-colored. “Seeds, I think.” He indicated a vast array of black and brown objects, mostly spherical. “Those I could barely singe with the beamer set for fine cut.

“When the temperature rises and the oceans melt, you’d have ample rainfall. In addition to enhancing an explosion of vegetation on land, such a drastic change would kill off the pika-pina and pika-pedan. Despite such changes, some plants have managed to survive the cold periods. Witness the yellow grass and occasional wire-brush we’ve passed these past days. Those grasses and the unknown varieties contained in these seeds take over the land. The pika-growth would retreat to the poles, waiting for cold epochs to return. We’ve seen how fast it grows. It could expand down from the poles, and perhaps from isolated surviving pockets on the shores, to become the dominant vegetable species in a very short time.

“I wish I had a decent laboratory here. These eggs … Somehow they survive thirty thousand years before the land warms and frees them. That’s important, because there are pretty disorganized people wandering around at that time, looking for food.

“The Golden Saia are not a different variety of Tran, nor are the Tran a species of Saia.” He gestured at Hunnar, at Elfa, at Ta-hoding. “You and the Saia are the same people.”

A mate made a disgusted noise.

“The Saia are the warm-weather mode of the Tran. During the onset of cold, those who survive the radical weather change develop thick fur. Wing dan appear and podal claws expand and grow to become chiv for traveling across the ice.” He sat down behind his table of living fossils.

“Think what such cataclysmic change would do to a developing but still primitive society. Famine, death from exposure, the near instant destruction of familiar food supplies. Sea travel obliterated, cutting off intercontinental and interisland communication. A drastic reduction in population—which explains the extent of these cities compared to the size of present Tran communities.

“It explains, Hunnar, why your people retain no memory of your warm weather ancestors. Survival would be more than enough to occupy every mobile minute of the dazed remnants of that hot climate civilization. How to make a fire, how to cook food, those would be the important things to hand down to shivering children. Not history. Given the frequency of the warm-cold weather cycle, you never have the chance to catch your racial breath.”

“No ice—free-flowing water for oceans?” Hunnar’s expression showed both horror and disbelief, as if someone had proved unequivocally that the world was flat.

“No ice,” said Ethan slowly. “And probably no real winds to speak of, either. Rain instead of snow and ice particles—-good-water-falling-from-the-sky,” he translated awkwardly, remembering that the Tran had no word for rain.

“No ice.” Hunnar seemed unable to pass beyond that incredible concept. “One could fall all the way through to the center of the world.”

“Water can support you, Hunnar, though not as well as ice.” Ethan forbore trying to describe what swimming was.

“The more reason for this confederation.” September brought them back to the present, back from speculations future and past. “If this information can be conveyed back to a few Commonwealth bureaucrats in the right agencies, it could mean a change so big and important here that—well, I can’t put into words what it would mean to your people, Hunnar.

“More o’ less, it’d mean that the next time your world warms up and you develop a nice, burgeoning society, get yourselves growing good and proper, then when it turns cold again, Commonwealth technology will be there to help you cope. Assumin’ the Commonwealth stands. I don’t make predictions for any government. They’ve got a disconcertin’ way o’ self-destructing.

“And you’d be able to develop a true planetary society for the first time, gain a continuity of racial development and history your world’s knocked down every time its gotten started.

“But it won’t do anybody any good unless we get this knowledge to Commonwealth authorities and show them there’s a world here cryin’ out for associate status and some honest recognition.”

XVI

IT WAS SEVERAL DAYS before they broke into the Assembly. The impressive domed chamber was buried beneath a huge slide. That unstable ground made Ethan and several others reluctant to enter, despite the apparent stability of the intact ceiling. Williams and Eer-Meesach could not be restrained, however. They were followed by others, reluctantly, into the largest enclosed space they’d found on Tran-ky-ky.

Built of stone and metal so solid that it supported the cumulative weight of dirt, rock and structures above it, the dome was filled with engravings and mosaics which proved conclusively most of William’s assumptions.

“You were not entirely correct, my friend.” Eer-Meesach ran a gnarled finger across one wall bas-relief. “The yellowish grass does not drive out the pika-pina but rather is a warm weather variety of it, as the Golden Saia are warm weather versions of us Tran.”

Williams was examining the carvings, nodding slowly in agreement. “Probably the nutrients concentrated in the pika-pina and pedan are moved landward and help to revive the dormant grasslands.”

“But what are these?” The elderly wizard indicated a profusion of small carvings, each different from the next. Remnants of ancient dyes still clung to the bare stone.

“Do you not remember them from the land of the Saia?” said Elfa. She turned to Ethan. “What did you call them?”

“Flowers.” He walked over, avoiding rocks and broken stone which littered the floor. “So the pika-pina flowers before it gives way to the grasses. Milliken, maybe every creature that flies, swims or chivans on Tran-ky-ky has both cold-and hot-climate varieties. That creature on the wall over there, isn’t that a stavanzer?”

“No,” Hunnar insisted from nearby. “Those strange things on its front—”

“Gills!” Ethan shouted it. “The stavanzer does look vaguely like a beached whale. Dormant gills don’t show themselves until the oceans turn to water. A stavanzer could never support its own weight on land.”

“I’m sure,” added Williams, “that the creature could exist as an amphibian for as long as was necessary to complete the transition to a watery existence.”

“I would much like to see these things you call ‘ghuls’.” Hunnar took a knife from his belt, handed it handle-first to Williams. “Go and kill a stavanzer and I will help you do the looking inside.” Laughter human and Trannish resounded in the chamber, producing echoes that were anything but eerie.

A week later the Slanderscree was filled with a cargo as unusual as it was diverse. There were hundreds of kilos of carvings, artifacts, sections of mosaic and wall. Enough proof of Tran-ky-ky’s erratic history both sociological and climatological to convince the stubbornest bureaucrat or Landgrave of The Truth.

September and Ethan were once again discussing the Tran’s future and history as the last of the cargo was secured in the spaces within the deck.

“Likely in the Saia mode all the Tran lived together on a few continents, lad,” the giant said. “Raisin’ a new civilization until the cold wiped it out, forcing ’em to disperse to the islands to survive. The harsher the climate, the more territory it generally takes to support folks.

“Now that we can prove they all used to live together and cooperate, it ought to be easier to get ’em to do it again.” He punctuated the comment with a reverberant grunt.

When they produced the evidence many days later, back in the steaming lands, the Golden Saia accepted the unarguable with typical lack of visible emotion. Their words betrayed their true excitement. Here was proof of most of their legends, solidified with a knowledge hitherto unsuspected. Listening to the legend-spinners, Williams and Eer-Meesach were able to fill in portions of the history that silent stone and walls had been unable to tell.

In contrast to their difficult ascent of the canyon, returning was mostly a matter of keeping the ship on a single heading. Motive power was no longer a problem, not with the wind off the plateau shoving insistently at their stern.

On reaching the edge of the ice, the captain brought the ship to a halt, whereupon Hunnar and a small group of sailors chivaned off toward Moulokin. They were expected to return with shipwrights, cranes and tools to aid in removing the wheels and axles and to help speed the installation of the five massive duralloy skates.

Their arrival in that busy shipbuilding city provoked a good deal of surprise. Neither the Landgrave Lady K’ferr, minister Mirmib, nor any of the others who knew where the Slanderscree had gone ever expected to see her crew again. They were certain the spirits of the dead who lived in the great high desert would claim the healthy bodies of the sailors for their own, to enable them to wander the spirit lands in more corporeal form.

Sir Hunnar’s hurried, none-too-precise explanations of what they’d uncovered created more confusion than enlightenment. He finally gave up trying to explain something he didn’t fully comprehend himself.

The following day he returned to the landlocked Slanderscree, accompanied by a large party of craftsmen from the city’s yards. Eer-Meesach provided a better explanation of their discoveries. Thus assured of old friends and a new heritage, they set to work making the great raft iceworthy again.

“What of the fleet from Poyolavomaar?” Ethan hesitantly interrupted the chief of the Moulokinese work crews.

The burly Tran left the final installation of a duralloy runner to his colleagues. “They remained a ten-day after your departure to the land of the Golden Saia, Sir Ethan, thence departed themselves. There have been but few ships put in to Moulokin since. None report sighting them, though two mentioned a large number of runner tracks extending northeastward.”

“Toward Poyolavomaar.” Ethan couldn’t quite convince himself that mad Rakossa and Ro-Vijar of Arsudun had conceded so quickly, despite this evidence to the contrary.

“ ’Tis so. Nor have any of our own vessels seen signs of them, though two still search further out to make certain they have truly taken their leave. ’Tis safe I think to say that, finding you not here, they betook themselves elsewhere.”

“I doubt that.” Ethan looked around to see who agreed with his own private opinion. Teeliam Hoh watched the repositioning of the fore portside runner, while the crew leader watched Teeliam. Her thoughts, though, were not on the delicate operation taking place over the side.

“Tonx Rakossa would not leave me alive while he remains so. While I live free, his thoughts will be on naught else.”

“Maybe he and Ro-Vijar had an argument,” Ethan half-joked, “and he lost.”

“I hope not.”

“What? But you’ve said …”

She stared at him, cold cat-eyes dark as the waters beneath the ice sea. “If he should be slain by someone unknown, far from here, if he should perish before we again meet, then I will be barred the delicious opportunity of killing him myself.” She spoke calmly, as if discussing the most ordinary, obvious thing in the world.

“Of course. I should’ve thought of that.”

She continued to stare at him, her head cocked slightly to one side. “You fancy you know us, do you not, Sir Ethan?”

“Know you?” Ethan felt glad of the expression-distorting face mask and the goggles behind. “Teeliam, I’ve lived among you for more than a year now.”

“ ’Tis true then, you indeed believe you know us. I’ve seen it in your gestures, in the way you converse with your companions from this distant land of Sofold. But you do not understand us. When I spoke of killing the Thing, it showed in your body and your way of forming words.

“You are …” she paused, half-smiled, “much too civilized, in the sense I believe you use that term. For all that you have shared with such as the magnificent Sir Hunnar and my good friend Elfa, they are still not part of you, nor you of them. They are part of me and this world. You will never change that.” There was pride in her tone, and a hint of arrogance.

“Perhaps not.” He knew better than to argue with such a recalcitrant customer. “I can only try to help as best I can, the people I’ve come to care for so strongly.”

Teeliam grunted noncommitally, chivaned away. Ethan was unable to tell whether she was voicing a deeply felt opinion, or if such challenge and gruffness were traits forced upon her by the actions of Rakossa. The results might simply have made her resentful of anyone who happened to be happy or optimistic.

Or male.

Still, he considered her words apart from their emotion-charged source. How well did he know any Tran? He counted Elfa, Hunnar, and many others his friends. But he had to admit there were occasions when he could not puzzle out their reasoning, or they his. Might they be doomed to exist forever as psychological pen-pals, able to communicate but only across a vast mental sea of alienness? So indeed he might not know them as well as he thought. As to never getting to know them, that he hoped was the brash opinion of one used to dealing only in absolutes.

Of one thing he was certain. Despite Teeliam’s insistence, contact with and membership in the Commonwealth would change the Tran, and their world. It had happened to other primitive peoples. Several had already risen to coequal status with human and thranx, and had been raised to full membership within the government. Others were working hard. Perseverance coupled with safe and benevolent supervision by the government and the United Church would aid any less sophisticated society in making the transition to a modern space-traversing technology with as little pain as possible.

That there sometimes was pain he could not deny, even to himself. That pain would be lessened considerably as soon as they returned to Brass Monkey and conveyed news of their discovery to the proper authorities—doing so took precedence over adding new states to the Trannish confederation. He had no doubt they could swing wide around Poyolavomaar and return to Arsudun uncontested.

He lost a mental step. What could they do, what should they do, on reaching the distant humanx outpost? Who could they report to? He was still unsure of Jobius Trell’s exact involvement with Calonnin Ro-Vijar. There was a possibility that Trell was operating directly with the Landgrave of Arsudun. September seemed to think so, but they had no firm proof.

Not that he was inclined to shrug off the giant’s opinions. More than once September had hinted that he was used to dealing with a higher echelon of power than was Ethan, that analyzing the motives and actions of power-wielders was not new to him.

Consider that Trell was the Resident Humanx Commissioner, that he had knowledge of every aspect of outpost operation. Brass Monkey had a few peace-forcers, stationed there more to protect the natives from the humanx than vice versa. Were they in league with Trell, or with Ro-Vijar directly? And what about the customs handlers, or the portmaster Xenaxis, not to mention the computers and processors?

Who within the modest complement stationed at the outpost could they entrust with such a momentous set of discoveries? Who could not only record and preserve such information against a possibly hostile bureaucracy, but could also transmit that knowledge to incorruptibles offplanet, where they would quickly become so widely disseminated that neither Trell nor anyone else could conceal them?

He took the problem to September. The giant was sitting on the frozen shoreline, his white hair blending into the background of sea and land.

September was not moving, simply staring motionless at the sheet of snow-dusted white where it ran up against the walls of the canyon. It was unusual to see him in such a reflective, downright pensive mood.

“Still in the egg?” The thranx phrase had long since entered the burgeoning roster of interspecies colloquialisms.

“Mmmm? Oh, hello, young feller-me-lad.” How oddly quiet he was, Ethan thought, as he turned his attention back to the ice. “No, not in the egg.”

“What are you thinking about?”

“My brother. Leastwise, the man who was my brother once.”

“You mentioned him before, a long time ago.” Ethan sat down alongside the mountainous form. “You said, ‘I had a brother, once.’ I didn’t understand what you meant by ‘once.’ ”

September’s mouth relaxed into a grin. He was watching the antics of two furry beetle-sized creatures. They were performing a miniature ice-ballet, skittering smoothly about where the shore met the frozen river.

“I suppose technically we’re still brothers. Once born one, I guess you’re stuck with it. Haven’t seen him in twenty, twenty-five years. I’ve done a lot of growin’ up since then. Sometimes wonder if he has, though I doubt it.”

“If you haven’t seen him, then how do you know he hasn’t, as you say, done any growing up?”

“You don’t understand, feller-me-lad. Sawbill, he was born bad.” Long minutes of quiet passed. September raised his gaze from skate-bugs to skating clouds racing overhead. “Got himself into a rotten, stinking business much too soon. That’s a part of it.”

“What kind of business?” September hardly ever talked about himself, and then always in his joking manner. To find him both loquacious and introspective was rare enough that Ethan forgot his original reason for seeking out the big man and probed on.

“He dug too deeply into … well, put it brief, he trained himself to become an emoman.”

Ethan knew of the men and women and thranx who sold emotions. Their status was only marginally legal, and what they sold was usually best left hidden away in the darker sections of hospitals. Commonwealth law guaranteeing so much freedom kept them from being closed down, though it could not prevent the occasional killing of one who grew too bold, or remained in one place too long. The social side-effects of their profession being what they were, few chose it as a life’s work. An emoman (or woman) rarely grew rich. There were other satisfactions to the profession, however, which induced a few to practice it. That gave rise to the saying that the most likely candidate for an emoman’s trade was himself.

“There was a girl,” September continued, rushing the words as if anxious to be rid of them. “There’s always a girl.” He chuckled in a bitter, bad-tasting sort of way. “I was interested in her, too much so. I was very young then. Sawbill was also interested in her… as a customer, and in other ways.

“We argued, we fought. I thought… anyhow, Sawbill sold her something he shouldn’t have. She wanted it—it’s a free galaxy. But he shouldn’t have done it. She was—repressed, I think’s the best way o’ puttin’ it. What Sawbill sold her made her unrepressed. Anyways, she overdosed herself. She—” his expression twisted horribly, “became somethin’ less than human but more than dead. Voluntarily turned herself into a commodity. Not a lynx or somethin’ decent like that, but something lower, beneath vileness, who—” He stopped, unable to continue.

Ethan wondered if he dared say anything. Finally he spoke as softly, gently as he could. “Maybe if you could find her now. She might’ve changed, tossed what she was engulfed by, and you could—”

“Lad, I said she overdosed herself. She didn’t follow instructions. Happens all the time to those who make use of an emoman’s merchandise.” There was a mountainous sadness in his voice.

“When Sawbill finally stopped supplyin’ her, she hunted up others who would. I can’t find her because she’s dead, lad. To me and most o’ the worlds, anyway. She just sort of got eaten away from the inside. Not physically. That I might’ve been able to cope with. The body did just fine, ’til it got used up too. By the time that started, her mind was long gone.” He turned his attention back to the ice.

“I hope she’s dead, Ethan. Should’ve done her a great kindness and killed her myself. I couldn’t, but as I told you, I was very young then. Everything Sawbill did was perfectly legal. He was always very careful about that. Probably still is, whatever he’s doing.”

“But couldn’t you have stopped him, legal or not? The man was your brother. Couldn’t he see what he was doing to the girl?”

“Feller-me-lad, emomen have their own code, their own set o’ morals. ’Cording to his way of thinkin’, he wasn’t doing a thing to her. She was doin’ it to herself. Commonwealth law sides with him. Emomen’s drugs have never proven addictive, not like something such as bloodhype, say. They’re big on legality. Not morality.”

“How can you act legally and not morally?” Ethan wanted to know.

September laughed, looking with pity at his young friend. “Feller-me-lad, you don’t know much about government, do you? Or law.”

“Government—that reminds me.” Ethan hastened to change the subject. He’d tunneled too deeply into another’s soul and had entered hollows he now wished he’d stayed out of. “How are we going to make our discoveries known to proper Commonwealth authorities without letting anyone cover them up?”

“So you’re finally as suspicious of Trell as I am, feller-me-lad?”

“Almost.”

“Good enough. Never trust an official who smiles that much.”

“He knows everything that happens in Brass Monkey. We need someone who can command a closed beam for off-world transmission.”

“Isn’t—anyone,” September grunted. He seemed hard at work on the problem, having already forgotten the moody discourse of moments ago. “Wait now.” He rose, towered over Ethan. “Ought to be one office that can send closed messages.”

“Don’t keep me guessing, Skua. Trell’s Commissioner, and he can—”

“Think a second, feller-me-lad. Brass Monkey’s large enough to rate a padre.”

Being only ah occasional church-goer, and less religious than most, Ethan hadn’t thought of the local representative of the United Church. No one, least of all a comparatively minor functionary like Trell, would dare tamper with a sealed Church communication.

“Now that that little gully’s crossed, let’s go back and see if we can’t help put our ship back together, eh, young feller-me-lad?”

They left the shore and headed toward the icerigger. The fifth and final duralloy runner, the steering skate, was being hoisted into place at her stern. Ethan snatched a surreptitious glance at his companion. The patina of indestructible confidence had returned to his expression, only slightly tarnished.

Skua September had turned out to be as vulnerable as any human. His huge frame simply gave him greater depths in which to hide his passions.

With typical lack of formality, the Moulokinese prepared no noisy demonstration to greet the return of the Slanderscree. The townsfolk went about their everyday business and the shipwrights who’d helped replace wheels with runners returned to their yards. Officially, the sole ceremony consisted of minister Mirmib and two aides meeting them at dockside.

“Landgrave Lady K’ferr Shri-Vehm bids you welcome again to Moulokin, my friends. Our breath is your warmth.

“There will be a feast tonight to celebrate your unexpected but nonetheless welcome return, at which time you may further enlarge on this wondrous history you have made for us.”

“Wondrous isn’t the word,” Ethan addressed the minister. “Significant would be better. Among other things, it shows that your new confederation isn’t as far-fetched as we first thought, because all Tran once lived within a far stronger union.”

“A union repeatedly scattered by weather stranger than I can believe, or so go the rumors our shipwrights have told me,” Mirmib replied.

As it developed, the feast of the night extended in various incarnations for several days, during which time the crew enjoyed the hospitality of Moulokin. Their tales engendered considerable, lively speculation and discussion among the townspeople. Some of the stories lined up neatly with local religions, which grew at once stronger for the confirmation and weaker for the reality of it.

When it was adjudged time for the Slanderscree to embark on its circuitous return to Arsudun, the Moulokinese finally abandoned their casual reserve. They took leave of their work to crowd around the harbor and voice enthusiastic, spontaneous wishes for the safe journey and good wind of their new friends and allies. With the last shouts of the watch patrolling the outer gate adding to the wind pouring down the canyon, the icerigger raced out onto the frozen sea.

Instead of paralleling the cliffs, Ta-hoding set a course northward. They would cross the endless pressure ridge of ice at a different point, to avoid possible confrontation with any lingering Poyolavomaar forces that might be guarding their first passageway through that broken, jumbled barrier.

Ethan stood on the helmdeck, watching the canyon that concealed Moulokin recede behind them. Ta-hoding animatedly waddled around the great wheel, happy as a pup. His steersmen also looked pleased at nothing in particular.

When asked to explain his beatific expression, the captain replied, “Why should we not be happy, friend Ethan? We sail with smooth, clean ice beneath us instead of unpredictable rock and dirt. I know now that if I order the mastmen to port a spar one jahn, the Slanderscree will react precisely so,” and he outlined air with a sweeping motion of one long arm.

“No longer need we guess at the results of our maneuvers. No more must I …”

“Below the deck!” came a shout from the mainmast lookout. “Sail five kijat to port!”

“Must be a merchantman, headed for the city.” Ta-hoding strained to look in the indicated direction. The horizon remained uninterrupted.

“Below the deck!” A note of urgency in the lookout’s yell sent idle sailors chivaning to the rail. “Four sails more traveling with the first … no, five! More still!”

“Do you suppose, friend Ethan …” A worried Ta-hoding let the sentence trail off. His jovial manner had faded.

Dan spread wide, Hunnar came shooting onto the helmdeck via one of the ice ramps leading up from the main deck. He dropped his arms and dan, lost speed, and braked in a shower of ice, then skated impatiently to join the captain and Ethan.

“Turn about, Captain.” His tone was grim. “They could be an unusually large group of merchants traveling together for protection, but we’d best not take chances.”

As if to confirm their worst suspicions, the lookout sounded again. “Eight, nine … I count at least fifteen sails, possibly more!”

“Must be the Poyolavomaar fleet. So they haven’t given up. They’ve waited all this time, hoping we’d return. Damn!”

“The girl Teeliam was right.” Hunnar’s gaze was fixed on the portside horizon. “Who should better know a madman’s desires than one who was subject to them? Turn about, Captain.”

But Ta-hoding had already begun unleashing a river of commands to all within earshot. When he concluded, he returned to stare in the same direction as Hunnar and Ethan.

“ ’Tis difficult to say what may happen.” The plump captain looked concerned. “We cannot swing to starboard, for it would take us into the cliffs. To make headway against the canyon winds, we need the westwind behind us. Yet they are already positioned to make use of it themselves. We have no choice but to swing toward them, catch the westwind on our starboard side, and swing back to Moulokin.” He stared up at Hunnar. “We may run into their point rafts before we can swing ’round to the west again.”

“Take care of your ship, captain friend. I will take care of other considerations.” Hunnar raised his arm and slid back toward the main deck, already organizing in his mind ways to repel potential boarders.

Off-watch crew came pouring onto the deck. Some of the sailors were buckling on swords and armor while double eyelids blinked away sleep.

Ethan continued to stare, looking forward as the prow of the icerigger began to come around and point directly at the onrushing Poyo rafts. By then the opposition had drawn close enough for the lookouts aloft to distinguish markings and pennants. The faint hope that the vessels might constitute part of some huge merchant fleet vanished.

A stocky, wizened Tran had mounted the helmdeck, stood alongside Ethan. Balavere Longax, Sofold’s most respected senior warrior, gestured to their left with a clawed finger. The claw was pitted and dull, a fragment of worn feldspar set on the tip of a gray branch.

“Infantry,” he grunted. “Slower than rafts but more maneuverable. They seek to cut us off before we can gather the westwind behind us.” He fingered the sword slung at his waist, a weapon far younger than himself. Turning, he shouted toward the main deck. “Ware bowmen! Keep to your shields, men and women of Sofold!”

Arbalesters, carrying the crossbows devised by Milliken Williams to aid in the defense of Sofold against the assault of Sagyanak the Death and the Horde over a year ago, took up positions high in the Slanderscree’s rigging.

Balavere studied the rush of infantry, now curving slightly toward the raft, “We must pass through them, but they will not stop us.” He glanced back at Ethan, grinned unexpectedly. “Their archers will concentrate their fire here, my friend, to try and pick off our wheelmen. Best you get yourself below.”

“If you don’t mind, I think I’ll stay right here.” His own confidence shocked him. Little more than a year on this harsh world had transformed him considerably. Contact with the Commonwealth would surely change the Tran. Contact with the Tran had already changed at least one human. He patted the sword slung at his side. It felt familiar, comfortable there. But it was the hand beamer he raised and checked.

“Charge is way down,” he told Balavere, squinting to read a tiny gauge through mask and ice goggles. “I expect Skua’s and Milliken’s are low also. But the first bowman who comes too close is going to get a strong dose of modern technology.”

“I had forgotten about your knives that fight with the long light,” the general said. “Good. Remain then and help protect our mobility.” He walked over to talk with Ta-hoding.

“I worry not overmuch about their arrows,” Ethan heard the general tell the captain. “They could do worse, if this Rakossa has good advice. Himself I think incapable of much tactical subtlety. Their rafts sail with discipline, so keep the wind and try not to cut us off overfast. They may try to jam the steer runner with cables.”

“Think you I’ve not been in battle before?” Anxious and concerned as he was, Ta-hoding wasn’t about to let Balavere or anyone else tell him how to handle his ship. “Keep any cables out from our stem and I will deliver all safely to the harbor.” He muttered a Trannish curse. “Had we but a few hours longer, we could have outrun them. Only a—”

He was interrupted once more by a cry from the mainmast. “Ten ships, eighteen kijat to port!”

By then the icerigger had swung around to where westwind was beginning to fill her sails. She picked up speed, but the sailors of the main Poyo body were visible on the decks of their rafts. A new threat.

“They have cut us off, then,” Balavere observed.

“Not yet.” Ta-hoding bellowed new orders. Painful creaks sounded above them, and Ethan anxiously looked upward. The adjustable spars had been twisted around so far that they were holding the sails almost parallel to the raft’s keel line.

“Think you they’ll take the strain?” Balavere was also gazing up into the webwork of singing rigging. The foremast groaned, appeared to bend slightly from the vertical.

“Did I not, I would never have given the order,” replied Ta-hoding. “If we did not try it, we would truly turn straight into these ten new rafts.

Continuing to accelerate, the Slanderscree curved tightly around back toward the canyon. When it became apparent to the infantry on the ice and the ten flanking rafts that their quarry was going to slide past instead of into them, the bowmen unleashed a rain of arrows in the icerigger’s direction.

One stuck tautly into the hessavar hide shield Ethan had been given. He stared at it for a second, then ducked back behind the railing as another shaft whizzed close by overhead.

A small group of Poyo infantry had managed to gain slightly on their companions. Now they were chivaning parallel to the icerigger. A few had even managed to slip beneath her hull, where they could not be seen. As Balavere had guessed, thick pika-pina cables were slung on the backs of several of the attackers.

Hunnar, looking tired but not worried, appeared on the helmdeck. “We will have to put men over the side.” An arrow landed at his feet, stuck quivering in the deck. Both Tran ignored it. “Our crossbowmen cannot pick them off quickly enough before they get beneath us.”

“Any we send over who fall behind would be lost instantly,” countered Balavere. He gestured at the swarming Poyo infantry, who were gathering in steadily greater numbers around the icerigger. “We cannot afford to lose many of our complement.”

“We cannot afford to have them jam our steering!” Young warrior confronted old.

A commotion forward temporarily brought the argument to a halt. Despite the danger, Ethan rose so he could see over the bow. A brown-gray arrowhead was streaming toward them from the vicinity of the nearing canyon.

“Looks like a sortie from the city.” Hunnar was standing close by him, gazing with satisfaction at the widening silver river pouring from the canyon mouth. “Our new brothers and sisters have come to help.”

With the Poyolavomaar fleet close behind and infantry preparing to ensnarl the Slanderscree’s steering mechanism in green cable, the arrival of forces from Moulokin saved Balavere and Hunnar further argument. The Moulokinese exploded into the unprepared Poyo troops. With the canyon wind canceling out the westwind, the Moulokinese soldiers now had the advantage of speed and maneuverability. They had timed their charge perfectly.

“Half the Poyolavomaar infantry succumbed to that initial surge, whereupon the Moulokinese arrowhead formation split, the soldiers curving around to left and right to race back toward their canyon. Some of them, in making the turn, came under fire from the nearest Poyo rafts and were cut down. Most were soon flanking the Slanderscree to port and starboard, exchanging victory yells with the sailors on board.

The canyon had become a familiar, gaping slash in the cliff wall. The icerigger slowed as she fought the powerful winds racing off the continent and down through the canyon, but so did the speed of her pursuers.

The Poyolavomaar infantry who remained made it a difficult last few moments, however. Shielded from the strong headwinds by the Slanderscree’s bulk, they were able to overtake her. However, between the escorting Moulokinese and the accurate fire of arbalesters positioned on the huge raft’s stern, no cable-carrying enemy soldier was able to close nearer than a dozen meters to the vulnerable steering skate.

They were within the towering walls of the canyon then, making slow progress inland with the Poyo fleet close behind. Once, one of the smaller pursuing rafts came almost within bow range. It mounted a pair of small catapults, one on each side of its single mast. Both were soon throwing skins filled with flaming oil at the wooden icerigger.

The Poyo catapulters had not compensated for the tremendously powerful headwind, however. Not only did the dangerous, fiery sacks fail to reach the retreating raft, but the wind held them up and carried them back to fall behind the catapult-mounting craft. Infantry tacking behind it scattered frantically as the flaming skins burst on the ice, sending burning oil in all directions.

The second Poyo ship hit sections of ice temporarily melted by the hot oil and slid awkwardly sideways as its runners lost purchase. Two more rafts piled up behind it, doing their best to avoid smashing into their out-of-control companion.

All this contributed immensely to the enjoyment of Moulokinese and sailors, who added hoots of derision and some especially choice Trannish insults to the confusion taking place in their wake.

Balavere permitted himself a crusty smile. “If all their attacks prove as ineffectual, we will have no trouble with these.”

“ ’Tis clear—I mean, it’s clear now why the Moulokinese didn’t report the Poyo fleet’s presence,” Ethan said thoughtfully. “Any neutral merchant raft was likely captured or frightened off, and those two rafts Minister Mirmib said were still out scouting will probably never return home.”

Balavere’s smile disappeared at Ethan’s words. He studied the scene behind them. Their pursuers were untangling and beginning to tack laboriously upcanyon after them. “They still owe much, friend Ethan. I fear that once we are safe behind the Moulokinese walls, they will give up for good this time.”

Ethan happened to see two figures conversing by the entrance to the main cabin: Teeliam and Elfa. “I don’t think so, Balavere. So long as this Rakossa has control, I don’t think they’ll ever give up. We may be here for a long, long time.”

XVII

THE SLANDERSCREE AND ITS Moulokinese escort slid in through the massive gate in the outer wall. Word of their return and the Poyo attack had resulted in full mobilization of the city. The wall was packed with armed Tran. Others waited in casual but still disciplined formation on the ice between the two walls, while rafts shuttled supplies out from the city itself. Ta-hoding brought the icerigger to a halt, reefed in most of her sail. “Why are we stopping here?” Ethan asked.

“Sir Hunnar has conveyed to me a wish to disembark, friend Ethan.”

Moving to the railing, Ethan saw that the knight and a majority of the icerigger’s crew was swarming iceward. To help defend the wall, naturally. Ethan ran to join them. September was already on the ice, moving awkwardly without his skates. Williams looked up as Ethan neared a boarding ladder.

“Aren’t you coming too, Milliken?”

“No, Ethan.” The teacher didn’t look at him. “You know I’m not much good in a fight.”

“I’ve seen you in combat, Milliken. You handle yourself as well as anyone.”

The teacher smiled gratefully. “Better one of us retain a partly charged beamer. Sure, I can fight with it. But when the charge is gone, I’d be an encumbrance. Swordplay’s not for me, Ethan.”

Unable to decide whether Williams was making a good strategic point or merely an excuse, Ethan said, “You’re probably right, Milliken. We’d better keep a beamer in reserve. Maybe you and Eer-Meesach can think of something to help.”

The schoolteacher appeared relieved. “We’ll try our best, of course.”

Ethan went over the side, bumping against the hull of the raft, the soft chunk, chunk of a sailor’s chiv sounding above him. His friend Williams, he knew, was no coward. He was perfectly right in insisting they keep a beamer aboard the ship. And he wasn’t much good with a sword.

Then he was down on the ice, where he promptly fell flat on his fundament, much to the amusement of the nearby Moulokinese. Elfa dropped down the ladder ahead of him. She held a crossbow. Sword and bolt quiver were slung at opposite hips. She smiled at his fall but did not laugh.

In the midst of a situation where he might soon find his throat slit, Ethan found himself staring deep into those topaz Tran eyes and thinking unthinkable thoughts. Here and now, he scolded himself, hundreds of kilometers from the nearest outpost of humanx civilization, parsecs from the closest civilized world.

What better place to think uncivilized thoughts?

“Thank you, Elfa,” he said as she gave him a hand up, for once not caring what Sir Hunnar made of his words.

Looking down the canyon from the crest of the wall, he could watch as Poyo rafts and soldiers formed a solid line across the ice. Arrows began to fly from the ranks of Poyolavomaar archers kneeling on the ice, from their counterparts aloft in the rigging of many rafts. All sails had been furled and ice anchors held the attackers’ rafts steady against the down canyon wind.

Military sophistication wasn’t necessary to identify a completely untenable position. Those Poyo arrows which did have enough force to reach the top of the wall had been slowed by the wind to where they could do little more than nick flesh. On the other hand, having the wind behind them drove crossbow bolts and Moulokinese arrows out and down with sufficient power to penetrate a hide shield.

The officers aboard the Poyo rafts quickly realized the hopelessness of their present position. Drawing in anchors, they let their rafts drift downcanyon and out of range.

Soon shouts of “Down, down!” sounded along the wall.

“That must mean catapults,” Elfa explained from nearby. Ethan was acutely conscious of her proximity. While the Tran did not sweat, they exuded a powerful musk which was individually distinctive. None was more so than Elfa’s.

“ ’Tis to be hoped they are as accurate with stones as they were with oil sacks.” She grinned a battle grin, showing delicate, pointed fangs.

That ferocious, toothy smile was enough to erase the absurd scenarios he’d been dwelling on for the past half hour. At the same time he discovered that the tension which had gripped him during the same period had less to do with combat than he’d thought. Now he relaxed a little.

Some distant heavy thumps sounded muffled by the wind. Ethan chanced a glance over the wall. Several man-sized boulders lay on the ice below. The massive stone rampart was barely chipped. War cries and obscenity-flavored laughter were the defenders’ response.

An audible whoosh, and a slightly smaller boulder sailed over the wall to land on the ice behind. After a few minutes. Ethan recognized the futility of his new assault. With perfect accuracy and no misses it would take the Poyos a dozen years to breach the wall which was far too massive to succumb to bombardment from such modest-sized stones. Nor could the Poyo fleet carry an endless supply of such ammunition, and bone and primitive metal tools would not suffice to cut new material from the dense basalt cliffs.

In the crowded canyon, they could not bring enough catapults to bear to drive the defenders off the wall. They had ample time to spot each arriving stone and get out of its way on the rare occasion when one would actually land atop the parapet.

When the Moulokinese arrived from the city with their own artillery and began using catapults to hurl wind-blown boulders back at the attacking rafts, the despair of the Poyo soldiers could almost be felt. They retreated again, still further down the canyon, and sat there. Meanwhile the Moulokinese soldiers and the sailors off the Slanderscree held an informal competition to see who could concoct the most degrading insult to hurl in their attackers’ direction.

Despite the situation, the Poyo rafts gave no sign of departing. It was to be a siege, then.

“I don’t think they’ll try that again for a while, young feller-me-lad.” September’s leathery skin was flushed, giving him the look of a man generating an internal sunset. No doubt he’d enjoyed the brief battle. Privately, Ethan suspected the giant was disappointed at the absence of any hand-to-hand fighting. His enormous battle-axe dangled from one burl-sized fist.

“Their arrows got here slowed down enough to pluck out of the air,” he commented, sitting down with his back against the wall. “Can’t hurt this wall with their rocks, and they don’t know enough ballistics to put every stone on top.”

“What do you think they’ll try next?”

“If I were them, lad, and foolish enough to continue this, I’d make a try at breaking in the gate. Since they can’t sail a ram into this wind, that means bringin’ up a hand-carried log or something or usin’ oil to try and burn it through.”

“The Moulokinese cables will still stop any raft from sailing through, Skua.”

“Right, feller-me-lad. That means they’d have to get enough infantry through to take over the wall and lower the cables themselves. I don’t see they’ve got a chance. We can have archers and arbalesters pick ’em off outside the gate, and can mass fifty soldiers behind the gate for every one who fights his way in. Be suicidal to try. That doesn’t mean they won’t. Humans have been known to try similar stunts.”

“They can keep us bottled up here in Moulokin indefinitely, though.”

“That’s so.” He fingered the gold ring in his right ear. “Don’t bother me much. I like Moulokin. But it will keep us from gettin’ our important discoveries to the padre in Brass Monkey. More important is what it’ll do by blockading all commerce. Traders and ship buyers will go elsewhere rather than fight their way into Moulokin. Rakossa’s officers probably know that, even if he can’t think of anything but gettin’ his hands on Teeliam. I don’t think our friends the Moulokinese will crack, but too many wars are decided by factors economic instead of military.

“Now me,” and he fingered the haft of the huge axe, “I’m hoping the Poyos get frustrated and try another frontal attack. It’s more likely they’ll get frustrated and speak off, ship by ship, for their homes and hearths.

“Meanwhile, we might as well lean back and enjoy the hospitality of our hosts, ’till the Poyos decide which way their frustration’s goin’ to drive them.” He put both massive hands behind his head and closed his eyes. After a few minutes, he indicated to Ethan that he hadn’t fallen asleep by popping one eye open.

“Barbarians against us, barbarians with us, and we three supposedly civilized folk helpless to influence ’em one way or the other. Think about it, lad.”

Then he did fall asleep, oblivious to the cold and the noise of a thousand alien soldiers chattering around him,

“With all due respect, my lord, we cannot attack.” The Poyo officer looked uncomfortable under the glare of his mercurial ruler, wished he were back on his own raft instead of here in the royal stateroom.

“Oduine is right, my lord,” said another of the assembled captains. “To have a normal wind before us would be disadvantage enough. But the wind in our faces here would give pause to a god! At their whim, they could sally out and do us much damage. Their weapons outrange us badly. And these peculiar small arrows,” he held up a Sofoldian crossbow bolt, “are fired with a force greater than our best archers can muster.”

“Their catapults have the wind behind them too, sire,” a third officer added. “I was with the group that entered the city many days ago to search for this accursed great raft. The wall before us is fully half a suntt deep and solid as these cliffs around us. It cannot be breached by any siege weapon I know of.”

Tonx Ghin Rakossa, Landgrave of Poyolavomaar, slouched in his chair at the far end of the triangular table and quietly regarded his commanders. He let the silence grow until many were shifting nervously in their seats.

“Do you have any more good news to give us, my soldiers?” They looked at one another, at the walls, their chairs, anywhere but at the dangerously soft-voiced Landgrave. Most of them despised their hereditary ruler, only a few shared his perverse dreams. There had been mutterings of disloyalty ever since the erratic Rakossa had ascended the throne following the suspicious death of his older brother, but the Poyos were a tradition-minded people. There was no outright rebellion then. There was none now.

None, however, could deny the wealth (however questionable the methods) which Rakossa had brought to their city-state. Many felt guilty at accepting wealth obtained by devices so callous, yet there were none who brought themselves to refuse it when their share was offered them.

Having spoken with quiet control, Rakossa now leaned forward and screamed at them. “Do you think we are blind, like the doublebody Gilirun who travels the ice by feel? Do you believe that as we face the refuge of that unmentionable woman and those off-world interlopers and that knot of fat merchants we cannot feel the wind blowing hard in our face?” He sat back, dropped his voice to an insinuating purr.

“ ’Twas not we who failed to jam with cable the steering runner of the coveted ice ship.”

One of the other officers held up another crossbow bolt. The tip and shaft were stained brown. “My lord, this came out of my back this morning.” A murmur of support sounded from the other captains.

“We ourselves were also wounded, T’hosjer,” said Rakossa. He had always to be careful. As ignorant and stupid as these warriors were, they were all he had to make reality of his dreams. Though devoid of vision, they could still be dangerous.

“Our soldiers would have jammed that raft’s steering, my lord,” said T’hosjer emphatically, “would have sent it crashing into the cliffs. Would have jammed it so it would have taken forty men a ten-day to untangle it … save for these!” and he snapped the bolt angrily in two,

“ ’Tis truth sire, save for that—and for this!” A sub-officer guarding the door into the cabin shouldered his way into the assemblage. Facing the Landgrave, he stood on one of the chairs and slammed his right leg onto the table. Triple chiv stuck in the hard wood.

A black line only a few millimeters wide ran from just below the furry knee around to the back, which was bulkier than any human calf. “The offworlders did this.”

Several of the other captains leaned forward, examined the remarkably symmetrical wound. Fur and skin had been burnt away.

“They have strange weapons which shoot pieces of sun,” the subofficer was saying. “They are long and thin and will go through the thickest shield.

“I had a woman in my command hight Zou-eadaa. A good fighter, afraid of nothing. She chivaned almost near enough to throw her cable at the raft’s huge runner. I myself saw what happened next, for I was closest to her.

“One of the offworlders pointed a tiny piece of metal at her. There was a flash of fire, blue instead of red, that was for a moment brighter than the sun.” An awed murmur rose from several officers. “It went through Zou-eadaa’s shield, her war coat beneath, her chest, to come out her back and strike the ice, which melted under it to a deep puddle.

“After the fight today, I went out on the ocean to retrieve her sword and armor and cut a muzzle lock for her family.” He held up his right paw, extended the index claw. “Were this finger long enough, I could have passed it completely through her body, through the hole the light weapon made. I did not watch myself enough this morning, and received this.” He brushed his palm sharply, bitterly, across the black line on his leg.

“ ’Tis no clean way to fight, against a weapon that makes one’s own leg smell like cooking meat.” He pulled his leg free of the table, stepped down off the chair. “Can we fight those who magic with the sun?”

Angry agreement came from several of the most disgruntled captains. Rakossa let them jabber on for a decent period, then said quietly, “Idiots.”

Conversation ceased, though there remained barely masked stares of rebellion. Rakossa stood up. “Did you know that, that you are all fools and idiots? Your mothers gave water!” He held up a paw. “Before you babble cubbish objections, we will tell you something else. We have already won this battle.”

Strange expressions greeted this ridiculous pronouncement. All knew, even his supporters, that the Landgrave was not the sanest Tran in Poyolavomaar. They wondered if he now might not have entered the region of the humored dead, a development many would have welcomed.

That was not the case. “We have won, because these detested creatures returned here to where we awaited them. We did not know if they would do so. We could not circle this enormous land to find where they might leave it and return decently to the ice. We had thought they might fly off through the sky, as Calonnin Ro-Vijar has told us the offworlders can. But he also assured us that they most likely would not.”

That last prompted a query from the officer who’d first spoken. “Where is the brave Landgrave of Arsudun?”

“Yes,” shouted another “where has he taken himself now that we must fight with blood instead of words?”

“At least you have the brains to note the absence of our valued friend and ally. Now, strain your tiny minds but a little further. Where can he have gone to? Think a moment!” He savored the sudden consternation visible on their faces. “Think of what we just told you, of the offworlders flying through the air.”

Someone finally said, in a stunned voice, “He has gone for offworlder help of our own.”

“A sensible man among you.” Rakossa marked the one who’d spoken for future promotion, provided he continued to behave with proper humility and deference toward the royal person.

“Ro-Vijar has allies among the offworlders, even as that accursed woman does. When it became clear to us that the iceraft and its cargo were elsewhere than in the city of the merchants we dispatched Ro-Vijar at his own suggestion back to his own country. He assures us he can procure offworld help. When he returns, it will be with weapons of battle so terrible that the puny hand knives of the offworlders on that raft will appear as a wooden sword beside one of steel!”

Sitting down, he let the officers mull over that bit of news. “Meanwhile,” he interjected, “the merchants and their offworlders cannot come out. If they dare attack us on the open ice, we will retreat past their wind advantage and cut them up on the sea despite their strange weapons. If they vanish again, they will be found when the Landgrave of Arsudun returns with his aid. They cannot escape us!” He slammed a paw down hard on the table.

“Then will we possess not only the great iceship, but all the riches of this bloated merchant city, which we will strip and then burn to the ground.”

The cabin rang with cheers. Rakossa sat back, smiled inwardly. Once more he had them. Maintaining the loyalty of such peasant was a disagreeable game, but one which great men like himself necessarily had to master.

Yes, he would have the raft with its beautiful, tall runners made from metal of the offworlders. He would have the mysterious short-arrow bows of its crew as well as their blood. His soldiers, who had grown too thoughtful for responsible citizens, would now have the chance to forget idle speculations and drown themselves in the flesh and wealth of Moulokin. His name and the name of Poyolavomaar would spread a little farther over this portion of the world.

There was something still more important he would gain. More vital than the conquest and rape of the city, than gaining the greatest iceship on all of Tran-ky-ky, than the power and prestige the coming destruction would bring to him. His eyes narrowed and double lids nearly closed, giving the Landgrave of Poyolavomaar a glazed, sleepy look. He would have the concubine Teehiam.

Let his officers and men gain the riches of the city. His desire was for a possession much smaller. He could not live knowing a possession had defied him.

The excited buzz of conversation around him faded to a dull hum as he envisioned for the thousandth time what he would do to her when his paws again touched her skin.

It would be her last escape.

One of Mirmib’s underlings was showing Ethan and Skua the outskirts of Moulokin. They were on the far southwestern side of the city now, where dense stands of coniferous forest ran inland up the shallow subsidiary canyon. Looking behind them they could see small rafts skittering back and forth within the bowl-shaped harbor. Smoke drifted from stone chimneys. Gentle breezes muffled distant shipyard and city sounds. The blockading Poyolavomaar fleet and the possibility of violent death seemed very far away.

“These trees,” the official pointed out proudly, “are among the oldest and largest in the canyon. We do not cut them indiscriminately, but reserve them for special endeavors, such as the mainmast of an especially large raft. They serve also to break the rare severe winds that come off the plateau above the city.”

The official dropped his arms, slowing his speed on the ice-path to a crawl to accommodate the two humans who plodded uphill alongside him. But they never did get to visit the saw mills and lumberyard which lay further upcanyon.

A shout sounded behind them. An anxious-looking young Tran was chivaning uphill after them. He came to an abrupt halt, tongue lolling, panting like a winded runner. Throughout his subsequent monologue his arms gesticulated wildly, usually in the direction of the harbor.

“More—more skypeople have come.” Ethan and September exchanged glances, said nothing. “They say …” He looked at both humans warily as he paused for a breath, “they say that you are renegades among your own people, evil ones come to work evil among us. That the Tran of Poyolavomaar are but doing all Tran a service by trying to take you into custody, and that we of Moulokin should surrender you immediately.”

“I see.” September regarded the downy-maned messenger easily. “What do Mirmib and the Lady K’ferr say to this?”

The other grinned in that peculiar Trannish way. “Many things that it would not be right to say in the presence of young cubs. They believe you. All we of Moulokin believe you. Those who could join with the treacherous Poyos could be naught but liars, no matter their powers or origin. A faster raft or stronger sword does not make a stranger’s words right.”

“I think,” September said approvingly, “you folks are gonna make good additions to the Commonwealth. Did you happen to see these new skypeople yourself?”

“I did.”

“Was one of ’em just a little shorter than myself, with a self-important manner about him?”

“I know naught of the mannerisms of you offworlders,” the messenger replied honestly. “I was sent only to inform you. But there were three skypeople and the one you may describe gives orders to the other two. They have come in a craft most marvelous and magical. It has no runners at all,” he murmured in astonishment, “but floats above the ice the height of my chest.”

“A skimmer,” explained Ethan, adding, “they can come right over the wall with that if they want to. But three?”

“Trell wouldn’t leave Arsudun without a bodyguard of some sort,” September said reasonably. “Probably peaceforcers. They’ll take orders from the Resident Commissioner without question, unless we can talk, sense to ’em. And if Trell’s told them we’re dangerous criminals or some such, we won’t have a chance to get near them. But a skimmer doesn’t frighten me. Trell would guess that much. Let’s go see what else they’ve brought.”

Trell had indeed brought much more than a skimmer. Ethan and Skua stood on the wall sealing off the canyon. In the distance they could see the furled sails and masts of the Poyo fleet. Considerably closer, floating two meters above the ice, was a rectangular metal shape with a curved prow. The back third of the object was irregular and composed of the same dull-antimony-hued metal as the body, the bumps and rises giving it the look of a diseased animal. The front two-thirds were normally encased in a metal and glassalloy canopy, which was presently retracted. A steady, mellow hum came from within the skimmer.

One survival-suited man sat at the controls. Trell stood behind him. Slightly to the left and still further back a third figure sat in a flexible seat. The seat was attached to a device consisting of a narrow, tapering tube two and half meters long that nested in a webbing of opaque ceramics, glassalloy, and spun metal. Ethan experienced a sinking feeling. The abstract sculpture was a beam cannon. One of modest size, but of sufficient capability to turn any fortification of Tran-ky-ky to a mound of molten rock.

Its operator was sitting easily in the seat, running a hand through her long red hair and waiting for instructions from the Commissioner.

The proximity of the skimmer rendered the use of voice amplifiers unnecessary. “Ethan Frome Fortune, Skua September, Milliken Williams!”

Ethan recognized Trell’s voice immediately. “Where’s Milliken?”

“Off with the wizard someplace. Never mind, feller-me-lad.” September roared over the wall. “We’re here, Trell!”

“You are engaged,” the Commissioner began officiously, “in unauthorized, unpermitted, and illegal diplomatic endeavors among the natives of this Class V unstatused world.”

“We’re trying to help them form something resembling a planetary government,” Ethan yelled back, “so they can make the jump to Class II. That’s a good thing. You said so yourself, Trell.”

“You do not have official permission,” Trell replied sweetly. “As Resident Commissioner I share your concern. But I cannot countenance unauthorized activities of such delicacy.”

“We’re willin’ to cooperate,” countered September. “Give us permission.”

“I’m not empowered to do so, Mr. September. I’m only an administrator, not a policy-maker. If you will return with me to Arsudun, I will help you fill out the proper forms and put the request through correct channels.”

“That would take years.” Ethan didn’t try to hide the sarcasm. “You know how the bureaucracy works. We’re not recognized diplomats, missionaries, anything but private citizens. We’d never get permission.”

“That is not for me to say. But you must go through official channels! As Resident Commissioner I am empowered to enforce the law. No law permits amateur meddling in native affairs.”

“You call it meddling. We call it somethin’ else.”

“Evidently, Mr. September. However,” and he nodded toward the waiting cannon, “whatever lies you’ve managed to foist on your native allies will not resist modern weaponry. For the last time, I implore you to return peacefully to Arsudun—”

“Where we might get our bellies slit … accidentally,” September cut in.

“—to pursue your endeavors through proper authorities.”

“If we don’t?” Ethan asked.

Trell managed to look pained. “If I am compelled to employ modern weapons against primitive peoples it will go very harshly with you.”

“What he’s sayin’,” September muttered, “is that if we and the Moulokinese resist, he can blow the whole city to fragments and blame it on us. If we go back with him, you know what’ll happen. If he doesn’t kill us outright, he’ll just have us put on the next ship outsystem. That’d be the end of any attempt to organize the Tran and lead ’em out of their self-destructive feudalism. You know how far any official request will get.”

“What say you, friends?” They looked back, saw Hunnar standing expectantly behind them. Ethan switched from the symbospeech he and September had been speaking back to Trannish and repeated most of their conversation for the knight and for Mirmib, who had chivaned over to join them.

Hunnar hefted the crossbow he’d taken from the Slanderscree’s armory. “What happens if I put a bolt through the chief human’s chest? Will he not die quickly as any Tran?”

“Just as quickly,” September admitted. “But we’d have to kill all three of them simultaneously.” He glanced over the wall. “Near impossible. If one of ’em survives, they’ll move back out of range and reduce the whole city, or worse, return to Brass Monkey and report what happened here. Then Moulokin would be listed as an outlaw city full of belligerents, and Ro-Vijar and Rakossa would go down as the finest leaders on all Tran-ky-ky. Too risky except as a last resort. Like jumpin’ a crevasse, it’s an all or nothing proposition.

“Besides, Trell’s no dummy. He knows we’ve got a couple of beamers. Probably the skimmer’s beam-shielded right now. Anything we fired at ’em would just get bent into the ice.”

“We’ve got one other thing to fight with, Skua.” Ethan looked from man to Tran. “The new history of an entire race.”

September let go a derisive sniff. “I’m not sure Trell’s the sort of man to whom that would make much difference, feller-me-lad.”

“Don’t judge him too fast, Skua. You said yourself once you’re used to dealing in extremes. Let me try and sell him, first. Before we try any all or nothings.” September looked undecided.

“Maybe I’m wrong, but I think he might be the sort of educated functionary who likes to steal so long as it can be done quasilegally. There’s a difference between a professional killer and an immoral opportunist.”

“You spin words mighty fine, lad.”

“It’s my business. Let me at least try talking to him. If he ignores me, well,” he shrugged and eyed Hunnar’s ready crossbow, “we can always try blunter methods.”

“Why not slay him,” Hunnar suggested blithely, “when he comes to parley?”

“In the first place, Hunnar, we’re not that kind of folks,” September replied sternly. “In the second, Trell will come by himself. May sound paradoxical, but he’s safer with his bodyguard behind him, runnin’ the skimmer and the gun. Kill him and we lose.”

“We agree then. Friend Ethan, try your words.” Hunnar’s tone left no doubt what he thought Ethan’s chances were.

He showed himself at the wall’s edge. “Will you meet us at the gate? We have a lot to tell you that you don’t know, Trell.”

“I will,” came the response, “provided I can bring a couple of bodyguards!”

September’s jaw sagged. If Trell were fool enough to leave the skimmer and cannon unattended …

He was not. When the towering wooden gates were lugged slightly askew, the opening admitted Trell, two huge Tran, and Calonnin Ro-Vijar, looking like a great gray Cheshire cat.

Trell had come thoroughly prepared. He wore skates similar to those manufactured for Ethan and his friends.

“So you and Trell were together in this all along,” said Ethan.

“In what?” Trell looked as innocent as the man who claimed his garrote was a handkerchief. “As Landgrave of Arsudun, naturally Ro-Vijar would be interested in anything affecting the peoples of his world.”

“Such as personal profit?”

“We are all businessmen and traders here.” Ro-Vijar did not sound offended by Ethan’s intended insult. “As a trader, I would be most gratified if this could all be resolved quietly, with no dyings. You should do as your leader requests and return with him to your outpost.”

“That might settle things between outworlders.” Hunnar leaned against the wall nearby and inspected the edge of his sword. “After the humans depart, there would remain many things to be settled among people.”

“As you wish, so may it be.” Ro-Vijar gestured imperceptibly in the knight’s direction, and Hunnar stiffened angrily.

“It doesn’t matter,” Trell said hastily. He pointed to Ethan’s waist. “In case you’re wondering, the skimmer’s not beam shielded. No need for it to be so on this world. But we’re just out of range of your hand beamers. They can’t reach a tenth the distance of that cannon.

“While I’d dislike having to kill you, if you refuse to return peaceably with me and persist in these illegal actions, I will regretfully do just that. Now what is it you wish to tell me?” He sounded impatient. It was cold in the shadow of the wall and his survival suit did not fit properly.

Ethan gestured to Sir Hunnar. The knight went to the door of a chamber built into the base of the wall. Several sailors from the Slanderscree trooped out. They carried pika-pina fiber sacks. Carefully the contents of the sacks were removed, laid out on the ice in front of Trell. Knives, plates, bas-reliefs, all manner of relics removed from the buried metropolis they’d discovered inland.

Wishing Williams were present to offer a more scientific and comprehensive explanation, Ethan launched into an analysis of what they had discovered. His narrative produced a more pronounced reaction from the Tran bodyguard and Ro-Vijar than it did from Trell.

That didn’t mean the Commissioner was unaware of the significance of the artifacts spread out before him. He knelt, examined a strange tool made of native steel finer than any he’d ever seen. “I admit I’ve seen nothing like this before. All this means is that these Mulkins of yours are superb craftsmen.”

“You don’t believe that, Trell. You don’t have to be an expert to tell how old this stuff is. With Commonwealth help, the Tran would be able to preserve their accomplishments and heritage from one warm cycle to the next.”

“These Golden Saia you spoke of …”

Ethan continued enthusiastically. “Warm weather versions of the Tran we see around us, survivors in their thermal region of the previous warm period. Plants and animals from that era have survived there also. Living proof, Trell, of what I’ve told you. The Tran live together on the continents in large social organizations during the warm cycles. Give them communications technology and you’d have a real planetary government. Only the periods of terrible cold force them into city-states competing for habitable territory.

“Don’t you see, Trell? There’s much more than just Associate Commonwealth status at stake for the Tran here. They’ll have full status in a few millennia, and they’ll keep it, once they’re assured of a cultural foundation that’s not going to be shattered by a new ice age every time it gets started.” He paused, continued with more solemnity than he thought he possessed.

“If you take us back to Arsudun, shunt us off on the next ship through and forget all this, you’re condemning an entire race, hundreds of millions of sapient beings, to an existence of periodic crisis, starvation, and death that can all be avoided. You’d be personally responsible for denying them their rightful heritage.”

“Leastwise you got a simple choice, Trell,” September said pointedly. “A few credits in your own account against the future of an entire world. ’Course, if you decide for the former, you wouldn’t be the first to do so.”

Ethan could see the Commissioner was sweating inside. It was one thing to skim a little illegal profit off the trade of a quarrelsome, primitive people, quite another to do so at the expense of an entire civilization’s future. Trell was just moral enough, just civilized enough, in fact just enough of a Resident Commissioner to be thrown into a real quandary by the problem.

Sensing uncertainty, Ethan searched desperately for some additional semantic weapon to throw at Trell. “You’d still be in charge, still be Commissioner. You could still take a legal percentage, however much smaller, of the local trade. Think of the boom in that trade when the Tran organize themselves on a planet-wide basis. We’ve already started them on that path here in Moulokin.

“And if that’s not inducement enough, consider the fame a few stolen credits can never buy. You’d go down in the Church histories as the Commissioner who recognized the cyclic nature of this world’s civilization and its importance and took the first steps to aid a climactically impoverished people. How much is a footnote in immortality worth, Trell?” He went quiet. Having appealed to Trell’s morality and now to his ego, Ethan had nothing left to fight with.

“I don’t—I’m not sure …” Trell’s unctuous manner had vanished along with his confidence. He’d come in expecting to hear pleas or defiance. Instead he’d been confronted with artifacts and a new world history. He was badly shaken, needed time to recover his balance.

“I’ve got to think on this, consider it carefully. We—” He halted, turned abruptly to Ro-Vijar. “Let us go and talk, friend Landgrave.” Ro-Vijar simply gave acknowledgement, accompanied Trell to the opening in the gate.

The Commissioner looked back at Ethan. “I’ll give you an answer in less than an hour.”

“All we ask is that you consider the obvious,” said Ethan. “We’ll give you our answer at the same time.” Trell didn’t appear to have heard the last, sunk in thoughts deeper than outside communication could penetrate.

“What do you believe he will do, friend Ethan?” asked Hunnar as the wooden walls ground shut behind the departing four.

“I don’t know. I really don’t know. Usually I can tell when I’ve got a customer bubbled—when I’ve convinced someone of something—but Trell’s too numbed to read. Skua?”

“I don’t know either, young feller-me-lad. Trell’s tryin’ to decide whether immortality’s worth the pleasures of the present. It’s the old human dilemma: do you live for today or work for a place in heaven? Problem is, we can’t counter with the threat o’ Hell. We’ll know in an hour.”

“Assuming he refuses, Skua … what do we do?” September said nothing. His expression was answer enough.

XVIII

THE SKIMMER HOVERED ALONGSIDE the royal raft of the Poyolavomaar fleet. Within the central cabin Trell, Ro-Vijar, and Rakossa conversed. The two peaceforcers stood nearby, chatting idly to each other and ignoring the curious stares of the Tran around them.

“Friend Calonnin,” Trell said wearily, “I keep telling you but you refuse to understand. I no longer have a choice in this. Events have taken it beyond my control.”

“You are right,” replied Ro-Vijar tightly. “I do not understand why you say you have no choice. Why do you not use your light weapon to make hearth-ashes of those three outworlders and scatter their ashes upon the ocean?”

“It’s not a question of three people any more.” Trell sat in the too-large Tran chair and worked his fingers. They rubbed, scratched, entwined and folded upon one another.

“Everything they said about the future of your people is quite correct, given the accuracy of their interpretation of the discoveries they made. I’m inclined to accept both. Besides, I like the idea of having my name in the history tapes. You will, too.”

“Your history is not mine.”

“It will be.”

“That remains to be seen.”

“Neither of us will sink into poverty because of these developments, Calonnin. You’ll still be Landgrave of Arsudun. As the port of Brass Monkey expands to handle increased trade from the rest of Tran-ky-ky, Arsudun and you will benefit.”

“In how many of your years?”

“Soon, soon,” Trell insisted.

“What of other, new ports?”

“There might be one or two,” Trell conceded. “But Arsudun will still be foremost.”

“I am little interested in what will occur after I am dead, friend Trell. I am interested only in what will happen tomorrow, perhaps also the day following.”

Trell glanced across the room at a figure standing in shadow. “What about you, Rakossa of Poyolavomaar? What do you want?”

Rakossa stepped out into the light. “We have wealth enough to satisfy us for all our future days. We have position and power. As to what happens to our name after we die we care not a k’nith. We do not even care what happens tomorrow, but only today. What do we want? We want justice! These merchants who dare to defy us and!—”

“Yes, I know, I know.” Trell sighed, exasperated by the childish obsessions of these ignorant primitives. “Calonnin explained to me about the concubine. Your desires are as limited as your vision, Rakossa.”

“You think us beneath you, offworlder. Our vision,” he said in a way which started a funny prickling at the back of Trell’s neck, “may not be so limited as you think.”

“Meaning what?”

“We attempt to foresee all,” Rakossa explained obtusely. “That is how we have been able to survive as long as we have in a court filled with intrigues and crafty enemies all about us. They too think we are foolish and mad, that we are blinded by silly desires. But obsession is not blindness, and we are not so obsessed that we cannot see possible futures. Cannot see all possibilities.”

Trell’s right hand began sliding cautiously toward the pocket in his survival suit, opening the interior heat seal to admit the hand into the coveralls beneath.

“First you said you care only for today. Now you claim to look into the future. You’re inconsistent if not truly mad, Rakossa.”

“ ’Tis our way of protecting our desires of today, offworlder.”

Trell had a sudden thought. Hand still moving, he turned a stunned gaze on Ro-Vijar, Who had moved to stand against a far wall. “Calonnin, what is …!”

The first arrow struck the Resident Commissioner just above his pushed-back ice goggles. It glanced off the skull and so failed to kill him outright. Subsequent arrows did not.

Both Ro-Vijar and Rakossa had ducked from the line of fire, Ro-Vijar out the door he’d ambled so casually toward, Rakossa behind the table and into shadows. Trell had just enough foresight to get off a shot. His beamer pierced only the cabin roof.

As soon as their task was completed, the sailors who’d been hidden in the rafters above and outside the doors and windows returned to their usual tasks. All save a few who were directed by Rakossa.

The bodies of the three dead humans, for the peaceforcers had fallen as well, were rendered almost unrecognizable by the profusion of arrows sticking from them.

“Were so many necessary?” inquired Ro-Vijar, eying the corpses a mite uncomfortably.

“ ’Twas yourself, Landgrave of Arsudun, who told us you could be not certain of the location of their vital organs. We do not take chances. Wait!”

The procession halted, their grisly cargo staining the clean wood of the deck. Rakossa walked to stand next to Trell’s limp form. Reaching through a small forest of arrows he lifted the vacant-eyed head by its hair, stared into it with blazing black and yellow eyes.

“Think you still so much smarter than us, Trell of the offworlders?” He grinned a bloodthirsty grin at Ro-Vijar. “Odd. He does not answer. Perhaps we have changed his mind for him.” He let the skull fall with a loose-jointed hobbling, a rotting apple in a stream. The sailors carried the bodies from view.

“Are you certain you can operate the offworlder’s great weapon?” he asked Calonnin.

“I tried in many ways most subtle on our journey here to induce Trell to show me, but he was too clever for that. However, when we confronted the humans before the wall, I watched intently as the female prepared the machine. I am sure she was ready to protect Trell, so the weapon should have been ready to fire. I memorized the procedure required as best I could.”

“Excellent. What will happen now that we have slain the offworlders’ leader?”

“He is but the leader of the single small town they maintain on our world,” Ro-Vijar explained thoughtfully, scratching at one ear where a persistent mite had been troubling him for days. “If you or I were to die, the knights and nobles would rise our offspring or one of their own to the throne. I suspect it is much the same with the skypeople. They will choose one among them to replace Trell until a new leader can be sent from beyond the sky to take his position.

“Whoever they send will know naught of what transpired here. Those in their outpost who know me will believe me, will believe my account of his death and that of his companions, as there is naught else for them to believe.”

“And you will remain secure as the only go-between twixt skypeople and Tran.”

“ ’Tis truth, friend, Rakossa.” Ro-Vijar has sloughed off a slight feeling of apprehension. He knew to a certain extent the powers the offworlders possessed. But what of powers he knew nothing about?

Trell had bled and died as readily as any Tran when the arrows transfixed him. No offworlder had arrived to save him or revenge him. It seemed likely none would. He was feeling much, much better now.

“I will control all the trade. As promised, you will receive your recompense for this day’s work.”

“And the raft. Do not forget the raft.”

“Yes, the great iceraft shall be yours also.” Ro-Vijar conceded the ownership of the icerigger easily. And why not? There was the skypeople’s skimmer which needed no runners to travel across ice or land faster than any ice ship. There were doubtless other devices he could purchase or steal from the human traders. He could blame any such thefts on others. The Poyos, for example. All knew of their ruthless treacheries. What need had he of an iceship, no matter its size?

“We will still strive to persuade the three offworlders in the city to surrender,” he told Rakossa. “They have the small light weapons.”

“Do we not have three of our own now, in addition to the great one in the sky raft?”

“True, friend Rakossa. But we are not experienced in their use. Best to avoid trouble if possible.”

“If they surrender, we will have six instead of three. They will inquire about Trell. Then they must die.”

“That is obvious,” agreed Ro-Vijar calmly. “ ’Tis good that we agree.”

Ethan leaned against the wall. He was watching several Moulokinese soldiers play a game familiar in a thousand manifestations throughout the galaxy. On ancient Terra it had been known as sunka, kalaha, and in a dozen other incarnations. One soldier had just collected seven of his opponent’s pebbles when the horribly familiar sound of paper tearing was heard.

Across the gate from his present position a gap had appeared in the top of the wall. It was roughly three meters long and three and a half deep, almost perfectly circular save for the jagged edges of a few stones sticking into it. Within that circle everything: stone, soldiers and weapons, had vanished. Or more properly, had become either part of the molten debris lying at the bottom of the cut or of the ashy vapor drifting downcanyon. Mist formed above it as the cold air of Tran-ky-ky contacted the superheated rock.

He hadn’t seen the bolt from the cannon, not that he had to. A frantic look over the wall showed the skimmer still floating in place in front of the nearest Poyo raft. September put a hand on his shoulder, stared alongside him.

“Feller-me-lad, that’s no man at the controls.”

As the skimmer started toward them, moving awkwardly in fits and jerks, Ethan was able to confirm the giant’s observation. The skimmer held several Tran, but no survival-suited humans.

“I recognize Ro-Vijar. He’s the one operating the gun.”

The skimmer halted just out of hand beamer range. The Landgrave of Arsudun rose behind the weapon. “I do not form phrases so pretty as offworlders. You will all surrender: now. Or I vow every man, woman and cub in Moulokin will die.”

Ethan shouted across the ice. “Where’s the human Jobius Trell?”

“Trell has traveled the path destined for all traitors, offworld or otherwise. He cannot help you now.”

Several Tran chivaned forward. They carried between them three feathered bodies, which they unceremoniously dumped on the ice. The corpses were not so far away that Ethan and the others on the wall couldn’t distinguish the limp forms of the former Resident Commissioner of Tran-ky-ky and his two attendant peace-forcers.

An anxious voice sounded behind him. “What means this, friend Ethan?”

He did not try to evade minister Mirmib’s question. “It means that our enemies now control weapons more powerful than our own. They’ve killed the humans who brought those weapons. I had doubts the man Trell would use such power against you and your people. I have no such doubts about Rakossa and Ro-Vijar.”

“We cannot surrender.” Mirmib looked adamant and worried simultaneously. “We cannot let them into the city.”

“I know.” Ethan considered. “Maybe if we three gave ourselves up …”

“Easy, feller-me-lad. Ro-Vijar might be sittin’ behind the convincer, but it’s that fella Rakossa who’s in control out there.”

“Teeliam would give herself up to save the city. She’s already tried to, once.”

“Use your head, lad. We didn’t let her do it before for the same reasons we won’t now. Rakossa’s got control of something that can level this whole town. He’s tryin’ to control a bunch of angry, embarrassed and bloodied troops. Do you think he’s going to let Ro-Vijar leave anyone alive here, maybe to tell the next Commissioner what really happened? Not a chance. We’ve got to fight.”

“Use your own head, Skua.” Frustration made Ethan sound angrier than he was. “We can’t fight a beam cannon.”

“Let’s fake a retreat. Pull back, maybe even let ’em into the city proper. We can split up, some of us head up the main canyon and hide in the mists, then come down and try and take the cannon on the chance they’ll relax. A few thousand would die, but better that than the whole population.”

“I have a better idea, gentlemen.”

Ethan and September turned to see a puffing Williams mount the last of the ramp leading to the wall top.

“Where the hell have you been, Milliken?” September growled.

“We thought it best to keep one beamer in reserve,” replied Milliken, ignoring the big man’s tone.

“I’ve been working on an idea with Eer-Meesach and some of the local craftsfolk,” the teacher continued, “ever since the Poyolavomaar fleet began their blockade.” Williams’s shyness passed for self-control at a time when everyone around him exuded an air of imminent defeat.

“I ain’t too proud o’ mine,” said September. “Let’s hear yours.”

“Have you forgotten the battle of Sofold? Have you forgotten, Sir Hunnar?”

“Nice thought, Milliken, but that won’t work this time.” September jerked a thumb back in the direction of the waiting fleet of rafts. “There was no beam cannon at Sofold, and Sagyanak traveled by raft, not on a skimmer above the ice.”

“I am aware of that,” Williams replied, with just a twinge of reproval. “I did not think we could repeat the battle of Sofold here.”

“Then why ask us to remember it?” wondered Ethan confusedly.

Williams proceeded to explain.

“We have waited long enough.” Rakossa stood in the bow of his craft and yelled to Ro-Vijar on the skimmer. “Let them die if they wish and die if they do not. Our soldiers would let out their heat. We have promised them Moulokin and they shall have it. If at this moment you have become fainthearted and uncertain like the offworlders …”

“Calonnin Ro-Vijar hears his friend Rakossa. Time enough has passed. It shall be as you wish.”

Turning, the Landgrave of Arsudun squirmed down into the too-small seat and repeated the sequence he’d memorized while watching the human female earlier. There was a crackling and a narrow shaft of glowing azure jumped from the end of the weapon. It struck the left side of the massive wooden gate at the place where it was hinged to a stone tower. A gaping hole appeared in the base of the tower. Slowly, accompanied by a tired groaning noise, the tower collapsed, bringing half the gate down with it.

An expectant, humorless cheer rose from the assembled soldiers on the rafts as they saw the heretofore impregnable gate go down so easily. In tumbling, the fallen tower had also pulled down the pika-pina cables behind it, opening the way to the inner canyon.

Ro-Vijar had to try several times, but finally succeeded in adjusting the attitude of the weapon so that it was pointed at the other half of the gate and its still-standing supportive tower.

“I can reduce the whole wall, if you wish to watch,” he called back to Rakossa.

“No. The stones left behind would cause my ships more trouble than the wall itself. We waste time. Make but a proper entry for us and we will do the rest.”

Gaining confidence in operating the weapon with each burst, Ro-Vijar fired again. Splinters of unmelted stone flew in all directions as the other tower was undercut and collapsed. Several additional bursts cleared the ice completely. Then he issued careful instructions to the young squire who was at the skimmer’s controls.

A little more smoothly, the strange offworld sky raft moved forward. Unfurling sails, the Poyolavomaar fleet commenced to follow.

Ro-Vijar raised the barrel of the gun, fired again at the top of the wall and blew another impressive circular gap in the crest. Following that, the shields and weapons lining the rampart began to disappear.

“They abandon the wall!” shouted one of the officers on Rakossa’s raft excitedly. “This will be a day long sung of in the city’s taverns and halls.”

Rakossa did not comment. As he’d told the human Trell, he cared nothing for histories.

Soon they would be within the city. He prayed devoutly that Teeliam would not kill herself. She should have enough sense to do that, or have another do it for her, but in the past she had clung tenaciously to life. Perhaps she would remain alive in hopes of killing him, as she had so often promised to. Little fool, little fool. She played so poorly at the game.

The faster they moved, the less time she would have to think. The less time she had to think, the better were his chances of finding her alive. He had no wish to toy with a corpse.

His lead raft sailed cleanly through the gap in the wall. Other rafts crowded close behind, soldiers lofting arrows at the retreating Moulokinese.

The last of them had vanished behind the false protection of the second wall as the Poyo rafts rounded the tight bend in the canyon. The fleet slowed, waiting while Ro-Vijar prepared to reduce this second obstacle to ash and slag.

He took his time. Powerful winds rocked the skimmer, despite its compensating stabilizers, and Ro-Vijar did not know how to adjust for the gale. No matter. His first bolt passed high over the wall. Snarling to himself, the Landgrave of Arsudun lowered the angle of the barrel. Crossbow bolts and tiny flares of blue light from the human’s hand beamers reached for the skimmer, falling laughably short.

There was a dull rumble above. A storm would dampen but not slow their entrance to the city. He looked skyward curiously—saw a few clouds, harbingers of the nearing storm no doubt. The rumble sounded again, then a third time. It was peculiar thunder, deeper yet not as reverberant.

Then the sky narrowed at the edges and he began screaming at a panicky squire, “Back sail, back sail!” He did not remember in that last brief moment that the offworld ship had no sails.

Jammed together as the rafts were, it was impossible to turn them quickly. The rumblings continued to echo through the canyon, some louder, some softer, coming in rapid succession now. Ro-Vijar leaped over the side of the skimmer, landing on the ice with an impact hard enough to crack one chiv. The wind at his back, he raced for the first wall fast as the downcanyon breeze would carry him.

Hundreds of meters above, Malmeevyn Eer-Meesach, wizard and advisor to the Landgrave of Wannome and Sofold, supervised the execution of Milliken Williams’ plan. The last of the powerful gunpowder charges were set off in the holes so laboriously drilled into the cliff tops. Then he and his assistants retreated as the upper portions of both sides of the canyon caved in.

Blocks of basalt and granite weighing a hundred tons or more tumbled majestically into the gulf. They struck hard enough to splinter the ice, though not crack it all the way through to the bottom of the solidly frozen inlet.

One gigantic irregular stone, a black iceberg that must have massed a hundred fifty tons, landed with a thunderous broom on the ice. It bounced once, rolled over and made the rear half of a Poyolavomaar raft into matchwood. Screaming sailors abandoned their craft in mindless panic instead of trying to navigate an escape.

Only a few rafts located at the rear of the fleet managed to back sail fast enough and with sufficient discipline to retreat. Then two rafts became jammed in the ruined first wall entrance, sealing the single path of escape.

A different roar sounded as the massed militia and sailors from the Slanderscree came chivaning through the gate in the second wall to engage the remaining demoralized and scattered Poyo troops who hadn’t been killed outright by the awesome power of the collapsing cliffs. Their only thoughts were of flight. They scrambled over rocks, ruined rafts and ruined comrades in their haste to flee. Moulokinese and Sofoldians pursued with bloodthirsty delight. Arrows, crossbows, and spears rapidly gave way to swords, axes, and other more intimate methods of destruction.

Ethan recognized one figure in the forefront of the carnage: Teeliam Hoh, wreaking murder with more enthusiasm than any warrior. He knew September would be out there also, slipping and sliding on his skates as he butchered alongside Sir Hunnar and the rest of the Tran.

He didn’t share their appetite for slaughter. Thanking the Tran who’d given him a tow, he skated over to where a gleam of light on metal showed beneath a boulder. From the looks of it, the huge stone had hit the ice, bounced once, and struck the skimmer broadside. Not having been designed to handle that kind of impact, the flotation craft’s compensators had blown and it had fallen to the ice.

Circuitry protruded from numerous gashes in the skimmer’s flanks, and molecular storage modules lay like dead bugs on the ice. Several smaller rocks had made scrap of the beam cannon. For an overview, he clambered up the chill sides of the stone.

Standing atop the boulder, he was able to see down the canyon—no longer a smooth white river, but a landscape of isolated dark shapes resting on a plain dusted with smaller rock fragments. His gaze went higher. Smaller bits of stone continued to loosen and fall from the cliff tops, which were no longer smooth and regular but deeply notched for a thousand meters on each side. Explosives were among man and thranxkind’s oldest weapons. They still had occasional uses.

Williams had reached the cliff top opposite Eer-Meesach. Below, ants slaughtered one another among pebbles.

One of the Moulokinese chemists who’d helped him stood nearby. “ ’Tis a marvelous thing you have conjured for us, Wizard Williams.”

“I’m not a wizard, and I certainly didn’t invent or conjure the powder. We didn’t get as much out of the charges as I’d hoped to. If we can find purer nitrates I’m sure we can manufacture a better grade.” He was performing calculations as he spoke.

Watching him, the Moulokinese was at once awed and afraid. The distance between scientists and the sometimes destructive results of their science is often more terrifying to the average being than the inventions themselves.

Williams noticed the Tran’s expression. To his great horror, he discovered it made him feel good.

It was late afternoon and the temperature was falling with the sun when the Moulokinese fighters chivaned wearily back to the canyon. Blood had frozen in copious quantities between the two walls, giving the inlet the look of quartz littered with crystals of vanadinite.

“ ’Twill require much time and effort to clear our canyon so that ships may travel it again.” Landgrave Lady K’ferr looked quite magnificent in battle dress, Ethan thought.

“We shall rebuild the damaged outer wall,” said one of her officers from nearby, “higher and stronger than before, with the same stones that have crushed our enemies.”

“ ’Tis truth. We will have the help of our friends of Sofold.” K’ferr gazed fondly at several weapon-laden sailors from the Slanderscree as they returned with prizes from the massacre. “I wish only,” she continued, looking saddened, “that I could congratulate your Sir Hunnar Redbeard, friend Ethan. Of all who fought, he was bravest.”

Ethan stared down the canyon at the stragglers returning to the canyon. “He could still be out there, cutting down one last Poyo.”

“I’m afraid not, feller-me-lad.” September had skated over to join them. “I was out on the ocean with him. Saw him go down myself. He didn’t get up again.”

There was a wail from behind them. Ethan wished the Tran were capable of fainting. Then he wouldn’t have had to see the look of anguish September’s words had produced in Elfa Kurdagh-Vlata’s eyes.

September laid down his heavy, stained axe, pulled his beamer from his waistband and tossed it to Ethan. After inspecting the reading on a certain small gauge, Ethan nodded, handed it back to the giant.

“Mine’s dead too, Skua. I don’t know about Milliken’s, but I think he used it up drilling holes for the charges.”

“Well, let’s hope we won’t need ’em on the way back to Brass Monkey, feller-me-lad. We’ll take Trell’s body and the two peaceforcers back with us. Been thinkin’ on what we ought to tell the port authorities. No need to get complicated about it. Unfriendly native attack, wandering bandit types.” Ethan nodded slowly, eying the three gashes on the left side of the giant’s neck. Someone had patched the survival suit with local materials. Since September chose not to mention the wound, Ethan ignored it.

“They’ll accept that story because they won’t have a choice, lad. Just as they’ll accept the artifacts and new interpretation of this world we’ll bring ’em. The next Commissioner sent here won’t have any ideas about illegal profit skimming, not with a civilization to help organize. But we’ll play it safe and tell the padre first anyway.”

“Once the Church stirs a theological finger in here, the bureaucracy will monitor its people more tightly,” concurred Ethan. “Poor Trell. He created the conditions for his own murder.”

“Sorry, feller-me-lad. I got no sympathy for him. I’ve seen this sort of thing happen on too many primitive worlds. And he made the old mistake of forgetting that primitive folks can be just as crafty-treacherous as the most jaded technological sophisticate.”

“You said the portmaster and others will accept our story because they’ll have nothing to compare it with. What if Ro-Vijar managed to get away?” Turning his face away from the blast of ice crystals streaming down the canyon, he looked toward the distant frozen sea. “I didn’t go looking for his body, but I didn’t notice it among the dead.”

“Assumin’ he ain’t lying under one of these rocks, we’ll just have to deal with his lies when we get back to Arsudun,” said September. “Be our word against his. I’m inclined to think Xenaxis will side with us.”

“That’s not what worries me, Skua. Ro-Vijar’s clever enough to settle for maintaining the status quo on Arsudun. By telling some story about his last minute alliance with us, for example. Xenaxis may not believe him, but he hasn’t got the authority to prosecute a native leader on our word alone.”

“I hadn’t considered that, lad. Be tough to prove anything if he agrees with us instead of attackin’ us. Let’s worry about that on the way back to Brass Monkey. We’ve a long way to go. Maybe we’ll get lucky and overtake him.”

Far out on the ice ocean, five battered rafts hove to a halt. Thunder, natural this time, sounded to the northwest and the captains of the five rafts knew they would have a difficult time making headway homeward if the storm did not skirt ’round them.

Furthermore, not only were their crews depleted, but of those who remained many were wounded too badly to work the sails.

A small group of sailors and officers had gathered on the stern of one raft. A single figure stood in the center of the circle they formed.

“You cannot put me off here,” the Landgrave of Arsudun insisted, frightened for the first time since they’d escaped Moulokin. He looked over the side, at the ice now lit an eerie blue-white by the twin moons of Tran-ky-ky. “Not without food and weapons.”

“We have carried you far enough, Ro-Vijar of Arsudun.” Rakossa fingered the fresh scar running down his sword arm. “Mayhap you can make it back to Moulokin and your offworld friends.”

“They are not my friends! You know that.” Fear lent force to Ro-Vijar’s protests. “Did I not help kill three of them with you, among whom was one partly my friend?”

“Ah. Then you may throw yourself on the mercy of the compassionate people of Moulokin.” There were unfriendly laughs from the circle of sailors, few of whom wore no bandages. One of them jabbed viciously at Ro-Vijar, his spearpoint piercing the Landgrave’s vest and starting a trickle of blood.

Ro-Vijar clutched at the puncture. Looking now like a terrified cub instead of the leader of a powerful island state, he scrambled over the railing and onto the single pika-pina boarding ladder there.

“I beseech you, Rakossa, do not do this thing to one who befriended you! I ask mercy.”

“We are being merciful,” said Rakossa nastily, “by not killing you slowly this moment.” He spat at the dangling Ro-Vijar. “Because of you we have lost most of our fleet, all of our best fighting men and women. When we return home, we will be pressed because of this disaster merely to retain our rightful throne.

“But worst of all, worst of all, that woman is safe!” He was quivering with rage, his fur bristling from ears to feet. “Safe among offworlders, whose ‘irresistible’ weapon you had us put our trust in.”

“Who could foresee the magic they would use to bury us beneath the canyon tops?”

“We tire of your excuses, Landgrave-no-more.” Several sailors moved threateningly toward the rail. Ro-Vijar hurriedly slid down the ladder. As it was drawn back aboard he stood shaking on the ice, staring up at the equally cold faces lining the railing.

“You cannot leave me thus, you cannot! Give me a weapon. A spear … even a knife!”

“You fought well with words, Ro-Vijar of Arsudun. Do battle with them now.”

“Offspring of a k’nith!” wailed Ro-Vijar. “Your mother mated with a root! I will follow you all the way to Poyolavomaar and thence travel on to Arsudun, where I will mount a fleet to raze your unspeakable city! You will die a death more horrible than you can imagine!”

Rakossa made a gesture of disgust. “There is no death we cannot imagine.” He turned to the squire standing next to him. “We would not inflict this vexsome babble upon the creatures of the ocean.” He put a paw on the squire’s lance. “Best to kill him now and spare the roamers of the ice.” He tugged. The squire did not let go of the lance.

Rakossa regarded the wounded soldier with a stare of disbelief. “We will gift you with another spear, sub-officer, unless you wish to kill the thing on the ice yourself.” When the squire did not reply, Rakossa tugged again, harder. Still the Tran didn’t let loose of his weapon.

“You wish to join him?” Rakossa’s voice was touched with incredulity. “Give us your lance, squire, or we will—”

“You will do nothing,” a tight voice said. Rakossa spun, confronting the speaker of the unbelievable words. Surely he recognized the young officer. It was one who had not cheered as loudly as others when Rakossa had first announced their intention to pursue the escaped offworlders from Poyolavomaar. And had he not seen this one in council since that time …?

“I hight T’hosjer, son of T’hos of Four Winds, of a line who have served Poyolavomaar many generations.” The moonlight gave his youthful features a sinister cast, shone on the slim sword the officer held to the Landgrave’s chest.

“Be that so, T’hosjer, you are an officer no longer.” His voice rose. “You are not even a squire; you are nothing!” He reached up a paw to shove the point of the sword aside. T’hosjer leaned forward, penetrating the other’s chest just above the sternum. Rakossa froze.

Looking around the circle he saw the fixed expressions on the faces of sailors and officers, wounded and spared. No one spoke.

“What is this? Have you all gone mad?”

“No, Rakossa of Poyolavomaar. We have gone sane.” T’hosjer gestured with his free paw toward the slight, silhouetted figure of Ro-Vijar down on the ice. “You blame all that has happened on that one. ’Tis not his fault. We of Poyolavomaar always prided ourselves on making trade or war on our own, without the help or interference of others.

“You have sought the aid of those who are not even Tran, have taken the advice of one not of the Seven Peaks. Because of that my brother T’sunjer and many friends of my cubhood lie dead on the step of a strange city that meant us no harm, their hearts pierced by arrow or sword, their bodies broken by rocks.”

“You fought as fiercely as any other,” said Rokassa accusingly.

“I fought for the city of the Seven Peaks, for Poyolavomaar my home and for my friends and companions. I fought because the alternative was to run. An officer of Poyolavomaar does not run and leave his friends to fight and die without him. There will linger on us no disgrace from this defeat, for we fought blind.” A mutter of agreement came from the surrounding soldiers.

“We were blinded by your words and the position you inherited. We partook of your madness. This, and not the defeat in battle, is the shame we will carry with us to our own passing. It has been long said that you were mad, Rakossa of Poyolavomaar. Those who disagreed or argued too strongly with you disappeared too often these years past.”

“We are your Landgrave,” said Rakossa angrily. “We stand before you as rightful ruler and liege!”

“You are no longer ruler or liege. From this point,” and he mimicked Rakossa’s own words of a moment ago, “you are nothing.”

Rakossa studied the circle of glowering soldiers, male and female. “A thousand metal pled to the soldier who kills this traitor!” No one moved. “Two thousand!” Then, “I will mate and make my coruler the woman who kills this one!”

That produced the first sounds from the group—mewling laughs from several of the female soldiers. One said, “To live the life of horror you visited upon your concubine Teeliam Hoh? I believed not the rumors that came of what you did to her. Now I think they mayhap were understated.”

Rakossa still could not comprehend what was happening. “Officers, prepare to set sail. Soldier-sailors, to your posts.”

“Over the side.” T’hosjer jabbed a little harder with his sword. Blood trickled faster through gray fur. “Join your ally and friend.”

Dazed, Rakossa crawled over the railing. “We will follow. We will see all of you spitted over hot fires in the kitchens. We will have your mates and cubs disemboweled before you!”

T’hosjer leaned over the side of the raft, made certain the no-longer Landgrave of Poyolavomaar dropped to the ice. Then he turned, exhausted, to the mate who had become captain of the raft and spoke a single word.

“Home.”

As members of the circle moved to their posts and signals were exchanged with the four remaining rafts, T’hosjer slid his sword back into the scabbard tied to his right leg.

“What of Moulokin?” asked one of the sailors. “Will they not come seeking revenge?”

“When we have regained some of our pride, we will come back to the canyon of the shipbuilders and make peace with them, as should have been done long ago. There will be changes in the way Poyolavomaar relates to its neighbors.”

As the pitiful remnant of the once grand fleet began to gather wind and move northeastward. T’hosjer moved to the stern. Two figures were receding behind them, dark blots against the ice.

“What see you, T’hosjer captain?” It was the one of the female fighters who’d laughed at Rakossa’s bizarre, desperation proposal.

“I expect they started the moment we prepared to leave,” he told her. He squinted into the moonlit distance. “I believe Ro-Vijar of Arsudun is on top, but it is becoming hard to tell.” He grunted, turned away as the two flailing figures became merely another blur on the blue-white ocean.

In the canyon of Moulokin several shapes moved against the wind and cold. Scattered among the boulders and the dead, they gathered the personal effects of the soldiers of Moulokin and the weapons and armor of the enemy not already scavenged by the victorious soldiery.

One figure did not move. She sat on a wooden beam splintered from some shattered raft and stared out toward where black cliffs gave way to shining ice sea. Since the sun had dropped behind the west rim of the canyon she had been singing in a high, keening wail that was part growl, part rhyme, part something no human could put a definition to.

A voice sounding tired and a touch irritated called to her from among a cluster of stones which had been torn loose from the outer wall by the offworlder energy weapon.

“With all due respect, my lady Elfa, I implore you to have mercy on a wounded soldier and cease that awful caterwauling.”

Her head came around sharply, eyes strove to pierce the night.

“Who … who calls the Landgrave’s daughter?”

“And give us some help,” the voice added, ignoring her request. Two figures limped out from behind an enormous boulder. One promptly slumped to a sitting position. The other figure fell atop the first, rolled off to one side and lay panting on the ice.

“I have a broken leg and torn dan, and this soldier of Moulokin is sorely hurt. I sewed up his belly as best I could, but I am no seamstress or physician.”

“Hunnar? Hunnar Redbeard?” She slid off the section of ruined mainmast, chivaned recklessly toward the two shapes.

Tonx Ghin Rakossa did not die easily. The same forces that powered the demons within him refused to let him perish.

He snugged the too-small cloak more tightly around his torso, leaned against the howling wind. Curse the leperworm Ro-Vijar for the damage he’d done before he died! Rakossa’s dan were too badly torn to give the wind purchase, and his left arm dangled uselessly from the shoulder.

But the former Landgrave of Arsudun was worse off. Rakossa warmed himself with the memory of Ro-Vijar’s neck snapping beneath his fingers. The Arsudunite had been weak in the end, weak from the softness inflicted on him by offworld luxuries.

When we return to Poyolavomaar and reclaim the throne, he thought venomously, we will deal with these offworlders once and for all.

His return to the city-state would provoke much consternation on the part of T’hosjer and the other traitors. How he would enjoy that confrontation! His allies remained safe at court and his lineage as Landgrave was unchallengeable. His claim would hold, and his very presence make liars of the traitors. To salvage their own precious necks, many of the common soldiers who survived would suddenly have second thoughts about any tale T’hosjer could conjur. Then he would have the pleasure of watching those traitors toast over low coals, until their fur blackened and their bare skin began to peel away.

But first he had to get there.

The walls of the plateau were growing gradually nearer, despite his arduous means of traveling by use of his legs alone. He was safely distant from vengeful Moulokin and should encounter no soldiers this far from the city. Within the lee of the cliffs he should find some shelter from the nightwinds, and likely some scattered pika-pina or other vegetation to eat.

Trading vessels should pass this way soon. He would hail one leaving Moulokin. Of his ability to pass himself off as a survivor of the battle he had no doubt, for words had always been his most effective weapon. While not clad in Moulokinese attire, his adopting of Ro-Vijar’s would not mark him as a dangerous Poyo either. The brotherhood of ice sailors being what it was, he would likely be treated kindly and carried to the merchant’s home port.

Once there, he could eventually buy, steal, or cajole a raft to carry him home to Poyolavomaar and revenge.

Something moved on the ice to the south. He froze, until he saw it was no roving carnivore but a ship, and a tiny one at that. Too small to be a merchantman, it probably held ice gleaners searching the cliffs for edible plants or animals. Simple hunters and gatherers, now able to ply their trade outside the secured city. In Ro-Vijar’s cloak he should not immediately be regarded as an enemy. If they were not of Moulokin he could retain his first plan. If they were of the city, he could feed them a formidable tale of shipwreck and woe.

Either way, he could gain their confidence long enough to give time to dispatch them, despite his one useless arm. That would give him a raft far sooner than he’d dared hoped. Why, it was not inconceivable that he could reach Poyolavomaar ahead of the traitors. How gratifying it would be to stand at the harbor front and greet T’hosjer upon his arrival!

The little raft drew hearer. He slumped to the ice. Let them think him more sorely afflicted than he was, the better to lull any suspicions they might have of him. Stone chiv braked to a halt nearby. There was the noise of someone stepping onto the ice. Slow chivaning sounds reached him, then stopped. He waited patiently, but no further indication of movement came. Only the everpresent wind, skipping and moaning over the ice like a mournful spinster.

Best to show them he was alive. He made his voice a weak croak. “Blessed are those who give succor to the wounded in time of trouble.”

The chivaning started again, but moved not toward him. Instead, it seemed as if he was being slowly circled.

“Blessed are those who deal in justice, to reward the persistent.”

That voice sounded half familiar, despite the wind’s distorting. He rolled over, wishing for a sword. A glimpse of his hoped-for savior made his wide yellow eyes bulge wider.

“YOU!”

For the first time in several days, screams rang across the ocean. They lingered, growing progressively fainter, for three days before ceasing altogether.

No one thought to question Teeliam Hoh when she sailed her tiny raft back into the harbor of Moulokin many days after the Great Battle, and none dared ask the source of the terrible content that shone in her face. She became a much-respected member of the Lady K’ferr’s household staff and lived a long and fruitful life in Moulokin. She had many pleasurable affairs and encounters, though she never mated, since relationships always faded whenever any male grew close enough to see what remained forever fixed within her eyes.

“What will you do now, friend Ethan?” Hunnar rocked awkwardly on his crutches as the Slanderscree heeled slightly to port.

They’d left Moulokin several days ago, promising to return and complete formal documentation of alliance between Sofold and the canyon city at first opportunity. Meanwhile the Moulokinese would sail out to spread the gospel of the Union of Ice and the confederation of all Tran among surrounding city-states and towns.

“I still have a job to return to.” Ethan spoke ruefully. “At least, I think I do. I’m a bit overdue at my next scheduled stop.”

Skua September stood nearby, his suit hood back, enjoying the minus twenty-five degree wind blowing in his face. He had one foot up on the railing and held himself steady with a massive hand entwined in the pika-pina rigging as he gazed out across the ice ocean. They had many satch to travel before reaching Brass Monkey.

“You really goin’ back to that business, young feller-me-lad?”

“It’s what I know best. If I’m lucky, I might be promoted to a management position in a few years.”

September made an impolite noise.

“M’nag, what is that, friend Ethan?” Hunnar looked curious.

“I would direct others at the job I’m doing now, supervise them. When the next Commissioner arrives here and begins recruiting a network of Tran to act as Commonwealth agents for Tran-ky-ky, he’ll be delegating similar jobs. You’d be a good candidate for one such important post, Hunnar.”

“He is candidate for no post,” said Elfa Kurdagh-Vlata, laying a possessive paw on the knight’s shoulder. With his broken leg, Hunnar was unable to draw away—not that he wished to. “Upon my father’s passing, he is to be my ruler-mate in Wannome.”

“Well, that’s a pretty good management position too,” Ethan admitted with a smile. They could see the smile through his survival-suit mask. Copying September, he slid it back, gasped as the cold air struck him.

The shock passed quickly. The wind was blowing no more than a dozen k.p.h. Coupled with the gentle temperature, it made the day seem positively tropical. He watched the white sea skim by beneath the icerigger’s duralloy runners. Perhaps he would doff the survival suit altogether, plus the clothes beneath, and enjoy a sunbath in the shelter of the central cabin.

He considered other options besides the obvious. What of the distant, wealthy Colette du Kane? By now he had acquired almost enough self-confidence to deal equally with that massively composed woman. It was a possibility he should reconsider.

Especially if he had lost his job.

“Will you come back, Sir Ethan?” Hunnar asked hopefully.

“I’d like to.”

“Me also, feller-me-lad.”

Leaving Hunnar and Elfa locked in more than just conversation, the two humans moved off across the deck.

“We’ve made a lot of friends here, Skua.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t come back just for that reason, lad.” The giant grinned that knowing grin which gave him the look of a man half devil, half prophet. “I’ve friends scattered all over the Commonwealth, on more worlds than I can remember. Fact is, I’ve other places to visit.

“There’s this gal on Alaspin, she’s an archeologist thinks she’s onto somethin’. Been wantin’ me to come ’round that way for a couple o’ years and help her out on some big dig. As I’ve only been to Alaspin once before, I think I might just drop down that way and look her up again.”

“Then if not for the friends, why would you want to come back?”

“Why, young feller-me-lad?” September’s smile widened. “You saw the carvings and inscriptions and mosaics in the mountain-city, and you heard our teacher friend Milliken hypothesize a different ecology, where the predominant color’s green ’stead of white.

“Yes, I’d like to come back allright. In about ten thousand years or so when this world swings close by its star again and the cycle shifts from cold to warm. I’d like to sail these same oceans again in a real boat, though the ol’ Slanderscree’s got her points.” He tapped the wooden rail affectionately.

“Think on those carvings again, feller-me-lad. Ten thousand years from now, why, it’d be nice to be here. Because when those frozen seeds thaw out fast, there’s gonna be a few hundred billion flowers all bloomin’ at once.”

The Deluge Drivers

Book Three of

The Icerigger Trilogy

In memoriam… Judy-Lynn Benjamin del Rey

Fate is an unkind editor, but at last the

genie is free of the bottle.

Soar.

Contents

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter III

Chapter IV

Chapter V

Chapter VI

Chapter VII

Chapter VIII

Chapter IX

Chapter X

Chapter XI

Chapter XII

Chapter XIII

Chapter XIV

Chapter XV

I

THE WORST PART OF it wasn’t that Ethan Fortune was freezing to death. The worst part of it was that he was doing so voluntarily.

Nudity was not favored by the heavily furred native Tran. For a human being to be standing naked on Tran-ky-ky verged on insanity. Despite this Ethan was not trying to commit suicide. He was supposed to be celebrating, though it was hard to pretend you were having a good time when you were turning blue and the goose bumps dotting arms, legs, and other sections of your anatomy were well on their way to settling in as permanent features of the epidermal topography.

That he had company in misery was no consolation. Skua September was just as cold, except for those portions of his face and neck that were covered by a heavy brown and gray beard. The old giant had both arms clapped tightly to his ribs.

There was also the matter of exposure to curious eyes as well as to the elements. Foolish to be embarrassed, Ethan told himself. He and Skua were the only the human beings in the royal hall of Arsudun. It was only natural their nude forms would draw attention, with their flat feet devoid of skatelike chiv, their dan-less arms, and their largely furless bodies.

Mousokka, who was second mate on the icerigger Slanderscree, commented that he found the subtle change in color of their skin very becoming. The glares this observation drew quickly convinced him that the change was other than voluntary and he did not mention it again.

The hardest thing to do was simply to be quiet. Shivering was permissible: muttering and making other noise was not. Skua leaned over to whisper to his companion anyway.

“It’s not so bad, young feller-me-lad. After a while the numbness kind of overwhelms the cold.”

“Shut up. Just shut up, will you?” Ethan leaned forward around the nearest member of the honor guard and looked toward the cupola. “Surely they’re almost through?”

Beneath an intricately carved dome of stavanzer ivory, a trio of elderly Arsudunian scholars were intoning the traditional marriage ritual. Overhead arched the stone walls and ceiling of the royal hall of Arsudun, the island-state whose corrupt Landgrave Ethan, Skua, and their Tran friends had recently overthrown. The new young Landgrave, Sev Gorin-Vloga, had given his blessings to the newlyweds-to-be and insisted they take their vows in Arsudun’s ancient castle. Ancient unheated castle, Ethan reflected as he tried to keep his teeth from chattering.

The two principles in this frigid romantic drama were Sir Hunnar Redbeard and Elfa Kurdagh-Vlata. Elfa was the daughter and heir of the Landgrave of Sofold, Hunnar the first Tran Ethan and Skua had dealt with after surviving their crash landing on this world eons ago. Ethan was delighted to share in their happiness. He would have given anything not to have agreed to share in the actual ceremony.

Not that he and Skua were alone in their nakedness. Guards and spectators alike had disrobed for the ceremony. Only the bride and groom were dressed. But the feline-ursine Tran were clad in thick fur. They didn’t notice the chill in the castle. Ethan and Skua had no such natural protection.

“Look, Ethan,” Skua whispered, “when I accepted the invitation to this little soiree on our behalf I had no idea stripping down was part of the tradition. The way that guard captain explained it, by appearing without raiment in the presence of the beloveds we indicate that we’re giving of our friendship and affection without any constraints. One holds nothing back. It’s a sign of respect for the lucky couple. One hides nothing in their presence.”

“That’s for damn sure,” Ethan growled.

Skua looked thoughtful. “Got its practical aspects besides. Hunnar there’s going to be Landgrave someday, ruler of Wannome. When everybody’s in a happy mood and celebrating would be a good time for a potential assassin to strike, but it’s tough to sneak in a weapon when you’ve nothing to hide it behind.”

“Damn shame, too. If I had one, I know who I’d use it on.”

September spread his huge hands. “Now what could I have done, feller-me-lad? Turned down the invitation to our friends’ wedding? A royal invitation at that, and what with us getting ready to leave this ball of ice once and for all. No reason for us to hang around. With Sofold and Arsudun in the north and Poyolavomaar and Moulokin in the south the Tran are pretty well on their way to breaking out of their feudal city-state cycle and establishing a planetary government. The rest of the independent states will have to join up because there’s no way they can stand against that kind of strength.”

One of the other spectators, an Arsudunian noble by the look of him, admonished them to be silent. It was disrespectful to converse during the sacred moments of the ceremony whether one be hero or commoner—or alien. Were they not conscious of the singular honor which had been bestowed upon them? Despite the presence of the human scientific outpost on the western shore of Arsudun this was the first time non-Tran had been allowed to witness the solemn, traditional rites which united male and female Tran in wedlock.

It was a delight Ethan could have forgone.

He kept quiet for Hunnar and Elfa’s sake. The business of betrothing consisted of a lot of twitching and moaning and entirely too much talk. If not for the fact that the two principals were close friends he would have declaimed his discomfort to all and sundry and damn the consequences. He tried to tell himself he wasn’t freezing, but his body wouldn’t buy it. So he concentrated instead on the more enjoyable activities which had led up to this prolonged session of discomfort: the procession through the town, the entrance into the castle, the swearing of the nobles, even the formal divestiture of garments which had taken place outside the hall, the clothing heaped into two piles between which the wedding procession had passed.

Would he truly have blasphemed if he’d kept his underwear?

He should have been grateful. What if tradition had called for the ceremony to have taken place not within the castle but out on the bare plains of Arsudun? Inside the temperature hovered close to freezing. Out on the plains it sank far below the point where water moved in comfort. Only fires in a few stone basins held back the arctic climate. One blazed not far away. Sticking his naked backside, or for that matter any portion of his anatomy, close to the hot stone would have constituted an unforgivable breach of etiquette. But he was going to have to do something soon. Shivering and goose bumps were half funny. Frostbite was not.

“I can’t take much more of this.”

“Concentrate on the ceremony, on the movements. Ain’t it beautiful?”

“What I can hear of it between my chattering teeth,” Ethan replied.

“And ain’t it great to see those two finally pledging their lives to each other?”

“Yes, yes, of course.” Maybe marrying Elfa would at last put to rest Hunnar’s groundless suspicions that she held some kind of perverse attraction for Ethan. “That warms my thoughts but not my tail.”

“Think warmth, then.”

“Easy for you to say.”

Skua eyed him reproachfully. “No it ain’t easy for me to say, feller-me-lad. I’m as cold as you are. You just ain’t trying hard enough is all. Think about something else. Think about”—he grew suddenly wistful—”think about next week when the next supply ship will arrive and we’ll be able to quit this world.”

That was something to think about, Ethan told himself. Think about returning to civilization after spending almost two years living with well-meaning alien barbarians. Think about a modern, clean, warm stateroom on a new KK-drive ship. Think even about getting back to work. Time to put adventure behind him and get on with the business of everyday life. The ordinary was long overdue.

September gestured toward the chanting elders. “I think she’s coming to a close, feller-me-lad.”

“What makes you think so?”

He pointed across the open central aisle. “See those old Tran over there? The senior ladies of the court, I believe. They’ve been standing like trees for the last thirty minutes and now they’re starting to gossip.”

September’s surmise was correct. As a final soliloquy crashed to a guttural close on a rising intonation, the assembled nobles gave out three loud shouts. Paws thrust ceilingward, they began to wave to and fro. This action caused their dan, the winglike membranes that grew from arm and sides, to move back and forth. The effect was to shower the happy couple with wind and words. Fortunately Ethan and Skua stood off to the side and so missed the brunt of the artificial gale.

The elders bowed out as the crowd surged forward to congratulate the newly joined. Hunnar raised both paws for silence.

“Newfound friends and allies: I thank you for your kindnesses and for your hospitality.” He nodded toward the elders. “I thank you also for the splendid ceremony which you have made for us.” Now he turned to face young Gorin-Volga. “Be assured that, pursuant to the new treaty made between our peoples, the citizens of Arsudun will be welcome in our home of Sofold as well as in the harbors of our fellow allies Poyolavomaar and Moulokin.” He stepped back and Elfa moved forward.

“Great times are upon us, my friends,” she began, her strong voice echoing through the hall. “Wonderful things are happening thanks to our friends the skypeople.” She gestured in the direction of the two shivering humans, and a startled Ethan fought to look as dignified as possible under the circumstances.

“We have learned that there are worlds other than our own, worlds as numerous as the city-states of Tran-ky-ky. To share in their greatest glory and power we must give up some of our ancient ways. No longer can the Tran live apart from one another, fighting to settle the simplest of differences and disagreements. We must come together in peace, for strength, so that when we join our friends the skypeople among the stars, as they assure us we must someday do, we can do this thing with our heads held high and dans spread wide. As warriors and as a people proud of what we are and not as wards of a greater state. We join together seeking parity and equality. Charity is not for Tran!”

A rousing cheer rose from the assembly and reverberated around the royal hall. Elfa and Hunnar were all but overwhelmed by hugs and embraces. To Ethan it sounded unflatteringly like feeding time at the zoo. He followed Skua as the giant used his bulk to shove his way through the crowd.

“I, too, have something to say, Sir Hunnar,” Ethan heard him ask.

“What is it, friend Skua?”

Ethan felt dwarfed by the mob of taller, wider Tran but not intimidated. He knew them too well for that. Besides, with all those furry bodies pressing close around him he began to warm up.

“It’s about our clothes.”

“Ah, in the emotion of the moment I did not think. You have lived with us for so long I sometimes forget you find our climate not to your liking. The ceremony must have been a strain for you and Ethan.” He pointed to the small mountain of clothing stacked to the right of the entryway. “I think you will find your dress there. Attire of close friends and relatives is always stacked to starboard. Come, we’ll help you.” Taking Elfa’s hand in his, he led them through the congratulatory crowd.

“I fear your strange clothing lies near the bottom,” Elfa observed.

Ethan eyed the mound of alien attire. “Doesn’t matter. I won’t mind hunting for it. It has to be warmer under there than it is out here.”

By the time he and Skua had recovered and donned their underwear and silvery survival suits, many of the chief nobles and knights of Arsudun had already presented their compliments to the newlyweds and made their exit. In another part of the castle the official feasting had begun. Shouts and snatches of half-sung, half-hissed song drifted into the royal hall.

He hung back while Skua joyfully participated in the raucous celebration. They couldn’t return to the humanx settlement of Brass Monkey until Hunnar’s crew, the sailors and soldiers of the icerigger Slanderscree, finished their reveling. This ended sooner than he’d expected. Not that it should have surprised him. The Sofoldians had been away from their home city of Wannome for more man a year. By now their many friends and relatives must be wondering if the great ice ship had come to grief and its crew of loved ones were no more than bones scattered on the ice. Ethan and Skua were not the only ones overdue at home.

Later that evening as the feasting was drawing to a close, Hunnar drew Ethan and Skua aside. They settled around a small table away from the noise of the main celebration.

“I wish that we could persuade you and your friend Williams to remain awhile longer among us. There is still so much we must learn.”

“Milliken’s sorry he was unable to attend,” Ethan replied, simultaneously envying their schoolteacher friend his decision to skip the wedding and remain behind in Brass Monkey. “I’m sure he’s as sorry as the two of us are that we have to leave, but we’re just not designed to survive on a world like Tran-ky-ky.”

“I would say you have survived well. You are as resourceful as any Tran.”

September sipped at his tankard of brew, letting Ethan do most of the talking. “You’re flattering us,” Ethan told Hunnar, “but even if we could survive here, we want to return to our homes, even as your people want to return to Wannome. It’s time. I’m not an explorer and adventurer by trade, you know. This whole business of Skua and Milliken and I coming to your world, landing among you—it was all an accident.”

“Aye, that’s a fact,” said Skua. “He’s a salesman, he is, and that’s about as unadventurous a profession as a skyperson can pursue.”

“You would give up all you have gained among us?” Hunnar stared at Ethan out of wide yellow eyes. “I could see you made a noble among my people. Vast tracts of land could be yours. The Slanderscree would be at your beck and call to carry you whence and whither you wished.”

Ethan smiled gently. By Tran standards Hunnar’s offer was magnanimous, but it was insufficient compensation for the lack of heated plumbing.

“Thanks, but right now all I want to see is a big city glowing with wasted light and full of naive customers with deep pockets.”

“What of your intentions to do commerce among us, as you once said you had been sent here to do?”

“No offense, but I’ve kinda lost my taste for working this territory. I’ll let some other representative of my company have that honor. I’m assuming that I still have a job, you see. Most companies frown on their employees’ taking a couple of years off without explanation.”

“But surely once you tell your”—Elfa struggled for the proper word—“master of what has happened he will be understanding and allow you to return.”

“Not master, just employer,” Ethan replied irritably, wishing he could scratch his chin but unwilling to pop the visor on his suit. “Although if I could talk to the big boss himself, I might be able to make him understand. I know my regional supervisor won’t.”

She turned her penetrating gaze on Ethan’s companion. “And what of you, friend Skua? A warrior like yourself could command whole armies. There will be much fighting ahead. Not all will be persuaded to join the Union by sweet words. Your skills would be welcomed by our generals.”

“You’re a darlin’, Elfa.” Ethan tensed but Hunnar only grinned, showing sharp canines. September had indulged freely in the local liquor. “But you don’t need me. With your combined forces you’ll be able to overwhelm the most powerful recalcitrant city-state. Don’t need me to make ’em see reason. I’d just be in the way, stealing the glory from some ambitious Tran warrior. Don’t want to step on somebody else’s career. Did that before, once, and it’s never left me. Besides, I’ve got business of my own to attend to.”

Ethan glanced sharply at him. “What business? You never said anything to me about having any business to get back to.”

“What did you think I was about, young feller-me-lad? Retirement?” There was a twinkle in his eye. “There’s this lady friend of long standing got herself a grant to do some studies on one of those out of the way recently discovered worlds Down-Arm. Fuspin—no, Alaspin the place is called. She’s an archaeologist. Been after me for years to give her a hand with one of her projects. Ought to still be out there, poking into alien thises and thatses, getting dirt under her pretty fingernails. Told me this Alaspin’s a jungle world. After our little stint hereabouts why, I’m ready for some sweat and humidity. That’s where I’m bound soon as we can take passage offplanet.” He smiled at Elfa.

“Second time, nothing personal. Your world’s an invigorating place, but just a mite too much so for us humanfolk. So you’ll understand why we’re taking our leave.”

“We will strive to.” She put a warm paw on September’s forearm. “We can offer you many things, but not a substitute for home.”

Home, Ethan thought. Did he have a home? Different nights, different cities on different worlds and then on again. If anyplace were home, it was the long emptiness between stars. Nothingness is my home, he thought, trying to be flip but finding that considering the matter seriously made him uncomfortable. Travel, sign a contract, travel on. It was hard even to remember his world of origin.

And what if he’d lost his job and couldn’t get it back? What to do then? Proceed to the nearest civilized world and seek new employment?

No, he still had a job, was still a sales rep for the House of Malaika. He had to proceed on that assumption. It was all the security he had left. Maybe Elfa was right. Maybe his superiors would understand. One thing he could be sure of: they’d never heard an excuse for extended absenteeism like his.

He was wondering if his samples still sat in the customs warehouse as the Slanderscree docked again in the harbor of Brass Monkey. The icerigger would wait until its honored human passengers rode back toward the stars in one of their skyboats. There was also the matter of stocking the big ship for the long journey homeward.

One thing Ethan had already decided. If he were out of a job, he intended to claim his simple trade goods and give them to Hunnar and Elfa. Let the company sue him for the cost—if they could find him. A modern inert-element space heater would be worth a Landgrave’s ransom to the Tran.

During their recent long journey to Moulokin, the outpost’s engineers had received and installed a deep-space communications beam. For the first time since the establishment of the outpost, its citizens were able to communicate directly with the rest of the Commonwealth without having to wait for the monthly supply ship to carry out messages. The difficulty Ethan faced in trying to contact his superiors was that the beam was booked up for months in advance by long-suffering, long-silenced bureaucrats and researchers. Having been denied regular communication via null-space with the rest of civilization, they were making up for lost years by using the transmitter around the clock. Ostensibly it was all official business. In reality they just wanted to talk.

The solution to the problem of availability and cost was one and the same. Without it he couldn’t so much as think of calling company headquarters.

Skua accompanied him to the gleaming underground communications center. Together they eyed the cluster of government functionaries and scientists gathered outside the broadcast console. The actual screen and its attendant instrumentation were enclosed in a bubble of smoked acrylic. As soon as one concluded his or her communication someone else entered the bubble. New hopefuls arrived in a steady stream. The number waiting to make use of the transmitter rose and fell without ever falling below a dozen.

September eyed the line of hopeful supplicants. “How are you going to break into that? And if you succeed, how are you going to pay for this? Use your retirement fund? This ain’t like calling your old Aunt Tilly, you know.”

Ethan smiled confidently. “You’re right on both counts, but I’ll manage. At least, I think I will.”

He led September forward, pushing and excusing his way past irritated, curious members of the outpost population, until they were standing just outside the entrance to the broadcast bubble.

“Hey, you,” snapped one of those in line, “there’s a queue here.”

“Sorry.” Ethan flashed his most convincing smile. It was a salesman’s smile, a professional smile; well practiced, endlessly rehearsed, subtly effective. “First-priority communication.”

A smirk appeared on the face of the midlevel bureaucrat next in line. “First-priority? I don’t recognize you. You’re not government or research. You have any idea what a First-priority costs? Kitchen help couldn’t pay for a First if the whole crew pooled a year’s pay.” He bestowed the dubious eye on both of them. Battered by the time spent out on the ice, Ethan had to admit that he and September probably didn’t look like they could afford a short sentence between them.

He just smiled at the man. “We’ll see. If you’re correct, we’ll be in and out of there in half a minute, won’t we?”

The bureaucrat performed an exaggerated bow and gestured magnanimously with his right arm. “Leave us not waste unnecessary time then, shall we?” The woman standing behind him turned to her friend and giggled.

As soon as the functionary inside completed his business, Ethan and Skua stepped inside. Some of those farther back in the line might have disputed Ethan’s right to try his luck even for a few seconds, but no one seemed inclined to strike up an argument with someone the size of September, which was why Ethan had brought him along in the first place.

The beam operator was tired, near the end of his shift, but not too tired to regard the newcomers uncertainly. He was blond and pale, and Ethan decided his ancestors would have been more at home on Tran-ky-ky than any other humans.

“What department are you two with? I don’t see any insignia.”

“No department.” Ethan slid into the broadcast chair as though he owned it, trying to hide his nervousness. “I want to make a private call, First priority.”

The middle-aged beam technician rubbed his golden crew cut. A single long, silver earring dangled from his perforated right earlobe. “A private call? First priority?

That means clearing the lines between here and wherever you want to call to.”

“I’m aware of that.”

“You know what that’ll cost? The amount of time and energy involved? Even if it’s Drax IV, and that’s the nearest world with a receiving station, the number of relays involved are …”

“I don’t want to talk to Drax IV. I want to talk closed-beam to the House of Malaika, which is located in the city of Drallar, on Moth. Can you set that up?”

The operator looked mildly offended. “I can set anything up—if you can pay for it. Right through Santos V and Dis and on to Terra. You’re talking a lot of parsecs, friend.”

“Devil take the parsecs. Set it up.”

The operator shook his head. “I don’t touch button one until I have some kind of financial clearance.” A hand hovered over instrumentation that had nothing to do with chatting in null-space.

Ethan swallowed. “Enter code twenty-two double R, CDK.”

Warily, the operator entered the information. “Mighty short code. This wouldn’t be some kind of joke, would it? I wouldn’t put it past Marianne and the guys.”

A few moments fled before the words “Unlimited Credit” appeared on the small tridee screen near the operator’s elbow. His eyebrows lifted. He gaped at the two words but nothing else materialized, no elaboration, no explanations. Just the two words.

“How’d you gain access to an account like this?”

September put just enough of a Tran-like growl into his voice to be intimidating. “You a cop or a beam operator?”

The man shrugged and turned to his instruments. “Hell of a distance,” he grumbled. “Have to patch in fifty stations at least.”

“You can set anything up, remember?” Ethan taunted him gently.

September leaned close and whispered, “How did you get hold of a code like that?”

“Colette du Kane,” he reminded his tall companion. “Remember her? She said if I ever needed anything, to use that code.”

“My kind of woman.” September had not forgotten the plump industrialist’s daughter who’d been marooned on Tran-ky-ky in their company. She’d proposed marriage to Ethan only to be turned down.

“Let’s not make fun of her in her absence,” Ethan chided his friend. “Especially since she’s paying for this.”

Despite his boasting it took the operator ten minutes to set up the call. Outside the communications bubble the functionaries who’d mocked Ethan cooled their heels while trying unsuccessfully to peer through the opaque plastic dome.

The static-filled screen in front of Ethan cleared slightly and the first sound filtered through. It was distorted and incomprehensible, not surprising considering the distance it had to travel. The operator cursed softly to himself as he adjusted his instrumentation.

Deep-space beams traveled in the mysterious region known as null-space, while KK-drive ships ploughed their way through space-plus. Sandwiched in between were stars, nebulae, and people in the region called normal space. Glory and a lifetime of ease awaited the physicist who could find a way for a ship to travel in null-space, a discovery that would reduce the travel time between the stars from weeks to minutes. Unfortunately, everything that ventured into that insane dimension came out scrambled, like eggs: Experimental animals sent through null-space arrived at their destination as soup. This muted the enthusiasm of potential human followers. So far, pictures and chatter were all that the Commonwealth’s men had figured out how to put back together again.

The picture cleared, revealing a figure as massive as September but not nearly as tall seated behind a hardwood desk. His complexion was ebony and his beard rolled out over his chest like waves across a beach. Though his frame occupied most of the image Ethan could make out a few details behind him. There was the desk of inlaid rare woods, a glass wall, and in the distance a city glowing with light. Drallar. Only a name on company documents until now. No reason for salespeople in the field to visit Moth. Actually, he’d heard it was something of a backward world, largely unpopulated, successful only because of its extreme laissez-faire attitude toward commerce. As a result it was headquarters for a number of major trading houses, among which was the House of Malaika.

Maxim Malaika regarded his caller across a distance of some seven hundred parsecs. The awesome gulf reduced his booming voice to a whisper.

“Faida, but this is a surprise. I don’t take calls from lower-level field representatives, but then they usually don’t call from such a distance.” He paused while he glanced at a monitor whose screen was hidden from pickup view. “Tran-kee-kee, is it?”

“Tran-ky-ky.” Ethan delicately corrected the pronunciation.

“And I never get calls from lower-level field representatives that they are paying for. I am intrigued, Mr. Fortune. What prompts this extraordinary communication on your part? You must have concluded quite a sizable transaction or two to justify such a transmission.”

“Actually, sir, I haven’t sold a thing in nearly two years.” Malaika said nothing, nor did his expression change. He was accustomed to receiving explanations. Now he awaited one.

Ethan told him how he’d been outbound on the long run from Santos V to Dustdune when he’d stumbled into the kidnapping of the heiress Colette du Kane and her father, how they’d taken care of the kidnappers but crashed on the world called Tran-ky-ky, how they’d subsequently managed to strike up a friendly relationship with some of the natives, and how they’d spent the last year and more just surviving.

More than surviving, they’d set in motion the unification of fiercely independent city-states, thus putting the Tran well on the way to forming a planetary government capable of applying for associate status within the Commonwealth. The Tran proved to be intelligent, eager to learn, ready to adopt new ideas. As long as corrupt officials like the late Jobius Trell could be kept away from them, they should develop rapidly.

“I’m glad to hear that,” said Malaika approvingly. “A developing race is a consuming race.”

Ethan hesitated. “Then I still have my job?”

“Still have your job? Of course you still have your job. You did what you had to do. I’m sure you did not crash on this world on purpose. I don’t fire competent people because they’re caught up in circumstances beyond their control. I am impressed with your resourcefulness and skill in surviving. I am so impressed I’m not even going to dock you your base pay for the past couple of years. Of course, you gained no commissions during that time but there’s nothing either of us can do about that.”

Ethan was speechless. It was more than he had any right to expect.

Malaika leaned forward and his face filled the distant pickup. “And who is the large economy-size gentleman standing next to you, Mr. Fortune?”

“Just a friend. Skua …”

“Davis,” September said. “Skua Davis.”

“Nice to make your acquaintance, Mr. Davis.” Malaika frowned. “That face. I’ve seen that face before. Have you always worn a beard, my friend?”

“Not always.” September eased a couple of steps backward, taking himself slightly out of focus.

Ethan’s expression twisted slightly. There had been several occasions when his friend had alluded to a checkered past. Ethan had pressed for details without ever obtaining any. Well, Skua’s privacy was his own business and as his friend he was duty-bound to respect it.

“I can’t thank you enough, sir.”

“Yes, you’re welcome.” Malaika reluctantly shifted his attention back to his employee. “Great things are in the offing for the House of Malaika, young man, great things. This past year has been rich with the unusual. I have done some traveling of my own, entered new markets, overseen the expansion of the company. Also met this extraordinary child, a young adult really, wise in some ways beyond his years and in others the epitome of the naive.” He shrugged. “But why burden you with the details of my life when yours has obviously been so much more interesting.”

“Not by choice it hasn’t been, sir.”

“I understand.”

“Thank you. I guess that’s everything then, sir. The Spindizzy is due in orbit here next week and I’ll be on it. I’ll make contact with my district representative as soon as possible. I don’t think it would do any good to try and resume my normal route where I left off, not almost two years late. For all I know my samples are a year out of date. Is Langan Ferris still my supervisor in this area?”

“Yes, Ferris is still out your way,” Malaika said indifferently. “But why the rush? What’s your hurry to be away?”

“What’s my hurry?” For an instant Ethan forgot whom he was talking with. “Sir, I’ve been stuck on this ice ball for more than a year. I’d like to get back to civilization. I’d like to converse in Terranglo instead of Tran, enjoy some civilized company and companionship.”

“Think of how you’ve positioned yourself, Fortune. Think of it! From what you’ve told me you’re uniquely familiar with the natives and their ways. With their culture and their desires, their wants. You’re best qualified to advise the new Resident Commissioner on how to deal with these Tran.

“If this local federation or union or whatever it is continues to mature and grow, these Tran will be ready to apply for associate status within the Commonwealth in a very short time. If they are accepted it means that their world will be upgraded from a restricted Class IVB to a IVA. They might even qualify for a special Class II. That means they would be allowed access to reasonably sophisticated goods and services. Goods and services which outside concerns would bid to provide.” Ethan tried to inject an objection but Malaika raised a hand and rushed on.

“You have gained the trust of these people. I do not need to tell you how important trust is when you’re trying to sell somebody something. You know the natives and what they would want. You could so advise the new Resident Commissioner.”

“Please, sir.” Ethan found he was starting to sweat. It was clear where Malaika was heading and Ethan searched desperately for a side road. “Any company rep could do what I’ve done. I’d be glad to brief anyone you decide to send out here. Myself, I’m looking forward to getting back to my old routine.”

“Old routine. It defines itself.” Malaika leaned back in his chair. “That’s for your average, mildly competent, unimaginative salesman.”

“But sir, that’s what I am.”

“Your modesty does you credit, Fortune. I couldn’t begin to ask a man like you, who’s been through what you’ve been through, accomplished what you’ve accomplished, to go back to the dull, boring grind of visiting the same old places and talking to the same old customers. I wouldn’t dream of asking it of you.”

“Ask it of me, please.”

Malaika went on as though he hadn’t heard the last: Perhaps he hadn’t, though Ethan doubted it. The head of the House hadn’t missed anything else.

“I envy you, Fortune; yes, I do. To have enjoyed the experiences you have and emerged from them wiser and more knowledgeable is something the rest of us, chained to our computers, can only imagine. The life of a travelling sales rep is clearly not for you, no, clearly not.”

“Begging to differ with you, sir, but I don’t have an adventurous bone in my body. Everything that’s happened has been an accident, and I’m tired of living an accident.”

Malaika nodded. “I understand, truly I do, Fortune. You’ve tired of aimless wandering, you’re tired of being bounced around the surface of a backward, primitive world. You want some stability, want to know where you’re going to be from day to day. You want a regular routine again, want to know that tomorrow’s work is assured and not radically different from what you’ve done today.”

Ethan relaxed a little. For a while there he feared he wasn’t going to be able to make his point. “Yes, that’s exactly what I want, sir. If it’s not too much to ask.”

“Of course not. We are in agreement, then.”

Ethan sat up straight in his chair. “We are?”

“Certainly. Taking into account all that you have told me, I have no choice but to appoint you as full factotum representing the House of Malaika on Tran-ky-ky. You will supervise the establishment and growth of a full-scale trading operation. With your unique knowledge and experience to draw upon, we will have a near monopoly on trade with the locals before any of the other great houses so much as get wind of the possibilities there. There are possibilities, I take it?”

“Yes sir, but as to the need for a permanent representative …”

“Every world no matter how recently opened to trade requires a permanent representative. A lucky man I am to have someone well qualified already on the spot!” Again Ethan hastened to argue and again Malaika overrode any incipient protests.

“Naturally such a promotion and increase in responsibility carries with it a hefty rise in salary. You can look forward to a better and earlier retirement, Fortune. You will have people under you to supervise. No more worrying about lost commissions and an irregular income.”

“Even so, sir, I …”

“Don’t thank me, don’t thank me. You’ve earned this. It’s an opportunity that comes rarely to one your age. Normally one serves twenty to thirty years before being appointed a factotum. And after our monopoly has been secured and you’ve trained a solid core of new people to handle the business, the House would consider transferring you to another world. Paris, say, or New Riviera.”

Ethan hesitated. By themselves the promotion and increase in salary weren’t sufficient to make him consider staying, but the possibility of obtaining both and then taking them with him to one of the paradise worlds, that was something worth thinking about. More than that, the offer was tempting. A factotum on a world like New Riviera could make an enormous amount of money while working in the most congenial surroundings the Commonwealth had to offer.

Even so, the memories of the bone-chilling arctic cold, the unceasing wind, and the more prosaic dangers of Tran-ky-ky were far fresher in his memory than tridees of warm beaches on unvisited worlds. Not that he didn’t have a choice. He could accept promotion and promise or he could quit and take the next ship one way to Drax IV and start looking for a new profession. Drax IV was a nice civilized world but not a major one. Jobs there might not be so easy to come by.

“Don’t thank me,” Malaika said again. “I will make arrangements for an account to be opened in the company’s name for you to draw upon. Within, oh, say a few weeks I’ll expect to see a comprehensive report on our prospects there, I’ll need to know what kind of approach you think we should begin with, what kind of assistance you’ll need, what sort of office equipment, what trade goods will be admissible under the planet’s current status, that sort of thing. I have complete confidence that you will do a thorough and businesslike job. Your raise in pay will be entered into the company’s computers immediately. I think that’s everything.” He reached forward to break the connection, paused.

“One more thing. How did you manage to pay for this communication, anyway?”

“Through a gift from a friend,” Ethan muttered dazedly.

“Ah. A very good friend indeed. Well, I have enjoyed our little conversation immensely, yes, immensely. Perhaps some day circumstances will allow you to visit Moth and we can meet in person. Lovely place, Moth. All the amenities with none of the concomitant restrictions and plenty of room for a man to stretch his legs as well as his mind.”

“Sure.” You wouldn’t want to risk freezing your precious backside by coming out here, of course, Ethan thought. If he’d known Maxim Malaika better, he wouldn’t have thought that. Or maybe he would have. He was mad: at Malaika, and at himself.

“Good-bye then, Fortune. Kwa heri. I’ll be looking forward to reading that report.”

The screen filled with static, then blanked. The operator fiddled with a few instruments, then swiveled in his chair to regard them both. “Transmission broken at the other end. Anything else?”

Unable to reply, Ethan simply shook his head as he stood. And he thought he was a pretty good salesman. The operator unsealed the bubble, letting them out. The line of waiting bureaucrats gaped at them as they strode silently out into the corridor.

“There now, young feller-me-lad, everything’s going to turn out all right.” September put a comforting arm around Ethan’s shoulders.

“Sure it is. For Malaika.”

“What about the money?”

“Money can’t buy happiness, Skua.”

“Well now, lad, it appears our philosophies differ on that point. You have to admire your boss. Made the whole thing seem as much your idea as his. He never actually gave you the choice to make.”

They turned a bend in the corridor. “The raise and the promotion are gratifying, sure. I just wish they applied on a slightly more benign world.” He nodded toward one of the insulated windows at the perpetual snow and ice outside.

“What’s this? Losing your affection for good ol’ Tran-ky-ky? I thought you’d feel right at home here by now, feller-me-lad. It ain’t as though you’re going to be skidding across the ice in the Slanderscree for the next few years. You’re going to have underlings to do the fieldwork for you while you sit back here in the commercial building in your nice warm office, staring at entertainment tridees and reading good books. With the deep-space beam in place you don’t have to feel cut off from what’s happening in the rest of the Commonwealth. There’ll be news, and new visitors—maybe you can hire a few competent young ladies to help you out—and in a few years, if all goes well here, you’ll get yourself boosted over to Paris or some place soft.”

“You make it all sound so reasonable and inviting. You sure you don’t work for Malaika on the sly?”

“Not likely, lad. And if the Tran qualify for associate status, you’ll be able to use a skimmer when you do have to make checks on your people out in the field. Your promotion will be good for you and good for our friends.”

“If it’s all so wonderful, why don’t you call Malaika back and offer to take the job?”

September’s eyes widened. “What, d’you think I’m crazy? I’m getting out of here on the next ship!”

II

EVERY BUILDING AT THE outpost where humans could expect to meet with Tran was equipped with a transition room, a chamber where the temperature was lowered to just above freezing. It enabled humans to talk unburdened by survival suits, while the Tran found it bearably tropic; a climate where different races from different temperatures could get together. Hunnar Redbeard was to meet them here. They waited in the corridor for the Tran to arrive.

Maybe Skua was right. The decision had been made. Nothing to gain from moping and moaning about his fate. There were plenty of people who would gladly have traded places and opportunities with him. And if he changed his mind, he could quit anytime. Sure he could. Just throw away his job, his career, his seniority within the House, and, as Malaika had so irresistibly put it, the chance of a lifetime for someone his age.

“At least I’ll have one old friend to keep me company.”

“Oh, you’ll make plenty of friends here,” September readily agreed. “Not all of them are likely to be as stiff-necked and tight-assed as that bunch back in communications. You’ll strike up all sorts of friendships as you get to meet the personnel.”

“I wasn’t talking about new friendships.”

“What’s that?” The giant eyed him askance. “Whoa now, feller-me-lad, you know better. When the Spindizzy settles herself in orbit, I’m up and away for Alaspin, I am. For Alaspin and a warm climate and the understanding solicitudes of a lady friend.”

“What was all that then about Tran-ky-ky’s wonderful opportunities and its delightful people?”

“All true, all true, young feller-me-lad, and just think of the good you’ll sip from that glass. I’d gladly stay and keep you company save for my prior obligations.”

“What obligations? A two-year-old half promise to join some archaeologist on a distant world? She’s probably forgotten all about you by now.”

“Ah, now, feller-me-lad, there you’re mistaken. Those who meet old Skua don’t forget him so fast, and a promise is a promise even if I am to be a bit late fulfilling it.”

Ethan nodded disgustedly. “That’s it then? You’re just going to run out on me?”

“Now, lad.” September looked hurt. “I’m not running out on you. You’ve chosen to stay here. You can still leave with me if you want to.”

“Sure I can.”

“Sure’s the word. Would you really deny me the choice you deny yourself? After all, I don’t have so much as a job here.”

“I can give you one. I’m going to be in charge, remember. You could be my executive assistant. I’m sure I could arrange a good salary for you.”

“Not good enough, feller-me-lad. Old Skua, he ain’t much for regular employment. I like to kind of keep moving around, if you know what I mean.”

Ethan turned away from him. “All right, then, go on, leave, forget it. Forget me, too. See if I care.”

“I had hoped,” September told him softly, “that our final parting when it came would be under more pleasant circumstances. We’ve been through too much this past year and more to say farewells without smiles, feller-me-lad.” Ethan didn’t reply. “Let’s put it another way. Would you ask anyone else to stay here if they didn’t have to?”

The younger man considered, slumped against the wall. “No. No, you’re right, damn you. It’s wrong of me to expect you to stay just to make it easier on me. You’re carrying around enough emotional baggage without me dumping extra guilt on you.” He managed a smile. “Maybe it’ll help if I can think of one of us enjoying himself someplace else relaxing and taking it easy in the sun.”

“I think you’ve a false conception of what archaeology’s all about, feller-me-lad. From what I’ve heard this Alaspin’s as primitive as they come. Don’t think they’ve got a deep-space beam dug in there yet. But if warmth can be transmitted by telepathy, I’ll do my best to share some with you. Maybe one of these days we’ll both meet under more comforting circumstances.” He looked past Ethan, through the transparent walls that lined both sides of the transition room.

“Let’s put made decisions aside. Here come our friends.”

Ethan turned. Hunnar and his two squires, Suaxus-dal-Jagger and Budjir, were approaching from outside. They halted at the entrance to the chamber, then stepped inside, waving at their human friends. They couldn’t come any farther since the temperature in the outpost would lay them out with heatstroke inside fifteen minutes.

As Ethan and Skua passed into the meeting room, a blast of cold air struck their exposed skin. Leaving the comforting confines of the outpost was always a shock, and this wasn’t even outside. Out on the ice beyond, the midday reading hovered between twenty and thirty below zero—on a clear day. Near the poles it was so cold that if not for the steady circulation of the atmosphere, the air itself would have frozen and fallen to the ground like dust.

Hunnar looked a little heavier than usual, Ethan mused. Marriage was already showing its effects. Greetings were exchanged.

“Well, friend Ethan, were you able to talk across the night to your Landgrave?” At the look on Ethan’s face the Tran adopted a tone of concern. “It went badly?”

“No, not badly. It’s just that—well, it was decided that I’m to stay here and continue with my work.”

“Here?” Suaxus’s pointed ears twitched forward. “With us? But that be wonderful news, Sir Ethan!”

“It is good,” Hunnar agreed. “I understand if you will not be able to return to Sofold with us, but because we now have the Slanderscree we will be able to come and visit you.”

“Yes, and one day I’ll be able to travel in a skimmer.” Despite what Malaika had said about letting employees do the fieldwork Ethan knew he could hardly turn a bunch of innocents lose on the surface of Tran-ky-ky without personal supervision. They wouldn’t last a month. The Tran would eat them alive, perhaps literally.

“I know that our climate and some of our people are not to your liking,” Hunnar said perceptively, “and that mayhap you wish still to return to your home, but when and wherever possible we shall strive to make a home for you here, among us.”

“It won’t be bad,” Ethan assured him, talking as much to himself as to his friends. “For a salesman, home is where you plug in your order screen.” And he had friends here already, he reflected. Unlike humans, when you made friends with a Tran you had a friend for life. He clapped a hand on Hunnar’s arm, feeling the thick bristly fur through the sensitive glove of his survival suit. “Let’s go see how the Slanderscree’s repairs are coming along. Now that I hold an official position here, I’m going to be able to help you a lot more. Anything Captain Ta-hoding requires in the way of joints or glue or bolts, I’ll be able to requisition from outpost stocks and charge to the company. I can put it all down to priming the customers.” He flipped up his hood but kept the ice visor unsealed. Maybe he couldn’t help himself but he could damn well help his friends.

“That’s the spirit, feller-me-lad.” September hung back. “While you’re out looking over the old Slanderscree I’m going to be getting what personal possessions I have together. The Spindizzy’s shuttle should be arriving pretty quick now and I won’t want to be late.”

Ethan turned at the exit to grin back at his friend. “You know these commercial shuttles. Some of them are pretty small.” September was six foot ten and built like a tank. “What if they don’t have a seat wide enough to fit you?”

“Why in that case, lad, I’ll have the factotum for the House of Malaika order me up a special crate and I’ll ship myself out as cargo.” He winked. “Happens as how I know the factotum himself and he owes me a favor or two.”

In fact, September was not quite ready for departure when Ethan thumbed the privacy buzzer set in the door of the small apartment the giant had been allotted. Several days had passed and the Spindizzy’s shuttle rested in the outpost hangar, still taking on cargo and comments.

The door slid into the wall to reveal an awesome sight few human eyes had encountered, or would want to—Skua September clad only in his underwear.

“Come in, young feller-me-lad, come in. In a little while I’ll be off and there’ll be time only to recall the things you wanted to say and didn’t.” He put a hand over the close control. Ethan stayed outside.

“You won’t be off like that, I hope.”

“Not on this world. It’s cold enough in the hanger. Come in, why don’t you, before we shock some passing technocrat?”

“I’m afraid I can’t, Skua. You’re going to have to come out.”

The giant’s huge bushy eyebrows drew together. “Don’t talk riddles with me, feller-me-lad. Not now. I’ve no business remaining here that requires my presence.”

“There’s someone who disagrees with you.”

“And who might that be?”

“The new Resident Commissioner.”

September glared at the floor. “How so? If they need some kind of deposition or statement from me, they can get ahold of me on Alaspin—if they can track down Isili’s site.”

“It’s not that simple, Skua. She’s flagged your boarding pass.”

“Splendid,” he muttered. “If some bureaucratic mama thinks she’s going to keep me off that shuttle, she’s got another thing coming.”

“She sure does. You and me.” He checked his chronometer. “In twenty minutes, to be exact. In her office.”

“What’s the point?” September made no effort to conceal his exasperation. “We’ve already entered everything that happened outside Moulokin in the official records.”

“Don’t get excited,” Ethan advised him. An excited September was something even his friends didn’t want to be around. “I’m sure it’s just a last-minute formality of some kind. In five minutes it’ll be done with and you’ll be out of there and on your way. We don’t even know what she wants to see us for. Maybe just to say hello and, in your case, good-bye.”

“She wants to see you, too, huh?”

Ethan nodded. “Before you get yourself all exercised and overwrought let’s just go up there and see what she wants. Besides, aren’t you curious to see who the Commonwealth has sent out as a replacement for that schmuck Trell? It’s crucial to the future of the Tran.”

“Aye, but not to the future of the September.” He sighed resignedly. “If she’s flagged my boarding pass I don’t have any choice. Wait while I find something to put on. Perhaps if she’s young and inexperienced she’ll need to have a private chat with old Skua to learn what this world’s really about.”

“What about your shuttle?”

“For the important things in life, one can always make time, feller-me-lad.”

The office of the Resident Commissioner occupied the apex of the triangular structure which housed much of the local Commonwealth administrative complex. From its top it commanded sweeping views of the outpost of Brass Monkey, the modest Tran community which had grown up around it, and the fjordlike ice harbor beyond. Tran ice ships sat tied up to low stone docks, seeking protection from the stronger winds that blasted the open ice ocean.

Ethan’s apprehension and Skua’s anticipation both turned out to be misplaced. The new Resident Commissioner for Tran-ky-ky was a pleasant, handsome woman in her mid-seventies. She wore a severe dress suit of light blue with Commonwealth insignia to match. Touches of the exact same shade of blue formed two parallel streaks in her otherwise silvery hair. She did not look like anyone’s grandma. Her movements were slow and her speech patient. Her name was Millicent Stanhope.

“Be seated, gentlemen.”

“Look, ma’am,” September said, starting in without waiting to be asked, “I can’t stay long. I’m booked on the Spindizzy, as you know, and I don’t want to miss her. I’ve been stuck on this world for too long already.”

“Gently, September. I read your formal reports. I know that you’re anxious to be on your way. I won’t detain you long.” Her eyes flicked over to Ethan. “And you, Mr. Fortune, I understand will be staying with us for a while longer. That’s good. I’ll want to draw upon your unique body of experience.”

“I’ll be glad to help whenever I can,” Ethan assured her, simultaneously realizing the truth of Maxim Malaika’s assertions.

September was in no mood to be coddled. “If you’ve read our reports, then why the need for this meeting?”

“Please try to relax, Mr. September, however much an effort it may be for you. I promise you won’t miss your flight.”

September leaned back in the big chair but continued to glance pointedly at the wall chronometer even though ample time remained before the shuttle was scheduled to depart.

“There is this business of the death of my predecessor, Mr. Jobius Trell.” Ethan shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “According to your report he was killed while making use of advanced weaponry in an attempt to enforce an illegal and extortionate trade monopoly on the native populace.”

“That’s right,” Ethan told her.

“Your description of the manner of his death is fuzzy as to details. I was wondering if you could be more specific.” Ethan glanced at September who regarded the ceiling with single-minded intensity. The awkward silence lengthened.

“You see, gentlemen, I have a reason for asking,” Stanhope finally told them. “I have spent forty-three years in the diplomatic service. I am retiring in six months and I want nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing, to mar my record. I am searching for neither scapegoats nor assassins. I just don’t want any surprises. That’s all. I promise you that anything you tell me will remain confidential and will go no further than we three, but if I am to treat knowledgeably with the locals, I must know everything that happened.”

Ignoring September’s silent protest, Ethan related the incidents which had led to the death of the former Resident Commissioner, telling Stanhope about his treacherous alliance with the former Landgrave of Arsudun and how he had manipulated the mad former Landgrave of Poyolavomaar. When he’d concluded the story, Stanhope leaned back in her chair and nodded gratefully.

“Thank you, Mr. Fortune. I appreciate your candor. That is a word rarely employed in the diplomatic corps.”

“Six months, you said.” Ethan strove to change the subject. “If you don’t mind my saying so, I’m surprised they’d send someone like yourself to a place like this with retirement so near at hand.”

She laughed lightly. “Oh, but I requested this post.”

That brought September out of his pout. “You asked to come here?”

“That I did. This is an outpost world, not even a formal colony, about as low a classification as you can find that rates someone with my seniority. Nothing happens here. Once a month the KK-drive ship that travels between Santos V and Drax IV pauses here. That’s it. For a diplomat, Tran-ky-ky is a dull, boring, and unprestigious place to be stationed, and that’s precisely why I wanted to come here.” Her tone darkened slightly, steel beneath the smiles.

“Six months, gentlemen. Six months I have left. I want them to be as quiet and undisturbed as though they never were. I came here to be forgotten for half a year. Then I can retire to my modular on Praxiteles and work on my laserpoint.”

“What are you going to do about the Tran?” Ethan asked her.

“Actually, I think they’re cute, your Tran.”

September guffawed. “About as cute as cannibals on ice skates.”

“That may be. But as they appear to be progressing nicely on their own, thanks to your own philanthropic efforts, I propose to do absolutely nothing. I will stay out of their way. Out of everyone’s way, hopefully. If there are any matters that require my attention, I expect my aides and involved civilians such as yourself, Mr. Fortune, will bring them to my attention. In return for this advice I will do my best to stay out of your way.

“I know that you intend to establish a formal branch of the trading house of Malaika here. I will do what I can to expedite your work by burdening you with as little red tape as possible. In return I expect you and the others like you to serve as my eyes and ears among the natives. As for myself, I will count my tour of duty here a success if I never have to step outside this office save to eat and sleep. I hope I have made myself perfectly clear.”

Ethan nodded. “Perfectly, Ms. Stanhope.”

She glanced at September. “And I expect you to say nothing about your difficulties here, particularly as they concern the late Mr. Trell, for at least six months.”

September adopted a dignified mien. “Ma’am, I assure you that unburdening myself to government officials is right near the bottom of my list of permanent priorities. I’m on my way to a world that makes this one look advanced so I can lose myself in an alien jungle for a year or two.”

“Then we are all in agreement as to the direction of our futures. Good.” She rose. It was a dismissal. “Mr. Fortune, I imagine you have a great deal of work to do. Mr. September, you must have some last-minute preparations to conclude prior to your departure.”

September approached the desk and took her hand in his. It vanished inside his massive palm. “Good to know the future of Tran-ky-ky’s in such understanding hands, for half a year, anyway.”

“Mr. September, you are gallant.” She retrieved her fingers, sat back down. “Now if you will both excuse me, I have a great deal of nothing to do and I am anxious to be about it.”

September wore a thoughtful expression as they took the elevator back to ground level. “Interesting old gal. Wish I’d known her twenty years back.”

“A bit stiff for my taste,” said Ethan.

“Don’t be too quick to judge, feller-me-lad. You never can tell about these steely-eyed types. Why, underneath that hard-shelled exterior there probably beats a heart of pure concrete.”

The lift doors parted. As they exited they nearly stumbled over a preoccupied Milliken Williams.

Like Ethan and Skua, the diminutive schoolteacher had also been in the wrong place at the wrong time when the kidnapping of the wealthy du Kanes had taken place, and like them, he’d been carried unwillingly to the surface of Tran-ky-ky. He was full of self-deprecation and apologies except when he was doing something like introducing the Tran to gunpowder and crossbows. Ethan thought he looked worried. That was William’s usual state of mind. He was always worrying about what was going to go wrong next, and if nothing went wrong, he worried why it hadn’t.

“I was just coming to get you.” His eyes darted from one face to the other. “Could I have a moment of your time, do you think?”

September rolled his eyes. “Everyone wants a minute of old Skua’s time. I’m running out of minutes, Milliken.”

“Please. This is terribly important.”

“What isn’t? All right.” He looked around, gestured resignedly toward the administration cafeteria. “I could use a bite to eat before getting on the shuttle.”

It was between meal times and the room was almost empty. Tran furs and handicrafts decorated the walls and gave the otherwise bland hall a little character. Automatic food machines lined one wall. Ice particles formed abstract patterns on the exterior of a curved, triple-paned window as the wind smashed them against the glass. They ordered food and drink and settled into a booth near the window.

“Skua,” Williams asked earnestly, “how set are you on leaving Tran-ky-ky?”

September said nothing, simply sat and stared. “Is there some sort of conspiracy at work here that old Skua knows nothing about? First you, feller-me-lad, and now our over-educated little friend here.”

“There is no such thing as overeducation,” Williams replied primly. “I asked you a perfectly straightforward question. And if we’re going to make comments about size, let me say I’d ten times rather be my height than a grotesque variant of a macrocephalian like certain people I know.”

“You mean macrocerebral,” said September. “Forget it. It’s just that you’re not first in line.”

“What’s going on, Milliken?” Ethan asked him.

“There seems to be a bit of a problem. More than a bit, actually. A very considerable problem.”

“What kind of problem?” Ethan was patient with the teacher. He had a way of talking around a subject rather than going straight to the point. You had to prod him or the conversation would languish among irrelevancies.

“It involves Tran-ky-ky.”

“I figured that much. I don’t want to sound impatient, Milliken, but Skua has a shuttle to catch.”

“Plenty of time before liftoff. I know. I checked the schedule. I was just wondering if you’d mind listening to a full discussion of this problem.”

“Anything to get this over with.” September swallowed the rest of his snack in a single gulp.

“You said it involves Tran-ky-ky,” Ethan reminded the teacher. “In what way?”

“We’re not sure. The entire planet may be at risk.”

Ethan sipped at his drink. “The sun’s not going nova or anything like that?”

“No, no, nothing so immediate or dramatic. It’s just that, well, there’s a climatological anomaly that nobody has a decent explanation for and it’s driving the meteorology staff crazy. By now the members of the local scientific community know about the three of us and our experiences. They know that our knowledge of Tran-ky-ky isn’t theoretical, that we’ve had ‘hands on’ dealings with the world beyond Brass Monkey.”

“Hands on for sure,” said September. “I don’t know that participating in the bashing of hostile locals qualifies us as scientific experts on much of anything.”

Williams didn’t so much as crack a smile. “This is a serious business, Skua.”

“Deity save us from serious business. What you’re saying is that some folks just want to ask us a few questions, right?”

Williams nodded.

“Milliken, you’re the only one of us who’s had anything that could be called scientific training. You’ve been everywhere Skua and I have. Why don’t they just talk to you?”

“First because no one is yet positive this matter is of a wholly scientific nature and second because some of the staff doubt their own conclusions. They’re desperately searching for as many possibilities of confirmation as possible. They’re afraid of being ridiculed. Since the three of us have been out there and know what Tran-ky-ky is like, they’re fairly certain we won’t ridicule them. Argue and dispute, yes, but not ridicule.”

September pushed away from the table. “Don’t let ’em be so sure. Let’s get on with it.”

“Do we have to go outside?” Ethan stared through the cafeteria window at the blowing snow.

“The main research center is reachable via the underground walkways, but it would be faster to cut across open ground.”

“We’ll walk the extra meters,” Ethan told him.

III

DURING THEIR BRIEF STAYS in Brass Monkey neither Ethan nor Skua had had any reason to visit the research complex. It was the oldest group of buildings in Brass Monkey and the rationale for the outpost’s establishment in the first place. Scouts first, scientists after, lastly bureaucrats. Like the rest of the outpost complex it was largely buried beneath the ice and permafrost.

The large meeting room Williams led them into lay several levels beneath the surface of Arsudun. Half a dozen curious faces turned to inspect them when they arrived. Out of this pack of intelligent speculation emerged a woman even shorter than the schoolteacher.

She wore a bright blue jumpsuit with green and white insignia and patches. Ethan had expected a white lab smock. Her hair was straight, jet black, and cut off in a straight line just above shoulder level. She might have been thirty or sixty. Her handshake was firm.

“I am Cheela Hwang. There are my fellow crisis mongers.” She introduced each of her companions in turn. “In case Milliken hasn’t told you, I am in charge of the meteorology department at Brass Monkey. As you might imagine, knowing Tran-ky-ky, we constitute a fairly large contingent here.”

“Weather’d be about the only thing worth studying on this world,” September commented, “excepting the locals, of course.”

She tilted back her head to try and meet his gaze. “Milliken forewarned me about your attitude as well as your sense of humor, Mr. September.”

The giant grinned slightly. “I’ll try to comport myself in a civilized manner and not eat any of your subordinates.”

“What’s this problem all of you are so exercised about?” Ethan asked her.

“Over here, please.” She led them toward the far wall, fingering a small remote control she took from one of the jumpsuit’s pockets. The wall came to light. It was an integrated tridee screen, which explained why it was the only partition in the room devoid of pictures, photographs, or other hangings.

“Perhaps you recognize this, Mr. Fortune.”

“Just Ethan will do fine.” He stared at the wailful of whorls and swirls. The colors were bright, the outlines regular. “Infrared photographs, but of what?”

“The ground we’re standing in, young feller-me-lad.” September gestured at the wall. “That blob up there, that’s Arsudun. Those smaller spots represent the Landgrave’s town, Brass Monkey, and the like.”

“You have a fine eye for information.” Hwang sounded approving.

September shrugged. “I’ve had some experience identifying topographic features from above. Why the infrared? Why not just a straight satellite photo?”

One of Hwang’s colleagues spoke up, a touch of bitterness in his voice. “This is a minor outpost. We don’t rate a fully equipped survey satellite. No high-resolution cameras. Just straightforward instrumentation.”

Ethan wanted to ask his friend where he’d gained experience “identifying topographic features from above,” but Hwang was pressing on, using her remote’s built-in pointer to trace features on the wall as the image changed.

“Do you recognize this?” The center of the picture was an intense orange.

“Looks like Sofold,” Ethan ventured. “The home island of our Tran friends. The central volcano is unmistakable.”

“That is correct. And this?” The two men stared hard at the image and looked blank. “That’s not surprising,” Hwang told them. “There’s no way you could recognize it because you haven’t been there. No human has. It lies far to the southeast of Arsudun.” She ran the wall through a rapid sequence of similar images.

“This is an infrared mosaic of the large southern continent.” Her pointer moved over the images like a two-dimensional insect. “Notice these features here. These big clouds and”—she dipped the pointer—“this heat shadow on the ice ocean.”

“What about them?” Ethan asked.

“They shouldn’t be there.” This from Gerald Fraser, an assistant. “They’re all wrong. We’ve been studying Tran-ky-ky’s climate for quite a while now. We’ve done mapping for years and the climate’s been under intensive examination ever since the establishment of the outpost here. There haven’t been any big surprises. Everything involving the weather has been pretty predictable and very consistent. Then this.” He waved a hand at the wall. “It’s like finding a lump of coal in your ice cream.”

“Gerry’s right.” Hwang’s pointer moved. “These clouds and this shadow on the ice are all wrong. Right for Kansastan maybe, but not Tran-ky-ky.”

“So it’s wrong.” Ethan was getting interested. “What’s its significance? What’s it indicative of?”

“A change in the climate.”

Ethan and Skua exchanged a glance. “I don’t understand,” Ethan told her. “Less freezing or more freezing, what’s the difference?”

“It’s not freezing here.”

Ethan’s gaze narrowed. “I beg your pardon?” He stared at the infrared image anew, trying to see things that weren’t there. Meanwhile Hwang’s pointer continued to flutter over the wall.

“This small area exhibits a radical difference in temperature from its immediate surroundings. In addition to the inexplicable rise in temperature spectroscopic analysis also reveals a radical change in the composition of the atmosphere directly above this portion of the continental plateau.”

“Volcanism,” September said immediately. “Tran-ky-ky’s full of it. I don’t see what the problem is.”

Hwang smiled. “You’re full of surprises, Mr. September. Yes, there are many volcanoes on this world, and sufficient volcanism in this area could possibly be responsible for what we’re seeing, but we don’t think volcanism is the cause. Low-resolution or not, our satellite is capable of resolving fairly small details on the surface; there’s no evidence of cratering anywhere in the vicinity of the anomaly.”

“What about venting?” September asked her. Ethan looked at him in surprise and September smiled back. “Done some geology in my time, feller-me-lad.”

“We thought of that also. We’ve even considered purely speculative and fanciful rationales. None of them fits the magnitude of what we’re observing. If we had a really decent satellite, with high resolution cameras on board …” Her voice trailed off momentarily. “But we don’t. Our orbiter was designed to aid in measurements of the atmosphere and in making weather predictions. We have better equipment on order but you might imagine how difficult it is to obtain expensive instruments for use in studying these backward worlds.”

“Don’t let Hunnar Redbeard hear you call Tran-ky-ky backward,” Ethan told her. “The Tran may not be sophisticated or technologically mature but they’re not dumb either, and they’re proud as hell.”

“Don’t be so defensive,” said one of the other researchers. “We’re here to try and help these people, not insult them.”

“We suspect volcanism,” Hwang continued, “because we don’t have anything else to go on. We know the planet’s internal heat helps drive its weather in the absence of open bodies of water. We could write the whole thing off until new equipment arrives. But we’re worried.”

A tall geophysicist with the unlikely name of Orvil Blanchard waved at the wall with a lanky hand. “Keep in mind we can’t find any natural features that might explain what’s going on in this region. Despite that, the changes in the atmosphere are increasing steadily. Volcanic venting varies dramatically. It doesn’t increase at a steady, measurable rate the way this anomaly does. At least, not any volcanic vent I’ve ever encountered. It’s as if something’s thrown a switch inside the planet.”

Hwang shut off the concealed tridee projector. “We could put it down to volcanism anyway, but we want to be certain. Since our modest survey satellite is unable to resolve the problem to anyone’s satisfaction, all that’s left to us is an on-site inspection. Which presents us with a problem. Because of restrictions governing the deployment of advanced technology on a Class IVB world like Tran-ky-ky, we have no access here to aircraft or skimmers. It was assumed we could get all the information we required to continue with our research via the satellite. Normally that would suffice.

“Administration had a skimmer for emergency use, but that apparently was destroyed when the previous Commissioner ran afoul of some unfriendly natives. Or so your report—which everyone here has read by the way—indicated.”

“I’ve seen ice cycles around the outpost. What about using those?” Ethan asked her.

“Strictly short range,” said Blanchard. “We could pack extra fuel cells, maybe even enough to make the journey there and back, but we couldn’t carry sufficient additional supplies. And from what we know of the weather out on the ice ocean, something as small as a cycle might get blown two kilometers back for every one it advanced.”

“Besides that,” Hwang went on impatiently, “none of us has ventured any farther from Brass Monkey than the shore of this island. It was circumnavigated and mapped by geologists as the base here was being established. That’s about the extent of our long-range exploration. Everyone’s still new to a new world. That’s why we’ve devoured your official report. It’s been invaluable to every department. But we’ve no personal experience or knowledge of what it’s like out on the oceans. None of us here at the outpost, for example, has ever seen one of these extraordinary creatures the natives call stavanzers.

“We’d be traveling blind and ignorant and with no aircraft or skimmer to back us up. I think you’ll agree that it would be exceedingly risky, foolhardy even, for people like us without your kind of experience to undertake a journey to the southern continent.”

“Can’t argue with you there,” said September, blithely ignoring the hidden plea.

Subtlety having failed, Hwang put the request directly. “Then surely you can see that we need your help.”

Realization dawned more slowly on Ethan. “Oh, no. I mean, we’ll be glad to help you with preparations and suggestions and advice, won’t we, Skua?”

September pointedly checked his chronometer. “That we will, young feller-me-lad, so long as they don’t take more than a few hours. A nova might have kept me off that shuttle. Nothing else will.”

Hwang turned to gaze earnestly at Ethan. “What about you, Mr. Fortune? Milliken tells us you’re going to be staying here anyway.”

Ethan shot an angry look in the schoolteacher’s direction. Williams didn’t turn away from the glare. Why be upset with Milliken anyway? Ethan asked himself. Truth was truth.

“Yeah, I’ll be based here for a while. But my responsibility is to the House of Malaika. I have to set up a formal trading station. Right now that consists of myself and a few cases of samples that are probably frozen solid in the warehouse. I have to arrange for construction or leasing of offices and storage space, hire an assistant from administration, and begin the search for suitable employees off-world. There are forms to be processed and filled out and filed, and I don’t know where to begin.”

“We can help you with that,” said another of the meteorologists. “We’ve been dealing with the local administration for years.”

“From a scientific standpoint, not a commercial one,” Ethan argued. “I also have to arrange quarters for myself.”

“We could find you a permanent apartment here.” Blanchard grinned. “Not entirely on the up and up, but we did lose a couple of geologists a few months back. You could have two apartments, one for yourself and another for a temporary office. Better than what administration would assign you.”

Ethan felt like a man climbing a ladder to escape a pack of carnivores. He was rapidly running out of rungs. “Look, I appreciate your offers and I sympathize with your situation, but I don’t have a minute to spare for myself, I’ve got a ton of work to do, and I just can’t disappear for weeks on end again. I just got back to civilization. If it’s an ice ship you want, I can make contacts for you in Arsudun Towne. You can hire transportation to Poyolavomaar. Once you’re there, I’m sure you’ll be able to hire a ship and crew to take you farther south.”

“Where we have to go is uncharted territory. It’s a long way from this Poyolavomaar you describe in your report. We don’t know the natives or their ways.”

“Why not just wait for your new satellite instrumentation? Then you can get all the answers you need from the safety and comfort of your offices.”

“It’s not our safety and comfort that concerns us at the moment,” Hwang told him. “It’s the safety of the natives, the Tran. You see, while we don’t share your unique experiences we do interact with the natives here in Brass Monkey. We know many of them by name and we’ve come, as you have, to like and admire them. We don’t want to see anything happen to them.”

“Now hold on a minute.” September looked confused. “We’ve been talking about an unexplained localized meteorological phenomenon affecting a part of the southern continent. Nobody’s said anything about a possible planet-wide disaster.”

“It’s difficult to speak in such terms without hard evidence,” said another of the scientists. “That’s why we’re so anxious to go and see what’s happening for ourselves. We hope no disaster is in the offing—planetary or even continental—but we need to go there and find out. And we need to do it as soon as possible. We can’t wait for answers on advanced imaging equipment that might or might not ever arrive. We’re probably overreacting, but we need to know what’s going on out there, Mr. September.”

“It doesn’t matter.” Ethan fought to keep a grip on his emotions. “Unless you hire an ice ship to take you to Poyolavomaar and then try to proceed south from there you won’t find out. Because there’s no other way to reach the region you’re talking about. You just ran through all the options yourself. It’s too far for ice cycles and there’s no skimmer or aircraft available.”

“What of the remarkable ice ship you built?” Hwang asked him.

“We didn’t build anything,” Ethan told her, more sharply than he intended. “The Tran built every meter of it themselves.”

“Excuse me. The ice ship you designed. It’s far sturdier and faster than anything we’ve observed locally. And it’s a proven long-distance traveler. If we could …”

“Out of the question.” It struck him then that the main purpose of the meeting had been to obtain the use of the Slanderscree. He and Skua were incidentals. “The Slanderscree’s going one way—and that’s west. Not east, southeast, or anywhere in that vicinity. It’s going to take a long time for it to get home because it’s going to have to tack into the wind.

“Its crew has been away from home for over a year. They may have membranes between their wrist and waist, they may have vertical pupils instead of round ones, but they’re people. They’ve been away from their families, their friends, and their lives for much too long, just because of us. They want to get back home as badly as Skua does.”

“We’re aware of their concerns.” Hwang made placating gestures as she spoke. “We sympathize with them just as we do with you and Mr. September. We’ve read everything you wrote about Sir Hunnar Redbeard and his people. But this matter concerns them more than it does us. This is their world that may be in danger. You must convince them to help us.”

Ethan shook his head. “It wouldn’t matter if we went to them stark naked and did tricks and somersaults until we froze in midair. Hunnar is now heir to the throne of Wannome. He has political as well as personal reasons for returning home. They’re our friends but we’re still aliens and they’re still Tran. They don’t owe us a thing. Quite the contrary—Skua and Milliken and I owe them for keeping us alive. No amount of talk on our part is going to convince them to put off their journey homeward for another six months or whatever in order to help you resolve a dispute about some variance in the weather hundreds of kilometers southeast of Arsudun.”

Hwang’s eyes dropped to the floor. “I understand. You must also understand that we had to ask. Milliken said it would be difficult.”

This is crazy, Ethan thought. Why do I stand here listening to this? What difference does it make what is causing the rise in temperature far to the south? They’ve already admitted it was probably due to volcanism.

But if it wasn’t due to volcanism, what was responsible?

It was none of his business. He was a trader, a man of commerce, not a scientist. It wasn’t his business to intercede with the Tran on behalf of Cheela Hwang and her associates. He had enough problems of his own to worry about.

She wasn’t finished. “We have neither the right nor the power to compel you. We know that you and Mr. September have endured a great deal these past months. We won’t impose on you any further. But we had to ask.” She spread her hands in a gesture of helplessness. “We had to ask because we had no other choice.”

What a terrific way to begin his relationship with the rest of the outpost’s permanent staff, Ethan thought. Not that he was likely to ever need their help. If only they wouldn’t be so damn gracious in defeat! Why didn’t they yell a little and curse him? What the hell did they expect? Even if he did confess to temporary insanity and agree to go off with them, didn’t they understand there was just no way he could convince Hunnar and Captain Ta-hoding and the rest of the Slanderscree’s crew to do likewise?

Because Hunnar and his friends had to return home. Even if Hunnar was in no hurry to assume the mantle of Landgrave’s heir and even if he and his people were interested in exploring still another unvisited region of their world, he was technically on his honeymoon. Did Tran have honeymoons? Maybe newlyweds were expected to go out and butcher a Droom or something equally adventurous.

It made no difference. They had to return to Sofold if only to inform their friends and relations of their continued existence. For all Elfa Kurdagh-Vlata’s father knew his daughter was dead and the crew of the icerigger with her, the great ship destroyed, the bones of her crew gnawed by scavengers. Regardless of how they might respond personally to Cheela Hwang’s request they were obligated to return home if only to convey news of their survival. The citizens of Sofold were unaware they were now members of a great and growing union of city-states. Hunnar and Balavere Longax were obligated to inform them of their future. There were relationships to be renewed, songs to be sung, deeds to be told. No choice in the matter.

He said as much to Cheela Hwang and her colleagues, hoping it would satisfy them and put the matter to rest in a manner which would preclude any need for future defensive recriminations on his part. He forgot he was dealing with people who were used to extracting answers from meager data. Blanchard found one before Ethan could excuse himself.

“What you’re saying, then, is that if you could convince them to take us, they’d be prohibited from doing so because of their need to report back home.”

Ethan nodded vigorously. “Circumstances beyond my control, or Skua’s, or anyone else’s.”

Blanchard looked gratified. “Not necessarily. What’s the minimum crew for a ship like your icerigger?”

“I don’t know,” said Ethan, taken aback. “I never really thought about it. I was just a passenger. If you’re talking about sailing, you don’t need near as many as the Slanderscree normally carries. If you’re talking about exploring a new part of the planet and defending yourself while you’re doing it, that’s something else again.”

“This would be a journey purely for research,” Blanchard argued. “We don’t anticipate any fighting.”

“You never do,” Ethan told him, “but Tran-ky-ky isn’t exactly a benign world. There’s plenty of hostile fauna around besides uncontacted Tran.”

“We would go properly equipped,” said another of the scientists. “No advanced weapons because that’s strictly forbidden, but we could take other equipment which would be of help. And if you’re trying to frighten us you’re wasting your time. We’ve discussed this among ourselves and we know what we’d be letting ourselves in for. We’ve traveled on and around Arsudun. We’re not entirely innocent of the dangers of this world.”

Ethan didn’t bother trying to explain that a jaunt of a few days around a relatively stable, civilized island like Arsudun bore no relation to a journey of many weeks into unexplored regions of a hostile world. Why waste the time? They weren’t going anywhere anyway. But Blanchard wasn’t through.

“What we could do is hire a merchant vessel to take the elderly, the injured, and the chronically homesick back to this Sofold. We have some discretionary income in our budget and we know how starved the Tran are for metal. I’m sure we could find a captain willing to undertake the trip. Those of your friends who insisted on returning wouldn’t have to work or fight on the trip back. They could relax. They’ve earned it. And we’d still have plenty of funds left to hire your icerigger.”

“This Balavere Longax, the senior soldier you speak of in your report, could be put in charge of the returnees,” Hwang added. “As a respected member of the court of Wannome his report would be believed and honored. In fact, you could argue that it’s his place to deliver such a report and not the younger knight you call Redbeard. The remaining crew could sail us to the southern continent.”

“Let this Longax person,” Blanchard went on, “assure the people back home that all is well. He can tell them about this union you’ve instigated, about the exploits of his comrades and friends, and of the royal marriage you attended recently. He can also explain the delay in the Slanderscree’s return and the importance of this journey we have to undertake. As to payment, we want to be sure we don’t offend the dignity of this Redbeard person.”

“There ain’t a Tran alive adverse to taking money,” September said, “but you won’t hire the Slanderscree and its sailors for a few chunks of iron.”

Hwang smiled. “The outpost has its own compact smelter, Mr. September. There’s ore deep in Arsudun which the natives cannot make use of but which we can. The smelter is here so that we can build and repair outpost facilities. That doesn’t mean we can’t use it to turn out ingots, bars, tubes, nails and bolts, swords and arrow points, and whatever else would please your Tran. We can fill the hold of their ship for their return journey. They can give us a detailed shopping list and we’ll fill it.”

Hwang had just made the closest thing to an irresistible offer one could propose to a Tran. Trade in sophisticated goods like electronics was still forbidden on Tran-ky-ky save for a few simple devices which would eventually break down. Nails and swords would last on a world where steel was more valued than gold. Even one as homesick as Hunnar would find it hard to turn down the offer.

“You can also tell them,” Blanchard continued, “that they would be expanding their knowledge of their own world and extending the hand of friendship and union to new peoples.”

That was as much an appeal to him as to the Tran, Ethan knew. By going along he would be doing business, making new trading contracts, perhaps finding new goods to buy. In a civilization like that of the Commonwealth, where electronics and goods and services were available cheaply and readily, exotic handicrafts and artwork were among the most highly prized of new goods.

Why the hell not? He was stuck here anyhow.

“I’m still not sure if this is a good idea or not or if it wouldn’t be better taken care of by some kind of remote survey craft, but I’ll put your proposition to Hunnar and his people. They have the right to turn you down themselves.”

“That’s all we’re asking.” She glanced up at September. “What about you, sir?”

“Me wishes all of you the best of luck, but my ship departs orbit at oh-eight hundred tomorrow morning. I’ll wave on my way outsystem. I’ve been cold long enough.”

Hwang was persistent, stubborn, or both. “The region where we’re going is warmer. That’s the problem.”

“Your problem, not mine. I’m off to where it’s warm all the time. Maybe I’ll regret not taking you up on your offer—in a year or two.”

She turned to Ethan. As far as she was concerned now, September had already departed. “I’m sure you’ll put our offer to your Tran friends as openly and honestly as we have put it to you. I only wish I could convey the importance of ascertaining the cause of this meteorological disturbance as rapidly as possible. There are crucial contradictions that require immediate resolution. Try to convey that to your friends along with our offer of cargo and transportation home for those who won’t come with us.”

“I’ll make sure they understand all the details. Why don’t you come with me since you feel so strongly about it? Tell them yourself.”

She shook her head. “I’m not good with people and I don’t know the language. None of us do. In that way our translators are electronic crutches. Speaking in person is infinitely more effective than talking through a device. Besides, these are your friends. It’ll sound much better coming from you. If they agree to help, then maybe I’ll be able to think of them as my friends as well.” An approving murmur rose from the scientists.

“We’ll see,” Ethan said, “but I can’t make any promises. As to convincing them of the urgency, that’s going to be tough.”

“I’ll take care of that,” said Williams quietly but confidently. “You soften them up, Ethan, and I’ll finish the argument off.”

Ethan looked dubious. “Hunnar Redbeard and Captain Ta-hoding are going to take more than just softening up when I try to convince them it’s not time for them to return home.”

“We’ve been a long time gone.”

As Hunnar finished his little speech his sentiments were echoed by the other Tran in the room. They included Balavere Longax, senior warrior among the crew of the Slanderscree; Ta-hoding, her captain; Elfa Kurdagh-Vlata, daughter of the Landgrave of Sofold; and Hunnar’s two squires. Ethan and Milliken Williams spoke for the staff of the research station while a dour Skua September glowered in the background. Ethan had asked him to join them and since his shuttle’s departure had been postponed to an early morning liftoff, he couldn’t very well decline. But he wasn’t happy about it.

The humans required survival suits for this extended parley, but to the Tran the temperature in the transition room was positively tropic, barely a few degrees below freezing.

As Hunnar sat down Ta-hoding leaned over the plastic table. “They wish us to take them where, friend Ethan?”

Williams unrolled the map Cheela Hwang and her colleagues had prepared. Transfers had been made from the survey satellite’s infrared photos. He wondered how the Tran would react to it, never having seen their world from above. They navigated by wind and stars, landmarks and tradition. If any could make the mental leap necessary, it would be those in this room. The concept of maps was not unknown to them, but aerial photography was something else again.

Tran measured distance in units called satch, and he’d had the outpost cartographer put all measurements on the crude map in those familiar numbers. It helped.

Elfa eyed the map uneasily. “No one has ventured so far south and east. That region is unknown to us.”

Ethan thought she looked wonderful in her furs and leathers. Exotic, very feminine in a feline sort of way, and wholly alien. You’re anthropomorphizing again, he warned himself.

“Until you made the journey in the Slanderscree no one from Sofold had ever been this far east before, either.” He used a finger to trace a route on the map. “We’ll head south to Poyolavomaar. That much is familiar territory and we can resupply the ship there if necessary. From there we turn southeast until we cross the equatorial ice pressure ridge—the ‘bent ocean’ as you call it—somewhere in this vicinity. Then it’s straight on to the edge of the southern continent. The continental plateau runs almost due east-west at that point and we’ll be able to keep the west wind hard behind us. I doubt we’ll run into anything we haven’t already met up with.”

“That is a promise oft disproved before,” Budjir quipped softly.

Ethan rerolled the map. The research department’s publications section would have copies prepared and laminated prior to the icerigger’s departure.

“It’s not like Hwang and her people are asking you to sail them to the south pole. They’re going to make the trip worthwhile. Each member of the icerigger’s crew will share in the profits to be realized upon your return home to Sofold.”

“What of those left behind who wait anxiously for word of that long-delayed return?” Balavere Longax inquired. His fur was tipped with silver and his beard gray instead of ruddy.

“The humans here intend to hire the best ship available to take a portion of the Slanderscree’s crew back to Wannome. They can report for all.”

“No other merchant vessel has ever made such a journey. Until we came to this place the people of Sofold had no knowledge of Arsudun, nor they of us,” Ta-hoding pointed out.

“Exactly. Now that the route is known and the journey once completed, other Tran should be more willing to attempt it. The owners of the ship we hire will be well paid.”

“We had the wind always behind us.”

“The return trip will involve more time and less danger, since the obstacles are now known. Those of your crew who make this journey will do so in comfort. Others will raise the sails and cook the food. When you stride together into the great hall at Wannome to speak of our adventures you will be honored. There will be more honor to come when the Slanderscree finally returns weighted down with its cargo of metal.

“I’ve talked to the metallurgist in charge of the smelter here. She’ll be glad to fulfill your requests for spear points, nails, small tools, and pipes. Whatever you wish. The humans who want to engage your services will pay for everything. With this one cargo Wannome will leap beyond its neighboring city-states in wealth and prestige. It will make it easier to strengthen the new union. When the people of Ayhas and Meckleven see the benefits to be gained from membership, they’ll rush to join.”

“You tempt us, friend Ethan,” said Balavere. “You tempt us greatly. Were it not for the need to inform our loved ones and our Landgrave that we still chivan o’er the oceans of our world, I would be inclined to stay with you myself. Such a cargo as you describe has never been imagined. I would like to be the one to unveil it.”

“As friend Ethan says, it is not as though we are being asked to sail ’round the globe.” Suaxus-dal-Jagger clearly had no doubts as to which course they should take. “What his friends propose is a journey no longer than the one that took us from here to Moulokin. Those lands also were unknown to us until we visited them. By making the journey we gained knowledge and allies. Why should not this one prove similarly beneficial?” The squire grinned, showing razor-sharp canines.

“And if there is to be a fight or two along the way, why, it would keep us from boredom. That is the only place I fear to visit.”

“I should think you’d had enough adventure to keep you from boredom for the remainder of your life.” Elfa’s gaze shifted from the exuberantly enthusiastic squire back to Ethan. “Still and all, your scholar friends offer a city’s ransom in payment for a little transportation. Long as it has been since my father has seen me, I know what he would advise.”

Hunnar had been studying his right paw, extending and retracting his claws. Now he looked up to where Skua September leaned against the door that led back into the outpost complex.

“What think you, friend Skua? Should we accept this proposition?”

“Yes, what do you think?” Balavere asked.

September let his gaze touch on human and Tran alike. “I think you’re every one of you fools. Some of you are furry fools and some of you smooth-skinned, but you have warm blood and idiocy in common. I think Ethan’s a fool for risking the dangers of your world on still another journey into unknown regions. I think the rest of you are fools for not returning home right now.”

“We know what to expect, Skua,” said Williams, adjusting his glasses. “It would be discouraging if we didn’t encounter one or two new things on such an expedition.”

“Something new ain’t what would worry me. Surprises wouldn’t worry me. What would worry me, Milliken, is that sooner or later a man’s odds will catch up with him. You don’t go give those odds any help against us. Fate’s already on their side. Me, I’ve been tiptoeing on the far edge of disaster most of my life. Just because I haven’t fallen off yet doesn’t mean I’m going to start dancing. I don’t think you should go.”

Williams turned to the watchful Tran. “Certainly there may be dangers to be faced. This is your world. I believe Cheela Hwang and her colleagues when they say that it may be in danger. The kind of danger that can reach across oceans and continents. We seek an explanation because events that cannot be explained have a way of coming back to haunt you. We must find out what is happening to the weather along the edge of the southern continental plateau.”

“What threat could it pose to us in far distant Sofold?” Budjir wanted to know.

Williams struggled to persuade. “I realize you’re still trying to grasp the concept of a world as one place, a single home. It took my people even longer to do so, to their detriment. A world is like a living organism. What happens on the other side of the globe can affect us here in Arsudun. Think of it as a creature without arms or legs. If one area is infected and not treated in time, the infection can spread and kill the whole body. We need to find out if this is an infection of that kind.”

“The scholar speaks truth. I agree with him,” said Balavere.

Hunnar and Elfa exchanged a look. She nodded once, slowly. But the final word did not rest with them. Not here, on this matter. This was not an affair of state. He turned to the captain of the Slanderscree.

“What of the ship? What repairs would have to be made before she could undertake such a journey?”

“None, Sir Hunnar. The ship is sound. While I would rather return home myself, the thought of another long journey does not frighten me. Our vessel is solid. She could use a thorough cleaning, but then what ship could not?

“The thought of sailing so far south with less than a full crew does not cheer me, but it can be done. No reason be there why thirty could not handle her well enough, particularly if we take our time and put out anchors early.”

“We’d like to reach this place as quickly as possible,” Williams commented, “but our actual speed would be up to you. Whatever’s affecting the climate isn’t going to alter radically one way or the other in a day or two.”

Ta-hoding looked content. “As long as we are not hard pressed, then, I see no reason why we cannot send half our complement and more home to cheer those we have left behind. We know her well by now, our icerigger, and those who agree to crew her on this voyage will be volunteers. If those who do so are promised a greater share in the promised cargo, I foresee no difficulty in securing willing sailors.”

“Naturally the captain’s share would be proportionately larger,” said September from his corner.

Ta-hoding coughed, looked slightly embarrassed. “It would not be unnatural. It is the traditional manner of such payments.”

“Clearly there would be plenty for all.” Hunnar shook a massive paw at Williams. “This will be the last place the Slanderscree docks before the familiar portal of Wannome harbor. Absolutely the last! The lamentations of my family echo loud in my ears.”

Williams nodded assent. “I promise. After this you can all go home, richer as well as wiser.”

“It is settled then,” said Elfa. She glanced up at Ethan. “But this I say to both of you: This is a thing we do not for the fortune your metal wizard has promised to us, nor out of friendship which has its limits. This thing we do because Milliken Williams asks it of us. Because we owe him a debt that has not yet been repaid.”

“Truth!” declaimed Balavere Longax loudly.

Ethan knew what they were referring to. If not for the schoolteacher’s application of some ancient practical knowledge, both the battles for Wannome and Moulokin would have been lost. Elfa, Hunnar, and the rest of the Tran owed Williams not only their independence but their lives.

“Yes, well.” The teacher dropped his eyes and voice and tried to vanish from view. “Anyone else in my position would have done the same. I just happened to be in the necessary place at the required time.”

“Anyone else I do not know,” said Hunnar. “Milliken Williams I do know. You overdo your modesty. This then is our repayment. We Tran do not like to leave debts lying loosely about where consciences can stumble over them in the night.”

“We’re all set then.” Ethan pushed back his chair. “Milliken, why don’t you deliver the good news to Hwang and Blanchard and the others? I’m sure they’ve chewed their nails down to the quick wondering what our friends’ answer will be.”

“With the greatest pleasure. They’ll be delighted for a minute or so. Then they’ll get to work making preparations for departure.”

“Yes, preparations,” said Ta-hoding. He didn’t rub his paws together but came close. “And while provisioning is going on I can meet with your metal wizard to discuss what we will want in the way of cargo for our trip back to Sofold. In that way it can be ready and waiting for us as soon as we return.”

Elfa was smiling. “It will be good to return home with something more than stories to give the people.”

Laser-bright, the sun of Tran-ky-ky cast the rocky features of Arsudun island into silhouette as it rose in the east. Ice particles bombarded the glass sealing in the second-floor observation deck that overlooked the shuttle runway.

Ethan watched as the shuttle rose from its underground hangar like a skeleton from the grave. It rested on wide blue ice skids, the stern of the sleek delta-wing shape pocked with rocket and jet exhaust ports. It would accelerate rapidly down the smooth runway, using standard jets to carry it into the upper atmosphere where ramjets would take over and increase its velocity further. Beyond the envelope of frigid air that cocooned Tran-ky-ky, rockets would take over and propel it into orbit where it would be overtaken by its mother ship. After passengers and cargo had been distributed, the KK-drive would be activated, tugging the interstellar craft out of Tran-ky-ky’s system and into that strange region known as space-plus, where faster-than-light travel was possible.

As he stared, the shuttle’s stern glowed with life. The thunderous roar of the jets was muffled by the thick glass. The ship began to move forward. Slowly at first, gradually gathering speed, its great weight forcing the skids through the ice onto the solid stelacrete beneath. Behind him other members of the outpost’s complement turned away. The once-a-month departure of the shuttle was not enough of a novelty to hold their attention longer.

They chatted easily, relaxed, their thoughts back on the business of the day. Ethan’s rode aboard the shuttle, alongside the large, extraordinary gentleman who’d been his close companion and friend for the year and more they’d spent surviving on this frozen world together.

Carried aloft on a column of superheated air, the shuttle lifted from the far end of the runway. Ethan followed it with his eyes until it vanished like a lost leaf in the perfectly clear blue sky. He continued to stare into the distance until the echo of the little vessel’s thunder faded in his ears. Then he turned away from the window.

There was plenty to do. Establishing a formal trading station would require the completion of an enormous quantity of paperwork, no matter how accommodating the new Resident Commissioner. If he started on it immediately he might be able to scratch the surface before the Slanderscree departed for the southern continent. Then there were specialized computer programs to be ordered, files to be set up, requests for personnel to enter. If he were lucky and everything he needed reasonably available, he might be able to relax in three or four months. If he could at least get some programs operating, it would look to Malaika’s subalterns like he was doing his job.

It was going to be a lonely one. Administration and supervision demanded he read, not shake hands or other appendages. The most entertaining computer program was a poor substitute for close companionship.

So preoccupied with planning was he that he almost ran into the large figure that had stationed itself at the far end of the corridor. The individual was leaning against the jamb, arms crossed and an angry expression on his face. Ethan’s jaw dropped.

He jerked around to stare back toward the observation window. No, the shuttle had not returned when he wasn’t looking, nor had he imagined its departure. Any more than he was imagining the massive, familiar figure that blocked the doorway.

It was just as well September spoke first because Ethan was utterly at a loss for words.

“This is all your fault, young feller-me-lad.”

The accusation called for a response. “My fault? What are you talking about, my fault? What’s my fault?” He gestured helplessly back at the window. Beyond, ground crew in small individual vehicles were out on the runway, already commencing preparations for the arrival of next month’s shuttle.

“Why aren’t you on the shuttle?”

“I’m not on the shuttle because I’m here. Can’t be in two places at the same time, now can I?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Skua.”

“Really? I thought I made it quite clear. We’re talking about my being here being your fault. That’s not overly obtuse, now is it?” He unfolded his oversize frame, stood straight. “It’s because of your damn archaic sense of responsibility. Your innocence and your filthy ingratiating personality. Hell, if I pulled a gun right now and blew your grinning head off, your last words would be an apology for the cost of the power surge. Where do you come off making me feel guilty, you and that midget mine of arcane trivia and those tiger-toothed furballs with pretensions of civilization?”

“Nobody can make another person feel guilty like that, Skua. You’ve managed it all by yourself.”

“Oh, now that’s a pithy homily, it is. Here I was, all set and ready to be on my way, and that runt Williams had to go and drag us to that damn meeting. Dangerous meteorological anomaly, my butt! And here I am still stuck on this lousy chunk of slush because somebody sees an anomaly in a fogbank a few thousand kilometers away.”

Ethan knew it was an inappropriate time to smile, but he couldn’t help himself. It was clear Skua was raging not against his friend but against himself.

“Skua, it’s not the worst thing in the world to admit to somebody else that you’re a decent human being.”

“But that’s just it, young feller-me-lad. I ain’t a decent human being. I’ve never been a decent human being. I could give you proof.”

Ethan tried to calm the giant. “You’re confused; that’s all.”

“Confused, hell. I’m mad and I’m frustrated because I don’t know what I’m doing here.” He jabbed a thumb ceilingward. “When I should be up there, relaxed, warm and outbound.”

“Whatever you’re doing here you’re going to be doing it for at least another month, until the next shuttle arrives. What about your archaeologist friend?”

“Who? Oh, Isili. Isili Hasboga.” He shrugged. “I’m two years overdue. I don’t expect she’ll fly into a rage if I don’t show up next week. In fact, I have the feeling she won’t even think about it. Me now, that’s something else.” He turned, ate up distance with enormous strides.

“One thing I’ll warn you about now, Ethan, and you can pass it along. When we’re out on the ice none of those sniveling scientists better thank me for coming along or he’ll find himself skating all the way back to Arsudun on his backside.”

“So you’re coming with us, then?”

“No,” September snapped. “I purposely missed the shuttle so I could squat here and glower at the robots. Of course I’m coming along.”

Ethan struggled to repress a broad grin. “That’ll be nice. Knowing in what regard Hunnar, Elfa, and the rest of the Tran hold you, I’m sure their spirits will be boosted just by your presence.”

“Further proof of how primitive they are and how far they still have to go,” September muttered. “Showing respect for a fool like me. I am a fool, you know. I’ve just gone and proved it again.”

“Quit bawling, already. And you still haven’t convinced me I’m in any way shape or form responsible for your continued presence here.”

“Ain’t it obvious, feller-me-lad? How could I leave with a clean conscience knowing you were all set to run off and get yourself killed. You would, too, without me around to watch after you. If not for old Skua, you’d be dead a dozen times over this past year.”

That was true enough, Ethan knew. It was also true that he’d returned the favor by saving September at least as many times as September had saved him, but he forbore pointing that out. He was too pleased to have his friend back for the forthcoming journey to belabor him with logic.

“What makes you think I’m going to put myself in a position to be killed? You heard Hwang and the others. A straightforward little scouting expedition to check out some weather, that’s all. No barbarian hordes to battle. No exotic cities of unknown persuasion to win over to the union cause. Why should we have any trouble?”

“Because there’s still this world to deal with. Tran-ky-ky. Damned little we know about it after more’n a year sailing its ice. No, you’d get yourself killed for sure without me to yank you back from the brink of disaster, young feller-me-lad. You’re too nice, too empathetic, and far too understanding for this business. Me now, I’m none of those. So I’m still alive when I should’ve been deaded ten times each of the past forty years.

“And if you persist in committing suicide in spite of anything I can do, at least I’ll be around to see to it that you get a decent burial, or cremation, or whatever form of final send-off tickles your soul.”

“Your concern for my welfare is touching, Skua.”

“Yeah, well.” The giant looked over his head, up the corridor. “Just don’t mention it to anyone else, okay? Give me a bad name in certain circles. Let’s get out of here, get something to eat.” He headed up the corridor that led to the central part of the outpost complex. Ethan had to hurry to keep pace with him.

“What do you want me to say if someone asks me why you chose to stay behind?”

“Tell ’em I overslept,” said September irritably.

Only later did it occur to Ethan wonder if his friend might have had some other reason for missing the Spindizzy’s departure. As September had admitted on more than one occasion, he was a man with a varied and not altogether benign past. Something might have convinced him that it would be in his own best interests to remain on an isolated, unvisited world for another month or so. Maybe there was someone on the KK-drive ship he didn’t want to encounter. Maybe he didn’t want to go where it was going just yet. Maybe, maybe…

Too many maybes for a mind already swamped with plans for the new trading station and the forthcoming expedition. If September was frustrated by his own inability to leave Tran-ky-ky, Ethan knew that frozen world would provide the giant with numerous opportunities to work off his unease.

IV

PROVISIONING AND PREPARATION OF the Slanderscree proceeded apace, thanks to the scientific establishment’s open-ended credit account. In a couple of days the icerigger was bulging with supplies. Only Hunnar’s embarrassment finally put an end to Ta-hoding’s unending requests for still more food, still additional extra rigging and sail. If they didn’t depart soon, the clever and acquisitive captain would have overstocked the ship to the point that no room would be left for her crew. As it was, by the time they were ready to leave, the icerigger was almost bursting.

Those Tran who had volunteered to crew the Slanderscree bade farewell to their colleagues and cousins who would be riding a hired merchant ship back to Sofold. Ethan and Skua had made many friends among the crew and there were handshakes and backslaps to be given in addition to the traditional Tran gestures of parting.

Cheela Hwang, Blanchard, and the four other scientists who’d been nominated to go on the expedition were busy checking over their gear. Besides Hwang and the geophysicist there was another meteorologist, a glaciologist, a geologist, and a xenologist. Moware, the last of the half dozen, had been included not for the help he might provide in determining the cause of the climatological anomaly but because the chance of a long trip away from already over-studied Arsudun was too valuable to pass up. He’d already expressed his intention to do photos and in-person studies of everyone they met during the course of the journey.

“Just don’t study them too close up,” September advised him. “You never can tell about the Tran. Why, they can be chatting with you friendly as can be one minute and slip a knife across your throat the next. There’s them that would spill your guts just for the metal in your belt kit.”

Ethan overheard and sidled over to stand next to his tall friend. “Come on, Skua, you know that isn’t true.”

“Do I now? Are we already experts on the Tran? Just because we’ve spent some months among them doesn’t mean we really know them. We know their language, the habits and culture of a few, the attitudes of several more, but we don’t know them. For all their cheery hellos and how-do-you-dos they’re still an alien people. They’re not human. They’re not even anthropoid.” He turned and stalked away.

Moware was the oldest member of the scientific team. He had the visor of his survival suit flipped back, as did all the humans, and he regarded September’s retreating back with interest. “I don’t know your big friend very well, but I think he carries a considerable mental burden with him wherever he goes. He jokes with his words but not his eyes.” He looked over at Ethan. “You’re good friends, though.”

“Very good—I think.” Ethan searched for September, but the giant had already disappeared. “He’s right, though. We don’t really know the Tran.”

And I don’t really know you, do I, Skua September?

He strolled over to where Hunnar and Elfa were bidding a final farewell to those members of the crew who were staying behind.

“In Wannome we will meet soon and drink and sup by the great fire in the Hall of the Landgraves.” Hunnar clasped the old warrior by both shoulders and Balavere Longax returned the gesture. Then Longax was embraced by Elfa.

“May the good spirits stay with you, princess, and carry you safely back to us. Your father will be disappointed to find you not among us.”

“My father will grumble and return to his business,” she replied with a smile. “You’ll still have stories to tell him when we finally enter Wannome harbor, for we’ll be back before your voice and imagination run dry.”

Then it was Ethan’s turn. When the ceremonials had concluded, Longax searched the busy crowd behind them. “Will not the great September come to bid us farewell?”

“He’s sulking,” Ethan explained. “Making a big show of how upset he is at coming with us.”

Longax made a gesture of understanding. “The September is much like a small meat-eater called the toupek. It is solitary, hunts by itself, joins with others of its kind only to mate, and roars like thunder, but it is only this big.” He held his paws a foot apart.

“I don’t know. Skua talks about us not knowing you. Sometimes I think I know you and Hunnar and Elfa better than I know him.”

“A strange one, your large friend,” Longax agreed solemnly, “even for a human being. I think he prefers to sail against the wind.”

“Why should that bother him?” It took Ethan a moment to realize he’d just made a joke that only another Tran could understand. Translated, it would have meant nothing to someone like Cheela Hwang. He’d been here a long time for sure.

Longax’s party left the icerigger and lined up on the stone dock. A blast of subzero cold slapped Ethan in the face and he snapped shut the visor of his survival suit. Through the polarized glass he watched while Longax and his companions bowed somberly toward the ship.

Ta-hoding took up a stance behind the ship’s wheel and bellowed commands. The wind which had stung Ethan bothered the captain not at all. Tran mounted the rigging and adjustable spars. Sails woven from pika-pina fabric began to unfurl.

Quite a crowd had gathered to watch the icerigger’s departure. There were a number of humans from the research station, running their recorders while murmuring notes into the aural pickups. A three-masted, arrowhead-shaped ice ship mounted on five huge skates fashioned of metal salvaged from the ruined shuttle craft which had originally brought Ethan and Skua and Milliken Williams to this world, the Slanderscree was a wonderment to all who set eyes on her, Tran and human alike. There was nothing to compare to her anywhere on the planet. Her ancestors had once carried tea and porcelain and passengers across the two great oceans of Earth. Milliken Williams had adapted those designs to the necessities of Tran-ky-ky and its frozen oceans.

Using the wind as skillfully as a flutist, Ta-hoding backed the huge vessel away from the dock. The watching humans were too busy with their recording and note taking to cheer, while the Tran observing the departure had no reason to do so. Formal farewells had been concluded. As far as Balavere Longax and his companions were concerned, their friends and shipmates were already out of sight.

Under Ta-hoding’s direction the icerigger pivoted neatly around its fifth skate, the stern rudder which was used to steer the ship. Wind filled the sails as the spars were adjusted. Picking up speed, the Slanderscree headed up the narrow ice-filled fjord that formed Brass Monkey’s harbor.

On our way again, Ethan mused as he watched the frozen terrain slide by. Outward bound and still not for home.

He expected that Hwang and her people would keep to their cabins; the deck of the Slanderscree under full sail was not a relaxing place to be. But he was wrong. Having been confined to a single island for their tours on Tran-ky-ky, the researchers were delighted to finally find themselves out on the great ice sheet itself. They embarked on a nonstop round of activity and experimentation, to the point where nighttime measurement taking began to interfere with normal shipboard routine.

“I was sleeping soundly, Captain,” Second Mate Mousokka explained to Ta-hoding while Ethan and Hunnar looked on, “having seen to the setting of the anchors for the night, when suddenly I hear the sound of many feet on the deck above. Too many for the night watch and in the wrong place. So I arise from a warm hammock and steal onto the deck to espy what’s happening. I am thinking perhaps we have been attacked and the night watch has already had their throats cut.

“But all I see are the furless beings—no offense, Sir Ethan—prowling about the deck setting up strange metal tubes. They stare through these and I look in the same direction, but all there is to see is the ice.”

“They were studying the phosphorescent algae that grows on the ice,” Ethan explained uncomfortably, having familiarized himself with that particular experiment. The second mate and the captain looked puzzled while Hunnar was merely amused. “Eorvin,” he told them, finding the proper Tran name.

Mousokka squinted at him. “They were looking at eorvin? In the middle of the night? In the cold dark?” Ethan nodded, a gesture that meant the same among the Tran as it did among humans.

The second mate thought this over before replying. “I will tell the others that they must watch your friends carefully, lest in their single-minded staring they fall beneath the ship or out of the rigging.”

“Not a bad idea, but they’re not as crazy as you think.”

“They are scholars.” Hunnar punctuated the comment with a grunt. “It is much the same thing.” There was no literal translation in Tran for scientist, Ethan knew, and the natives had decided to use the nearest formal equivalent.

“I would not know,” said Mousokka. “I am but a simple sailor.”

“Just make sure they keep out of your way,” Hunnar instructed him. “We don’t want them interfering with normal routine or hurting themselves.” He glanced at Ethan to insure this met with his approval.

“Don’t be obvious about it and it’ll be okay. I doubt they’ll notice anyone keeping an eye on them anyway. They’re too busy with their work. Preoccupied. You have to understand that because of Commonwealth regulations, they’ve been cooped up in Brass Monkey ever since the place was established. Now that they’ve been allowed out to see more of your world, they don’t want to miss a single thing. They want to see everything.”

“Eorvin.” Mousokka left muttering to himself.

The activities of the human scholars remained a mystery to the Tran, but at least the sailors and soldiers were sufficiently sophisticated not to ascribe everything Hwang and her people did to witchcraft or sorcery. It was much simpler just to explain that the scholars were all slightly daft.

Such as the morning when a ravenous flock of carnivorous snigaraka was driven by hunger to move against the ship. A lookout spotted them and gave the alarm as they wheeled above the ship’s path and prepared to attack. When they finally dived at the deck, unarmed personnel had already taken refuge below and the soldiers were ready to meet them. Arrows and crossbow bolts picked one fanged flyer after another out of the sky.

One fell close by Ethan’s feet. It was two meters long from nose to tail, with a gaping mouth lined with spikes. The latter were not teeth but the sharp, jagged edge of two horny plates which formed the jaws. Like every successful Tran-ky-ky lifeform it was covered with a coat of fine fur. Unlike the Tran, the bristles of the snigaraka were hollow to conserve weight while maximizing heat retention. Their wings were short and broad, more like those of a hawk than an eagle. The tails were the most distinctive feature in that they were held vertically instead of horizontally, and there were two of them.

With sharp projectiles and grasping talons flashing around him, Moware sat high up in the rigging preserving the battle on his recorder, calmly adding explanatory notes where necessary. Tran yelled at him to come down. He ignored them, and it was possible he never heard them. Two snigaraka could easily have plucked him from his webbing and carried him off, or he could have been knocked from his perch to the deck or the ice. Of those potential disasters he appeared blissfully unaware, a delighted smile creasing his face as he imaged the attack for posterity, not to mention future study.

Later that day, after the aerial assault had been beaten off, the xenologist played back his recording for the benefit of his fellow scientists. They sat clustered around the recorder as it played back the battle, offering comments and asking questions and completely ignoring the obvious danger Moware had placed himself in. It was wholly incidental to the information obtained. When an attacking snigaraka swooped down on Moware and the lethal jaws momentarily filled the recorder’s lens, the only comments to be heard involved the structure of the jaws: were they true jaws or a flexible beak?

All the grumbling about the strange and disturbing actions of the scholars finally came to a head when one of them asked Third Mate Kilpit if they might seek out another flock of the airborne assassins in order to complete their documentation of the snigaraka’s method of attack.

“It is one thing to convoy these alien creatures to an unknown land,” Kilpit told Ta-hoding, “another to deliberately place ourselves in danger to satisfy their strange and inexplicable desires.”

“Did anyone get in your way during the attack?” Elfa asked the mate.

“Well, no, my lady.” Kilpit dug into his pelt for a persistent nibbler and looked uncomfortable.

“Was anyone injured because of something the humans did?”

“No, of course not.”

“Then you have no complaint.”

Hunnar was more understanding. “Some of the crew are confused. That which is new and different is always confusing. I will talk with the scholars.”

What he did was convey the disquiet to Ethan, who agreed to have a chat with Hwang’s group.

“You have to understand,” she said when he’d finished relaying the Tran’s concerns, “that it’s difficult for us to restrain our enthusiasm. After years stuck in offices, we’ve suddenly been given a whole world to examine.” Her manner was formal without being standoffish.

“I understand,” Ethan replied, “and Hunnar understands, and Elfa and probably Ta-hoding understand, but the common sailors and soldiers in the crew, they don’t understand. And they’re nervous about what they don’t understand. They watch while you run your experiments and engage in inexplicable activities and they conjure up all sorts of superstitious nonsense.”

“We keep too much to ourselves. You and Milliken and September move freely among them, have for a long time now, so they accept you and your individual idiosyncrasies.” Blanchard supported his chin with his left hand. He wore his mustache, Ethan mused, like an afterthought. “We may not be athletes, but after two years and more on this world we’re in pretty good shape. You have to be to qualify for posting to a world like Tran-ky-ky.” He glanced up at Ethan.

“Because of our arrangement which involved sending a large portion of the ship’s complement home, it is presently minimally crewed.”

Ethan nodded. “That’s so.”

Blanchard regarded his colleagues. “We’ve all done heavy work in survival suits. Perhaps we could help.”

“No, no,” Ethan told him. “Ta-hoding looks like a jolly, easy-going type, but he’s not where his ship’s concerned.”

“We wouldn’t try anything we couldn’t handle.” Almera Jacalan, the resident geologist, flexed an arm. “We’re intelligent enough to know what we can and can’t do.”

“Put it to the captain,” Hwang decided. “It might be fun.” Murmurs of agreement came from her colleagues.

“Sure.” Jacalan laughed at the prospect. “I can pull a pika-pina cable with the best of them, and we know we won’t have to swab the decks. You can’t wash outside on this world because any liquid freezes instantly. Besides,” she added, “the crew ought to know that in a tight spot they can call on us for assistance.”

“I’ll suggest it.” Ethan sounded doubtful.

He was honestly surprised when Ta-hoding agreed. “A couple of extra hands, be they furred or not, would be welcomed. By all means let the scholars learn the ways of the Slanderscree. One need not be an experienced sailor to help pull in an anchor.”

It was as Blanchard had hoped. With the humans working alongside, the crew came to know them as individuals. They gradually put aside their fear and suspicion and before many more days had passed were enthusiastically demonstrating how to do everything from adjusting the spars to scraping the sails. Everyone was able to relax because all knew the arrangement was only temporary. They would take on additional, experienced hands at Poyolavomaar.

Everyone was relieved at the cessation of tension and surprised at the feeling of camaraderie that quickly developed. While learning how the icerigger was handled, some of the scientists began to give the Tran short courses in geology and climatology. The lessons generated grudging admiration among the sailors, while the scientists ceased to view their furry, big-eyed companions as primitive aborigines.

Meanwhile the Slanderscree followed its zigzagging course southward to Poyolavomaar as Ta-hoding made skillful use of the ceaseless wind.

Not long ago they’d traveled that same section of ice. It should have looked familiar to Ethan, but he wasn’t a Tran. Ice was ice. Ta-hoding or any of his crew, on the other hand, could have pointed out specific cracks in the ice sheet, could have identified individual folds and subtle discolorations. Streaks and striations were as clear to a Tran as lines on a road map. For beacons they relied upon the stars, for direction the wind.

He wondered how much Commonwealth participation would change his friends. Civilization dulls the senses.

Having learned their lesson, the snigaraka stayed clear of the icerigger. So did the rest of Tran-ky-ky’s lethal lifeforms, though they did encounter a rarity called a dyella.

To Ethan it resembled a gigantic snake, though he knew that was impossible; a cold-blooded creature couldn’t survive long enough on Tran-ky-ky to reproduce. The dyella was twenty meters long, legless, and covered with fine maroon and pink fur. Flanks and top were rounded and it slid along on its flattened underside, special glands secreting a hot lubricating slime which enabled it to slip quickly across the ice. Twin rills or sails ran nearly the length of its back. By twisting and turning these to catch the wind it sailed along as efficiently as the Slanderscree.

Several of the sailors yelled to Ta-hoding to swing sharply to port so that the icerigger’s metal skates would cut the carnivore in half, but the human contingent would have none of it. Moware was frantically trying to reload his recorder while Jacalan and the rest of the nonbiology specialists fought to make records of their own. In coloring and size the dyella was far and away the most impressive lifeform they’d yet encountered.

The creature let out a rumble incongruously like a threatening mew and moved slightly sideways, paralleling the icerigger at a distance of some thirty or forty meters. It neither attacked nor retreated:

“One small bite …” said Ta-hoding as he stood by the rail watching their unwelcome escort. He brushed the points of his claws against the palm of his other paw. “Dead meat. Poisonous.”

Ethan looked forward. Moware and his colleagues were all but falling overboard in their haste to snap close-ups. “Don’t tell the scholars. They’ll want to obtain a sample of the toxin.” He turned his gaze back to the dyella, fascinated by its supple, seemingly effortless method of propulsion. It had no trouble keeping up with the Slanderscree.

“What do they eat out here? That’s a big animal, and you don’t need poison to take down pika-pina.”

Ta-hoding leaned forward so he could peer toward the bow, grunting as his belly was indented by the railing. After a few moments he pointed sharply to the southeast. “There, achivars!”

The herd to which the captain was referring soon came into view and Ethan realized the dyella hadn’t been following the icerigger. It had been pursuing the herd of herbivores. Each achivar was about the size of a pig. In addition to their fur, the achivar were covered with meter-long spines. At the tip of each spine was a small winglike membrane. By raising and lowering their spines and adjusting how they lined up, the achivar could catch the wind and sail efficiently across the ice, like the dyella and the Slanderscree, and dozens of other ice dwellers.

The icerigger plowed into the herd without running over a single member of the group. Even the youngsters spun and turned with incredible agility, their massed spines flashing as they caught the sun. They had large, brilliantly intense red eyes, tiny heads that hugged neckless bodies, and broad flat feet that had evolved into flat, slick pads. The dyella raised its long rills to catch the maximum amount of available wind and tried to cut the herd off, to steal the wind from their spines much as ancient seagoing men-of-war tried to capture the wind from an enemy sailing ship in order to deny it speed and maneuverability. The tactics of consumption instead of the strategy of war, Ethan reflected.

The dyella was having a hard time. The achivar were as fast and much more agile. September joined Ethan in viewing the spectacle.

“Ice-skating porcupines,” he grunted, glancing at Ta-hoding as the captain yelled a casual command to his helmsman, “Are those spines as sharp as they look?”

“Every bit of that,” Ta-hoding replied. “Their small wind-catchers notwithstanding. The trick in hunting achivar is to surprise them when they are resting or feeding and their spines are relaxed.”

“Moware asked me to come up here.” September gestured toward the bow. “They’d like to capture a specimen to take back to Brass Monkey. I tried to tell him and the others you wouldn’t go for it.”

“These achivar are neither asleep nor feeding, and if we were to come to a stop the dyella might decide spineless Tran are more agreeable prey than speedy, spiny achivar. Therefore we will not stop. You must convey my apologies to your scholars.”

“Not me. I agree with you completely.”

Ethan stepped away from the railing. “I’ll tell ’em. They’re the ones who are in a hurry to get to the southern continent. I’ll remind them that you’re only doing as they requested.” Ta-hoding nodded his approval.

As the icerigger left the achivar herd and its tormenting dyella behind, Moware fumed but had to be content with the images and sounds his recorder had captured. Much later the frustrated xenologist drew Ethan and Skua aside. “Who’s paying for this trip?”

September merely grinned and turned away to continue his surveillance of a line of distant granite teeth poking through the ice. “Ask that of Hunnar or Ta-hoding or any of the other noble Tran and you’ll have the chance to study how tight a U-turn this ship can execute.”

“Surely it would not destroy their scheduling for us to stop occasionally to gather specimens.”

“You’re the ones who wanted speed, remember? The Tran agreed to take you to the southern continent as fast as possible. That’s what they’re doing. You don’t alter plans in midjourney. It’s not their way. These people have put off seeing their friends and loved ones for another few months to help you out. Be satisfied that you’re on this ship at all. Don’t push your luck with the Tran. They have short tempers and long memories. Irritate them now and you’ll have the devil’s own time getting them to help you in the future.”

Moware mulled over September’s advice. “If you say so—but I’m not happy about this.”

“Nobody said you had to be happy.”

The xenologist bridled slightly but his position was weak and September knew it. His colleagues might sympathize but they wouldn’t risk the good will of the Tran to advance his argument. The meteorologists needed to get to the southern continent, and the geo people like Jacalan and Blanchard had nothing at all to study out on the ice. They weren’t about to insist on detours and unscheduled field trips.

The next day they entered the first extensive pika-pina field and no more was heard from Moware as he embarked on a detailed study of the vast reservoir of flora. He was too busy recording the new wonder to argue about stopping. All he had to do to collect a week’s worth of specimens was drag a collecting net alongside the speeding icerigger for ten minutes.

Ta-hoding guided the ship through the endless field of greenery, avoiding the larger, thicker stands of pika-pedan. The icerigger’s metal skates sliced cleanly through the water-filled greenery, leaving pulp, other organic detritus, and new shoots already climbing in its wake.

“Noticed something different here lately, young feller-me-lad?” September joined Ethan in staring over the bow sprit.

“That’s an open question.” Ethan idly checked the thermometer built into the wrist of his survival suit. It was a brisk ten below that morning. Not bad considering that just before sunrise the reading had fallen to minus sixty.

“It’s our good friend Williams.”

“What about him?” Ethan stared up at September curiously from behind his survival suit’s visor.

The giant nodded toward the four scientists clustered together amidships. Ethan recognized Williams immediately by the teacher’s battered survival suit, so different in appearance from the shiny unmarred attire of his companions.

“That’s our friend Hwang he’s hanging around with.”

“So? They’re observing together. I’m not surprised. After over a year of having to try to make conversation with a couple of simpletons like you and me, I’d expect him to spend as much time as possible with people of a similar mental bent.”

“Been doing nothing but observing together. Ever since we left Arsudun.”

“You wouldn’t be insinuating that there might be something more than a professional relationship developing between them, now would you?”

“Oh, no, not me, not me, lad.”

“Why don’t I believe you?” Ethan watched as Williams put his faceplate close to Hwang’s. Natural enough, given the limited range of the suits’ speaking membranes. “I’m not sure our friend Hwang is capable of anything more than that.”

“Don’t let her attitude fool you, feller-me-lad. Even steel can smolder, given the right conditions.”

“Sorry. I just can’t think of our Milliken as a right condition.”

“Can’t you now? Adjust your perspective, feller-me-lad. Among that lot Milliken’s stature is considerable, and I ain’t referring to his size. He’s seen stuff these stay-at-homes can only dream about—and lives to tell about it. And he’s a bona fide hero to the Tran. Don’t think our calculating friends miss things like that. Someone like himself comes marching into Brass Monkey on a ship of his own design, crewed by Tran he’s helped to make allies of, and the status of a fancy degree goes right down the chute. Can’t you see how someone like Hwang could be taken with a figure like that?” There was definite merriment in September’s voice.

“Maybe so, but all that time we spent out on the ice, I kind of got the feeling that maybe Milliken was … you know.”

“I thought similarly, feller-me-lad, which makes recent developments all the more intriguing. You think about it, though, and everything matches up pretty well. Our friend Cheela’s a bit on the domineering side, for all that she’s a petite little package, and …”

“Don’t you have something of more consequence to speculate on?” Ethan said disgustedly.

“I sure don’t,” September replied cheerfully. He waved at the ice sheet speeding past, the broad monotonous plain of pika-pina. “Not out here I don’t. I was just wondering what the Tran would make of such goings-on. Species or no, this is a bunch of sailors we’re keeping company with. Sailors are sailors no matter what shape their pupils or feet.”

“Just keep it to yourself, Skua. What you find amusing they might consider blasphemous or bad luck or something. We don’t know their attitude toward shipboard romances.”

“Tran wouldn’t be like that, but you’re right about one thing, young feller-me-lad. I should keep my big mouth shut.” He nodded toward the quartet of scholars. “It ain’t going to be easy to keep it a secret the way those two are carrying on. Why, do you realize that yesterday they…?”

The wind roared over the bow, drowning out the rest of his words as he strolled away.

Now that the idea had been planted Ethan found his gaze drawn back to Williams and Hwang like filings to a magnet. Damn September anyway for distracting him with inconsequentials. It was none of his business or anyone else’s what the two were about. If it were true, though, he was happy for Milliken.

He discovered he was grinning to himself.

The following afternoon they encountered not a herd of the achivar but a veritable spiny army, sweeping toward them from the south. Brown and blue spines stretched from horizon to horizon. Females and offspring swerved neatly around the Slanderscree’s skates while an occasional larger male would try to jab the metal supports with his forespines. The icerigger sailed on through an ocean of flag-waving spikes.

“Must be a hundred thousand of them!” yelled the ecstatic Moware as he tried helplessly to decide which way to aim his recorder.

Hunnar and Ethan watched the astonishing spectacle side by side. “Never have I seen or heard of a migration so large. It is not the proper time of year.”

“Maybe their habits are different in this part of the world,” Ethan suggested.

Hunnar executed a gesture of concession. “Perhaps. You would think they would stop in such a rich region to graze, yet they push steadily northward. One would almost think they were running away from something.”

V

“POYOLAVOMAAR ON THE HORIZON!”

All eyes turned to the lookout’s bin atop the mainmast. Then there was a concerted rush forward as crew and passengers alike strained for their first sight of the powerful city-state which had allied itself with Sofold following the battle outside Moulokin. The scientists were anxious to set eyes on the seven islands they had been told about, while Ethan, September, Williams, and the Tran wondered what kind of government had been established in their absence. Would they still be welcomed as friends, let alone as allies?

An hour later they were in among the outer islets, steep-sided volcanic buttes whose tops projected up through the frozen ocean. Neatly terraced hillsides were dotted with farmhouses of dressed stone. Smoke rose from tall chimneys. The first of the seven large islands that were home to the majority of Poyolavomaar’s population lay dead ahead.

Ethan scanned the slopes for signs of war or discord and allowed himself a silent sigh of relief at finding none. Their deposition of the homicidal former Landgrave had not sparked a civil war in their absence. “Looks peaceful enough.”

September nodded. “Someone’s taken control here, and without a heavy hand. I see new decorative wood carving on some of the buildings and the docks. Oppressed people don’t decorate. Wonder who the new Landgrave is. Maybe that young officer T’hosjer T’hos who finished off Ra-kossa.”

“Could be, but I think the nobles would choose someone with a closer connection to the throne if they could find a distant relative who wasn’t as crazy as Rakossa. We’ll find out soon enough.”

Small ice craft were turning from their courses to parallel and escort the Slanderscree. There was no mistaking the icerigger for any other ship on Tran-ky-ky. Those Poyolavomaarians who had been present when it had passed through on its way to fabled Moulokin recognized it immediately. Citizens of the city-state filled the rigging and lined the rails of their much smaller vessels to offer whistles and shouts of greeting.

One sleek, high-sailed ice boat pulled alongside long enough for a member of its crew to perform a feat of acrobatic derring-do which had even the hardened sailors of Sofold cheering. Using his strong claws to maintain his grip on the wood, he crawled out on the starboard rigger of his ship until he was squatting directly above the single skate at the end. Then he lifted one paw long enough to wave to his helmsman. As that individual delicately manipulated sails and wind, the ice boat’s starboard rigger rose slowly off the ice until it was careening along at sixty kilometers an hour on its fore and aft skates only. A hair more to port, and the boat would roll, smashing itself and its crew against the ice. Back to starboard too suddenly, and the impact would certainly jar the precariously balanced rider loose, to be battered against the ice or thrown beneath the massive skates of the Slanderscree.

Neither happened. With his boat heeled as far to port as possible the daredevil young Tran gathered himself and leaped, his claws and fingers slamming into the scaling ladder built into the icerigger’s side. Immediately his own boat dropped back level with the ice. Several of the Slanderscree’s sailors roared their approval. Others extended willing paws to help the boarder onto the deck.

He was a tall, sleek male, not long out of adolescence. His fur glistened with youth and his eyes shone with excitement as they tried to take in everything at once. They stopped moving only when they caught sight of Ethan and September.

“It is you who helped us to regain our freedom from the tyrant Rakossa. You have come back to us.”

“Just passing through,” said September. “As for regaining your freedom, you did that yourselves.”

“Who reigns in Poyolavomaar now?” Ethan asked.

“T’hosjer T’hos, he who deposed the tyrant.”

“Picked the right individual instead of the right bloodline,” September murmured. “Sensible folk, our Tran.”

“We are looking forward to meeting with your new Landgrave,” Ethan told their visitor.

“And he glad will be to greet you. I hight Neravar Blad-Kagenn, soldier in the Island Guard. I would be honored to accompany you to the castle.”

“Glad to have you aboard.” September looked past the young warrior. His small ship had sped away, probably to convey news of the Slanderscree’s, arrival.

Blad-Kagenn’s gaze traveled from one part of the huge icerigger to the next. “I am almost enjoying myself.”

“Any reason why you shouldn’t?” Ethan inquired curiously.

Blad-Kagenn turned yellow eyes on him. “Because the world is going mad, of course. Have you not heard in the northern lands?”

“I guess not.

“What is such talk?” Hunnar had joined them in time to overhear the warrior’s last comment. Redbeard’s attitude was more formal than that of the two humans, though not unfriendly. For his part Blad-Kagenn lowered his voice out of respect for the senior knight.

“The world is going mad, or so it is said. Perhaps it is nothing more than a rumor.”

Hunnar glanced at Ethan. “Something we should be looking into?”

Ethan shrugged. “Too soon to say. We’ve business of our own to take care of. One crisis at a time.” He returned his attention to Blad-Kagenn. “Tell us of your new Landgrave. We met him only briefly when last we passed through your territory, and at that time he was only a soldier, not a ruler.”

Blad-Kagenn told them of how Rakossa’s line had been formally deposed and how the nobles, to make peace quickly, had settled on the young soldier to lead them. None were sorry to learn of Tonx Ghin Rakossa’s death. His madness and not-so-private depravities had been both an embarrassment and threat to the population for many years. Rakossa’s spies had been everywhere, but when T’hosjer removed the head of the monster, the body dissipated quickly.

The Slanderscree was in among the seven main islands now. Ta-hoding slowed the ship lest they run over one of the smaller vessels plying the iceways. At the main island more cheers awaited them, though Ethan thought the shouts and roars oddly subdued.

Blad-Kagenn proudly escorted them around the harbor and up the steep slope that led to Poyolavomaar’s castle. T’hosjer T’hos was still the tall and, by Tran standards, slim soldier Ethan barely remembered from their previous visit. He greeted Ethan and Skua as friends and embraced Elfa and Hunnar, his recently acquired allies in the Union of Ice. Court retainers looked on approvingly. It was a good thing, this alliance. There was none of the nervous whispering or sidelong suspicious glances that normally attended such a meeting. The sycophants and fawning bodyguards who had surrounded Rakossa were gone.

Chairs were brought forward. They were wide enough to accommodate folding winglike dan—or a loose-fitting survival suit. Drinks arrived in the company of a court recorder who would write down whatever was said between Landgrave and visitor.

“I did not expect to see any of you so soon again,” the young Landgrave told them.

“Nor we you,” replied Elfa.

T’hos adjusted his dan and leaned forward. “I think I preferred soldiering to administration, but I could not refuse the honor to my family. Tell me now: What changes in the north? What have you seen, where have you been, and how does the Union progress?”

“The Union is solid as the rocks and grows larger and stronger every day,” Elfa told him. “As for what changes there have been”—she nodded demurely toward Hunnar—“I have taken a mate.”

T’hos smiled broadly at the Sofoldian knight. “This means that I will not be able to strengthen the Union by a marriage between our two states.”

Hunnar nodded and kept a straight face. “There are many young females of marriageable age and noble birth in Sofold.” His tone turned serious. “Much have we seen and learned since last we made landfall in Poyolavomaar. Enough to last a curious soldier several lifetimes.” He nodded toward Ethan and Skua. “Our new friends have ships that fly through the sky and devices that enable them to talk across more satch than separate Sofold and Poyolavomaar. As soon as the Union becomes strong enough and we are able to join in this greater union they call their Commonwealth, we too may be permitted to make use of such wonders.”

T’hos’s whiskers rose. “This is a time I must live to see! I have sent emissaries to Warreck and Vem-Hobar asking them to join in our Union. They have reacted with suspicion and evasion, which is to say, normally. I have hopes of winning them over together with several smaller outlying city-states. We could compel them to participate by force of arms but”—he glanced sideways at Ethan—“you say this is not how your government prefers a union to be formed.”

“Not really.” It wasn’t much of a prevarication, he reflected. Actually the Commonwealth didn’t care how primitives created their planetary governments. Conquest was as acceptable as argument. But the Tran were warlike enough. By giving soldiers like T’hos no option Ethan hoped to preserve lives and property. A union that came into being with as little bloodshed as possible would be the stronger for it.

“Continue your discussions.”

“Such is what we are doing,” T’hos assured him. “In the end I am confident reason will prevail. It is merely a matter of time. It is only that I am personally impatient to qualify for these benefits you spoke of when last you paused among us.” A puzzled expression crossed his face. “Was I then wrong in believing that you would not return here?”

Elfa dipped her head slightly and cut her eyes sharply toward her human companions. The double gesture was rich with suggestion, not all of which Ethan comprehended despite the months he’d spent living among the Tran.

“It seems that Sir Ethan and Sir Skua found our company so pleasing they decided to remain awhile longer among us.”

“Not on your whiskers,” September growled, not caring if he insulted half the organized government of Tran-ky-ky.

“I came along to keep him out of trouble and that’s the only reason I came along.” He nodded toward Ethan.

“We know well what a rugged and unfeeling person you are,” Hunnar said sardonically.

T’hos was staring past them, toward a high window which overlooked the harbor below. “Do you wish to know what I have thought of every day and night since you left? To ride one of your sky boats and see my world from above, as the long-winged urlus do. I have climbed all the major peaks of Poyolavomaar but it seems to me not the same.” He extended both arms to display his veinous dan. “These flaps of skin make chivaning a delight, but they will not allow us even to glide.”

“I promise,” Ethan told him, in defiance of any relevant regulations, “that as soon as the Union is accepted by my government, as representative of the Tran I’ll get you up in a skimmer or a shuttle somehow. I’ll have to have an aircar to carry out my new work here and I’ll bring it to Poyolavomaar just so you can have a ride.”

“Wonderful, wonderful!” The young Landgrave clapped his paws like a cub. “If only the world does not end before this happens. Some say it is going mad.”

“We heard the rumor,” September commented. “Maybe you could tell us a little more about exactly what—”

“Your pardon for interrupting.” Ta-hoding had been waiting patiently off to the side until he could stand it no longer. “We have a problem that is based on fact and not rumor, good Landgrave. As many of our crew were desirous of returning to their homes, we have sailed here with a minimal crew. My people are exhausted and in need of relief. The humans who are our passengers have been as helpful as they can be, but experienced ice sailors they are not.” He indicated Williams, Cheela Hwang, and the rest of the research group who were studying the wall hangings and stone carvings that decorated the Landgrave’s hall.

“They are willing, but sometimes they cause more trouble than their well-meaning efforts are worth.”

September nodded ready agreement. “I saw Jacalan trying to raise a sail in a seventy kph gale. We’re lucky we didn’t lose her.”

“Tell me what you require,” said T’hos unhesitatingly.

“We know that Poyolavomaar is home to many fine sailors of the ice. We would take some temporarily into our company to aid us in our journey. It would make much smoother our expedition to the southern continent.”

“The southern continent? Why would you wish to go there? Are you returning so soon to our friends in Moulokin?”

“No. We go another direction entirely; not south by southwest but by southeast.”

T’hos frowned. “You sail upon empty ice. Though that is far from the routes our traders ply it is said there is nothing in that direction for thousands of kijat. No cities, no towns, not even barren unclaimed islands. A few dealers in furs and metal have penetrated that far to tell us only that there is no reason to go farther.”

“Nevertheless, that’s where we’re going,” Ethan told him.

“You should not.” The Landgrave looked troubled. “That is the part of the world they say has gone mad.”

“Should’ve guessed,” September murmured. He jerked a thumb back toward the rubbernecking researchers. “Our thoughtful associates apparently aren’t the only ones who think something out of the ordinary’s going on down there.”

“The travelers who described this madness heard it from others who heard it from another who heard it from one they say was probably half-mad himself,” T’hos muttered uneasily. “One must be cautious in such matters. The credulous are all too ready to believe whatever they are told. As Landgrave I must be more careful. But it is one thing to deal with one who is mad, as Rakossa was, and another to think of what someone means when they talk of the whole world going mad.” He rose half out of his chair and gestured to his right.

The Tran who shuffled forward was older even than Balavere Longax. His chiv had seen so much use they had been worn down nearly flush with the thick pads of his feet. No more for this elder long hours of carefree chivaning across the ice. Like the poor humans his wizened eyes touched upon he was reduced to walking.

He listed slightly to the left, like a tree that has been permanently bent by the wind. The long staff he leaned on was pointed like a skier’s pole. His mane and facial fur had gone snow white. His eyelids opened halfway only, afflicting him with a perpetually sleepy air. His infirmities notwithstanding, he managed two-thirds of a respectful bow.

“I greet our friends from Sofold and from the sky. I remember you from your previous visit, though we were not then formally introduced.” He smiled, a patriarch who had outlived his tormentor. “I was not in favor in the court of Tonx Ghin Rakossa. I am afflicted with a disarming habit of saying what I think.”

“Get you run through every time,” September said knowingly.

“T’hos had resumed his seat. “This is Moak Stonetree, my most respected adviser. He it was who first learned of the rumor you would seek in person.”

“What’s all this nonsense about the world going mad?” September had never been much on protocol or subtleties.

Stonetree made certain the point of his staff was driven into a crack between two smooth flooring stones. His gaze narrowed as he fixed on the tall human. “A rumor proven is a lie confounded. Truth balances itself precariously betwixt the two. I have passed along only what I have learned from others.”

“Trappers and outreachers will say anything to draw attention to themselves.” Elfa snorted derisively. “The more their tall tales are believed the readier they are to embellish them. They enjoy frightening with imaginative stories of the world beyond the wind those who remain safe and secure in their cities.”

Stonetree nodded respectfully. “All that you say is true. Yet so wild and bizarre is this particular tale that one can only wonder at the inventiveness of whoever initially declaimed it. It has the singular virtue of remaining unchanged through several retellings.”

“Means little,” observed Ta-hoding. “Such travelers take care with what they swap far out on the ice, be it money, skins, or stories. Keeping such an odd and elaborate fantasy coherent would only add to its effectiveness, and to the amusement of telling and retelling it.”

“I hope that you are all right,” Stonetree said solemnly. “I hope that this is but a fanciful invention with which to afright children. However, it is sometime since my childhood and I find that I am frightened.”

“Is that all the stories say,” Ethan asked him, “that the world is going mad? Or are there details or descriptions? How does a world begin to go mad?”

The old adviser turned his patient gaze on the smaller human. “The tale says that in one part of the southern continent the ice has become a corpse.”

Ethan had to ask the oldster to repeat himself. September wasn’t sure he’d understood clearly either. The giant looked for explanation to their fellow Tran, but Ethan spoke up before Ta-hoding or Hunnar could do so.

“I don’t know that term. What’s an ‘ice corpse’?”

By way of reply Stonetree picked up a half-empty goblet and ceremoniously turned it upside down. Water ran out on the stones, escaping into the cracks in the floor.

“Do you now understand?”

September shook his head in frustration. “I never was one for oblique explanations.”

“It’s water,” Ethan told him. “When ice dies it becomes water. A corpse.”

“Okay, I buy the relationship. That still doesn’t tell us why someone would think the world’s going mad down there.”

“It is wrong,” Stonetree told him firmly. “We make ice corpses so we can drink. That is natural. To find it where we have made it not is unnatural. It is perverse. It is—madness.”

“Wait a minute,” said Ethan suddenly. “You’re talking about open water? A hole in the ice sheet?”

“Just so,” said Stonetree, relieved that the skypeople had finally grasped the notion.

“That’s impossible. Even at the equator it’s impossible.”

The old adviser sounded tired. “Just so.”

Ethan swallowed hard. At its thinnest point, the ice sheet that covered Tran-ky-ky from pole to pole was thirty meters thick. Because of the planet’s perturbed orbit the equatorial regions would not warm sufficiently for standing water to form on its surface for at least another several thousand years.

“It’s got to be volcanic activity, like Milliken and Jacalan and the rest suggested.” September was staring hard at the stone floor as though seeking inspiration in the cracks. “Nothing else could cause this damn ice to melt like that. Nothing!”

“How large do the travelers claim this ice corpse to be?” Ethan asked T’hos’s sage.

“There the tale becomes slippery. Some say it is no more than a small pond as might be made by hunters who have built themselves a fire upon the ice. Others declare it to be kijatin in extent. There is no proof because no one wants to go there. Demons make corpses of Tran as well as ice.”

Ethan tried to imagine how a group of unsophisticated Tran would react if they stumbled across a large area of open water. What would Earth’s ancient Polynesians have thought if the tropical seas surrounding their island homes had suddenly begun to freeze solid?

“Nobody makes a corpse of me, not while I’m alive,” said September with a disarming grin. “We’ll find out what’s going on there because that’s where we’re going.”

“If there is too much truth to this, I fear you will not return.” Stonetree shifted his stance, resting his aged legs. “A pity, for you have done much good for Poyolavomaar and for all Tran.” He gestured with a withered finger. “One piece of advice I will give you: If you encounter demons, leave them alone. Let them have what ice they wish. Perhaps they will claim only a small area and leave the rest of the world sane.”

Ethan indicated the scientists, who had concluded their tour of the royal hall and were casting impatient glances in the conference’s direction. “Our scholar companions have instruments which will take the measure of any demon. Whoever comes with us need not fear.”

T’hosjer considered. “I will find sailors for you who are not afraid of traveler’s tales. I will also give you a guide to help lead you to this place of seeming indecision.”

“We don’t need—” Ethan started to say, intending to explain that Hwang and company’s instruments and satellite reconnaissance measurements would take them straight to the region in question without the need for a guide, when September cut him off.

“We’d be very grateful for a guide and for all your help, T’hosjer. Anyone brave enough to lead an expedition of aliens to a land of demons is someone I’d like to have riding point for me. So long as your sailors aren’t tempted to bail out if the going gets rough.”

T’hosjer drew himself up to his full height. “The sailors of Poyolavomaar will do as their Landgrave bids them, no matter their own feelings. You need not fear desertion. Stonetree will make the arrangements.” As the Landgrave turned to bark orders at his adviser September leaned over to whisper to Ethan.

“Have to watch your thoughts, young feller-me-lad. T’hosjer here’s already offered to fill out our crew. To refuse his guide, who’ll probably also serve as his personal spy on the trip, would be a bit of an insult.”

Ethan looked abashed. “I let my enthusiasm get the better of me. Sometimes I forget the Tran aren’t regular folks.”

“You’re right about that. They’re a damnsight finer than regular folks. For a salesman you ain’t much of a diplomat.”

“Sorry. They’re not always the same thing.” He sat back in his chair as T’hosjer turned his attention back to them.

“Stonetree will speak to Orun Malc-Vierg, who is marshal of our fleet. He will find volunteers from among his bravest and most experienced sailors. There is honor to be gained in traveling with you, and much to be learned. I do not think there will be trouble filling your requirements. Fleet sailors are not superstitious trappers. As for your guide, it will be someone from my own court, knowledgeable, brave, and close to me.” He turned and beckoned toward the crowd of silent courtiers.

An extremely attractive and unexpectedly young Tran female slid over on an ice path to join them, moving with leonine grace and power. By Tran standards she was even prettier than Elfa Kurdagh-Vlata, but there was nothing soft-looking about her. Her attitude as her eyes flicked over them bordered on the imperious. She was silently challenging each and every one of them to object to T’hosjer’s selection of her as guide.

“This is Grurwelk Seesfar,” said T’hosjer by way of introduction. “As a child she explored that very same distant land you seek in the company of her father, a well-known and respected explorer.” He nodded to her. “You have the honor of guiding our allies back to that region.”

“I have been listening to your conversation. Too much talk. But I am pleased that I have been chosen to assist our friends from the sky.”

“You mated?” September asked casually. “And if so will your mate be coming along also?”

She looked sharply at the giant. She had yet to blink, Ethan noted. Among the Tran the absence of a gesture could have considerable significance. Not blinking for long periods could be construed as silent defiance.

“Mated I was. Widowed I am. My mate and my father vanished during a visit to that same area you aim toward during a hunting expedition more than a year ago. Since that time I have tried and failed to find others willing to accompany me on a search for them. All the fault of these childish stories. I was preparing to go by myself, and now providence has brought you and your curiosity to Poyolavomaar. I will be glad of your company and gladder still of your aid.”

“Whoa,” said September. “You’re coming along to help us, remember?”

She ignored him as she turned her icy stare on Ethan. “I know you have strange weapons and devices, instruments capable of dealing even with demons. I know this because of what you did to destroy Rakossa the tyrant and because of what I have just overheard. If demons have imprisoned my mate and my father, you will destroy them for me!”

“We don’t know that any demons are involved,” Ethan said quietly.

“There are!” Light flashed from her nictitating membranes. “They stole away my father and my mate. I will find them and bring them back.” So saying, she spun on her chiv and skated back into the crowd without waiting politely for a formal dismissal from Landgrave. T’hos simply smiled tolerantly.

September looked at the ruler of Poyolavomaar. “Not a good idea. She talks tough and looks tough, and I’m sure she knows the area as you say, but she’s in on this because she’s after revenge on something or somebody that probably doesn’t exist.”

“She will do as she has promised to do,” T’hosjer assured him.

“She can pledge her loyalty a thousand times over. That’s not the kind of reassurance we’re after.”

“I am curious that you think no demons dwell where you are going. If not demons, what then is causing the ice there to die?”

“We don’t know that’s what’s happening there,” Ethan reminded him. “There’s a system of internal heating that—” The expression beginning to appear on the Landgrave’s face made him stop, turn, and beckon Milliken Williams.

The teacher did his best to give T’hosjer a crash course in volcanism, geophysics, and plate tectonics. It was impossible to tell how much of it made sense to the young ruler. Finally September stepped in.

“We’re searching for the cause. Whether volcanoes or demons or hot springs or whatever, we don’t know. That’s why we’re going there. Whatever it is, we’ll find it and find it fast.” He leaned back in his chair. “I have a ship to catch.” He nodded toward the crowd of courtiers which had swallowed their guide-to-be. “And I’d still prefer someone to lead the way who doesn’t have a personal, highly emotional stake in the outcome of our travels.”

“Seesfar is high-strung,” T’hosjer admitted, “but she is the only one to have traveled in the region you intend to visit.”

“That’s settled then,” Ethan said quickly before September could think of another objection. “I’m sure she’ll be a great help.”

T’hosjer T’hos rose. “I will see to it that you are provisioned with whatever you require.” Ta-hoding started to speak and Hunnar was quick to silence the greedy captain. “The additional crew you asked for will arrive at your dock no later than this evening so that you may have time to instruct them prior to your departure. Come, Stonetree. I would talk more on this matter.”

The aged retainer bowed again, holding on to his pointed staff for support. They left together.

Ethan caught September by the wrist. “You ignored your own advice. What was that you told me about accepting the offer of a guide or else we’d insult our host?”

The giant looked uneasy. “I expected someone interested in topography, not revenge. She could steer us wrong, looking for her relatives.”

“Use your head, Skua. All we have to do is listen politely to her suggestions, nod approvingly, then go where our charts and measurements tell us.”

September nodded slowly. “I hope you’re right, young feller-me-lad. What’s done is done. But I’ve seen that expression and heard that tone from humans and nonhumans alike, and I’m telling you now that if that smoky little Tran sees something she wants, she’ll use the Slanderscree and the rest of us to get it for her.”

“Ability and determination don’t necessarily go hand in hand, Skua. We’ll be able to handle her.”

“Could be.” His eyes still searched the crowd without finding the shaggy-maned head he was looking for. “Could be also that if she’s convinced demons have shanghaied her father and husband, she’ll find a way to steer us straight to hell.”

“You’ve seen the survey satellite readouts,” Ethan reminded him quietly. “What makes you think we’re not headed there already?”

VI

AS THEY PREPARED TO depart the following morning it seemed as though half the city-state’s population had gathered to watch. Poyolavomaarians sat on the docks, stood along the harbor wall, and chivaned on the ice, the adolescents showing off to see who could execute the most intricate and dangerous maneuvers. A few of the icerigger’s sailors were doing a brisk trade in goods they’d brought with them from Arsudun, still little more than a name to most of the islands’ inhabitants. Ta-hoding complained that he was fast becoming captain of a crew of merchants instead of sailors and that the Slanderscree was so loaded down with trade goods it wouldn’t steer properly.

Nevertheless, despite his complaints Ta-hoding was justly renowned for his tolerance. The trading was allowed to continue until the ship’s cook attempted to bring aboard a disassembled, intricately carved Poyolavomaarian house, for which he’d traded several barrels of dried vegetables from the ship’s stores. Ta-hoding let loose with a barrage which had his people scrambling to sequester their purchases belowdecks before he could throw them overboard. The next sailor or soldier who attempted to swap so much as a button would find himself tied to the stern of the icerigger to be dragged like baggage all the way to the southern continent, Ta-hoding roared.

The crew griped about lost opportunities for profit but returned to their stations and jobs. Ta-hoding might be overweight and slightly comical-looking, but there was nothing amusing about his authority or his willingness to bring it to bear on those under him. For their part the Poyolavomaarians applauded each of the captain’s inventive imprecations and urged him to still more elaborate flights of verbal-anatomical fancy. Or as September put it: “Nothing like a little cultural exchange to cement friendships among new allies, feller-me-lad.”

While exchanges, verbal and commercial, were taking place, Grurwelk Seesfar clung to the foremast rigging and sneered at her jostling fellow sailors.

It was Suaxus-dal-Jagger, Hunnar’s senior squire, who apologized for intruding on September’s observation with a comment of his own. “Perhaps you could lend your wisdom to a small problem, sirs.”

“What kind of problem?” Ethan sighed. For some unknown reason the Tran believed he possessed great powers of reconciliation and understanding.

“Two of them, actually. They’re right behind you.”

Both men turned. Members of the ship’s crew were going about their business, storing last supplies, cleaning the deck, pouring water to form fresh icepaths, and defrosting frozen pika-pina rope with a lamp. A few were instructing recruits from Poyolavomaar’s navy in the fine points of the icerigger’s operation.

He was just turning back to dal-Jagger when a blur near one of the main loading ramps caught his attention. His first thought was that two of the new crew were midgets. As they slowed and he saw their pudgy faces, he knew they were preadolescent cubs.

That in itself was not a surprise. Wherever they docked cubs loved to play around the great ship, chivaning around its tall metal skates and climbing on the cables that secured the ice anchors. What was surprising was that they were on board. Their antics drew angry comments rather than smiles from the busy crewmembers.

“They’re in the way,” Ethan commented. Dal-Jagger nodded approvingly. “Why not shoo them off, then?”

“That is the problem, Sir Ethan. They are the offspring of this Seesfar person who has been forc—assigned to us by the Landgrave of Poyolavomaar. It is beyond normal protocol.” The squire was obviously upset. “I understand as do most of us that we must accept her because to refuse would be to insult our new allies, but it is beyond common sense to expect us to accept her entire family as well. The Slanderscree is not a nursery.”

“Why not just let it slide?” September suggested. “What harm can a couple of cubs do? The trip’s bound to further their education.”

“The Slanderscree is also not a school. Nor is it a passenger transport. The crew are already complaining.”

“Absurd. Next you’ll be telling me it’s bad luck to have a female on board.”

Dal-Jagger eyed him oddly. “Why would I say a thing like that, Sir Skua? All who sail know it is the contrary, that it is good fortune to have a mixed crew. Not to mention more enjoyable for all involved. But you are not Tran.”

“Nope. Every race to its own prejudices, I guess.”

“This has nothing to do with prejudice. It is a question of what is practical and sensible,” dal-Jagger said firmly. He gestured toward the loading ramp. “Several times they have almost caused others to fall.”

“No need for a cabin boy or two, is what you’re saying. Our traditions ain’t the same either. Ah.” His tone changed to one of satisfaction. “The captain has been informed.

“Come on, feller-me-lad. This ought to prove interesting.”

Grurwelk was hidden behind Ta-hoding’s mass, though they could hear her stating her case as they approached.

“They come with me because I am all they have left. They are my family.”

“While you are on my ship your crewmates are your family,” Ta-hoding shot back. “T’hos rules in Poyolavomaar. Out on the ice, I am lord. They must remain here.”

“I’m taking them with me,” she growled, “so that they may see their father again soonest, if he still lives.”

Something bumped into Ethan from behind, nearly knocking him off his feet. When he turned he found himself staring down into a wide furry face. Its owner took a step backward and stumbled into his brother. Both of them fell to the deck. Awed eyes flicked from Ethan to September and back again. The cub let out a peculiar whoosh of chilled air, the small cloud like a visual exclamation mark. Ethan knew it as the Tran equivalent of gosh-gee-whiz.

“Look,” breathed the cub, “it’s the great lords from the sky!”

“Not great lords,” Ethan corrected him.

The pair scrambled to their feet. “It is as we were told. You are as modest as a great lord, sir.”

On the edge of puberty, Ethan decided as he studied them. Cute as could be. As he looked on they both bent double and rested their paws on the deck.

“We are honored,” they said in unison.

“Charming little buggers,” September commented. He glanced at Ta-hoding. “You sure they’d be in the way, Captain?”

That worthy looked uncomfortable but he stuck to his guns. “If you were a scout or a pilot, Sir Skua, you would know how out of place cubs are on a warship.”

“Warship?” Seesfar seized on the claim immediately. “I see no preparations for war. Only for travel and exploration.”

“We go not to fight but we must be prepared to. We have had to do so in the past.”

“You speak of my offspring as being in the way. What do you call these foolish humans who dash back and forth and run into each other much as my children?”

“Scholars. Scholars are often absent-minded because they are constantly thinking on scholarly things. This is something that is the same among the skypeople as it is among us.”

“What better place for a pair of cubs, then, but among a host of scholars? Think of what they could learn.”

Ta-hoding flashed his dan at her. “I will not sail this ship out of this harbor with those infants aboard!”

Eyes locked. Sailors pretended to continue their work. When the end came it was a surprise to everyone.

Seesfar nodded, just once. “This is your ship. While I am on it, I will abide by your decisions.”

Ta-hoding relaxed uncertainly. “Well, I—that is right of you. Very right. It is decided, then.”

“Yes. Decided.” She put her dan protectively around both cubs. “Come, sons of Seesfar. My body will go but my heart will stay still upon the ice.” As everyone stared she led them down the ramp and off the ship.

“See?” Ethan said smugly. “She’s perfectly responsive.”

September was following the departing guide with his eyes. “Or perfectly subtle.”

“I don’t follow you.”

“Any Tran who’s ever sailed a ship knows that cubs aren’t wanted aboard.” He nodded toward the dock. “She knew that when she brought them aboard. She was also aware of our worries about her. What if she brought them on just so we could see how docile she could be when push came to shove? What if the whole confrontation was a sham, staged so she’d have a chance to demonstrate how ‘cooperative’ she could be? To allay our lingering concerns?”

“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 variously “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 results 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.

The stove was inserted in the carcass and the opening sewn shut. Ethan, September, and Hunnar dragged it to the rail.

“Carefully go here, feller-me-lad,” September whispered as something moved in the moonlight below. “Now!”

They heaved it over the side. It struck the looming tentacle and bounced away. For a moment they were afraid the carcass would roll across the ice and be ignored.

But the shan-kossief was more sensitive than that. Noting the presence of something edible, it began to melt the ice beneath the carcass, which vanished into a puddle even as Ethan and his companions looked on. They retreated from the edge lest they follow the butchered corpse into oblivion.

No one spoke. A few looks of despair crossed faces when time passed and the ship shuddered anew.

“It didn’t work,” Ethan mumbled. “We’re going to have to think of something else.”

“I don’t understand.” Blanchard was shaking his head in puzzlement. “On a world like this a few hundred degrees should feel like thousands.”

“Not in haste.” Ta-hoding wasn’t looking at them. He was listening, listening and perhaps employing senses only someone who’d spent a lifetime sailing the ice sheet possessed. Again the Slanderscree quivered.

“Ethan is right,” said Hunnar. “It is not working.”

“Something is. Be calm, relax, and feel the ship.”

Hunnar frowned, then slumped slightly. Once more the icerigger shook. Ethan stared at one, then the other, until he couldn’t stand the silence any longer.

“Would one of you please tell me what’s going on?”

“The last few times the ship moved it was not from settling,” Ta-hoding told him without shifting his gaze from the ice beyond. “I am sure of it. I know this ship’s balance as well as I do my own, maybe more so.” As he finished, the Slanderscree was wrenched violently—but to the side, not downward.

Ethan and the others made a cautious concerted rush to the rail. No tentacles rose to the attack. A glance showed that in the subarctic night air the water which had been sucking at the port bow runner was already refreezing, the ice sheet re-forming around the duralloy. Hal Semkin, Hwang’s assistant, produced a small flashlight and played the powerful beam over the surface below. It was likewise refreezing. There were no visible weak spots for tentacles to burst through.

“Sonuvabitch,” Ethan muttered in surprise, “we did it.”

“Don’t be so quick.” Seesfar pressed close behind him, staring at the ice below. “The shan-kossief is crafty. It may simply have gone deeper and waits there for us to grow careless.”

“Not if he’s trying to get rid of that stove,” Hwang argued. “I don’t care how big the thing is. That’s all that’ll be on its lumbering mind for a while.”

“You do not know the shan-kossief,” Seesfar snapped.

“Maybe not, but I do know some biochemistry. The creatures of your world are no more different in makeup than you and I. They’re flesh and blood, even if their blood is pumped full of natural antifreeze.”

“We cannot in good conscience send workers over the side to cut us free until we are sure the shan-kossief has departed,” said Hunnar.

“You can’t.” Ethan extended a gloved hand toward Semkin. “Let me have that light.” The meteorologist obediently handed it over. “Somebody get a rope. If I run into trouble down there you can yank me clear.”

September divined his friend’s intentions. “May not be time enough to yank, feller-me-lad.”

“I don’t think it’ll matter. I think Cheela’s right. Our subsurface nemesis has gone off in search of a nice quiet place to try to throw up.” He nodded over the side. “Everything’s already refrozen. Surely if the shan-kossief was still around it wouldn’t let that happen. It would have to start all over again. We’ll fix the rope around my arms and shoulders so that if I’m grabbed I won’t slip out of my suit.”

“If it’s still down there and it does get a grip on you, it won’t matter,” September warned him. “All the Tran on this ship won’t be strong enough to pull you free.”

“Somebody’s got to make sure it’s gone. I’m lighter than you are and our thoughtful friends don’t have my experience out here. Besides, I know what a kossief is like, if not its big brother. And I don’t want to spend the night wondering about it. If it is gone and we sit around here and debate its intentions, we might give it time to come back.”

September shook his head. “I think your common sense is frozen, like everything else on this iceball.” When Ethan started to comment September stopped him. “Spare me any more of your logic. It’s your neck. And everything above and below it.”

“That’s right,” Ethan agreed. “It’s my neck.”

The rope was secured and double-tightened. Thankfully no one wished him good luck. Not verbally, anyway. He, slipped over the rail and started down the boarding ladder cut into the icerigger’s side. When he reached bottom he took a deep breath and let himself drop the rest of the way to the ice.

The silence on the ice was total. He couldn’t hear the soft whispering of his companions up on deck. As he scanned the surface he saw that the ice sheet was broken and cracked where it had been thawed by the shan-kossief and then had refrozen in the creature’s absence. Assuming it was absent, he reminded himself.

Trying to float above the ice, Ethan made his way toward the bow. Nothing moved under the ice sheet. The few puddles he encountered were freezing underfoot. His light penetrated the ice more than a meter in places and revealed nothing.

The starboard bow runner was intact. As near as he could tell so was its portside counterpart, though it was buried two-thirds of the way into the refrozen ice. Shouldn’t take a crew of energetic, muscular Tran equipped with spears and ice picks long to chip it free, he mused. Then they would have to hack a sloping channel so it could slip free without damage when Ta-hoding gave the order to put on sail.

He leaned back, saw anxious faces and visors staring down at him. “It’s all right. We can get out of here without any trouble. The runners and braces are intact. Just going to take a little hard digging. I’m coming up.” He turned and started briskly back toward the boarding ladder. He was halfway there when the ice gave way beneath him.

The rope harness brought him up short. Somehow he hung on to the light. Now it danced crazily off smooth ice walls as he spun like a top at the end of the cable.

Nothing had reached up to grab him and pull him down, he saw as he fought to still the pounding in his chest. He’d fallen through a thin layer of ice into a sizable cavern. It dawned on him that he was dangling in the middle of the cavity the shan-kossief had occupied. He felt like bait on a line.

Bringing the light under control as his spinning slowed, he was immensely relieved to see that the cavity was empty. Peculiar undulations marred the otherwise smooth walls, reminding him of watery ripples on a smooth sandy beach. His beam revealed a huge tunnel stretching off into the distance. Residual heat trapped beneath the surface continued to melt water in a few spots. The steady, metallic drip was the only sound in the cavern besides his own breathing.

He was still slowly spinning when he picked out a large mound of white powder off to one side. At first he thought it was pulverized ice. It was a different shade of white, however, and the riblike projections which emerged from the pile were not ice crystals. He wondered if any of the crushed skeletons were Tran, but not hard enough to insist on a closer look. The cavern was too much like a catacomb.

His light lingered on the mountain of dissolved calcium as he was pulled up through the hole.

“I’m okay!” he shouted as he reemerged. A swing on the rope brought him into contact with the ship’s side and he was able to secure the grip on the boarding ladder he’d been walking toward. Still shaking, he forced himself to climb the rest of the way to the deck.

September’s anxious face was the first one he saw. “You disappeared on us, feller-me-lad. I thought you were a goner.”

“I fell through a thin spot into a big cavity. The shan-kossief’s lair, I think.” He sucked fresh air. “We’d better make sure we angle to starboard when the time comes to move. That’s a big hole down there. If you could tame one of those things, it’d be a heckuva help in building underground communities on this world.”

September glanced over the side, saw the dark pit into which Ethan had stumbled. “You might be able to train it, but I don’t think you could find anybody who’d volunteer to feed it.”

Ready hands helped Ethan slip free of the harness. “There’s a big tunnel stretching from the lair northward. That’s where it took off. You can bet if the stove doesn’t kill it, we’ll see it again.”

“We will not,” Ta-hoding assured him, “because we will no longer be here.” His breath formed a small cloud in front of him as he turned and began shouting orders. There was a noticeable reluctance on the part of the crew to comply with the captain’s directives. No one rushed to scramble over the side and test the accuracy of the human’s assessment.

Eventually, two soldiers braver than their comrades cautiously made their way down. Using picks they started hacking at the ice which imprisoned the Slanderscree’s port bow runner. When nothing materialized to grab them, they were joined by two dozen of their fellows. Picks rose and fell with increasing confidence.

Meanwhile Suaxus-dal-Jagger and a trio of Hunnar’s bravest soldiers lowered themselves into the shan-kossief’s lair to stand guard before the tunnel. At least those working on the exposed surface would have time to flee if the monster returned.

The pit was not reoccupied. “Busy trying to salve the worst case of heartburn it’s ever had” was how Blanchard described the shan-kossief’s situation. If it could survive the heat, the creature would pass the stove much as it had passed the bones of its prey. Then hunger would drive it again.

That was the hypothesis put forth by Moware. No one planned on staying in the area to check its validity. As soon as the runners had been freed and paths for them sliced through the ice, they brought the excavators aboard and the ice anchors in.

Wind filled the icerigger’s sails. Wood groaned. The great ship began to move forward. Shuddering and scraping the ice, the Slanderscree emerged from its temporary imprisonment. Moments later it was standing even with the surface of the frozen ocean.

Soldiers and sailors cheered, then returned to their tasks. Despite the fact that many of them had been chipping ice all night, no one rested until they had traveled a reassuring distance from the shan-kossief’s cavern. A safe number of satch away, someone remembered the unfortunate night watch and the ship paused long enough to hold a brief, somber double ceremony. The wind would have to be satisfied with words alone since there were no bodies to return to the ice.

There had been some tension between the more experienced sailors from Sofold and the newcomers who’d joined the expedition at Poyolavomaar. The confrontation with the shan-kossief had taken care of that. Of the two night-watchers who’d been lost, one had been a citizen of Wannome, the other of Poyo. Tragedy was a powerful unifier.

A few guttorbyn, aerial carnivores resembling furry flying dragons, swooped down on the ship in hopes of picking off an isolated meal. Each time, they were met by alerted, armed Tran who would drive them off, shrieking their disappointment. After the shan-kossief, the guttorbyn seemed almost comical, with their long, narrow mouths and outraged cries. By the time they reached the equatorial ice pressure ridge which the Tran called the Bent Ocean, the crew had become blasé about danger.

The ridge was a much more serious if less life-threatening obstacle to their progress than any carnivore, however. Forty thousand years ago that line was where the previous warm cycle had ended. Pack ice from the north had run into pack ice advancing from the south. The two ice sheets had crunched together and pushed up and out, forming a solid wall of blocks and slabs that girdled Tran-ky-ky at its equator.

Ta-hoding barked at his helmsman and the icerigger slowly swung eastward. They sailed parallel to the ridge with the wind behind them, searching for a break the crew could enlarge to create a passage.

During their previous journey to Moulokin, far to the west, they had found such a pass. After enlarging it with picks and axes, they’d used the power of a rifs storm to force the ship the rest of the way through. It was not a technique anyone wished to employ again since it could just as easily result in the destruction of the icerigger as in its safe passage to the southern ice sheet.

Days passed without sighting anything more encouraging than slight variations in the height of the ridge. Ethan and his companions grew discouraged.

“Surely,” Cheela Hwang said to him, “there has to be a place where the ice has collapsed under its own weight, or been cracked by continuing pressure, or has melted enough for us to make a passage?”

“Not necessarily. Any change we’ve observed has been organically induced, as by that shan-kossief thing.” Zima Snyek, their resident glaciologist, was the butt of jokes among the Tran since he spent as much time working with the ice as a kossief. “We know the ridge circles the whole planet. It’s conceivable it might do so without interruption.”

“We haven’t the time or the resources for a circumnavigation.” Hwang was studying a small electronic map. “We’ve already sailed too far to the east. We shouldn’t continue much farther this way.” She glanced up at Ethan. “You told me you broke through the ridge once before.”

He nodded, gestured stemward. “On our journey to Moulokin. It was a do-or-die situation. Break through or get torn to shreds by a rifs.”

“Why don’t we just retrace that route and utilize the existing passage?”

Milliken Williams had been listening, as was his preference, but now spoke up. “First because it’s a long ways to the west. Second because we could easily miss it and sail on by, and lastly because we barely slipped through the first time. Between the weather and subsurface movements, the gap may already have been at least partially filled in. If that’s the case, we’ll never find it. We’d be a lot better off if we could find a suitable way through right here. You’re talking about spending weeks searching for a break that might be undetectable.” He shrugged. “You’re right about one thing, though: If we don’t find something soon, we won’t have any choice but to go back.”

It was Ta-hoding who brought the search to a halt. Like most of them he’d spent endless hours scanning the unbroken barrier paralleling them off to starboard, the wind ruffling his mane and the fur on shoulders and neck. He was very patient, Ta-hoding was, but he, too, had his limits. The day came when he requested a conference.

“It is time to decide how we intend to make our way southward from this region. We cannot sail around the world only to meet ourselves in the same places we have already visited.”

“There is no other way.” Hunnar was as frustrated as any of them. “We have already determined that.”

First Mate Monslawic nodded. “Still we must find one. Let us think hard on this matter as we continue as we have for another day or two. If by then we have not found a place to make a passage, we must turn about and retrace our course. Better to sail all the way back toward Moulokin to search for a way through we know exists than to continue endlessly on an unprofitable heading.” Clearly the Slanderscree’s first mate had given their situation much thought.

“We cannot go back,” Ta-hoding informed him. “We must cross the Bent Ocean within the next couple of days.”

“Why the hurry?” September wanted to know.

By way of reply Ta-hoding pointed toward the bow. Ethan joined the others in staring forward. A few scattered clouds marred the otherwise pristine horizon. Not rain clouds, of course. It never rained on Tran-ky-ky. Most of the planet’s moisture lay permanently frozen on its surface. Even snow was rare, though more common in the planet’s warmer regions. Clouds were seldom seen, even here near the equator.

Ethan wondered what Ta-hoding was pointing at. As it developed it was something visible only to an experienced sailor.

“For the past several days the winds have been erratic,” he told them. Ethan knew the winds of Tran-ky-ky blew with extraordinary consistency from west to east. “That is a strange formation but not an unknown one.” Then he was talking about the clouds, Ethan mused. “Also it is the season.”

“Season for what?” Williams asked.

“Comes soon a rifs. Not today, not tomorrow, but soon. Out of the east. Usually they come from north or south. This comes out of the east. It will be very bad.”

That went without saying, Ethan knew as he stared at the innocuous-looking puffs of cumulus. It meant a complete reversal of normal wind patterns. The atmospheric disturbance required to accomplish that would have to verge on the demonic. Yet Ta-hoding sounded so sure.

“What’s a ‘rifs’?” Jacalan asked.

Hwang let her colleague Semkin explain. “A local superthunderstorm. Several thunderstorm cells cluster in the same area. They start feeding off each other, the way a firestorm feeds on its own heat. On Tran-ky-ky very little actual moisture’s involved. That only seems to make the storm worse.” He was gazing thoughtfully at the clouds.

“I’ve never actually experienced one, of course. None of us have. They’re nearly nonexistent away from the equatorial regions. But Cheela and I have studied them via satellite reconnaissance. The thunderhead crowns will boil up tens of thousands of meters until they scrape the limits of the upper atmosphere. There’s lightning, lots of lightning, and surface winds approaching hundreds of kilometers an hour. Not good kite-flying weather. Any animal with any sense immediately goes to ground to try and wait it out.”

There was silence as his colleagues absorbed the implications, which were obvious even to non-Tran and non-sailors. You couldn’t tack into a three-hundred kph wind, nor could you safely anchor yourself anywhere on the barren ice sheet. The only reasonable chance of safety lay in a protected harbor. There were no harbors of any kind out on the naked ice.

A ship caught in the open and overtaken by the rolling storm front of a rifs had one chance and one only to survive. That lay in adjusting the amount of sail and turning about to run directly before the wind, praying that sails, masts, and crew held together long enough for the storm to pass over.

Once before the Slanderscree had done that and survived, battered and bruised. Attempting it a second time would involve tempting whatever fate had thus far watched over her. Even if they tried it and managed to ride out the storm, it would shove them, probably damaged and unstable, far off their chosen course. The planet itself seemed to be conspiring to keep them from reaching their destination.

Ideally they would make it through the pressure ridge, put on all sail, and fly southward beyond the storm’s reach. Ideally. Ideally, Ethan thought, they would have ignored regulations and smuggled along a few explosive devices with which to blast their way through the barrier. No time left now for what-ifs and maybes.

They had no explosives, no beamers, no appropriate modern technology. All they did have, they realized as they took stock of their resources, was a lot of muscle and determination. That would suffice to chop a path through the ice ridge. In weeks. They needed to break through within forty-eight hours.

What sophisticated scientific instrumentation they did have consisted largely of devices for measuring and calibrating and weighing, not for concentrating brute force on a specific area. A pair of drills designed to take core samples from the ice would help. A hundred such drills would be needed to accomplish their ends. The drills could melt some ice but not nearly enough fast enough.

The alternate solution did not occur to the Tran because as Tran they would never have conceived of something like it. For once the obvious was voiced by Skua September and not Williams.

“It’s pretty damn clear to me that since we can’t go through this stuff we have to go over it.”

Ethan added his own expression to the sea of astonishment that greeted this blithe observation.

VII

“ARE YOU PROPOSING,” WILLIAMS said finally, “to turn the Slanderscree into an aircraft?”

September didn’t bat an eye. “Something like that.”

Since September was considering it semiseriously, the teacher did likewise. “Even if we could pack on sufficient sail the wind isn’t strong enough.”

“Funny, that is.” September looked thoughtful. “Though with a rifs behind us and enough sail I wouldn’t be surprised if we could get the ol’ scow airborne. Controlling her would be something else again.” He glanced past Williams until he found Snyek. “Going to need those coring drills you mentioned. Have to melt some ice and then let it refreeze.”

“What in heaven’s name for?” Hwang demanded to know.

September grinned at her. “Your corers aren’t big enough or powerful enough to melt half a path through that ridge, but we can use them to take the sharp edges off, if you know what I mean. Some of those ancient ice blocks that form the ridge are pretty big and pretty solid. If we could just sort of melt them together and even them out, doing the fine work with ice picks and axes, why, we might end up with something.”

“Like what?”

His eyes twinkled and he turned his grin back on Williams. “Like a ramp.” He let them mull that thought over, then continued. “See, we form and shape this big ramp out of ice using the coring drills and hand tools, ran it right to the crest of the pressure ridge. Then we back the Slanderscree off a fair ways”—-he illustrated the necessary maneuvers with great sweeps and twists of his long arms—“as far to the west as required, put on all sail, and bring her in to the ridge at an angle with the wind strong behind us.

“We go up that ramp,” he said as he slid one palm sharply against the other, “and over the top. That’s it, we’re through. We don’t have to cut through the damn ridge, all we have to do is go over it.” He coughed into a closed palm. “And make a respectable landing on the other side, of course. One thing about ice: It may be sharp-edged and cold and uncomfortable, but as long as you’ve got some tools, good cold weather, and a heat source or two you can sculpture it as easy as you would a bar of soap.”

His companions’ response was underwhelming. “I would prefer to transit the ridge another way,” Williams said finally.

“So would I.” This from a doubtful Ta-hoding. “I find your thoughts intriguing but impractical, friend Skua. As you have said, the critical problem is one of velocity.”

“Are you kidding? The Slanderscree only put on all her sail once or twice. You know how fast she could go.”

“On the level ice, yes,” the captain admitted, “but uphill? Such a thing has never been done in a large ship. It is a maneuver left for sport, on chiv or in a very small light craft.”

September looked at Hwang. “Run some calculations. Mass and velocity, wind speed—let’s find out if it’s theoretically possible, at least. We can make the ramp as graduated, as long as necessary.”

“Not too long.” Ta-hoding the sailor had an excellent grasp of elementary geometry, not to mention the physical capabilities of his crew. “We have only so much time.”

“We’ll manage,” said September impatiently. “We’ll do whatever we have to do. I’m sure we can gain the necessary speed and hold the ramp.”

“That is not what troubles me.” All eyes turned to Hunnar Redbeard. “Let me see if I understand this novel sky-people notion.” He employed his arms and paws in rough imitation of September’s aerodynamic gestures. “We retreat a certain distance, put on all sail, and catch the wind full behind us.”

“That’s it, that’s right,” said September excitedly.

“We sail up this ramp you propose to construct”—he raised one paw skyward—”and launch ourselves over the top of the bent ocean with enough force to carry us across the far side of the barrier and onto the navigable ice on the southern side.”

September looked pleased. “You’ve got it, Hunnar.”

“I have no doubt we can attain the required speed, and I believe it may be possible to maintain enough control at that speed to sail up this ramp. Yet I worry still.”

“About what?”

“The Slanderscree is a large, heavy ship. It was designed to chiv”—and he made a shoving gesture with his right paw—“across solid ice. It is a strong vessel and many times have we learned the strength of the wondrous metal we cut from your small ship to fashion the great runners and their braces. Still, for all it has accomplished and all it has survived, it was not designed to be dropped from a considerable height.” He stared at September.

“If all goes as you plan and we overfly the Bent Ocean, what will happen to us when we strike the unyielding ice on the far side? The ocean will not break. That is something that cannot be said of the Slanderscree. What would it profit us to cross the barrier if we destroy our ship in the process?”

“That’s one thing I don’t have any way of predicting,” September replied somberly, “and despite all their instruments and learning, I don’t think Williams and his friends do either.”

“The ship’s whole weight will come down on the bow runners, then the stern and the rudder,” Ethan murmured. “If we try this, and I don’t have any better idea, we need to pull everything out of storage that can be used for padding. Spare clothing, extra pika-pina rigging, everything we’ve got. If we cram it all between the runners and their braces, it’ll help absorb the shock.”

“That’s the spirit, feller-me-lad!”

“Those braces can only cope with a certain amount of shock,” Ta-hoding reminded them.

“They’re duralloy from the skin and guts of a lifeboat,” September said. “So are the bolts and sheet bracing. The woodwork’s the product of Wannome’s finest carpenters and shipwrights. Even if we do bust a brace or two we can still rig something temporary to hold the runners in place until we can get the ship back to a repair yard.”

“If only it were that simple.” Ta-hoding gestured toward the bow. “If we break off more than one runner, we will have to anchor the ship so that we can make these temporary repairs you speak of so casually. Remember that the rifs can catch us as easily on the southern ocean as on this side, should we become trapped in this place. With damaged runners we could not even run before the wind. The ship could be torn to pieces.”

For a moment or so only the wind talked. Then Ethan spoke up quietly. “Doesn’t look like we have much choice. We’re much too far from Poyolavomaar or any other known shelter to try to make it to safety before the storm hits. If we sit around and wait for it, we’ll be in real trouble. If we try and outrun it and it overtakes us, it’ll blow us so far off course we might as well go back to Poyo and start over again.”

“Might we not find shelter in the lee of an island?” Elfa wondered.

Ta-hoding shook his head. “We’ve seen none that would be suitable.”

“Then Ethan and Skua are right. We must try this.”

Hunnar looked sharply at his new mate. “I always knew you to be conservative. Have we spent too much time among the skypeople?”

She put two fingers to his lips, letting him feel the claws. “Not that. In your company I would dare anything, lifemate.”

Hunnar let out an appreciative hiss. “Whatever the daughter of the Landgrave dares, can I dare less?”

She withdrew her hand, turned to face Ta-hoding. “Royalty does not command the ice. This is your dominion, your ship. The final decision rests with you. You know what the icerigger is capable of better than anyone else. What are our chances of surviving such a mad enterprise?”

Ta-hoding sighed deeply, executed an intricate gesture with the fingers of his right hand. Fifty-fifty. Ethan had hoped for better odds.

“One is ready to risk all, the other tells me nothing,” Hunnar grumbled. Cat’s eyes turned on Ethan. “What think you, my friend?”

“Why ask me? I’m just a passenger on this boat. I have no authority here. Why don’t you ask Milliken?”

“Because you are no adventurer, by your admission. Because you and not friend Milliken are a counterweight to tall Skua’s opinion. You are cautious where he is rash. You consider where he dares.”

“Well, in the absence of a better alternative I’d have to say that you don’t get anywhere in life without taking a chance now and then. I admit we’ve taken our share, this past year, but that doesn’t alter the situation we’re facing now. That’s all easy for me to say. It’s not my ship.”

“No, but it is your life,” Elfa pointed out.

“Let us do this.” Ta-hoding spoke without looking at. them, already making preparations in his mind. “Everyone who is not a member of the sailing crew will disembark and cross the Bent Ocean on foot, to wait for us on the other side. That way if catastrophe strikes not all will be at risk.”

“Then you have decided,” Hunnar murmured.

“Boldness is not in me. I play only the dice that are given to me. Here we must roll as best we are able and hope for a twelve to show itself. If I cannot have confidence in my ship and my crew, what is left to me?”

“So it is to be tried.” Hunnar could not bring himself to show false confidence. “I wish there was another way. Were there, we would not be proceeding with this insanity.” He turned to Hwang. “My soldiers will work side by side with you to shape the ice. You will choose the angle of the ramp and instruct us accordingly.” He stood. “Now that we have determined our course of action let us move quickly. The sooner we begin, the sooner we will be finished.”

“And the harder we work,” Elfa added, “the less time we will have to think about what we are really going to attempt.”

Blue sky had given way to roiling blackness on the eastern horizon by the time the ramp was ready. Like questing scouts, the first gusts of wind from the advancing storm front slammed into the steady west wind, sending confused air swirling in all directions. Ice devils, miniature whirlwinds composed of ice particles, danced crazily across the flat surface of the frozen ocean. Occasionally one would stumble into the workers, forcing them to drop their tools and hug the ground. One caught Ethan with his visor up and brought tears to his eyes. It was like being battered by cold sand.

Jacalan and Blanchard shut down the two overworked drills and joined the rest of the refugees in slipping and sliding down the south flank of the pressure ridge. Ethan and September hung back, settling themselves in the shelter of a huge upturned ice block. Someone had to watch, Ethan told himself.

Like the approach to a giant’s castle a long, relatively smooth ramp had been hacked and melted out of the ridge’s north slope. The scientists and Hunnar’s soldiers had done their work well. How well there was no way of telling until the icerigger actually attempted its run.

Everyone knew that if the ramp collapsed while the Slanderscree was making its climb, the great ship would be imprisoned on the ridge. Then they would be well and truly trapped in this isolated region, far from human or Tran civilization. They’d built as solidly as possible, given the limited amount of time and equipment at their disposal. Semkin had supervised the work with the drills, making sure that all the gaps between the massive ice blocks had been filled and sealed.

At last there was nothing left to do but to do it.

A glance to his right showed figures standing and waiting on the southern ice sheet: the icerigger’s fighters and the members of the research team. Only Hunnar and Elfa had joined Ethan and September atop the ridge. With the wind whipping his fur Hunnar stood tall and straight as one of the icy spires surrounding them. He shaded his eyes with his right hand.

“I can barely see the ship.” Ethan squinted and looked northward but saw no sign of the Slanderscree. That would change shortly, he knew. “They are putting on sail. Ta-hoding has the spars turned into the wind. Ah, now they are being adjusted. The sails fill. She comes.”

They waited. A few minutes later both men could make out the sleek arrowhead shape of the icerigger racing toward the ridge at high speed. Ethan was startled to realize that this was the first time he’d actually seen the ship under full sail and from a distance. For a hybrid cobbled together from a schoolteacher’s memory it was quite beautiful. There was none of the ungainliness one might have expected, though the absence of a curving hull was disconcerting. The underside of the icerigger was perfectly flat, since there was no water for it to cut through.

“Wish Ta-hoding had given better than an even chance,” he muttered.

September had his visor up so it wouldn’t interfere with his view. “Hell, young feller-me-lad, that’s better odds than life gives most of us.”

Ethan turned his attention eastward. Lightning split clouds black as coal dust. “When will the rifs get here?”

Hunnar Redbeard looked down at him, then turned to face the oncoming storm. “Soon, but not so soon as it might. A bad storm, very bad, but I think it may be moving slightly to the northwest instead of due west. We have been gifted with a few precious additional hours of manageable weather. If it continues to turn, it is possible it might miss us entirely. A havlak full of irony there would be in that!”

“It might also not miss us,” Elfa put in. “And if we do not do this thing we will be no better than where we were before the storm was sighted. We must still cross the Bent Ocean. Now is not the time for hesitation.”

“I was not hesitating, my love. Ethan asked my thoughts.”

“Here she comes!” September roared, bending slightly and pointing. “I swear Ta-hoding’s got his clothes on the line trying to coax another tenth of a kph out of the west wind.”

Ethan found he had to lift his own visor in order to see properly. Cold stung his exposed skin, pins on his cheeks. The icerigger seemed to be accelerating with every extra meter of ice it crossed. Five rooster tails of ice particles flew from the base of each duralloy runner as it cut across the flat surface. When it was half a kilometer from the pressure ridge, Ethan guessed its velocity at between a hundred and fifty and a hundred seventy kilometers an hour. Sails billowed taut from the masts and rigging. The whole vessel appeared to be leaning forward, straining, struggling to gain every last possible ounce of speed. It was near enough now for Ethan to pick out Ta-hoding and his helmsman. They were leaning on the large wooden wheel, fighting to keep the flying Slanderscree on course.

The captain must have shouted a command because as they looked on the adjustable spars suddenly pivoted. Heeling over on both port runners like a skater fighting to maintain his balance, the great ship swung sharply southward. The maneuver might have cost her a little speed.

Old instincts made Ethan crouch in anticipation. If the icerigger hit the ramp at the wrong angle, it could fly off in any direction, including straight toward them. Hunnar and Elfa likewise sought shelter. Only September held his ground, looking like some misplaced sculpture in his silvery survival suit.

On board the Slanderscree those sailors who weren’t trimming the spars reached for something solid and gritted their teeth. Ta-hoding and his helmsman clung to the wheel. Driven by the full force of the west wind the icerigger reached the base of the ice ramp and came rocketing upward, looking for all the world like some alien version of the Flying Dutchman about to sail off into the sky against the wind.

As it ascended it slowed perceptibly. Ethan found himself urging it onward, trying to lift it the extra thirty, twenty, finally ten meters toward the top. His help was not required.

Still traveling at upward of a hundred kph, the Slanderscree shot off the top of the ramp and over the crest of the pressure ridge. For an instant it seemed to hang in the air, frozen as if by some cosmic artist. Then it began to descend in a slow, graceful curve.

Hunnar and Elfa rose, while down on the southern ice sheet soldiers and human scientists watched breathlessly as the icerigger came soaring toward them. For a brief moment it was a ship not of the ice but the air, a visitor from a long-forgotten legend. The beauty of those few seconds impressed itself strongly on all who witnessed it. None would forget it.

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.

“They want us to change course and follow them,” Hunnar announced. “No, wait, that is not entirely true. They are ordering us to follow them. By the Seven Devils!” He turned to yell toward the helm. “Hold to your heading, Captain!”

The admonition proved unnecessary, since Ta-hoding had already independently determined to do just that. The Tran on the skimmer appeared to consult someone out of view. There was much waving of arms and violent gesticulations. Then one of the talkers vanished below, to reappear a moment later with something small and shiny in one hand. A tool.

A hand beamer.

It was an old, outdated model, but still plenty effective enough to burn a hole in the Slanderscree’s hull or anyone unfortunate enough to get in its way. Its operator proceeded to demonstrate the weapon’s effectiveness while everyone on that part of the icerigger ran for cover.

“Beamers.” September peered over the top of a storage locker. “Where the hell did they get beamers? And a skimmer.”

“Outrageous.” Hwang was lying prone on the deck. “Whoever is behind this is a candidate for mindwipe!”

Upon concluding his demonstration the Tran with the beamer waved it carelessly in the direction of the sailing vessel and repeated the demand that it turn and follow. The Tran at the controls handled the skimmer smoothly, keeping it equidistant from the icerigger and the frozen surface below. Clearly he’d been taught how to drive the advanced vehicle.

“What are they saying now?” Ethan asked Hunnar.

“Strange accents. They say that if we do not turn immediately to accompany them, they are going to disable us.” The knight turned cat’s eyes on his human companion. “Can they do that with weapons so small?”

Hunnar’s query was prompted by the fact that the hole the strange Tran had burned in the side of the icerigger was barely a centimeter in diameter. What the knight didn’t comprehend was the beamer’s range. Its operator could stand off at a safe distance and pick off the crew one at a time, or force them to abandon the Slanderscree’s helm, or slice up the rigging like so much spaghetti. Yet they hovered within crossbow range.

Crossbows were not a native development. The Tran of Sofold had been instructed in their construction and use by Milliken Williams. There was a chance the icerigger’s marksmen could pick off the Tran with the hand beamer. A hasty conference was called while the participants lay flat on the deck.

Three soldiers were chosen. Hunnar replied to the ultimatum with a long-winded reply, stalling the skimmer’s occupants until the crossbowmen were ready. Then he ducked down as they rose and fired.

All three bolts struck their mark. The reaction of those on board the skimmer was almost as extreme as the reaction of those on the ice ship to the skimmer’s appearance. The belligerent Tran wielding the beamer clutched at his chest where the heavy bolt had penetrated his leather armor. He tottered sideways and fell over the side, vanishing astern like a leaf on the water. His body bounced several times as it receded behind both craft.

Another Tran had been trying to bring a second beamer to bear on the icerigger when one of the bolts slammed into his shoulder and the third grazed his ribs, ripping a hole in his right dan. He dropped the weapon and rumbled back into the craft.

The skimmer bobbed and ducked wildly as its driver momentarily lost control of his ship. It lost altitude, glanced off the ice and threw up a spray of ice particles, nearly crashed into the side of the Slanderscree, and finally regained operational altitude as it zoomed toward the southwest before the crossbow operators could reload and fire a second time. Growls of defiance from the rigging and deck of the icerigger spurred its flight.

Premature, Ethan thought. A pity they hadn’t been able to hit the driver. In that event the skimmer would have gone to automatic and they might have been able to board it and take control. As it was, they remained ignorant of who their assailants had been, where they’d come from, and how they’d come into possession of advanced Commonwealth technology.

Humans and Tran conferenced and argued on the quarterdeck.

“Maybe there’s another independent research team out here studying the change in the weather,” Jacalan suggested.

“That’s crazy,” Hwang insisted. “Even if there was, no halfway reputable observer would give advanced weapons to the sentients of a Class IVB world. And why give commands like that? Friendly people who want to talk don’t take potshots at you.”

“I think we should turn about and head for Brass Monkey,” Ethan said firmly. “Yes, I know we’ve come a long way and I’m sorry to see all of you return empty-handed, but this is something we didn’t count on. They showed two beamers. Maybe they have more. Right now I’d say survival’s more important than time. In fact, it’s always more important than time.

“The obvious conclusion to draw from our recent visit is that there are humans or other advanced people operating in this area, doubtless without authorization. They’re engaged in something probably illegal. They’ve provided local allies with weapons and transportation. I’m sure they weren’t expecting us to show up or we wouldn’t have been able to surprise them with crossbows the way we did.”

Second Mate Mousokka joined them. “Your pardon, honored ones, Captain, but the bindings securing our port bow runner have weakened. It is slipping free of its brace. I have been over the side to check it myself. If it is not fixed soon we will loose the runner completely.”

Ta-hoding muttered an old sailor’s curse, looked at the expectant cluster of humans. “We cannot make the necessary repairs while moving. We shall have to stop.”

There was nothing to discuss. Sails were reefed and spars turned into the wind. The Slanderscree slowed, came to a complete halt. Ice anchors were set out to hold her steady while workers poured over the side and began work on the crippled runner. Worn lengths of pika-pina cable were cut away and replaced with fresh. Undamaged rope was unwound and retightened.

They were three-quarters finished when the skimmer returned with company. Two of the small, open airships flanked the immobilized icerigger this time. Once more exposed crew scrambled for cover while the crossbowmen loaded their weapons and prepared to defend the ship. Once more a beam was fired from one of the skimmers. It took the form of a thick, intense beam of bright orange light and it ripped right through a mainmast spar. The heavy length of wood fell to the deck like a severed limb, scattered sailors.

“Laser cannon.” September spat to his right. “That takes care of that. We can’t impress ’em with crossbows this time.” He squinted in the direction of the skimmer. “You sure there ain’t any humans on board?”

“There are no skypeople on either sky boat,” Hunnar assured him. “I see only the Tran of strange dress and speech.” As he spoke, the smaller of the two craft edged close to the icerigger while its larger companion hovered well out of range. For the second time that day they were ordered to follow.

“Do we want to go with these people?” Cheela Hwang wondered aloud.

“Do we have any choice?” September said.

Ta-hoding was thinking fast. “Tell them, Sir Hunnar, that we cannot follow because they have disabled us. Tell them of our troubles with our port bow runner. Explain that we are but inoffensive merchants exploring new territory and that we wish only to be allowed to continue on our way.”

A dubious Hunnar conveyed this assertion of innocence to those on board the skimmer. The craft immediately moved around to the stern of the Slanderscree, where a Tran with a hand beamer used the small weapon to cut through the thick pika-pina control cables that linked the rudder runner to the wheel on the quarterdeck. The big wooden wheel immediately spun loosely. Until the cables were replaced or repaired Ta-hoding would be unable to steer the ship.

“Laser cannon,” Moware was muttering disconsolately. “Skimmers. Vile people have been at work here.”

The meaning was clear enough to everyone. Whoever had committed these violations of Commonwealth development policy for unsophisticated worlds would be unlikely to have any compunctions about disposing of a few traveling scientists and their companions. They needn’t necessarily be human, either.

While motives and origins were debated, the first skimmer moved from the Slanderscree’s stern to her bow. A heavy braided fabric cable was attached just below the bowsprit. By shouts and gestures those on the skimmer indicated that repairs to the bow port runner were to be completed as fast as possible.

“Don’t have much choice,” September told Ta-hoding, Elfa, and the rest. “Not with that sticking down our throats.” He nodded toward the second skimmer and its heavy artillery.

“I have regretfully reached the same conclusion,” Ta-hoding said.

By late afternoon the work was finished and the icerigger was taken in tow. Advanced or not, the load strained the skimmer’s engine. Their progress southwestward was slow. While the first skimmer pulled, the second paralleled the ice ship, the narrow muzzle of its heavy weapon focused amidships.

“What about putting some of our best people over the stern,” First Mate Monslawic suggested, “to repair the steering cables?”

“A thought,” said Ta-hoding. He looked neither fat nor lazy as he glared at the bigger skimmer. “Perhaps we could outrun these sky boats.”

Ethan shook his head. “You’d need twice the wind we have now. They’re more maneuverable than the Slanderscree as well as faster. And it would only take one shot from that cannon to disable us permanently. This way if we do get the chance to make a run for it all we have to do is fix the cables.” He frowned. “I wonder why they haven’t taken the precaution of disabling us further.”

“Perhaps they wish the ship for a prize,” Hunnar suggested.

“My beautiful Slanderscree,” Ta-hoding moaned. “Everyone wants my ship. Truly it is the greatest prize on all Tran-ky-ky.”

The captain’s pride-filled exaggeration was pardonable, Ethan mused. There was nothing to be gained by pointing out that Tran who had access to laser cannon and hand beamers and skimmers didn’t need ice boats, no matter how great or graceful.

The long, slow tow offered those on the icerigger ample opportunity to study their captors. Despite access to advanced technology the Tran manning the skimmers didn’t look particularly prosperous. Some wore armor and attire that looked battered and worn while their distinctive headgear was more outré than impressive. The dichotomy was as puzzling as it was obvious. It was as if they had encountered a knight of old mounted on the most magnificent charger, only to discover on closer inspection that he was clad in rusty, broken armor and torn underwear.

They were much closer to the southern continent than they thought. They would long since have seen the expected hundred-meter high cliffs of the continental plateau but for one thing: there weren’t any. Not here, where the usual vertical walls of rock had given way to collapsed, eroded slopes. A few isolated granitic spires loomed like lonely sentinels surveying the results of millennia of erosion.

There was also much more vegetation than usual, due to their proximity to the equator. Disintegrated rock had collected in cracks and crevices to form soil. Even so, the land plants which clung to a subfreezing existence were a sorry lot, nowhere near as impressive as the pika-pina and pika-pedan which thrived out on the ice sheet itself.

They sailed parallel to the rubble-strewn slopes all that evening and through the night before morning saw them towed into a deep harbor much like that at Moulokin. Unlike Moulokin’s haven, no sheer walls towered above the ice here. Gentle slopes rose gradually from the edge of the ice.

Ethan knew from their previous journey that such harbors were actually subterranean river canyons which were submerged when the ice sheets melted during Tran-ky-ky’s warm cycle. In twenty thousand years, this inlet would be completely under water.

If not sooner. The new thought was as disturbing as the presence of the laser cannon.

Before long they found themselves in among other, much smaller ice ships. Poorly put together, scarred and battered by heavy use and poor weather, they clustered around the Slanderscree like jackals around a lion. Some of those on board conversed animatedly with the crews of the skimmers. No surprises there.

As they neared the harbor’s end the first cliffs hove into view. Thick clouds hid the edge of the continental shelf. Hunnar and the rest of the Slanderscree’s crew were panting nonstop now. The water beneath the icerigger’s runners was nearly ten centimeters deep, and to those accustomed to normal temperate zone readings, the climate within the harbor was sweltering. According to Semkin, by high noon the thermometer might reach an astonishing two degrees above zero centigrade.

A city had taken root on the southwest rim of the harbor. Ethan hadn’t expected a real town, but the presence of so many small ice ships was sufficient to suggest a thriving community. It was a dull-looking place, the stone structures sprawling haphazardly along the shoreline and back up into the hills. Across, the harbor from this egalitarian community, a fairly steep slope climbed several hundred meters from the edge of the ice sheet, leveled off, and vanished into the clouds. This prompted him to query Jacalan, their resident geologist.

“Sorry. I know there’s a lot of cloud cover here, Ethan, but I’ve been watching my instruments closely and there’s no evidence of plutonic activity anywhere in the vicinity.” He nodded toward the mountain that rose from the north side of the harbor. “If that’s a volcano, it’s dead or dormant.”

“Then what about all this cloud cover? It’s not a rifs storm. Something has to be generating all that moisture.”

Jacalan shrugged. “Ask Hwang or Semkin. Weather’s their department.”

He did, but neither meteorologist had a ready explanation for the dense layer of clouds that hung over this area of the continent. It was part and parcel of what they’d come to investigate, and thus far their studies hadn’t produced anything particularly informative. Hal Semkin clung to the hot springs theory despite Jacalan’s counterarguments, while Hwang was trying to put together a theory allowing for warm subcrustal emissions of heat and moisture which would not conflict with the geologist’s findings.

Ethan moved to the quarterdeck. Ta-hoding still stood by his useless helm, “Know anything about this place?” Ethan asked him, fairly sure of the captain’s response.

“Nothing.” Next to the captain the great wooden wheel spun aimlessly.

“What about the sailors from Poyolavomaar?”

“The questions have been asked.” Ta-hoding sounded irritated but Ethan knew it was only frustration that made his replies short and sharp. “This land is as foreign to them as to those of us of Sofold. At this end of the world only Moulokin was spoken of, and as you know it, too, was unknown until we went there and made allies of its people.” He stared at the low-lying city they were approaching. “Would that the soldiers of that fine metropolis were here to aid us now.” He pointed toward the port.

“What a poor place this is. See, with all this broken stone lying loosely about, their homes and storehouses are still ineptly fashioned. There is no profit to be made trading with such a community. The wonder of it to me is that it exists in this place at all. Who do they trade with? We encountered nothing between here and Poyolavomaar.”

Indeed, the closer they drew and the better view they had, the more Ethan found himself wondering what this city was doing in this isolated region in the first place. There was little use of mortar or cement. Gaps between undressed stones were chinked with smaller rocks and pebbles or stuffed with raw pika-pina. Roofs were fashioned of large flat stone slabs instead of the dressed and cut slate common to developed communities like Wannome or Arsudun. Except for a single multistory structure which overlooked the town from off to the left and resembled an oversize hut with battlements, the entire city conveyed the impression of being nothing more than a hasty afterthought.

“No walls, either,” observed Ta-hoding professionally. “No gates. It is evident they do not expect to be attacked. There are no other city-states nearby to threaten them.”

“Who would want to?” Hunnar commented contemptuously. “What is there to plunder? New buildings that are already falling down? Citizens clad in rags and tatters? All the loot this place could offer would not be worth the life of a single warrior.”

None of which, Ethan reflected, squared with the presence of skimmers and energy weapons.

The skimmer with the cannon was moving inboard. Hunnar and September barely had enough time to debate the possibility of jumping her crew when it was already too late. Their captors were prepared to repel boarders not with swords and shields but with hand beamers. It hovered alongside the Slanderscree only long enough to let off a couple of its crew. Then it drew away to a safe distance again, the cannon muzzle still trained on the icerigger.

No one bothered the boarders. If they hadn’t been completely confident of their safety, they wouldn’t have exposed themselves to those on the icerigger in the first place. The pair wandered the deck, ignoring the surly stares of the sailors, inspecting rigging and woodwork. Despite their ownership of beamers and skimmers they were obviously impressed.

The one in charge was a large, powerful individual who to Ethan’s surprise was on the elderly side. Not as old as Balavere Longax, but older than anyone still on board the Slanderscree. His squire or bodyguard clutched his sword convulsively in his right paw and tried to hide his nervousness. Neither of them carried a beamer. Naturally not, Ethan mused. They weren’t going to put themselves in a position where someone could take any of those precious weapons away from them. Whoever had engineered the capture of the Slanderscree knew what they were doing.

Both the presence of the weapons and the tactics their captors had employed were alien to Ethan’s experiences on Tran-ky-ky. He said as much to Hunnar, who readily agreed.

“Indeed, it would appear that in addition to tools from your people these hostiles have received advice as well.”

For an instant Ethan wondered if these Tran could have ambushed some illegal expedition and stolen their equipment. It was a theory quickly discarded. The Tran were clever, but you didn’t figure out how to operate something as complex and advanced as a skimmer without some kind of instruction. Whether that instruction had been given voluntarily or under duress was, like practically everything else that had happened during the day, still a matter for speculation.

The older boarder had a thick brown beard as opposed to Hunnar’s red one. Ethan left Ta-hoding guarding his useless helm as he joined Hunnar, Elfa, Skua, and several others in confronting their visitor.

The peculiar, thick accent was easier to understand up close than when shouted over a distance between two moving craft. “I am Corfu. Formerly Corfu of Kerkoinhar.”

“Never heard of it.” Hunnar’s admission was echoed by his companions.

“Few have.” The older Tran did not seem troubled by the slight. “It was a good place to live and prosper. Only, Corfu did not prosper with it. There was a disagreement involving ethics. It was said that I cheated a relative of the Landgrave. It was said that I did not. In such a confrontation I was bound to lose. I was exiled.

“I am just a merchant, not a hunter. Exile is hard on a merchant whose property has been confiscated. Yet despite the fate my enemies intended for me I survived—and found a place here.” He gestured toward the city as they turned toward a dock and the towing skimmer maneuvered them in close.

“Yingyapin. Not much to look upon now, but that will change. Is changing.”

“A lot of construction going on, but none of it what you’d call impressive,” September commented thoughtfully.

Corfu glanced at the giant in surprise, studying his face carefully. “You speak our language without a translating device.”

Their visitor wasn’t the only one who was surprised. In addition to skimmers and beamers this Tran also knew what a translator was and spoke of it as though he was familiar with it. Was there any advanced technology they hadn’t been given access to?

“Humans are not supposed to speak Tran except through such machines.”

“Is that what your human friends have told you?” Ethan asked him.

Corfu’s attention switched to him. “And another who speaks.” He studied the humans who had gathered around him. “How many of you speak Tran?”

Ethan cursed himself for speaking. He’d been doing it for more than a year and it was a natural reaction, but on reflection he realized he should have let September do all the talking. It would have been better to keep their linguistic talents a secret. Too late now. This Corfu looked sharp enough to figure out that those humans not wearing translators were the ones likely to be fluent in his language.

Still, Milliken Williams kept his hands at his sides and their captor seemed content to let the matter pass as he extolled the virtues of his new home.

“It is not impressive, true, but one day all will bow before its Landgrave. You are looking at the most important city in the world.”

“There are no important cities anymore,” Hunnar informed him. “There is only the Union.”

“The Union? What foolish talk is this? There are no unions among Tran.”

“There are now. The city-states of Wannome, Moulokin, Poyolavomaar, Arsudun, and many others are joining together to form a great Union so that we may join with our human friends and others in the greater union of the night sky.”

“Ah, you are talking of membership in the Commonwealth.” Corfu smiled.

Ethan thought he was beyond shock. He was wrong. “How do you come to know of the Commonwealth?”

Corfu looked smug. “We, too, have our friends. I am not displeased to hear of this Union between your city-states. I welcome it. It will make our administration of Tran-ky-ky that much easier.”

“If you think you’re going to conquer the world with a couple of skimmers, a few beamers, and one cannon you’re badly mistaken,” Ethan told him.

Hunnar nodded in the direction of the merchant’s uneasy bodyguard. “Especially not with the likes of that for your army.”

Corfu nodded at the speaker. “By your bearing you are a noble, I see. I have had my fill of nobles, Redbeard. When we of Yingyapin take power, we will do away with them. A new order will arise in place of the old, one founded on ability instead of false aristocracy.”

Hunnar growled and displayed his long canines. “I earned my knighthood, as did every knight of Wannome.”

The merchant wasn’t impressed. “Influence begets training; birthright, education. Heredity counts. And you may kill me if you wish.” He didn’t turn to face Grurwelk Seesfar, who held a knife concealed in one paw and had been slipping up behind him. She hesitated.

“If I do not return unharmed to my companions, they will destroy this wonderful vessel and everyone aboard. Your human friends will tell you what our weapons can do.”

“We already know.” Hunnar glared at Seesfar, who backed off but kept the knife in her fist. Then he indicated the city beyond the dock. “I see nothing to fear here, no irresistible army, no relentless ranks of warriors.”

Corfu smiled at some secret thought. “We will conquer without the need of an army. We do not need to fight. Indeed, we will conquer without recourse to these light weapons.”

“How do you stand the heat here?” Ethan asked him. “I wouldn’t think any Tran would find this land a comforting place to live.”

“You think this is too warm? I find it pleasing myself.”

“So you are diseased in body as well as in mind,” Elfa commented.

Corfu’s smile faded slightly. “Think you so? Soon you will see.”

Milliken Williams stepped forward. “Listen, on behalf of my colleagues I demand to know …”

The much bigger Tran caught him across the face with a powerful backhand, sending the schoolteacher staggering backward. Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth. Cheela Hwang was at his side instantly. Several of the Slanderscree’s sailors tensed but Hunnar gestured for them to stay where they were. Corfu ignored the threatening body language and glared down at Williams. There was no doubt the merchant was enjoying himself.

“You demand nothing here, little human. You are not my superior. We use your technology, but we are not afraid of you. You are not gods; only people like us who have lived longer. So you have a little more knowledge and much more metal. We make use of your knowledge, we make use of your metal and your machines, but that does not mean we need always make use of you.” He turned and stalked off toward the quarterdeck, indifferent to the hostile stares that followed him, unconcerned as to whether anyone might chose to put a spear through his spine.

Ethan leaned over the rail and stared at the crowd that had gathered to inspect the icerigger. They were no more impressive up close than they’d been from a distance; a poverty-stricken, tired group of migrants. They didn’t look like conquerors. They looked beaten.

Hunnar joined him. “I know this is a strange place, but something here speaks to me besides the unavoidable decrepitude. Everything here is different.” He nodded toward the crowd. “So many different costumes. If you listen to them speak you hear not one odd accent but many.”

Having concluded his inspection of the quarterdeck, Corfu rejoined them. “You observe accurately, noble. What you must realize is that until recently Yingyapin was far poorer than this.

“It could have been otherwise had we founded a city elsewhere. There are better harbors waiting to be developed, richer land to cultivate. Here there is little of that. But this city is founded on something else: hope. The kind of hope that sustained me in my time of troubles. It was hope that brought me to this place and hope that has kept me here.” He made a sweeping gesture.

“All you see before you fled troubles in their homelands. Some are outcasts, some criminals, others simply poor. That is why you hear so many dialects, why you see so many different modes of dress. Yingyapin is a refuge for the dispossessed and displaced, for those who have left poverty and disappointment behind.”

“Looks to me like they’ve just exchanged their old disappointments and poverty for new.”

“Do not forget hope, human.”

“What hope?” Hunnar gestured toward the ramshackle buildings. “I see naught but destitution and aimlessness.”

Corfu waxed unexpectedly eloquent. “Sometimes hope is not like a fine hide or a good sword. It is not always what you can hold in the palm of your hand or feel beneath your feet. For all that, in our case it is intangible yet still has weight. Our hope is as real and solid—” and he chuckled at some private joke—“as the ice of Tran-ky-ky. When it is held up before you to marvel at, you will understand. Then you will not be so quick to disparage the judgment of the poor wretches you now see before you. A wise Tran measures his decisions on all the facts.”

“The fact is that we have been kidnapped by pirates,” Hunnar snapped.

“If you choose to join us all of your goods and property will be returned to you,” Corfu replied unexpectedly. “Even unto this grand vessel. Nor will you be harmed in any way. We seek allies, not enemies.” He raised a paw to forestall Hunnar’s instinctive protest.

“I know what you are about to say. It has been said before by those equally as proud and foolish. Wait and see what is offered before you refuse your cooperation.” His tone darkened as he turned to face Ethan.

“As for you and your kind, you cannot join us because we have already joined you.”

Ethan wasn’t given a chance to delve into the meaning of this enigmatic comment. A loading ramp slid from the dock onto the deck of the icerigger. The ramp crew had been forced to improvise, never having had to deal with a ship the size of the Slanderscree. Ethan noted that the cannon-armed skimmer continued to float off to one side. Its crew hadn’t relaxed their vigilance one iota.

Escaping from this place wasn’t going to be easy. And what was all this talk of joining? What was there here to join that could possibly appeal to the likes of Hunnar Redbeard and Elfa Kurdagh-Vlata? Corfu told them they’d find out.

The merchant chivaned down the iced ramp, returned soon with a ragtag, poorly disciplined guard to escort a dozen representatives from the ship into the city.

Yingyapin did not benefit from close inspection. If anything, Hunnar’s and the other Trans’ opinion of it fell a notch. It remained a puzzling, unimpressive collection of falling-down structures cobbled hastily together out of broken, undressed rock. The least building in Wannome would have seemed a masterpiece of the mason’s art compared to any edifice in Yingyapin. Only the squat, ugly pile at the southern end of town looked like it could survive a strong wind. Corfu called it the palace.

Only half a dozen Tran guarded the visitors, but each was armed with a hand beamer. They were slightly better clad than their urban compatriots and they handled the advanced weapons as though they knew exactly how to use them. September was certain they hadn’t merely acquired a few minutes casual instruction in their use. They’d been drilled. Any attempt to overpower them and take their weapons would have been suicidal. Far too soon to give thought to such extremes.

Even the renegade former Resident Commissioner, Jobius Trell, whose plans had depended so much on his Arsudinian allies, hadn’t trusted his native friends with advanced weapons. Clearly someone hereabouts felt differently.

A pair of tall Tran hefting traditional weapons flanked the nondescript entrance to the palace. The lack of a heavy guard was itself instructive. They were marched through the dingy, badly lit structure until they emerged into a larger chamber only slightly better illuminated than the hallway they’d employed to reach it. The decor was unimpressive and reflective of the general poverty of the community—with one notable exception.

Suspended from the ceiling two thirds of the way down the room was a meter-wide, self-powered lighting fixture. It might have been transposed straight from a modest auditorium on a far-distant Earth. Its presence in that crumbling bastion of barbarian penury was as unexpected as a conservationist’s triody in a hunter’s igloo.

Seated on a throne hammered together out of scrap sheet metal was a twisted little Tran whom Ethan first took for a juvenile but who on closer inspection was revealed to be only an extremely short adult.

“All bow,” Corfu grandly declared, “in the presence of Massul fel-Stuovic, first emperor of all Tran-ky-ky!”

IX

ETHAN DIDN’T KNOW WHETHER their guards would have shot Hunnar, Elfa, or any of the other Tran in the visiting party for laughing, but all of them somehow managed to restrain their instinctive reaction to this astonishing pronouncement. Even the acerbic and combative Seesfar restricted herself to a single sharp bark of amusement.

By the look of him Massul fel-Stuovic wasn’t emperor of anything. Any one of them, including the ladies of the group, could have beaten him up without strain.

Corfu frowned and lifted the muzzle of his own beamer. “All will bow.”

September shrugged indifferently. “What the hell. It’s only a gesture. Not much point in getting shot over a gesture.” He bent from the waist. Ethan and Milliken mimicked the movement.

Their Tran companions were not as ready to comply. Corfu aimed his beamer between Hunnar’s legs and scorched the floor with a single shot. Hunnar’s expression tightened, but he held his ground. The merchant was about to fire again when the diminutive ruler tiredly waved a paw.

“It doesn’t matter, Corfu. Leave it be. What good to kill a potential convert?”

Corfu’s gaze narrowed as he stared at Hunnar Redbeard. “Not this one, I think. Too stubborn to save himself.”

“Stubbornness can give way to fanaticism, and if channeled, that can be useful.” Massul waved a second time.

The merchant hesitated, his eyes locked with Hunnar’s. Then he shrugged as if it were of no consequence and re-holstered his weapon. “As you command, my lord.”

“There are no emperors on Tran-ky-ky.” Elfa didn’t request permission to speak. “There never have been and never will there be.”

“Never is a long time, female.”

“Besides, we’ve already unified four major city-states and are preparing to accommodate more in a union of our own making. We have no need of would-be emperors.”

“A union, you say? Good news, if true. It makes our own work that much easier.” The emperor appeared no more distressed by this news of a competing planet-wide government than had Corfu. On the contrary, it was a development he seemed to welcome.

“Just what is your ‘work’?” Ethan asked him.

Massul studied him out of small, sharp eyes: “Curious, you humans. Always asking questions. When you’re not giving orders.”

Suaxus-dal-Jagger was craning his neck to examine the hall with exaggerated interest. “Where are the banners, the insignia of family? What kind of court is this?”

“A new kind,” the emperor informed him. “One based on achievement instead of nobility. I do not count myself the product of an ancient line. I merely have been fortunate enough to be in the right place at the right time. As have many of us.” He gestured casually in Corfu’s direction. The merchant acknowledged the gesture with a nod. Even here, in the castle’s inner sanctum, the wind penetrated sufficiently to ruffle the fur and dan of the visiting Tran.

“Words do not make a ruler,” Hunnar snapped.

“Truly. Only deeds make rulers. One cannot achieve great things without proper preparation. We are in the process of preparing. The results will become apparent to all Tran soon enough.” He looked past him. “What I do not understand,” he said, addressing himself to Hunnar and Elfa, “is what a grand vessel crewed by warriors like yourselves is doing convoying a group of humans to this part of the world.”

“We are friends,” Elfa replied simply.

Cheela Hwang stepped forward and spoke through her translator. “We have come to observe an anomalous meteorological phenomenon. The air here is much warmer than it should be. Surely you have noticed.”

“You do not find our climate to your liking?” Massul was clearly amused. “I thought you humans preferred warmer weather.”

That was as much as an outright confession that the emperor and his people were being aided directly by a group of people operating illegally on Tran-ky-ky, Ethan thought.

“Yes, we do. We prefer much hotter temperatures than you. That’s not what we’re concerned about,” Hwang explained. “The weather here shouldn’t be this warm. The upper part of the ice sheet hereabouts is melting.”

“Not only the upper,” Massul informed her, not in the least perturbed by the thought, “but from below as well.”

“Then you must know what’s going on here,” Williams blurted, “and yet it doesn’t seem to bother you.”

“Why should it bother us? Everything changes sooner or later.”

“Yes, but in the case of your world it should be later. Ten to twenty thousand years later, according to our calculations. Something is very wrong here.”

“No!” Massul leaned forward. “Nothing is wrong here—except you. You should not be here. Something will have to be done about that. Everything else here is very right.”

Dal-Jagger leaned over to whisper in Hunnar’s ear. “My lord, I am not afraid of these light weapons. No matter how efficient the spear it must still be wielded with courage and daring. We can take this lot without much trouble.”

Hunnar turned his squire down. “There may be others watching us armed with similar devices, or machines we know nothing about. We do not yet know enough to risk all. Hold.”

Dal-Jagger stood back, disappointed but obedient. September had overheard and now bent over the squire. “Answers first, then fighting. If I’m going to get shot, I don’t want to go down full of unanswered questions. Time enough later for grand gestures. Let’s make sure we know the reason for them before we go making ’em.” The squire nodded reluctantly.

“Something else that interests me.” September addressed himself to Ethan while Hunnar and Elfa talked to Massul. “I’m still not sure who’s master here; emperor or merchant. Corfu lets his emperor do all the talking, but when he has something to say he says it and doesn’t ask permission. Doesn’t look to me much like your usual Landgrave-noble relationship, even if he did back off on shooting Hunnar. Maybe he’s got reasons for keeping himself in the background. Sometimes the people with the real power aren’t the ones you see on the tridee. They’re the ones to whom real power’s more important than ego-boosting. They hang in the background and shun the publicity. In that respect, based on what we’ve seen this past year or so, the Tran ain’t that much different from the rest of us.”

Massul was picking at one paw. “What are we to do with you humans?”

“I would think that our friends would have some suggestions,” Corfu said.

“Yes, yes, of course. Well, see to it. I have had a long day and I am wearied. Take them up to Shiva and let him decide.”

September and Ethan didn’t react to the name, but Williams and most of the scientists certainly did. As they were marched out of the court chamber the teacher fell back with his friends.

“That’s not a Tran name,” he informed them.

“Didn’t think it was,” said September. “Didn’t sound right.”

“It’s human, from one of the ancient babel-tongues. Pre-Terranglo. It’s from a dialect that was known as Sanskrit. In the Hindu religion Shiva was the god of death and destruction.”

“What’s in a name?” September muttered. “I was born in July.”

“Are you saying,” Ethan said, “that on top of the beamers and skimmers and lights we’re supposed to believe that there are ancient human gods wandering around here?”

“As Skua says, it’s just a name. I just thought you should know.”

Their escort marched them out of the castle, but instead of turning back toward the harbor they headed west and out of town. Corfu chatted with his own people, unsuccessfully tried to engage Hunnar in casual conversation. He had better luck with Grurwelk Seesfar, much to everyone’s surprise.

They turned up a well-worn path that led between a pair of ruined buildings and found themselves climbing a trail that switchbacked up the steep slope on the far side of Yingyapin harbor. Ethan tilted his head and regarded the ascent ahead uncertainly. The slope was climbable for about three-quarters of its height. Above that the broken talus and boulders gave way to sheer cliff. None of their guards carried ropes, grappling hooks, or any other kind of mountaineering apparatus. Surely they weren’t going to be expected to climb that. For one thing, humans were much better climbers than Tran.

At the base of the cliff Corfu turned to the left. A much narrower trail wound its way northward along the base of the sheer rock wall. Whether poorly cleared or intentionally camouflaged Ethan couldn’t decide. It was an excruciatingly difficult hike for the Tran. They were used to having the wind propel them effortlessly across the ice. Here, on rough ground, their huge clawlike chiv tended to be more of a hindrance than a help. Obviously used to the climb, Corfu bore the strain uncomplainingly. Hunnar, Elfa, and the rest of the Tran in the visitors’ party grimaced and tried to ignore the pain in their feet. It must have been, Ethan reflected, like walking in too-tight boots balanced on six centimeter-high spikes. You had to move slowly and carefully or you’d twist an ankle or worse.

As a result even Milliken Williams, who was not the most athletic of men, managed to keep up easily with their escort.

Ethan was only mildly surprised when Corfu finally halted outside what looked like a bare rock wall, touched a hidden switch, and caused a large slab of gray schist to swing aside to reveal a well-lit tunnel beyond. They’d endured so many surprises in the past twenty-four hours he was sure he was beyond being surprised anymore.

He was wrong.

The tunnel they entered had not been chipped from the solid rock with picks and hand shovels. The walls were smooth and straight, the ceiling gently curved. Before they’d walked very far the rock gave way to metal, the metal to plastic as the passageway opened into an endless, hangar-sized cavern full of machinery. The air was alive with humming and whistling, electronic Muzak. It stank of lubricants, steam, and electricity.

Sight and smell alike were foreign to Tran-ky-ky. Pipes and conduits snaked off into the distance. Suddenly the presence among the Tran of Yingyapin of a few beamers and skimmers seemed but a trifling breach of regulations. If whoever had provided them, to Massul’s minions was a candidate for mindwipe, here was interference on a scale sufficient to qualify the perpetrators for physical dissolution.

Whatever the installation’s purpose, it was clear it hadn’t been put in place overnight. Design and scale suggested years of preparation and actual construction. It still wouldn’t be difficult to keep the whole business a secret, as September pointed out.

“We’re a helluva long ways from Brass Monkey and what with the weather on this world being like it is, why, you could build a whole city a few kilometers from the outpost.”

A city this was not, though it employed a small army of human technicians. They looked up curiously from their work as the parade passed them by. None tried to engage the visitors in conversation. Ethan found that odd. The presence of strangers within the complex ought to have provoked more than curiosity. Surely even the most ingenuous among them knew they were participating in an illegal operation. That might have something to do with their reticence.

“I don’t recognize any of this.” Cheela Hwang was studying the complex machinery intently. “I wish some of the people from our engineering department were here.”

“Be glad they’re not,” Ethan told her.

“Some kind of mining operation?”

“Possible.” September was as puzzled as any of them as to the complex’s purpose. “Maybe they found a big ore body here and they’re digging it out on the sly. You’d have to do it that way, since you wouldn’t be able to get permission from the authorities. On a Class IVB world any minerals would be left untouched, kept in trust as it were for the locals. Maybe whoever’s responsible—and they’ve sunk a lot of credit into this operation—is paying off Massul and Corfu and the others with beamers and skimmers and such.”

The deeper they marched into the complex, the easier it became to sense the vastness of the installation. The temperature here had risen to just below human optimum. Corfu and his troops seemed halfway acclimated, but Elfa and the other Tran from the icerigger were suffering, their long tongues hanging out as they panted incessantly, their bodies fighting to rid their systems of excess heat. Ethan and his companions had switched off their survival suits.

Corfu directed them into a large service elevator. It barely held all of them and would have been a good place to try overpowering their captors. Once again September vetoed dal-Jagger’s suggestion. At close quarters even a badly aimed beamer could do horrible damage to mere flesh and bone.

The lift ascended slowly, eventually depositing them in a deserted hallway. Corfu led them to a pair of doors which parted to reveal a spacious circular room. Free-form windows spotting the far wall looked out over sandstone monoliths completely enshrouded in fog. When the mist parted Ethan could see gentle slopes lining a smoking valley. Taller plumes of fog or smoke streaked the otherwise cloudless sky.

Here then was the proof of the volcanism which Hwang and her associates had been so sure existed. Yet there was something about the massive plumes that didn’t look right. They did not vary in thickness or intensity and showed no signs of fluctuating in strength. Ethan had visited a few hot springs in his life and their output was never this consistent.

“Perhaps the installation we walked through utilizes the subsurface volcanic heat for power.” He nodded toward the windows. “This vented steam could be a by-product of energy generation.”

“Probably is,” September agreed, “but I don’t think volcanism has anything to do with it.”

Any chance of pursuing September’s thoughts further was eliminated as they were pushed into the room, which on closer inspection most resembled a conference chamber combined with an office. Their beamer-wielding guards split up to flank the entrance. Corfu strode toward the windows and bent over a high-backed chair, whispering.

A small, dark-skinned man (though not as dark as Williams) rose from the chair. His back was to them and he was staring out at the smoking valley. Ethan wondered what this room would look like from the outside. Unless you stumbled into it, he was sure it would blend perfectly into its rocky surroundings. Even the free-form windows would be difficult to identify from a distance. He didn’t have to debate whether this was the result of camouflage or aesthetics.

As the man turned to face them he continued listening to Corfu. Ethan saw no evidence of a translator in the man’s ear. It followed that he was as fluent in Tran as any of them. His manner was preoccupied, nervous, and intense. He was smaller than Williams and his structure was delicate without in any way being effeminate. When he spoke he sounded preoccupied and almost apologetic.

“Please, all of you, sit down. I am sorry for the manner in which you were brought here, but as you will learn it was necessary. Until I have determined how your purpose and intent in being here will affect our functions, I must be cautious.”

“We’re more interested in your purposes and intent,” said Williams.

The man turned to him, tight-lipped. “Already I don’t like you. Please keep your mouth closed until you are spoken to.”

Not very apologetic, Ethan mused. Not all the fires here burned beneath the smoking vale beyond the windows.

Williams bristled but kept quiet. Their interests would not be served by provoking a confrontation before they’d learned anything. September stepped forward and performed introductions for human and Tran alike. The man listened politely while Corfu smirked in the background. When Hunnar and Elfa were introduced and what they represented described, the man began shaking his head slowly while gazing at the floor, giving the appearance of one who’s just lost a paper clip and whose sole desire was to find it immediately.

“I’ve never heard of your union,” he said when he finally looked up at them. “Unfortunately, cut off as we are here in the southern part of your world it is impossible for us to keep up with native affairs elsewhere. I am going to believe you because I’d like to. Your union suits our purpose here.”

Ethan pointed to Corfu. “That’s what he said.”

“Yes.” The man smiled thinly at the merchant. “Corfu has been a great help to me.” Ethan noted that there was no mention made of Massul fel-Stuovic, emperor of all Tran-ky-ky.

“You must forgive my forgetfulness. I have been very busy and it has been some time since I was required to practice anything resembling the social amenities. I am Dr. Shiva Bamaputra. I am in charge of the installation here at Yingyapin.”

“Quite a setup,” September commented.

“It is fairly impressive, isn’t it?”

“Enough to impress even a Commonwealth inspectorate. Why don’t you apply for a permit for whatever it is you’re doing here? It would make things a lot easier for you.”

“You choose to affect the air of an uneducated bumpkin, Mr. September, but I think I know better. I think you know as well as I why I cannot do that. Why do you think we built underground here if not to escape detection from those who would disagree with our intentions? We would have had to do this in any event in order to preserve heat. Heat is very important to what we are doing, you see, and even fusion stations are not unlimited in what they can achieve.”

Then volcanism wasn’t involved, Ethan reflected. “Just what is it you are doing here?”

Bamaputra looked past him, past all of them. “Something the Commonwealth would not approve of, I think. The reaction of the Councilors of the United Church would be stronger still. They’re all so stiff and formal, so tradition-bound and conservative that even if they saw the chance to help those in need, they wouldn’t do so if it didn’t fit their precious regulations. They would shut us down in an instant despite the benefits that are accruing to the people of this world.” He turned back to face the windows that overlooked the valley.

“We are Tranforming.”

“That’s a contradiction in terms,” Hwang said. “This world is already ‘Tranformed.’ ”

He glanced back at her. “How familiar are you with the physiology and history of the Tran?”

“We’ve made a few interesting discoveries,” Ethan told him.

Bamaputra eyed him a moment, then nodded. “Yes, I’ve noticed that several of you seem very comfortable with these people as well as with their language. I will presume you are cognizant of the basics, then. If I go too fast for you or mention something you are not familiar with, please interrupt and I will elucidate.

“There is nothing complex about what we are doing here. Three fusion plants have been installed deep within this part of the continental plateau. We are using the production of these plants not only to power our installation but to melt the ice sheet from the underside up. You will be interested to know that where it clings to the continental shelf in this area the oceanic ice sheet is in places less than twenty meters thick. That is one reason why we chose this peninsula as our base of operations. The warming of the atmosphere in this vicinity and the concurrent melting of surface ice is the by-product and not the principal intent of our operation.”

“Why?” asked Blanchard.

“Because this atmosphere needs more of two things: water vapor and carbon dioxide. In addition to melting the ice sheet we are pumping water vapor back into the air. To produce the carbon dioxide that accompanies it we extract oxygen from the air and add carbon from large coal deposits directly beneath this station. There are substantial archaic seams of anthracite in the area. It seems strange to burn a fossil fuel for no other reason than to intentionally pump it into the atmosphere.”

No scientist, Ethan was struggling to follow the conversation, which was why Bamaputra was making everything as simple as possible.

“The greenhouse effect on Tran-ky-ky is weak. We intend to artificially increase it to the point where enough of its sun’s heat is retained to raise the surface temperature as much as eighteen degrees.”

“What is all this talk?” Hunnar finally asked his friend.

Ethan replied without taking his eyes off Bamaputra. “He is talking about raising the temperature of your planet considerably, to well above the point where ice becomes a corpse.”

“You’re talking a long time,” September was telling their host. “You won’t live long enough to see it to fruition.”

“Ah, but that is where you are wrong, my large friend. Because the climatological balance on Tran-ky-ky is so delicate, it is in fact possible to effect substantial shifts in temperature over a surprisingly short period of time.”

“What I don’t understand,” Ethan told him, “is why you’re bothering. All that’s going to happen naturally.”

“Yes, but the change will take ten to twenty thousand years. The planet will enjoy its briefer warm cycle before swinging back out in its perturbed orbit and freezing again. Then the down cycle of life will resume. The oceans will refreeze, the temperature will drop permanently back below freezing, and the Tran will once more be forced to cower in their caves and feudal castles, reduced to devoting their racial energies just to surviving. No, you are wrong about the time we require to change this. You forget your elementary physics.” Several of the scientists grimaced. If this reaction pleased Bamaputra, he gave no sign of it.

“Once the ice sheet has melted through, the defrosting effect will accelerate even in the absence of above-freezing temperatures since the exposed dark water will absorb and distribute the sunlight which the ice has previously reflected. The result will be accelerated shrinkage of the ice sheet and the expansion of open ocean into the northern and southern temperate zones. The level of the seas will rise fifty meters and more. Those Tran inhabiting low-lying areas will be forced, as would be the case in fifteen thousand years or so, to abandon them and move to higher ground. There will be a mass migration from the low islands to the higher land of the continents. As the air warms, these will become inhabitable, as they historically have been before when the climate moderates. In point of fact, they will come here.

“Our initial research suggested that this, the southern continent, was the area of highest population density in warmer times. There will be a corresponding migration and physiological change in the animal population as well. There will be some deaths among the Tran because their necessary physical change from a cold state to a warm one will also be accelerated.” He shrugged. “This is unavoidable.”

“How many deaths?” September’s voice was very low.

“Impossible to predict with accuracy. They are certainly to be regretted, but you might reflect that in earlier times such deaths occurred naturally as a consequence of the long, arduous journeys from the islands to the continents. These deaths will be prevented.”

How?” Blanchard asked him.

“When the Commonwealth learns what is happening here by means of relay from the outpost, regulations will have to be put aside in favor of rescuing as much of the native population as possible. Their arcane restrictions do not apply in the face of a ‘natural’ catastrophe affecting large numbers of sentients. The Tran of Yingyapin, quietly aided and abetted by us, will do likewise. It is not in our interest to have anyone die unnecessarily.”

“Nonetheless, you’re willing to accept those deaths as an inevitable consequence of what you’re doing as opposed to modifying your goals,” Jacalan said.

“You must consider what the final result of our work here will be,” Bamaputra said emphatically. “As the temperature rises the Tran will begin to change physically. They will lose their dan and chiv and long fur and adopt the golden-furred Saia state millennia earlier than otherwise. A much more natural state of affairs. They will become land dwellers instead of ice dwellers.

“Don’t you see what this will mean for them? They will be given a boost no other generation of Tran has ever had. In a congenial climate they will be able to develop properly, to achieve the advanced civilization they are capable of but which was always aborted by the onset of this brutally cold climate. For the first time in their history they will be able to reach a level of civilization high enough to enable them to retain it through any future onsets of frigid weather. As a result they will be ready to enter into not associate but full membership in the Commonwealth thousands of years earlier than would otherwise be possible.

“Furthermore, the inevitable consequence of emergency Commonwealth aid will permit them to retain their newly achieved civilization regardless of what happens to the climate if our artificially enhanced greenhouse effect cannot be maintained. It will be the dawn of a golden age for Tran-ky-ky.”

Like the rest of them September had listened quietly to Bamaputra’s exculpation. Now he frowned and scratched at the back of his neck.

“You know, monkeying around with something like a world’s climate is strictly forbidden by just about every primary Commonwealth directive I can think of. Folks are only allowed to play god on uninhabited worlds. Trying to make permanent changes on one populated by intelligent locals, well, if word of what you’re doing here got back to the right parties I wouldn’t give half a credit for your prospects.”

“Ah, but we have the advantage of operating on such an isolated world. By the time the ‘right parties’ ”—he formed the words with barely concealed contempt—“get wind of what we are doing it will be too late to reverse the process. The seas will already have begun to melt, the Tran will have begun to change physically, and shutting us down here would be more harmful than permitting the process to continue.”

“What I can’t figure,” Ethan said, “is what’s in it for them.” He nodded toward Corfu, who looked a little startled at abruptly being included in the skypeople’s conversation. “I mean, you’ve obviously managed to secure his cooperation and that of this self-proclaimed emperor and the rest of the local population. I don’t see that they’re necessary to it. You could just as easily lock yourselves inside this mountain and ignore them.”

“You are correct, Mr. Fortune. They are not necessary—but they do make life here easier. Eventually we will need the aid of some Tran. Corfu and his fellow citizens will provide that for us.”

“It has all been very carefully explained to me by the scholar.” Corfu indicated the diminutive Bamaputra. “It is very simple. Even a fool could see it.” No one in his audience, human or Tran, accepted the bait. He was forced to continue, slightly disappointed.

“I—through the good offices of the emperor, of course”—and he smiled sufficiently to show who stood where in the local Tran hierarchy—“saw to it that information and labor were supplied to the skypeople to help with their project. In addition we have served as scouts, recruiting new citizens for our growing city, co-opting the curious and educating them about the nature of the Divine Plan, driving off those who appeared unsuitable for participation.”

When he said the last Ethan glanced at Grurwelk Seesfar. She was staring intently at Corfu but said nothing.

“We did not expect to capture so fine a prize as a great ship crewed by both humans and Tran, but as you saw we were equipped to deal with any eventuality.”

Are you? Ethan thought. Do you really realize what’s going to happen to you and to your world if this little maniac is allowed to continue his work here? Does Bamaputra really have it worked out so precisely? Playing around with a world’s weather isn’t quite like building a new castle or fighting a rival clan.

“Mayhap you can fool the skypeople,” Elfa said sharply, “but you cannot darken our eyelids so easily. There is more to it than that.”

“Oh, there will be changes,” Corfu murmured with a smile. “Many changes.”

“Indeed.” This explanation didn’t seem to interest Bamaputra as much as his previous one. “As the sea level rises and the Tran abandon their city-states to migrate here they will initially be dependent on those Tran already securely established on the continents. That is where Massul’s people come in. My successors and I won’t have the time to deal with local matters. Someone else will have to take care of allotting land, setting up and administering refugee stations, and generally running the new unified government. Emperor Massul will by then be well prepared for coping with the increased migratory influx to the southern continent.”

“And my family,” said Corfu, “my despised and degraded family will be in charge of all commerce, supplies and clothing, tools and housing, homes, and local transportation. All at a price. This I may not live to enjoy, but my children will. The name of Corfu ren-Arhaveg will be resurrected, and all Tran will do it homage!”

“My financial backers have already agreed to a long-term commercial arrangement with Massul and Corfu. It will assist in accelerating the integration of the Tran. They will be compelled to unite in the face of a common problem. Those who insist on trying to retain their feudal independence will drown or starve. Those who survive and work together will bring about a new age on Tran-ky-ky.” He spread his hands and a trickle of real emotion seeped through the carefully controlled visage.

“Don’t you see? We’re not engaged in anything unnatural here. All we’re doing is speeding up something that’s going to take place anyway. We’re giving the Tran a ten thousand-year head start. Everything we’re trying to accomplish: the melting of the oceans, the warming of the climate, the physical transformations—those are all going to come about sooner or later. Why not sooner?”

“Now we know what’s in it for him.” September jerked a thumb in Corfu’s direction. “We still don’t know what’s in it for you and your ‘financial backers.’ ”

“Me?” Bamaputra drew himself up to his full height. “I am ‘in it’ because I am a scientist. Because I want to help these people achieve their potential. Because I wish to see certain theories of mine come to pass.” He relaxed slightly. “Of course my triumph will be a private one. There will be no public acclaim, no honors or honorary degrees. Since this is highly illegal, my name and that of everyone else involved in the actual work will have to be kept secret.” He looked thoughtful.

“Perhaps after I am dead, as Corfu says of his offspring, some relatives of mine may seek proper enshrinement for my name. In my lifetime, I know I must be satisfied with internal contentment alone.”

“I am confused.” Ta-hoding looked at his human friends. “This all sounds very much akin to what you have been doing for us.”

“This isn’t the way to go about it, Ta-hoding,” Ethan responded. “You don’t unify people by threatening them with drowning and starvation. You don’t bring them closer together by forcing them from their homes, destroying their existing culture, and interfering with the natural order of things.”

Bamaputra’s lower lip pushed forward. “When the oceans melt of natural causes many die. Perhaps more than would die without us here to aid them.”

“The Commonwealth will be around to help the Tran in ten thousand years or it won’t be worth joining,” Ethan shot back.

“Why should these people have to wait that long?” Bamaputra looked shrewdly at Hunnar and Elfa.

Hunnar didn’t reply immediately. He eyed this peculiar little human warily, fond neither of his accent nor his attitude. In the almost two years he’d lived and traveled across the world in the company of Ethan, Skua, and Milliken Williams, he’d learned much about the ways of skypeople. Some his friends had explained to him. Other things he had learned from quiet observation. Something about this Shiva person disturbed him.

Not his treatment of Tran. This Corfu creature he treated well. There was a distance in him, a deliberate if silent barrier erected between himself and those he spoke with. Not contempt. It was almost as if he believed himself to be the only person in the room. Instead of humans and Tran he might as well have been speaking to machines. Was that because he thought of others as nothing more than machines or because he was so machinelike himself? Hunnar wasn’t intimately familiar with sophisticated machinery, but he had observed enough of it in action at the human outpost of Brass Monkey to gain some idea of its characteristics.

“What are you talking about?”

“In coming to this place you have demonstrated courage and resources beyond the Tran norm.” Bamaputra’s expression of false jollity didn’t fool Hunnar in the least. “Now you know what is going to happen to your world. While our facilities for receiving large numbers of migrants are not yet in place, you could still return home and inform your people of what is forthcoming. But for those already living in Yingyapin you could be the first. You could partake of relevant advantages by moving here and helping us in our work before the real changes begin.”

“A moment.” Corfu was more than slightly taken aback by this unexpected offer from his human ally. “We could not possibly cope with …”

Bamaputra cut him off. “There are ways. We could manage. I will talk with my backers. When all is explained to them I am sure they will be able to find a way to come up with the requisite additional funds to commence settlement by outsiders, particularly as energetic and advanced a group as this. Development on the continental plateau could begin ahead of schedule.” He turned his attention back to Hunnar.

“You see, my friend, you and your people could dominate. In time you could rule Tran-ky-ky.”

“What about the line of your emperor?” Elfa asked sarcastically.

“Massul fel-Stuovic’s family is small. Over a period of time, who is to say which group would emerge as the most powerful? That is up to you. Internecine conflicts among your kind do not interest me. I am willing to work with whoever is on top at the time. So are my backers.” He looked over at an obviously upset Corfu.

“Relax, my friend. You would still be in charge of the distribution and sale of all supplies and equipment, including any new devices we choose to provide.”

“Where do the people live?” Ethan asked.

“Which people?”

“The engineers, the technicians who run this place.”

“We have constructed an extensive underground facility for their comfort.” Bamaputra was obviously annoyed at the interruption, feeling he’d been making progress with Hunnar and Elfa. “Given the climate, underground living is much more practical. That is one of the things we will change, of course. Why do you ask?”

“I was just wondering,” Ethan told him evenly, “if they’re all aware of what the end result of their work here is going to be.”

“It wouldn’t be practical to try concealing our aims from those who work for us. Each has his own reason for being here. You see, my idealistic friend, there still exists a sufficiently large segment of humanity which is not concerned with the fate of alien races as much as they are with improving their own circumstances—the thranx excepted, naturally. We pay very well and our method of payment ensures that the taxing authorities have trouble tracing such disbursements.

“Even so, not all know everything. Safer to keep as many as possible in the dark. They prefer this as much as we do. Should they be discovered and arraigned they will be able to plead honest ignorance before the truth machine. It’s not hard to find competent people to perform under such circumstances, provided you phrase your job offer appropriately. The number of zeroes at the end of financial statements is likewise efficacious.”

September was looking around the conference room/office. “You’re right about one thing. Somebody’s put a lot of money into this. I imagine they expect they’re going to get it all back by selling vital supplies and equipment for the development of a new civilization to the grateful survivors?”

“I would not know. I am not much interested in commerce myself, though in order to deal effectively with my backers I have been forced to learn something of the financial world, yes. Your supposition is correct insofar as it goes, but it does not go far enough. It is not only the Tran who will be dependent on my backers for favors.

“When the sea level begins to rise, low-lying harbors such as Brass Monkey will be flooded. Much of the island Arsudun will likewise become untenable. The Commonwealth will need a new location for its outpost, not to mention its refugee centers. Not enough of Arsudun will remain above water to suffice.

“Here, the government will find not only facilities suitable for human habitation already in place, but also the new center of Tran civilization. Uncertainty over how this all came about will be overwhelmed by the need to establish a new base quickly.”

“To help the migrants,” Ethan muttered.

“Precisely. In any fight between necessity and morality the latter never wins.”

“It’s still not the right way to do things,” Ethan argued.

“What is the right way anymore?” Everyone turned in surprise to Mousokka, second mate of the Slanderscree. “So much has changed since these people have come to our world.”

“For the better,” Elfa reminded him, “because we know that Ethan, Skua, and Milliken are our friends. This have they proven not with words but with deeds.”

“They are changing us. The skypeople are changing us. Why is one group better than another? None of them are Tran!”

“Why don’t you talk over my offer?” Bamaputra suggested with a smile. “Return to the familiar surroundings of your beautiful ice ship. Discuss it among yourselves. I would much prefer to have your cooperation than not, though it will not make any difference in the end either way.”

“And if we don’t cooperate?”

“You people have this charming way of dispensing with diplomacy.” Bamaputra retained his good humor. “That can be discussed if and when it occurs. Do not trouble yourself with such thoughts. We are not barbarians here.”

“No,” echoed Corfu proudly, “we aren’t barbarians here.”

“I don’t like giving ultimatums. But keep in mind that nothing is going to stop this project. There is too much invested. You can be part of it or not, as you will. Go and talk in private. If you have any more questions, Corfu will see to it that they are relayed to me.

“Meanwhile I need to talk about your unexpected appearance here.” He was staring straight at Ethan as he spoke. “Devin Antal is plant foreman. It is his responsibility, too.”

“Any preliminary thoughts on the matter?” September asked easily.

Their slightly built captor tilted his head back to regard the giant casually. “When any occur to me, Mr. September, I assure you that you and your companions will be made aware of them immediately.”

X

HUNNAR WAS TOO NERVOUS to sit. He paced the Slanderscree’s dining room, ruffing his dan and clicking his canines.

Escape was out of the question. The icerigger’s anchors had been wrapped around heavy pilings, and Corfu had mounted a guard on the deck. Upon returning from the installation their situation had been explained to the crew. Now the sailors and soldiers were conferencing out on deck while Hwang and her companions anxiously discussed their own options in the cabin that had been reserved to them.

Elfa was present, of course, as were Ethan and Skua. Ta-hoding, Suaxus-dal-Jagger, and the Slanderscree’s mates sat off to one side.

“What I do not understand is what’s so bad about the offer we have been made.” The second mate, Mousokka, leaned against a wall and crossed his arms.

“You can’t let someone turn your world upside down like this,” Ethan tried to explain.

“Why not?” The mate eyed him sharply, then let his gaze rove around the room. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I like the idea of being warm all the time. Simply because our weather is always cold does not mean it is to be enjoyed. The north winter wind never delights me. If our bodies will adapt themselves to warmer temperatures, why should we not welcome their arrival?”

“And we could also,” the third mate put in, “gain an advantage over all other Tran, as this human says. With the Slanderscree to lead the way, all of Wannome could move to this place.”

“It would mean starting over with nothing,” Elfa argued. “Would you then abandon the homes of your forefathers for a promise?”

“If what this human says comes to pass, we will be forced to do that one day anyhow. We will become like the Golden Saia.” Kilpit looked at Ethan. “Is this so?”

Ethan nodded. “But we’re talking ten thousand years or more before the change occurs naturally.”

“Why not start now? This human says his people will help us. We will be given light weapons and sky boats for our own use.”

“At a price,” Hunnar snapped. “And a price we know nothing of.”

Kilpit looked to Mousokka for support, then shrugged. “Everything comes at a price. We can pay these humans now or pay the world later.”

“What about your union?” September asked him. “What happened to the idea of all Tran cooperating and working together for a common goal?”

“We will all be united as the world warms and the seas die. Only some of us have a chance to be united before everyone else.”

“Such thoughts go against the whole idea of union. Either we work together as equals or we cannot work together at all,” Hunnar insisted.

“Too much to decide on in one day,” murmured Ta-hoding. “Too much. Of course we cannot accept this divisive proposal. It is unthinkable.”

“Unthinkable to you, perhaps,” growled Kilpit. “What will you do when the seas melt and you have no ice ship to captain?”

“I will learn to steer one of these sky boats. Or I will learn another trade. What I will not do is compromise my ideals or the world of my birth because some skinny furless creature from elsewhere says it is best for me.” He glared hard at his third mate. “That is what you and Mousokka seem to be forgetting. Always have we Tran made our own decisions. Not always for the best of reasons or motivations, but at least they have been ours. I dislike the idea of my future and that of my cubs being determined by someone else, no matter that he may be well intentioned.”

“I don’t think he’s as well intentioned as he’s trying to be.” September dug at a tooth. “Never can tell about some of these pure-research types. They live in their own little worlds. So long as they can prove an occasional theory or so, they’re happy. As far as they’re concerned, the rest of the universe can go hang. He argues well but not plausibly.”

“Then this is settled,” said Hunnar firmly. “We will refuse his offer.”

“But not right away,” Ethan cautioned him. “We have to make it look like you’re hesitating, have to buy some time until we can figure out a way to break out of here so we can warn the authorities. If this is such a benign enterprise whose primary beneficiaries are supposed to be the Tran, let’s let the Commonwealth Xenological Society debate its merits, not us.”

“It does not matter.” Kilpit suddenly rose and headed for the door. “You have made your decision. We have made ours.”

“We?” Hunnar’s fur bristled.

Ta-hoding rose and his eyes narrowed. “Kilpit, you have been a good and faithful mate, but now you go too far. You forget yourself.”

“On the contrary, Captain mine,” the third mate said with a hint of the old deference still detectable in his voice, “it is myself I must not forget.” Mousokka moved to join him in flanking the exit. “Myself, my relatives I have not seen in more than a year, and my friends.” His eyes darted around the room.

“Listen to yourselves! You have been among skypeople so long that you have forgotten what it is to be Tran. I have not forgotten. It is about surviving the best one can. It is striving to obtain an advantage for yourself and your family.”

“We had no argument with the concept of a greater union,” Mousokka said, “since within it, Sofold would always be first among equals. You are prepared to cast aside a still greater opportunity. We are not.” He opened the door.

Armed sailors filed into the room. Though they held tightly to their weapons few of them could raise their eyes to meet Hunnar’s or Ta-hoding’s. That they were carrying arms at all was enough to explain what was going on, since Corfu’s troops had disarmed the crew earlier. Ethan strained to see past them, out into the hallway, trying to count the number of mutineers.

“You have cast night soil on your heritage,” Hunnar said tightly. “You have foresworn your duty to city and Landgrave and have gone over to a foreign king.”

“We have done no such thing,” said Mousokka uncomfortably. “It is you who have gone over. Over to these skypeople.” He jerked his head in Ethan’s direction.

“And who have you gone over to,” Elfa asked contemptuously, “if not to skypeople?”

“Massul is Tran. So is Corfu. The human thinks he uses them; they think they use him. It does not matter. These skypeople have light weapons and sky boats. They cannot be stopped. Martyrs are fools. I am not a martyr.”

“They can be stopped,” Ethan told him, “once we break out of here and get back to Arsudun.”

“You are not breaking out of anything.” Corfu shouldered his way into the room. “Thoughts of flight are futile. At least these right-thinking Tran”—and he indicated Mousokka and Kilpit—“have sensed which way the wind is blowing.”

“The wind,” declared Ta-hoding with dignity, “blows always to the east.”

“Not always.” Corfu grinned. “These skypeople have machines that can bend the very wind and sun to their needs. These things they can do on behalf of those willing to work with them.” He allowed himself a slight chuckle, which among the Tran consisted as much of whistling as anything else. “Did you truly believe we would let you hold council and make a decision which might not be in our interests without taking care to secure allies among your own people as rapidly as possible?” He looked past Ethan and September to Hunnar and the other Tran in the room.

“Come, use your heads, my friends. Join us. Your city-state or union or whatever you want to call it can become first among all Tran-ky-ky. Do the sensible thing for your children and grandchildren if not for yourselves. For it is certain a new age is upon us.”

“It became necessary to destroy the world in order to save it,” September murmured, but in Terranglo so only his fellow humans would understand him.

Corfu glowered in his direction, executed an expressive gesture with the short sword he carried. “No talking in skypeople words. In my presence you will speak properly.” Ethan noticed that not all the armed Tran who had filed into the room were members of the Slanderscree’s crew. Corfu was making sure Hunnar’s eloquence could not sway the hesitant mutineers at the last minute. Not a good idea to change your mind with a beamer stuck in your back. The merchant’s people would not be affected by Hunnar’s outrage, Elfa’s contempt, or anything he or September could say.

Ta-hoding was talking to the deck. “My fault. All my fault. A captain who cannot maintain the allegiance of his crew is not worthy of the title.”

“Do not blame yourself,” said Kilpit compassionately. “This is nothing to do with you or your abilities, Ta-hoding. It is to do with what we think is best for ourselves and our future.”

“We linger too long.” Mousokka stepped aside, gestured at the open door with his sword. “We have spent too much time already listening to the words of these skypeople and doing as they ask without question.”

“Who do you think pulls this puppet’s strings?” Hunnar nodded toward Corfu.

“No one pulls my strings but me!” The merchant waved his sword a centimeter from Hunnar’s muzzle.

The knight replied with a thin smile. “Yes, it is evident what a brave warrior you are on your own.”

The two glared at each other for a long moment. Ethan held his breath. Then Corfu took a deep breath and stepped back. “I am bound by agreement—agreement, you hear, not an order—not to harm any of you for now. I agree to this to please my friend, the skyperson Bamaputra.” He looked around the room.

“Those who have joined with us will be watched, but eventually all will be given an important place in the new ruling caste: The rest of you will be given time to think and hopefully to learn whence your true destiny lies.” He gestured with his sword. “Come now.”

“Wait a minute,” said Ethan. “I thought we were going to be allowed to stay on the Slanderscree.”

“You were allowed to return to have your discussion in familiar surroundings. Nothing was said about letting you remain longer.” Corfu smiled wolfishly. “If you were to be allowed to remain here, you might waste your time on thoughts of escape instead of considering where your destiny lies. Thoughtful as he is, Bamaputra would spare you such wasteful distraction,

“For myself, I do not think you could escape all the guards and slip away with this ship, but I have learned that skypeople do not like to take chances. You are to be returned to the skypeople’s house to meditate upon the error of your ways.”

This was bad, Ethan knew. As long as they were on the ship there was always the chance of cutting the anchor cables, slipping their bonds, and overpowering or eluding Corfu’s minions. If they could maneuver the Slanderscree back out onto the open ice where the wind blew hard, they might even be able to outrun a skimmer.

Within the installation their every breath was likely to be monitored by advanced surveillance devices. They wouldn’t be able to go to the bathroom undetected, much less break through a real door. Bamaputra wasn’t taking any chances.

“What about our friends?” He indicated Elfa, Hunnar, and the others. “They can’t stand the heat inside the installation.”

“Their health is not my concern,” said Corfu brusquely as they were herded out of the mess under the watchful eyes of beamer-wielding guards. Those members of the icerigger’s crew who’d gone over to the other side made way for the column. Some of them looked as though they might already be having second thoughts, but no one had the guts to express that kind of opinion in the presence of the handguns. Ethan thought most of them could be made to see the error of their ways, but doubted he or anyone else would be given the opportunity to win back their loyalty.

“Understand,” Kilpit was saying earnestly as they were marched onto the deck, “we do this thing for our families and for the traditions you have forgotten. Wannome first, last, and always. So it has always been among the Tran of Sofold and so it will be again.”

“It doesn’t have to be,” Hunnar was muttering. “It doesn’t have to be. Sometimes times themselves must change.” No one paid any attention to him.

Once more they found themselves forced to make the steep climb from Yingyapin to the underground installation. With night beginning to fall the humans were grateful to reach the Earth-normal temperatures inside the mountain.

A quick head count revealed that less than half the icerigger’s crew had joined Bamaputra’s domesticated Tran (that was how Ethan had come to think of them). The mutineers did not join in the ascent but were left in possession of the ship.

The sheer number of captives presented a problem. Despite their insistence that they be allowed to remain together, Tran and their human friends were separated. No doubt Bamaputra hoped to convince the reluctant to join him. Hunnar, Elfa, and the others were herded into a large, empty food storage room where the internal temperature could be kept at a level more to their liking.

As the humans were thoroughly searched by Bamaputra’s security team, Ethan noticed that Skua was eyeing one of their captors with particular intensity. He remarked on it.

“Funny, young feller-me-lad. Time passes in a twinkling but it’s hard to forget certain faces.”

Ethan gaped at him, then at the big man who appeared to be in charge of security. “You know that one?”

“That’s the Antal Bamaputra mentioned. Devin Antal. He and I were in a bit of a war together, on opposite sides. If he’s the same man he was, then he won’t make things easy on us. A real do-as-you’re-told type, but if push comes to crunch, the type who’ll make sure to look out for himself. There might be an opening there for us, if we pay attention.”

Sure enough, the man Skua called Antal introduced himself as Bamaputra’s foreman. He showed them their new home, an unused workers’ dormitory that could be sealed from the outside. After a short speech warning them to stay put and not make trouble he departed for parts unknown.

In a war together. On rare occasions September had alluded to a conflict in which he’d played some important role. That was hardly pertinent to their present predicament, Ethan mused dourly as he sat down on the flexibunk. It was more comfortable than any bed he’d slept in since leaving Brass Monkey, but he still didn’t think he was going to rest easy.

“Our guests are situated.” Antal flopped down on a couch in Bamaputra’s above-ground observation room-cum-office. “Didn’t have any trouble with the people from the outpost. Their Tran were a little more rambunctious. Corfu’s boys had to crack a couple of skulls.”

Bamaputra turned away from the window. “I don’t want anyone killed. Each of them is potentially useful to us.”

“Hey!” Antal raised both hands. “I told Corfu I’d hold him personally responsible. He didn’t like it, but he got things quieted down. I should have taken some of our own people off the line instead of letting Massul’s stooges handle it. You know how these natives are.”

Bamaputra pursed his lips. “Fractious. Undisciplined, combative, unable to live in peace among their own kind. At times they remind me of humanity prior to the Amalgamation. The Dark Ages.”

Antal casually struck a narcostick alight. “What are you going to do with them?”

The installation director frowned at the cloying smoke that filled the room, but he didn’t demand that his foreman extinguish it. The relationship between the two men was of almost equals, like a pair of boxers who never fought because they were ganging up on a third opponent but who fully expected to face each other in the ring one day.

Not that they wouldn’t have enjoyed a good fight, though it wouldn’t have been much of a contest. Antal was a big, broad-shouldered individual in his late thirties, a menial laborer with a degree. He outweighed Bamaputra by forty kilos. But he didn’t think of taking a swing. They needed each other everyday. Antal ran the day-to-day operation of the complex installation that was gradually transforming Tran-ky-ky’s atmosphere and melting the ice sheet. If anything went wrong mechanically, he knew how to get it fixed. If anything else went wrong, well, that was Bamaputra’s business. He knew why things broke. He also saw to it that the credit kept flowing.

It was an awkward relationship, but it worked. The installation had suffered a minimal number of breakdowns under their dual supervision. None of the clandestine shuttle drops had been detected by the government people at Brass Monkey. No reason why they should be: Tran-ky-ky was a big world, difficult to survey. Their supplies always arrived timed so they would not conflict with the arrival of the regular Commonwealth liners.

So what was a Tran ice ship doing probing the continental shelf with a half dozen human scientists aboard?

“I thought they’d get curious about the warming trend hereabouts, but I didn’t expect they’d be able to make an on-site inspection.”

“It would not have been possible,” Bamaputra muttered, “without this extraordinary ice ship and the cooperation of its Tran crew. That, and the three men who have apparently lived for some time among them. A strange story, that. If not for their intervention, albeit involuntary, these Tran would still be huddled inside their own city-states doing traditional battle with their neighbors and the plundering nomadic hordes which migrate around the planet, not setting off on missions of unification which can only inconvenience us.”

Antal puffed on his narcostick and relaxed. “Damned inconsiderate of ’em.”

Bamaputra glanced sharply at his foreman. “Are you mocking me?”

“Would I do that, Mister Bamaputra, sir?”

The administrator let it pass. Now was not the time for him and his foreman to get into one of their little fights. “It’s fortunate we spotted them and were able to bring them in. If they’d been able to turn and run before the skimmer with the cannon had been able to arrive all might be lost.”

“Yeah, but they didn’t and we’ve got ’em.”

“I’d hoped this was a problem we would not have to deal with until both you and I were dead of old age.”

“Well, we’re not. What do you want me to do with them?”

“The Tran we will sit on and try to bring over to our camp. As for these other meddlers, I would much prefer to dump them into a hole in the ice and then allow it to freeze over. While that is an appealing scenario, I fear it is impractical. If they do not return, they will be missed. Not that those bureaucrats at Brass Monkey can do anything without skimmers, but in the event of a mass disappearance they might be able to secure a waiver of regulations. That would mean more of the same types snooping around here. We can do without that kind of attention. Therefore we cannot kill them—yet. Nor can we let them leave.

“Those Tran who remain obstinate can of course be disposed of.”

“What about this trio of outsiders, this guy Fortune, the schoolteacher, and September, the big guy? I don’t imagine they’d be missed.”

Bamaputra shook his head. “Killing them would only make the rest that much more obstinate.”

“Are you thinking of persuading some of them to work for us?”

“The thought had occurred to me. I don’t know any of them yet. Money is available for such purposes. That might swing one or two of them over to us, but not all, I’m afraid. I fear several are idealists.” He sniffed. “There is no place in science for idealism.”

“What if we kept the women here as hostages?”

“Too risky. It would only take one to give us away. The ones we allowed to return to the outpost might harbor hidden dislikes for those we held here. We absolutely cannot allow any of them out of the installation.”

“So what do we do?” Antal put his feet up on the couch. Bamaputra eyed him distastefully, but said nothing.

“If we cannot persuade them to join us and we cannot dispose of them, we will simply have to keep them alive and quiet. There is no hurry. They will not be expected to return for some while and so we will have time to think. In time we will come up with an appropriate solution. Or they may. For now let us do this: We can have them make a recording. Let’s say our studious guests have encountered an unexpectedly advanced Tran community boasting a unique social order which they wish to study while they pursue their investigations of local meteorological anomalies. The Tran in question have agreed to put them up until they have completed their studies. All of this can be put on a recording chip and sent back with some of our own Tran in a small ice ship. These people did bring recording equipment with them, I trust?”

“Yeah. We’ve been through all their stuff. Gauges and samplers and so forth. What you’d expect. No weapons.” He grinned. “Can’t break regulations, you know. They had a good field recorder.”

Bamaputra nodded approvingly. “Everyone on the recording will be all smiles and contentment. Its arrival should allay any worries on the part of both the outpost scientific and government administration. And I understand the new Resident Commissioner has arrived. She will be too busy settling in to concern herself with a group of explorers who by their own admission are in no danger. What do you think? Will they cooperate and make the necessary recording?”

“I don’t think there’ll be any problem with that. I’ll stick a beamer in somebody’s ear and threaten to pull the trigger. That ought to eliminate any hesitation. This doesn’t strike me as an unusually brave or foolhardy bunch.”

“Fine. Meanwhile we will continue operations normally. When the next supply vessel arrives we will relay news of this awkward development back to headquarters. Let them chew on the problem and come up with a final determination. That way it will be out of our hands. I don’t want the responsibility. Our task is to see that our work here continues uninterrupted.”

“Sounds good to me.”

“What kind of watch do you have on them?”

“Watch?” Antal sucked in smoke, exhaled a small cloud. “They’re well secured. Standard camera surveillance. You want me to put guards on their rooms? They’re not going anywhere, and I’d rather not spare the personnel.”

“If you’re sure …”

“The Tran are sealed in an empty perishables storeroom and the others in a safe dorm. Now and then I have somebody check on them and they’ll be fed three times a day. The Tran don’t know enough to start looking for a way out and that dormitory has magnetic seals on the door. No locks to pick. The cameras make thirty-second room sweeps. They’re unbreakable, regular security equipment. Why take somebody away from his job so he can go to sleep in front of a door with a beamer in his hand? These are machinists, programmers, and fusion engineers, not peaceforcers.

“If anyone in either room tries to fiddle with the door, the cameras will show it to security central. We’d just tell the fiddlers to knock it off or else. They’re as aware of their predicament as we are. I doubt they’ll try anything.”

Bamaputra hesitated, then nodded. “This isn’t my area of expertise. You know best.”

“It’s not my specialty either, but I wouldn’t worry. They can’t go to the bathroom without being seen. There’s no camera in the Tran dorm but they wouldn’t know how to break a magnetic seal even if they were told what it was.” He pulled a fresh narcostick from his vest pocket and extended it toward the administrator. “Sure you won’t try one of these: Helps you forget where you are.”

“I prefer to know where I am.” He sniffed disdainfully. “What is the point in distorting your perceptions when there is so much of interest to observe while they are functioning properly?”

Antal sat up. “Maybe mine aren’t functioning right, then, because it beats the hell out of me how anyone could find anything of interest to observe on this spherical ice cube. All I’m interested in observing are my quarterly credit transfers. I’ve gotta check Number Three. Been having some overheating problems. Minor stuff, but I want to look into it. You know how temperamental those magnetic containment fields can be.” He rose, started toward the exit.

“You going to stay here and stare at the steam?” he asked curiously.

Bamaputra had turned to face the windows. “For a while.”

“Suit yourself.” Antal left the administrator to his contemplation. What a weirdo. He’d long since given up trying to understand the smaller man. For a while, Antal thought he might even have been an extremely well-built, cleverly programmed robot. The theory was quickly disproves He’d encountered a few pure humanoid machines and without exception every one of them was friendlier and warmer than Bamaputra. He was too distant, too cold to be a robot.

September lay on two bunks placed end to end and put his hands behind his head. “Well, young feller-me-lad, how do we get out of this?”

“I don’t know,” Ethan told him as he stared at the single door, “but they daren’t kill us.”

“Daren’t say daren’t. Anyone willing to sacrifice a few tens of thousands of intelligent locals to further a commercial end is more than capable of bumping off a few members of his own species.”

“I don’t doubt they’d do it in a minute if they thought they could get away with it, but they must know we’d be missed back at Brass Monkey.”

“I’m sure they do or we’d probably be sucking ice by now. The longer we sit here and don’t report back, the more curious Hwang’s colleagues back at the outpost will become. So whatever this Bamaputra fellow decides, he’s going to have to do it pretty quick. You’re right about one thing, though. I don’t think our imminent demise is one of their primary options. There’s plenty to dislike about our captors, but they don’t strike me as rash. I wouldn’t be surprised to see them try to co-opt Hwang and her people.”

“Surely not.” Ethan was shocked by the suggestion.

“If you work on somebody long enough, it’s been proven you can alter their attitudes no matter how dedicated they are. This Bamaputra’s sharp. And he’s a scientist himself. He can talk to folks like Blanchard and Semkin in their own language. He might eventually be able to convince some of our friends that what he’s doing really is in the best interests of the Tran, his backers’ ulterior motives notwithstanding.”

“You know, that whole business still bothers me.”

September turned to look at him. “How do you mean, feller-me-lad?”

“Well, I’m in the same sort of business. Trade, commerce, you know. There are other, less expensive ways to secure a trade monopoly than by changing around a whole world’s climate.”

A broad grin spread across the giant’s face. “I was wondering when that would occur to you.”

Ethan was startled. “You’ve been thinking along the same lines?”

“Have to be blind not to see it, lad. For instance, your company could simply apply for such a monopoly. Even though getting it’s an outside shot, if you paid off the right people and demonstrated your good intentions to the rest, you just might get permission. At least you try.”

While they mulled over the obvious, Hwang and her colleagues were engaged in animated discussion across the room. When it concluded, Williams and Cheela Hwang came over to join them. They brought confirmation of Ethan’s suspicions, but not in the manner he’d hoped.

It was much worse than anything he’d thought of.

“We’ve been doing calculations.”

“Isn’t that what you always do?” September quipped.

She didn’t even glance in his direction. Her expression was ashen. “We’ve been plodding through what we know and combining it with what we can extrapolate in the absence of actual raw data about the actual rate of melting of the ice sheet and the warming of the atmosphere in this region. We’ve had to guess as to how long this installation has been in operation. We do know, of course, that it can’t be longer than the existence of Tran-ky-ky has been known. The chances of it having been discovered by these people prior to the first official Commonwealth survey are slim.” She looked at the scientific calculator on her wrist, shoving back the sleeve of her survival suit to expose the small rectangular readout. It was filled with dancing figures.

“We’re pretty sure of our results. I wish we weren’t.”

Milliken Williams looked stricken. “They show that this Bamaputra is being much too modest when he says they’re going to change things on Tran-ky-ky over a period of time. The surface will indeed warm rapidly once the ice sheet begins to retreat. The trouble is that Tran physiology can’t adjust nearly as fast. The climatological shift will occur much too quickly for our friends to adapt to it.

“Those who live close to the equator have a chance of surviving, with help and care. Those in the northern zones, from the temperate to the subarctic, will die of heatstroke long before they can reach the southern continent, despite anything short of massive intervention on the part of Commonwealth authorities. Even if such intervention is forthcoming, we don’t see how a relief effort of that size can be mounted in time.” He made a disgusted sound. “Politics.”

“We’re not talking thousands of deaths here,” Hwang whispered. “We’re talking millions. Genocide. Not mass extinction, but close. Those Tran who survive will do so as government wards, not as the progenitors of a new ‘golden age.’ ”

All Ethan could do was gape at the two of them and say, “Why?”

“I’ll tell you why,” said Hwang evenly. “You recall what Bamaputra said about this Massul and Corfu being in charge of refugee relief efforts? This is going to simplify their work. Massul will be emperor of nothing.”

September was nodding his head understanding. “All adds up, don’t it?” He looked at Ethan. “What happens, feller-me-lad, to a world that gets warmed right up real quick, too quick for the Tran to handle the change? What’s the result down the line when the ice melts and the temperature starts staying above freezing day and night?”

“I don’t follow you, Skua.”

September tapped the side of his white-haired head with an index finger. “You gotta learn to think in global terms, lad. See, if it gets too hot for the Tran, it becomes, real comfortable for humans. You end up with a nice, temperate, attractive, watery world where what’s left of the native population is confined to a single land mass much larger than they need to support them. A native population so reduced and weak that it would be dependent for its very survival on the largess of the Commonwealth.”

“Precisely,” said Hwang. “This installation has been carefully concealed so that the change in the climate can be made to appear the result of natural causes. Giving the prevailing ignorance about this world that is still possible to do. The Commonwealth will be forced to step in to insure the survival of the Tran as a race. In the confusion many relief organizations will be establishing footholds here. Bamaputra’s people will be the first of many and the best positioned to take advantage of the catastrophe.”

“Maybe Bamaputra’s fooling everyone under him. Maybe they’re not aware of what he’s really doing here.” Ethan knew it sounded naive but felt it had to be said.

Hwang shook her head. “The calculations are too simple, too obvious. People like this Antal aren’t stupid. They must know what the end result of their operation here is going to be. It is possible that the lower echelon workers are being kept ignorant.”

“Don’t you see, young feller-me-lad? Bamaputra’s backers aren’t interested in commerce. They aren’t interested in trade monopolies. They’re interested in real estate. A world’s worth. Colonies are allowed on uninhabited worlds and Class I worlds with the consent of the dominant race, but not on anything in between. Tran-ky-ky’s real in between. Not that anyone would want to settle on Tran-ky-ky the way it is. But raise the temperature fifty degrees or so and melt the ice and this could be another New Riviera.”

“For the Tran it would become a literal hell,” said Williams. “For those who managed to survive, anyway. The racial remnants would eventually change into the Golden Saia state, but their numbers would be too reduced to object to an influx of settlers.”

It was quiet for a long moment, each of them lost in their own private contemplation of a horror greater than any had previously encountered or ever expected to.

“Are you sure about the rate of warming and melting?” Ethan finally murmured.

“Even if we are off by a factor of ten or twenty percent,” Hwang told him softly, “it still spells doom for the Tran as a developing race. They will never have the chance to build the advanced civilization Bamaputra talks about because they will not have the numbers to do it on their own. They will become wholly dependent on Commonwealth refugee agencies—or on this project’s backers.”

Williams smiled humorlessly. “I can see Bamaputra’s people displaying great concern for the survivors. It will be excellent public relations for them.”

September nodded knowingly. “They’ve figured it down to the last weld. Right from the start—except for us. We shouldn’t be here. At least we’ve managed to start ’em looking over their shoulders. Not surprised they’re handling us so careful. They know any of us gets back to Brass Monkey and starts talking, the Commonwealth itself won’t be big enough for them to hide in.”

“Then they’d better start running,” said Cheela Hwang softly, “because we’re leaving.”

“I’m willing. There’s just one problem or two.” Ethan nodded toward the exit. “We’re stuck behind a metal door with magnetic locks on it, under constant video surveillance and imprisoned deep inside solid rock.” As he finished, his objections were punctuated by the gentle whir of the spy-eye motor drive swiveling the camera across the floor.

Cheela Hwang reacted as though she hadn’t heard a word he’d said. “Getting out of here is the easy part.”

Ethan looked at September, who shrugged. “Say we manage a miracle and do make it back outside. Our troubles would only be beginning. How do we get from here back to Brass Monkey? You’ve seen the size of the guard Corfu’s mounted on the Slanderscree—not so much because he’s worried about us taking it back as to keep his fellow citizens from stealing it for themselves. Then there’s the matter of the thirty or so mutineers still living on board.”

“We’ll manage.”

“You got to hand it to her, young feller-me-lad,” September said. “She’s nothing if not confident.”

“We’ll do it because we have to.” She indicated her companions, who were sitting nearby making loud, casual conversation to overload the aural pickup that was almost certainly observing the room along with the camera. “We thought of trying to steal one of the installation skimmers, but those are surely more heavily guarded than our ship. Once we get out, we must find a way to take back the Slanderscree.”

September flexed his huge hands. “Once we’re out we might be able to manage all sorts o’ things. The problem is vacating this particular suite. You don’t seem too worried about that.”

“If there is one thing we still have it is a surfeit of brainpower.” She smiled at him. “I have talked it over with Orvil and the Others. The security system watching over us is very simple. This room must have been set aside to hold those employees who become abusive or drunk or break rules and regulations. It was not built to restrain hardened criminals or”—and her smile widened slightly—“dedicated, knowledgeable people who are compelled to find a way out. This is something which Bamaputra or his foreman may soon realize. If they plan to hold us here for any length of time, I’m sure they will begin arrangements to make this area more secure. All the more reason for us to leave as soon as possible.”

“We’ve decided that it would be an advantage to move at night,” Williams put in, “even though technically there’s neither night nor day inside this place. From what we were able to observe on the way in we determined that this installation functions according to a typical twenty-four-hour day/night routine. Much of the equipment we passed is automatic. Probably everyone except designated nighttime supervisory personnel sleeps during the Tran night.” He checked the chronometer built into the sleeve of his survival suit. “Everyone should try to rest some. We’ll see about breaking out of here around midnight.”

“Security won’t sleep,” Ethan pointed out.

“It won’t matter because we’ll be gone,” Hwang told him.

“No, you don’t understand.” He nodded inconspicuously in the direction of the methodical, roving spy eye in the ceiling. “Whoever’s watching that camera’s monitor will raise the alarm immediately.”

“Not if there’s nothing to watch.”

Ethan smiled. “You can’t throw a blanket or something over the lens. That’ll provoke just as quick a reaction as if we start hammering on the door. For the same reason you can’t bust it. If the monitor at their security station goes blank they’ll be down here in seconds to fix it.”

“We’re not going to do either of those things,” Williams assured him. He looked at Hwang and the two of them shared some secret joke. “Whoever’s watching the security monitors isn’t going to see anything unusual all night. Meanwhile we’ll be on our way out of here.”

Ethan shook his head. “Then I confess I don’t have the faintest idea what you have in mind.”

“Good.” Scientist and schoolteacher stood together. “That means they won’t either.”

“So what’s our first step? What do we do now?”

Williams stretched elaborately. Next to him, Hwang yawned. “We go to sleep.”

XI

ONE OF THE MOST difficult things to do is maintain the illusion of sleep when in fact you are so keyed up you can hardly lie still. That was what Ethan and everyone else in the room had to do for the rest of that day and on into the night. At the appointed time it was all he could do to remain silent with his eyes tightly closed.

Faint noises came from the cluster of bunks the scientists had grouped together. That would be Blanchard moving about. He and his companions had rehearsed all that afternoon, but even if it worked it was going to be close. The spy eye swept the room every thirty seconds. There would be no second chance. It had to work the first time.

A hand gently touched his shoulder and he slipped silently out from beneath the thin bedcovers. He could sense other shapes moving in the darkness. As time passed without armed guards appearing to check on the sudden rush of nocturnal activity their confidence grew.

They had been allowed to keep their survival suits and the harmless equipment the suits contained. Using their bodies to shield their efforts from the tireless spy eye, Blanchard and his friends had cannibalized portions of that equipment. The result was a tiny, ultrashort range transmitting device.

They couldn’t disable the spy eye because that would bring an immediate response from installation security. But Blanchard had devised a way to achieve the same result. Instead of recording what it saw every half minute, the transmitter he and his colleagues had constructed and trained on the spy eye jammed the recording circuitry. Instead of displaying a new recording every thirty seconds, the camera now continued to play back only what it had observed in the half-minute interval between twelve fifteen and twelve fifteen and a half A.M. All the spy eye had seen in that particular thirty seconds was a room full of sleeping people. It would run back that sequence over and over until either the deception was finally noticed or the recording began to deteriorate from repeated replaying.

By which time they hoped to be elsewhere.

Eventually it should occur to whoever was assigned to watch the monitors that no one in the dormitory prison had yawned, turned over, or so much as twitched in his sleep. They were gambling on the boredom inherent in such a job. It was much more likely that the monitor-watcher glanced only occasionally at his screens, and therefore unlikely he’d notice anything out of the ordinary for some time. With luck, their disappearance wouldn’t be noticed until it was time for the morning meal to be delivered.

Compared to fooling the spy-eye system defeating the door lock was an easy matter. A single window was set in the door. By peering through it was possible to ascertain not only that there was no one immediately outside but also that the plant did indeed shut down during the nighttime hours. Only a few dim lights glowed in the corridor.

After everyone had quietly slipped outside, Blanchard removed the lock defeat he’d improvised and listened as it sealed itself shut once more. Anyone happening by who tried the door would find it locked tight. Should they also happen to glance through the window they would be able to see lumpy, motionless shapes lying on the dimly lit cots. Williams had supervised the artistic rearrangement of blankets and pillows to simulate sleeping human forms.

From Blanchard they shifted their reliance to Skua September, who as it turned out had the best memory of all for places and passageways. As they crept down corridors and stairs they remained fully alert, but no one appeared to confront them. Machinery hummed and fussed around them, masking the noise of their footsteps on the metal catwalks. Clearly the installation was attended by a minimal night crew.

“Down this way, I think,” Williams whispered.

September shook his head in disagreement. In the poor light, his white hair served as a bobbing beacon for all to focus on. “Over here. After we left the Tran they took us up one more level.” He started toward a stairwell, silent as a ghost.

In a few minutes they found themselves standing across from the oversize door that sealed the refrigerated storage room where their Tran compatriots were being held. Williams had to admit that he’d been wrong. September accepted the apology as his due.

This would be the trickiest part of their escape attempt, for naturally there was no thought of trying to flee without freeing Hunnar, Elfa, and the rest of their Tran friends.

“Can you see anything?” Ethan and the others looked on anxiously as Blanchard put his face to the window in the door and stared into the room beyond.

“Two dimples in the ceiling. They might be spy eyes, or they might be something else. Can’t make out details.”

“Sprinkler heads,” Semkin suggested hopefully. “Why would anyone put spy-eye cameras in a freezer?”

“I don’t know.” Blanchard stepped back, rubbed at his eyes. “We’ll just have to slip inside and hope that if they are cameras I’ll have a chance to jam them before anyone wakes up.” The abrupt stirring of the fifty or so Tran in the room would be bound to draw the immediate attention of even the sleepiest of security personnel watching the monitors.

They waited while the geophysicist used his homemade device to interrupt the magnetic flow which kept the door sealed. In the darkness the faint clicks sounded preternaturally loud. September wrapped one huge fist around the oversize handle, nodded at Blanchard, then slowly eased the door aside.

Several Tran stirred. One sat up and stared in the darkness but said nothing. Blanchard hurriedly moved to aim the jamming unit at one of the dark spots in the ceiling, relaxed with a sigh. Sprinkler heads. No reason, just as Semkin had said, to put security cameras in what was essentially an enlarged refrigerator. Ethan didn’t doubt such devices would eventually be installed to keep an eye on the Tran as well as the humans. For now it wasn’t an immediate concern of Bamaputra’s or Antal’s. Besides, a primitive native couldn’t defeat a magnetic lock. The cold room was perfectly secure.

As secure as the dormitory.

They spread out and began waking the Tran, admonishing them to silence. Dark furry shapes began to rise and gather. Faint light shone eerily through raised dan, giving their native companions the appearance of enormous bats. Within minutes the entire group had been awakened. Hugs and greetings were postponed until they could be exchanged under more amenable circumstances. They still had to get out of the installation.

The corridor was empty as a newly dug grave and they began filing out of the room. The mere movement of so many bodies produced a certain amount of sound, enough to rise above the soft muttering of machinery. Still, by itself the noise wouldn’t be enough to raise an alarm. Someone had to hear it first. Blanchard reseated the chamber door while Ethan and the others discussed their plans with the newly liberated Tran.

“We’ve got to try and retake the ship.”

Hunnar nodded, that odd little down and sideways movement of the head that Ethan knew as well as any human gesture. “It will be good to fight.”

“Even if we should fail,” whispered Monslawic, Ta-hoding’s first mate, “better to die fighting than rotting away in a cage.”

September clapped the Tran on a furry shoulder. “We ain’t going to fail. Not after having made it this far.”

They followed the giant as he struggled to retrace the path they’d taken when they’d been marched inside the installation. There was no way to muffle the clatter of clawlike chiv on metal, which sounded like an army of dog-sized insects. A single night tech left his dials and gauges to find out what was making the strange noise. He found out. His eyes widened as half a dozen of the Slanderscree’s sailors jumped him. They would have cut his throat save for the intervention of the humans. Ethan pointed out that the unlucky man wasn’t responsible for the installation or its raison d’être. It required all their powers of persuasion to dissuade the Tran, who were eager and anxious for someone to kill. In the end they settled for gifting the technician with a mild concussion.

Cheela Hwang and her companions descended on the man’s equipment belt and pockets like so many scientific scavengers, appropriating everything that might prove useful later.

No one guarded the entrance to the installation. It would have been a waste of manpower. The human inhabitants rarely went outside and unauthorized Tran were never admitted. Nevertheless, Blanchard and Moware wasted what Ethan and September thought were precious minutes double-checking possible alarm relays. The Tran milled aimlessly behind the humans, fancying they could already smell the frigid freedom that lay on the other side of the heavy barrier.

The geophysicist, Hwang, and Semkin worked with the door mechanism for several minutes. Then they all stepped back. Blanchard made a connection, a motor sprang to life, and the door swung up and back quietly. Everyone held their breath, but no sirens screamed behind them, no horns shattered the night silence. On the barren slope outside the ceaseless wind moaned invitingly.

There was no holding back the Tran. Sailors and soldiers poured through the opening and gathered on the cleared, flat area that had been sliced from the granite. They sucked in the fresh cold air, spread their dan, and danced pirouettes on the frozen places out of sheer exhilaration.

Off to their left lay the path that led down toward sleeping Yingyapin. Tran-ky-ky’s multiple moons illuminated the switchbacks, a dark ribbon drizzled among lighter rock. A few lights burned late in the would-be capital of all Tran-ky-ky.

Ethan started down as Blanchard closed the door behind them. A clawed hand held him back and he turned to see Hunnar Redbeard’s cat’s eyes glowing down at him. The knight smiled with satisfaction.

“There is a quicker way, my friend.” He turned, exposing his broad back. “Climb on. Put your legs around my waist, just below where the dan is attached.”

“I don’t …”

“Do not argue. In that place we rely on your wisdom. Out in the real world you must listen to us. See.” He pointed and Ethan could see Hwang and the other scientists crawling onto the backs of strong sailors.

As the door closed, Blanchard came rolling out beneath it, just clearing the descending lip of the barrier. He rose panting, the visor of his suit temporarily fogged. His tone was exultant.

“I haven’t done anything like this since I was at university. Rather like a complex game.” He turned to face the doorway, a part of the hillside once more. “The thirty-second repeat is still fooling them.”

“Let’s hope it continues doing so.” Ethan climbed onto Hunnar’s back and wrapped his fingers around the straps that held the two pieces of the hessavar-hide vest together. He locked his legs around the knight’s waist. “What now?”

“This now.”

Hunnar trudged to the edge of what to Ethan looked like a sheer drop. Closer inspection revealed that the slope wasn’t quite vertical. He’d never been very fond of heights. Water had been dumped here to create a smooth ribbon of ice down the embankment. In the moonlight it gleamed like a frozen waterfall.

He started to say, “You can’t …!” as Hunnar pushed off into emptiness.

They were falling. Wind roared around his visor. The knight spread his powerful arms, opening his membranous dan to their maximum extent—not to catch the wind this time but to brake their descent. To Ethan it didn’t feel like they were slowing down at all. His fingers dug into the hessavar straps while his heart commenced a rapid migration up into the vicinity of his throat.

This was how the local Tran, Corfu, and his ilk, returned from the installation back to Yingyapin. Not for them hours wasted trudging down the switchbacks. It was like descending a ski jump except there was no upcurving jump ramp waiting at the bottom. Only solid rock and what looked like far too small an area in which to stop.

Daring to open his eyes, he saw the rest of the Tran screaming down the ice flow. Some carried his fellow humans. One husky sailor balanced Skua September on his back. As Ethan stared, Skua saw him and waved wildly in his direction. His large friend was apparently enjoying the near-suicidal descent immensely.

Miraculously they arrived at the bottom of the drop intact. Trembling, Ethan slid down off Hunnar’s back and struggled to regulate his breathing and heart rate. As he did so he tilted his head back and stared up at the ledge which marked the entrance they’d just fled. It showed as a thin line against the lighter stone impossibly far above. September strode over to him, his eyes shining, and clapped him on the back.

“Was that a ride or weren’t it, young feller-me-lad?”

“I could have lived without the experience.” Ethan was still gulping air via his visor membrane. Much as he wanted to, there was no thought of pushing back his hood or visor, not during the coldest time of night.

If their captors had thought ahead, they would have appropriated the research team’s suits, exchanging them for normal coveralls or similar attire. That would have precluded any possibility of escape more effectively than the strongest locks or thickest doors. Antal hadn’t bothered. Why worry? The prisoners were secured in a locked room under constant video surveillance. They couldn’t possibly flee.

The breathtaking descent had deposited the escapees on a rocky ledge just outside the city. While the humans recovered from the precipitous drop, the Tran were conferencing. Hunnar, Elfa, Grurwelk, and Ta-hoding rejoined them moments later.

“We think it safer to avoid the city. Though none should be about this time of night, you can never tell when you might encounter a watch. The harbor is ringed with easy icepaths. The farther we stay from inhabited areas the better. It will take a little more time.” Hunnar traced a course over rock and ice in the moonlight. Across the harbor, her sails reefed and still tied to the dock where they’d arrived, the Slanderscree waited like a sleeping princess in a dream.

“We will go around there, and there, and then cross the harbor.”

September studied the proposed route thoughtfully. “We’ll be mighty exposed out there on the ice. No cover.”

“Corfu’s guards will be huddled around a fire or one of your magical heaters on the city side. They have no reason to believe us anything but tightly imprisoned inside the mountain. As for the traitors on the Slanderscree, if their consciences trouble them as they should, they will not rest as easy, but neither would they bother to mount guard over a vessel already under guard. By approaching the ship from the harbor side we will avoid the gaze of any who may be awake.”

“I don’t see that we have any other choice,” Ethan ventured. “Besides, the faster we move the better our chances. Speed’s stood us in good stead so far.”

Hunnar grinned at him. “Ready then, friend Ethan, for another ride?”

“So long as it’s not vertical.”

They moved out, Tran in the lead, humans in the middle, more Tran under First Mate Monslawic’s command bringing up the rear. The Tran traveled on the icepath that paralleled the coastline while the humans had to make their way across the bare rock nearby. From time to time they had to slow and detour around an isolated shack or stone hut, but no lights burned in these habitations. If any held occupants, they slept on unaware of the desperate column that marched so carefully around them.

Any fighting to be done would be left to the Tran. While the human’s survival suit material was tough and durable it was not designed to serve as armor. It was intended to keep heat or air conditioning in, not sword points out. A stab or slice at the right angle and with enough force could penetrate the inner lining and render a suit useless. If they were to escape, they would need the suits functional.

Elfa insisted they were worrying needlessly. There was no reason to mount a guard on the harborside of the icerigger. They would approach undetected.

Then it was time for Ethan to mount Hunnar’s back again and a moment later the entire party was moving out onto the ice. Hunnar lifted his arms, letting his outstretched dan catch the wind. Ethan could feel them picking up speed, accelerating steadily, until they were chivaning silently across the harbor. The layer of melt water which covered the surface slowed them somewhat and Ethan readied himself for a fall or two, but the Tran adapted to the presence of the water well and had no difficulty in maintaining their balance.

Hunnar’s guess proved correct. As they neared the great icerigger even the most myopic among them could see that the railings and masthead lookout bins were unoccupied. Ship slept as soundly as city.

Jacalan and his companions kept throwing nervous glances in the direction of the buried installation they’d just fled, only to be reassured by the continued absence of flashing lights or blaring alarms. Their departure had yet to be detected, and it would be hours before anyone needed to check the dormitory in person. If all went well aboard the icerigger, by breakfast time they would have left the harbor behind and would be flying across open ice. The more kilometers they could put between themselves and Yingyapin before their escape was discovered, the better their chances of outdistancing one of the short-range skimmers.

Hunnar turned and let Ethan slide down. It was hard to walk on the ice in survival suit boots but not impossible. The layer of water didn’t make things any easier. They had to move more cautiously than usual. The sound of so many feet sloshing about seemed deafeningly loud to Ethan.

Half the loyal Tran began to climb the boarding ladders cut into the ship’s side while the rest chivaned beneath the hull. They would board from the starboard side. A third group led by Skua September headed for the dock. They would silence any guards ashore and then give a signal, whereupon the final attack on the icerigger would begin.

Unfortunately, Corfu’s minions were neither as lazy nor sleepy as everyone hoped. Instead of continued silence, the night air was broken by a hoarse scream. Ethan tensed at the faint, unmistakably whispery hiss of a beamer being fired. Hunnar muttered something incomprehensible in Tran and started up the boarding ladder nearby. No point in holding back now. Staring into the darkness Ethan could see the soldiers and sailors of the Slanderscree climbing frantically and knew that on the starboard side of the ship others would be doing likewise. They outnumbered the mutineers, but that was no guarantee of success. They had no way of knowing how many guards Corfu had put aboard the ship itself or what type of armament they carried.

He found himself scrambling up the roughhewn steps, up over the railing and out onto the moonlit deck. Muffled sounds filtered up from below where what fighting there was was taking place. He immediately rushed to the far rail and stared toward the city. Shouts and yells came from the small building at the far end of the dock where the guards had barricaded themselves. The occasional flash of a beamer was shockingly bright against the night. Lights were already appearing in other buildings as those awakened by the noise fumbled for their lamps. Anxiously he glanced up and back toward the mountain that dominated the far side of the harbor, but there was still nothing to indicate that the alarm had been carried to their captors.

Dissension and fighting were as natural to the Tran as eating and sleeping. With luck anyone observing the goings-on in the city would put it down to normal internecine argument. It couldn’t have anything to do with the recently acquired prisoners. After all, didn’t the security monitor continue to show the captured visitors from Brass Monkey sleeping soundly in their beds?

No, there was no reason to believe the nocturnal ruckus was due to anything out of the ordinary. Even if word eventually reached Massul fel-Stuovic or Corfu it would take time to raise the alarm up at the underground installation. Unless Bamaputra’s allies had the use of a communicator. Even if they did, it would take a while to wake someone like Antal who had the power to make decisions.

His attention was drawn to an alien shape emerging from belowdecks nearby. Moonlight glanced off a sword wet with blood. Seeing the look on his face, Elfa hastened over to reassure him.

“Little enough killing there has been. We surprised them in their hammocks. The traitors Kilpit and Mousokka were in Ta-hoding’s cabin. Among those who remained true there was some sentiment for butchering them all, but Hunnar, sweet-tongued devil that he is, insisted that those who rebelled had been swayed as much by the difficulties of the long journey as by this merchant Corfu’s offer and that they might be reinstated as crew once again. Until we can be sure of them each will be watched over by one whose fealty is not in doubt. Those who offered no resistance and have expressed remorse will be given this opportunity. Myself, I think my mate too compassionate, but we need every hand we can get.” She gestured toward the mainmast, where sailors were braving the frigid wind as they fought to set sail.

Others wrestled to bring in the ice anchors while Ta-hoding supervised the hasty splicing of the severed steering cables. Ethan ran to watch. September joined them a moment later, breathing hard.

“You didn’t surprise them,” Ethan said accusingly.

“Sometimes your target ain’t as cooperative as you’d like. That’s the real world for you, feller-me-lad.” Behind the survival suit’s visor his eyes shone like tiny echoes of Tran-ky-ky’s moons. “We were lucky to do as well as we did. The bastards had beamers.

“One of ’em was off in a bathroom and got away before we could run him to ground. He’s the one who saw us coming and raised the alarm. The rest of ’em divided into two groups. We took the first bunch easy enough but the others stood their ground well. I’m still not sure we got them all. But we did get these. Here.” He tossed something small and silvery to Ethan. A beamer. Ethan clutched the illegal weapon gratefully.

“Older model.” September grinned. “Bamaputra doesn’t trust his Tran allies all that much, it seems. Not that it ain’t an efficient killer.” He displayed his own captured handgun. “Both of ’em about half-charged. Use it only as a last resort.”

Ethan nodded briskly and clipped the gun to his belt. He was no soldier, but he’d done plenty of fighting this past year and the beamer was simple enough for a child to use. Or a primitive alien unfamiliar with advanced technology. You pointed it at a target and pulled the trigger as often as necessary until the charge ran out. He could be at least as accurate as any of Corfu’s Tran.

The icerigger lurched, nearly throwing his feet out from under him. Ta-hoding turned away from the stern and moved to take the wheel.

“What do you think, Captain?” September asked him.

Ta-hoding hardly had time to reply. He was testing the wheel, supervising the storing of the ice anchors, and trying to set sail in an effective pattern. Shouts continued to come from over the stern, were relayed to him by another sailor straddling the aft rail.

“The steering will hold for a while, friend Skua, but not in a strong wind or at high speed. We’ll push it for all its worth and when it snaps again we’ll have to stop and re-splice it, but not a moment before.”

“You’ll get no argument on that from me.” Then his eyes widened and he let out a warning bellow.

His beamer seemed to go off in Ethan’s face, leaving spots dancing before his retinas. When he turned it was to see a Yingyapin soldier falling away from the rail, his face fried, skin and fur burning where the beamer had struck. As Ethan picked himself off the deck September stomped over to the rail and peered over the side, making satisfied noises.

“You enjoy killing, don’t you, Skua?” He brushed at his survival suit.

The giant turned on him. “No, young feller-me-lad, you’ve got it all wrong. I don’t enjoy killing at all. What I do delight in is confounding my enemies. That’s always been part of my makeup and always will be.”

The icerigger groaned and Ethan stumbled again. Several of the mainsails had been let out and now a pair of foresails filled with wind. Ta-hoding handled the wheel as delicately as a lady’s ankle bracelet, making full use of the ship’s adjustable spars as he edged it away from the dock. The first glow of morning was kissing the top of the mainmast with molten gold.

They were on their way.

It seemed to Ethan that every plank, every nail and bolt creaked and groaned as the captain guided his vessel out onto the ice. Ta-hoding was trying to steer the ship with wind and spars in order to spare the crudely spliced steering cables as much strain as possible. September beckoned to Ethan to join him at the railing.

A small armed mob was gathering on the dock. There were no beamers in evidence. The arrows and spears they hurled at the retreating ship fell well short as Ta-hoding brought the icerigger’s bow around, aiming for the harbor entrance.

A few of Massul’s troops chivaned out onto the ice, more for show than anything else. They posed no real threat to the Slanderscree. They would make a rush, toss a spear or small axe, then fold their dan against their sides and wheel sharply to right or left to keep out of range of those on the icerigger. One bowman ventured too close and caught a couple of crossbow bolts for his trouble. That put an end to any incipient thoughts of pursuit on the part of their former guards.

They were beginning to move toward the open sea and still there was no sign of reaction from up on the mountainside. Ethan wondered how Massul would react to a thorough explanation of what Bamaputra and his people were up to. Would he believe that his patron humans intended not to help him so much as to cause the deaths of thousands of his own kind so they could then steal his world? That he would be an emperor in name only, lording it over a few sad remnants of a once proud and independent race?

And what of Corfu? What good would it be to possess a trade monopoly when most of your potential customers were dead?

Not that it mattered. Even if they could convince both Tran of the truth, Bamaputra would simply dump them in favor of more cooperative substitutes. There are always those among any race to whom promises are more important than truth. In any event he doubted he’d be given the chance to try.

Ta-hoding was spinning the wheel, heedless now of the potential strain on the spliced cables and shouting at his sailors to back sail. Ethan frowned. Back sail was the last order he expected the captain to be giving. He rushed toward the bow, September leaping from the quarterdeck to join him and landing so hard Ethan thought his huge friend would crash through to the living quarters beneath. The tough wood held.

Then they were standing side by side looking over the bow as the Slanderscree, which had just been starting to accelerate, slowed to a halt.

Shining in the rising sun and blocking the entire mouth of the harbor was a metal barrier composed of giant X-shapes made from construction beams. These were attached to a long thick metal tube like so many crosses strung on a post. Each X rested on a pair of metal skates not unlike those which supported the icerigger. The entire massive gate was hinged to a point of land just west of the city. Steady light shining behind windows of real glass hinted at an independent power supply. Even at a distance Ethan could see masses of armed Tran gathering on the rocky peninsula to protect the gate station.

The barrier completely closed off the harbor from the open sea beyond. Even if they could somehow cut the power to the tiny engines that moved the gate that didn’t mean they could move it. Not if the hinge had been locked in place. The tops of the X’s were four meters above the ice, the connecting metal tube or bar half that. No flimsy construct this, it looked solid and immovable. They were trapped.

A glance back toward Yingyapin revealed groups of Tran moving back and forth like clusters of ants. Probably someone was talking to installation security on a communicator right now. It might even be that Antal’s security personnel had moved this harbor barrier into position by remote control. If that was the case, it explained the lack of reaction from above. There was no hurry. The escapees weren’t going anywhere. Plenty of time to break out the skimmer with its laser cannon and escort the would-be refugees back to their cells. And Ethan knew they wouldn’t be given a second chance to pull the recycle-the-monitor-view trick.

Meanwhile the Slanderscree rested on ice topped with three centimeters of water as those on board frantically tried to decide what to do next.

“Can we hold the ship?” Suaxus-dal-Jagger wondered aloud.

“Not against heavy energy weapons,” Ethan told him.

“Suppose,” Budjir said, “we threatened to burn it? That would not matter to the skypeople here, but this Corfu covets the Slanderscree desperately. He would at least argue with them that since we cannot flee they can wait and starve us out.”

“Now that’s a thought,” September murmured. “Bamaputra’s not the type to waste anything. And keep in mind he wants Hwang and her buddies alive in case any curious types from the outpost come calling to see what’s happened to them. I think you’re right, Budjir. I think they’ll hold off any shooting. They can see we’re stuck here, so why not just wait us out? Better for him if we give up quiet-like. Except we ain’t giving up just yet. We’re leaving.”

Ethan eyed him sideways. “You just finished saying that we’re stuck here.”

“The Slanderscree’s stuck. We’re not.”

“Don’t get me wrong, Skua. I don’t want to go back up there anymore than you do.” He jabbed a thumb in the direction of the mountain and its underground complex. “But at the same time I don’t think we can make it back to Brass Monkey on foot.”

“I’m not much on sliding myself, lad. That’s why we’re going to take one of the lifeboats.”

“Are you seriously considering attempting a return to your outpost in one of those tiny craft?” Hunnar asked him in disbelief.

“Not to Brass Monkey, no. But if we can make it to the southern shipping lanes near Poyolavomaar, we can hail a trader and buy ourselves passage the rest of the way. If we can make it that far, the young Landgrave will give us a decent ship and the crew to sail her back to the outpost.”

“I am coming as well,” Ta-hoding told them.

“Someone who can give orders has to stay with the ship,” Ethan argued.

“Monslawic can handle command. Already he has proven that. Without me you will not have a chance.”

“I’d argue you on that,” September told him, “but fight it I won’t. Be good to have you at the helm, Captain. I think we should take that Seesfar gal, too. She knows the territory between here and Poyo better than any of us.”

“I would rather leave her behind,” Hunnar growled.

“I ain’t especially fond of her myself, but when you’re trying to save your neck and the necks of your friends, personal likes and dislikes kind of recede into the back ground. You don’t have to marry her, just sail with her. Now what about a representative from our scientific contingent?”

“Ought to be Milliken.” Ethan looked down on the deck. Williams was deep in animated conversation with Cheela Hwang and Snyek, the glaciologist. “He knows what it’s like out on the ice. The others don’t.”

Hwang and her colleagues agreed that the teacher was the best qualified of their number to make the journey. This Ethan expected. They were nothing if not sensible. What he did not expect was the ferocity with which Hwang kissed the teacher farewell. That was neither expected nor sensible. Amazing what a little casual conversation could accomplish between intelligent people, he mused.

“Six then,” said Hunnar as they watched the, crew unlatch one of the icerigger’s two lifeboats. “Three Tran, three human.”

“Go, husband,” Elfa murmured softly. “Ride the wind back to me. I will be here waiting for you when you return.” Sailors swung the small craft over the side, manipulating ropes and pulleys.

“Till the next evening.” Hunnar put out his right paw, palm upward, and they locked fingers, then parted. September was already over the side, catching and stowing sacks of supplies. Williams followed, then Grurwelk Seesfar, Hunnar, Ethan, and lastly Ta-hoding, puffing hard and trying not to show it.

With only six of them aboard they had ample room to move about. It was a much smaller version of the Slanderscree, equipped with four runners instead of five, a steering handle instead of a wheel, and a single folding mast. The raised central cabin provided the only shelter from the ceaseless wind. As they settled in and found places, sailors began to push the little iceboat toward the metal barrier. The central cabin barely passed between two of the welded-beam X-shapes and beneath the connecting bar.

Then they were on the other side, past the barrier. Ta-hoding, Hunnar, and September fought to raise the mast and lock it into position just forward of the cabin. The single sail was set and secured to the tip of the boom. As wind filled the woven pika-pina the metal gate, the mountains, and Yingyapin harbor began to recede behind them. The icerigger’s bulk was clearly visible, imprisoned on the other side of the barrier. No one cheered their escape, no lookouts waved enthusiastically from their posts atop the masts. If they were lucky, they would slip away without being noticed by those on shore, whose attention should be concentrated on the much larger ice ship.

As they began to emerge from the shelter of the harbor the sail bulged with west wind and they picked up speed. Freezing water splashed up and back from beneath the bow runner, splattering everyone aboard. Icicles began to form on the boom, the rails, and the roof of the cabin. Water was something no ship on Tran-ky-ky was designed to contend with.

Utilizing a spare sail from the lifeboat’s storage locker, they were able to rig a crude screen between bow and mast. It slowed them slightly but kept the water off. Williams had been staring intently astern ever since they’d left.

“No skimmers. That means Bamaputra and his people don’t know we’ve left. They might not miss us for quite a while.”

“Don’t count on it,” said September, scraping ice crystals from the rim of his visor. “The first thing Antal will do is order a head count. They might not miss the lifeboat but they’ll sure as hell miss us. I’m sure your lady friend will stall them as long as possible.”

“Yes, Cheela ought to—” Williams halted in mid-sentence and eyed him sharply. “Lady friend? What makes you say that, Skua?”

“Why, nothing, nothing at all, Milliken. Except she pretty near had you right there on the deck by way of saying good-bye.”

Fortunately for the easily embarrassed teacher, his skin was much too dark to show a blush.

XII

TRAN-KY-KY’S FROZEN OCEAN SURROUNDED them, the rim of the southern continent was rapidly falling astern, and still there was no sign of the expected pursuit. Ethan was beginning to believe they’d pulled it off.

September stood on Ta-hoding’s right, shielding his visor with one hand while peering into the rising sun. “Let’s turn east for a bit, Captain.”

“East? But Poyolavomaar lies north by northwest.” The wind ruffled his dense fur. Like Hunnar and Grurwelk he appeared oblivious to the cold.

“That’s the way they’ll expect us to go. Better we waste a few days by sailing east before turning north. Once we’re sure we’re in the clear we can make a gradual swing back toward Poyo. Keep in mind that those sky boats’ range is limited by the amount of fuel they can carry. The more they waste searching for us where we ain’t, the less likely they are to find us. We sure as hell ain’t going to outrun them. Not in this stuff.” He gestured over the side.

It seemed to Ethan that the layer of water atop the ice sheet had deepened by half a centimeter just while they’d been imprisoned. That was impossible, of course. Such an increase would require months of heating. But it was hard to escape the feeling that at any moment their little craft might become a boat instead of an ice ship.

By midday the familiar cliffs which marked the limits of the continental plateau had replaced the unusual gentler slopes which embraced the harbor they’d left behind. The sun was bright and piercing, the air still warm to the three Tran, though not warm enough for the trio of humans to consider doffing their survival suits. At least they were able to flip back their hoods and visors. It was worth a little cold to be able to breathe Tran-ky-ky’s pure, unpolluted air directly.

“With your hood back you could also hear better, so everyone heard the low, buzzing whine at about the same time. It was loud enough to rise above the whistle the wind made as it passed through the little craft’s rigging. September hurried to the stern where he raged at ice and a mocking fate.

“How did they find us? How?” He clutched the stolen beamer in one huge fist even though he knew it wouldn’t be of much use against a heavily armed skimmer. Ethan gripped the other pistol.

“I’m not sure this time they’ll give us the chance to ask questions.” He gestured with the weapon. “Maybe they’ll move in close to check on us and we can pick them off.”

“Maybe.” September’s tone clearly indicated what he thought of their chances. “Depends who’s on board; humans, Tran, or a mix.”

Grurwelk had moved to stand alongside them. Now she pointed. “There it is.”

Several minutes passed before the air-repulsion vehicle had come close enough for the less farsighted humans to pick out the silvery silhouette. It flew swiftly over the flat surface, keeping three meters above the ice.

“Good tracking equipment.” September was muttering unhappily. “I was counting on them not having any portable stuff. Obviously I was wrong. Or maybe they just guessed lucky.”

“Maybe it’s our turn.” Ethan slipped his beamer out of sight. “They probably know we took these but they don’t know for sure that we have them here. It’s possible they think they’re back on board the Slanderscree.”

September hesitated, then shoved his own weapon into a pocket in the pants of his survival suit. “Possible. Not likely, but possible. We’ll find out soon enough.” His eyes watered as he stared into the wind. “What about the heavy artillery?”

“I fear the weapon you refer to is indeed mounted on this sky boat.” Hunnar’s query was more hopeful than sanguine as he nodded toward the now concealed pistols. “Can you reach them with those smaller light weapons?”

“Not if they chose to stay out of range,” September told him. “Better be ready to abandon ship if they start shooting. A heavy energy weapon’ll make splinters of this boat. The air in the wood will explode and the rest’ll burn.”

“Abandon ship?” Ta-hoding clung to the steering mechanism and uneasily peered over the side at the layer of cold water their stone runners were cutting through. “What if we fall through the ice to the center of the world?”

“Don’t worry about that,” Ethan told him grimly. “You’d freeze before you could drown.” The notion of swimming was as alien to the Tran as the idea of traveling through the vacuum of space. Not that anyone could stay alive for long in the frigid liquid. It was only six centimeters deep here. Be hard to drown in that. The captain’s fears set him to wondering just how thick the ice sheet was this close to the continent. He knew it was thinner than elsewhere.

“Slowing up.” September blinked tears from his eyes. “Damn. They must suspect we’ve got the pistols.”

“Can you make out how many there are?”

“Two Tran for certain,” said Hunnar evenly. “At least two of your kind. One steering and another seated behind the big light weapon.”

“Taking no chances,” September rumbled. “So what are they waiting for? Why don’t they finish us?”

“Maybe they’re having trouble with the gun,” Ethan said hopefully. “Plenty of battles have been decided by weapons that didn’t work properly at the critical moment.”

“Taking a head count, more likely.”

The delay did not last long, nor was there anything wrong with the laser cannon. An intense burst of amplified energy momentarily flared brighter than the sun as the weapon fired. It struck not the lifeboat but the ice in front and around.

Runners slid over nothing and the craft slewed sideways, the mast collapsing on top of them, as the ice gave way under the intense heat. They lurched wildly to port. Hunnar inhaled sharply and clutched at the steering column. Grurwelk cursed as she rolled over Ethan while Ta-hoding intoned a hurried prayer.

They did not sink. The ice sheet had been shattered all around them but it didn’t melt completely. The lifeboat was partially supported by a large floe that remained beneath the starboard runner. As they listed to port water began to trickle in through the closely set decking. It pooled up around Ethan’s feet as he struggled erect. The survival suit kept it from his skin.

“What the hell are they doing?” Even as he finished asking the question another bolt from the cannon blasted the ice off to their right. September had ducked below the railing. Now he raised his head to peer back at their assailants.

“Game time,” he muttered tightly. Another flare melted more ice in front of them. “They’re going to pin us in open water and wait till we sink.”

“What happens if we don’t?”

“I’m sure they’ll find a way to accelerate the process. Blow away the stern or something.”

Ethan pulled out his beamer. “We’ve got to take a shot at them. We can’t just sit here!”

September put a restraining hand on his shoulder. “Maybe that’s what they’re trying to do, find out if we’ve got the pistols or if they’re back on the good old Slanderscree. Save the charge. They’re still out of range. If we don’t fire, maybe they’ll figure we don’t have them and move a little nearer.” He licked his lips. “They’re pretty close now. Come on, boys, we’re just as helpless as can be down here. Come on in and have a nice close look.”

By this time they were drifting in the middle of a patch of open water the size of a small lake. Wavelets rocked the lifeboat, which refused to sink. Williams found a couple of pots in the central cabin and soon he and Ta-hoding were bailing like mad. No doubt those on the skimmer found this essentially futile activity very amusing.

Then all of them were thrown backward as the water heaved beneath them.

It must have been a fish. Ethan didn’t know what else to call it because he didn’t get a very good look at it. Williams had a better view and thought it surely the biggest Holothuroidea in existence. It had a mottled, leathery skin from which tentaclelike purple and red eruptions projected and it slurped down the hovering skimmer as easily as a trout would take a fly. It hung frozen against the sky, a streak of color shattering the pure blue, the aft section of the skimmer dangling from horny lips. As it slid back beneath the surface the two Tran seated in the rear of the craft jumped clear.

The wave created by its descent split more of the ice and rocked the floating lifeboat wildly. Only once before had Ethan and his companions encountered one of the monstrous lifeforms that lived beneath the ice in the dark depths of Tran-ky-ky’s still liquid oceans. Undoubtedly the apparition which had inadvertently if momentarily saved them also had a warm-weather state, just as did the Tran and every other inhabitant of this frozen world. Perhaps in that state it had eyes. Ethan had seen none. In the cold lightless depths other senses came to the fore. Probably the swimming leviathan had sensed the skimmer’s motion.

What would it make of the drifting lifeboat?

He forced himself to stay calm. In shape and movement their craft was little different from the ice floes drifting all around it. He climbed to his knees and peered over the side, his legs immersed in icy water. There was no sign of the skimmer. One minute it had been hanging in the clear air, tormenting them. Now it was gone, along with its advanced weaponry, communications equipment, and crew.

Well, not all its crew. As Ethan stared, one of the two Tran who had jumped clear at the last instant vanished beneath the roiling surface. The other clung to a small ice floe and somehow managed to pull himself out of the water. He lay there, breathing hard and soaking wet and terrified, staring at the ice corpse surrounding him. Ethan wondered how long he’d last. The Tran could tolerate extreme cold, but dampness was something their systems were not accustomed to.

Ta-hoding clung to the steering oar. “It will come for us next. We are finished, doomed.”

“We’re still afloat,” September snapped, “and keep your voice down. That thing may have ears as big as its mouth.”

So they waited, bobbing in the slush and water, expecting at any moment to be engulfed from below. They were not. Not in five minutes, not in ten. Half an hour later they were still drifting aimlessly.

September rose and whispered. “Anybody else see any eyes?” A soft chorus of nos greeted his query. “Then it doesn’t see, or if it does, not well. Probably relies on high-pitched sound, or the pressure produced by other creatures moving through the water, or just movement. Maybe the vibrations the skimmer’s engine generated brought it up. Maybe it doesn’t even know we’re here.”

“It might be kilometers away by now,” Williams suggested hopefully.

“Yeah, and it might be able to get back here real quicklike. So let’s keep it quiet and slow.”

“A legend,” Hunnar muttered. “A creature from hell itself.” He peered cautiously over the side, unable to see more than a meter into the dark water. “Something from the depths of memory. I hope it stays there. If that is the sort of creature we will have to deal with when our world warms and the ice melts, then I hope the seas stay frozen forever.”

“What are we to do now?” Ta-hoding wondered. “Why do we not sink to the middle of the world?”

“We float.” Hunnar had trouble with the little-used word. “The way a small pouch of chiaf floats in a cup of soup.” He was studying their surroundings intently. “Somehow we must get back out onto the ice.”

“What about that one?” Williams pointed to the exhausted sole survivor of the skimmer, lying on his ice floe.

“What about him?” Hunnar sneered. “Let him freeze; let him starve. He is already dead.” He turned away, heading toward the bow. Grurwelk lingered in the stern, staring:

“We could paddle,” Ethan suggested, “except we don’t have anything to paddle with.”

“And we don’t want to make any vibrations in the water,” September reminded him. He started hunting through the storage lockers until he found what he wanted. As they looked on he secured one end of the pika-pina cable to a serpentine hook in the bow. At first Ethan thought he was fooling with the ice anchor, but the anchor remained in its holder nearby.

“What do you have in mind, Skua?”

September grinned at him. “Been more than a year since I’ve been able to go for a swim. Expect I still remember how.”

Ethan eyed him in disbelief. “You get in that water you’ll freeze. A survival suit’s not a spacesuit. It’s designed to operate in air. Besides, you don’t know what’s swimming around down there.”

“Reckon we’re fixing to find out. One thing’s for sure: We can’t just sit here. In a little while this wood’s going to get waterlogged. Then we’ll all be swimming.” He wrapped the loose end of the rope around his waist, then pointed to the left of the bow.

“There’s a lot of big chunks over that way. If I can get some traction I can make it to the ice sheet, then try to pull the boat over. With all of us pulling on the cable we might be able to haul this thing out of the water. Remember, there’s no hull. It’s just araft with runners and a mast. Not nearly as heavy as a regular boat.” Slipping one leg over the side, he put a foot into the water.

“Your suit system’s going to be overwhelmed,” Williams was telling him. “The water will press it flat against your body. You’ll lose the insulating layer of air. There’ll be nothing between you and the material for it to heat. And if you get any water down your neck …”

He didn’t need to finish the sentence. If the ice water got inside the suit, it would ruin the material’s ability to distinguish inside from out. The confused thermosensors would interpret the water temperature as body temperature and adjust accordingly. Heating would effectively cease, and in the water beneath the lifeboat an unprotected human body would perish of hypothermia in a few minutes.

“Don’t worry, young feller-me-lad. I’ve always been pretty good about keeping my head above water.” He dropped the other leg over the side and slipped into the sea, still holding onto the rail. Now he was submerged up to his chest.

“How is it?” Ethan asked anxiously.

September smiled back up at him but you could see it was forced. “Afraid it’s starting to get a mite cool. We’ll see.” The rest of the pika-pina cable was coiled over his right shoulder. It was light and strong but there was still enough of it to weigh him down.

Taking a deep breath, he let go of the rail and dropped the rest of the way into the water, pivoted and began breast stroking toward the solid ice a dozen meters in front of the lifeboat.

Silently those on board urged him on, dividing their attention between his swimming form and the dark water surrounding him. Would the sudden presence of light attract curious dwellers from below? September continued to make progress, swimming silently and strongly without a single wasted motion. He reached the edge of the ice sheet without anything arising from the depths.

Whereupon the next problem manifested itself. September was no seal, able to accelerate in the water sufficiently to leap out onto the ice. The edge of the sheet offered precious little in the way of a handhold.

He tried several times but kept slipping back into the water. Paradoxically Hunnar, who could not swim, could have climbed out easily by digging his long powerful claws into the ice. September didn’t even have long fingernails, which in any case were enclosed by the suit’s gloves.

As they looked on worriedly he reached down into the water and picked up a drifting chunk of ice. Using this he began hammering away at a crack in the surface of the ice sheet, holding himself partway out of the water by leaning his left arm and shoulder on the sheet while simultaneously treading water.

Somehow he managed to chop a couple of shallow holes in the ice. Then using both hands he pulled himself out until he was lying flat. It was a measure of his exhaustion that he lay like that for a long time without turning to acknowledge the congratulations of his companions. Water formed a crust of ice on the exterior of his suit, which gradually brought his body temperature back up to normal.

Though it appeared plenty thick where the energy weapon hadn’t touched it, September still crawled on his belly another three meters away from the water’s edge, until he was certain the surface underfoot would support his standing form. Keeping the end of the cable wrapped around his waist, he dug his feet into another crack in the ice and leaned backward.

With infinite slowness the drifting lifeboat began to move. Using his body like a pulley, September continued to drag the waterlogged craft and its anxious passengers toward him. Almost an hour passed before the bow nudged up against the shore.

“I’ll go first,” Williams said. “I’m the lightest.”

“Right. If you fall through, grab the rope and pull yourself toward Skua,” Ethan advised him.

Williams nodded, then gingerly stepped over the bow and put first one foot down, then the other. The ice held.

“Solid,” the teacher said with satisfaction. He walked over and joined September, adding his lesser but nonetheless welcome strength to the cable. Ethan was next, then Hunnar, Ta-hoding, and lastly Grurwelk, still gazing back at the lone survivor of the skimmer who continued to drift aimlessly on his ice floe.

Deprived of their weighty presence the lifeboat floated higher in the water. Under September’s direction they all strained on the rope, using their weight as well as their strength, until Ethan was certain his arms were pulling loose from their sockets. Once they got the bow up on the ice sheet it became easier. They didn’t let up, however, until they’d dragged the little craft a respectable distance from the open lake.

Ignoring the several centimeters of water that still sloshed beneath their feet they broke off the icicles that had formed along the sides and bottom of the boat. Hunnar and Ta-hoding struggled to reset the fallen mast while Williams straightened the sail.

Ethan frowned and walked over to where Grurwelk Seesfar was staring at the water. When he looked in the same direction he saw that there was no sign of the last Tran survivor from the ill-fated skimmer.

“Finally went under, huh?”

She nodded tersely, turned away. To his astonishment he saw tears in her eyes. It was extremely rare for a Tran to cry.

“I don’t understand,” he said, gaping at her. “He was one of those who tried to kill us.”

“I know. One of those who allied himself with scum like this Corfu and his snotty little would-be emperor. He was also my husband. I ask a favor of you. Tell not the others. It means nothing now. It would not do me good.”

Ethan swallowed hard. “I understand. I won’t say a thing.”

She managed the faintest of smiles. “I thank you for this small thing. It would seem that appearances and decency do not always go together.”

Ethan stared after her as he strode back to join the others in preparing the lifeboat for travel. He noted that she did not again look at the place of open water.

The mast held, the sails held. They were off for Poyolavomaar. Inside the small cabin, the three humans clustered around a stone Tran cookstove. Since the cabin had stayed above water, the stove had remained dry, along with its highly combustible contents. Now a small but intense fire crackled within, the smoke rising through a narrow pipe fashioned from a single bone from which the marrow had been removed. The blaze heated the stone walls of the stove which in turn radiated a luxurious warmth throughout the cabin. The heat would have driven the Tran to distraction, but for the three humans it was an echo of home.

September had stripped off his survival suit and laid it out to dry and recuperate. His naked form occupied one whole end of the cabin. A couple of thick furs lay draped over his legs and like his companions he held his palms out to the fire until the skin threatened to crisp. He was no longer shivering.

“Terrific things,” he said, nodding in the direction of his survival suit which hung from a hook like a discarded skin, “but they’re not omnipotent. There at the end I thought I’d lost it all because I couldn’t climb up on that damn ice. I could feel my legs starting to go numb, or is that a contradiction in terms?”

“If you hadn’t gone for that swim,” Williams told him, “we’d still be floating back there, waiting to sink.”

“Or be swallowed,” Ethan added. “You think they’ll send out the other skimmer to look for us?”

“I doubt it.” September pulled back his hands and shoved them beneath the furs, a blissful expression on his face. “There’s going to be a lot of shouting and yelling when that skimmer doesn’t return. It’ll be natural for Antal and his people to assume it might take a day or two to run us to ground. By the time they figure out their gunners aren’t coming back we’ll be too far out for them to find us. They can’t have long-range tracking equipment.”

“Why not?”

“No need for it, first of all. Even if they did they couldn’t use the stuff. Emissions would be picked up by the survey satellite or in Brass Monkey itself. All they can do is assume their people got us and then crashed or something on the way back.” He grinned at the thought. “Bamaputra’s not going to sleep real well for a while, wondering what really happened.” He stretched out on the combination bed and bench. “Now if you fellas don’t mind, I’m a mite fatigued.”

They were all exhausted, Ethan knew. No reason to worry with Ta-hoding guiding the boat. He lay down next to the exquisite fire and closed his eyes.

The last thing he saw out the rear cabin window just before he fell asleep was Grurwelk Seesfar, standing close by Ta-hoding and staring back the way they’d come.

Ethan could not penetrate the veil she drew over her emotions during the voyage to Poyolavomaar, but he was glad she’d come along. Whatever she was feeling inside she kept to herself and devoted all her energy to retracing the course they’d traveled on the journey south. When Ta-hoding’s navigational abilities failed and Hunnar’s instinctive sense of direction became confused she was ready and willing to choose a path based on her previous memories of travel in this region. Gradually the others came to treat her as a full-fledged member of their expedition and to rely on her knowledge. Ta-hoding accepted her boldness as a challenge and matched it with daring of his own.

An example of the captain’s courage came five days out as they were overtaken by a wyrsta. While not as violent as a rifs, it presented a more subtle threat since it was composed of swirling ice particles. These created a complete whiteout. Anyone sitting in the stern was unable to see beyond the central cabin.

A less confident skipper would immediately have turned the bow into the wind, set the ice anchors, and waited for the storm to pass. Not Ta-hoding. With Seesfar assuring him no obstacles lay between their present position and their goal he kept the sail up and maintained speed. Half a day’s travel found them through the storm, whereupon he was persuaded to surrender the wheel to Hunnar. Ice particles had collected in the captain’s frozen fur and beard until he resembled a feloursine version of Father Christmas.

Williams looked back at the storm. “I imagine that’s what a sandstorm must be like, only with ice substituting for sand.”

“I could stand a nice, hot sandstorm right now.” September leaned against the cabin while he perused the southern horizon. “Anything to get warm.”

“Still no sign of pursuit.” Hunnar reached out to tighten a loose stay. “Can your sky people devices track a fleeing vessel even through a wyrsta?”

“Depends on what instruments are being used,” Ethan told him. “I think the ice might scatter high-res radar and I don’t know what it might do with infrared. I’m starting to think that we just might pull this off.”

“If we can find the spot where we brought the Slanderscree across the equatorial ice ridge, and if we can pull, push, or otherwise cajole this windboat back the same way,” September reminded him.

Ethan’s expression fell. “I’d forgotten about that.”

“Do not worry,” said Williams, trying to bolster his spirits. “We’ll find the place again and we’ll get across if we have to carry the boat on her backs. In any event the exertion will help to keep us warm.”

“I’d prefer an induction heater,” Ethan muttered, crossing his arms over his chest.

They managed the crossings—though Ethan was convinced his back would break and his legs give out—just as they made it all the way back to the wide, welcoming harbor of Poyolavomaar. Despite their exhaustion the Landgrave insisted on seeing them immediately, whereupon all adjourned to a private meeting chamber in order to avoid the stares and speculative gossip of the court. As T’hosjer T’hos listened quietly to their tale, interrupting only occasionally with a terse, pointed question, Ethan realized that fond as he was of Hunnar Redbeard, the Landgrave of Poyolavomaar was the Tran best suited to represent his world in the councils of the Commonwealth:

He was being premature, he told himself. There might yet not be anything left to represent.

When they’d finished, T’hosjer had a tray of hot drinks brought in. He watched in silence as his guests drained their goblets, the grateful humans not even bothering to inquire as to the nature of the contents. He spoke again as a servitor refilled the containers.

“I do not understand your kind, friend Ethan. What these people attempt beggars reason.”

“Don’t let it bother you.” September leaned back in his chair, held his hot goblet against his forehead and put his feet up on an exquisitely carved table. “We humans have been puttering around with intelligence for about ten millennia now and we don’t understand ourselves either.”

“But why do such a thing? Why condemn tens of thousands of innocent cubs and elders to death? We would be pleased to share our world with any of your kind who would like to live among us.”

September wagged a sardonic finger at the young Landgrave. “Ah, but in that case you’d have to be paid. Commonwealth law requires it.”

“Whenever sentient beings are regarded as nothing more than statistics affecting a profit and loss column, morality is the first casualty of the final reckoning,” Williams solemnly declared.

“Clearly these people have to be stopped and an end put to their evil enterprise.” T’hosjer spoke quietly, thoughtfully. “But how can this be done if they possess the magical light weapons you have spoken of?”

“We’re hoping they had only one of the most powerful kind of light weapon, and we saw that vanish in the belly of something you wouldn’t describe in detail at a polite supper.” September handed his own hand beamer to the fascinated Landgrave. “If all they have left are more of these then we have a chance. Not to defeat them, but to keep them occupied until serious help can arrive from Brass Monkey.”

Ethan nodded. “Milliken will return and confront the Resident Commissioner, explain what’s going on, and see if we can’t have a peaceforcer ship sent from the nearest base to shut these people and their operation down permanently.” He glanced at the teacher. “He’s better at explanations, and Skua and I are better at fighting.”

“The fastest ship in Poyolavomaar will whisk your scholar back to your outpost to give the alarm,” T’hosjer assured them as he rose. “Nor will you brave friends be returning alone. I will mobilize the fleet. But it will take time.”

“It will cheer those we left behind just to know you are coming,” Hunnar assured him.

“Begging your pardon,” said Williams, “and I don’t mean to denigrate your generous offer, sir, but I don’t think that’s a very good idea.” Everyone stared at him.

“If we return alone, we might be able to sneak back into the harbor and aboard the Slanderscree without alerting anyone. If we arrive with the whole Poyolavomaar navy in tow, Bamaputra will know we got at least this far. He’ll be forced to attack if only to find out what’s going on. I suggest we allow them to believe we perished along with their missing skimmer. That way they won’t be tempted to throw everything they’ve got at us in an attempt to take the ship. Let them continue believing they’ve achieved no worse than a stalemate. It will save a lot of lives.”

September looked excited. “It’ll do more than that, by damn. If they see us limp back to the Slanderscree, the first thing they’ll think is that we didn’t make it anywhere. Otherwise why return? We’re not going to be giving any interviews and they won’t have had the chance—unless they’ve managed to take the ship, which I doubt—to count heads except through monoculars from a distance. Six leave, five come back. I think, we can fool ’em.” He turned back to T’hosjer.

“How long for your best ship to make it to Brass Monkey and back?”

The Landgrave discussed figures with Williams, who transposed to metrics. The results left Ethan nodding with satisfaction.

“Not as bad as I thought it would be. Meanwhile, sir, if it pleases you to alert your forces, then do so. We don’t know how Bamaputra will react to our return and you ought to be ready to defend yourselves if nothing else.”

“Then all is settled.” They rose to leave.

September stepped in front of the teacher. He towered over most men; Williams he dwarfed completely.

“You’re going to be all alone for a bit, my friend. Just you and the Tran.”

The smaller man smiled up at him. “I do not feel uncomfortable among the Tran. We’ve lived with them for nearly two years now. As for human companionship, I’ve spent much of my life living within myself. I’ll be okay.”

“Well, don’t waste time, and don’t stop to ogle the scenery.”

“I intend to stop for nothing.”

The three of them had been together for so long it felt unnatural to be standing on the end of a dock waving farewell to Williams. That was what Ethan and September found themselves doing the following morning as the sleek, narrow-hulled ice ship crewed by the best sailors in Poyolavomaar pulled out of the harbor heading north. Not that either man held any illusions regarding something as archaic as Three Musketeership. They’d been thrown together on this world by accident and kept together by circumstance instead of by choice. But the teacher had been a boon companion; soft-spoken, sensible, and silent unless he had something worthwhile to add to a conversation. They would miss his good counsel.

Skua September was anxious to head back to Yingyapin. His eagerness was matched by Hunnar’s, who though he would not admit it aloud was obviously frantic to be with his Elfa once more. Ethan assured the knight that even if their adversaries had somehow managed to regain control of the Slanderscree, they weren’t likely to engage in a massacre of the escapees.

By mutual consent no one discussed what they would do if for some reason Williams didn’t make it back to the outpost. Tran-ky-ky posed plenty of problems for long distance travelers without opposition from the likes of renegade humans. Stavanzers, wandering barbarians, drooms, storms of varying suddenness and awesome power—any one of these could obliterate a ship and its crew. T’hosjer tried to get them to relax. Williams was traveling on the best ice ship this part of the planet had to offer, assisted and watched over by the finest crew an ice-going city-state could put together. He would make it back to Brass Monkey healthy and ahead of time.

“I sure hope so,” September commented, “or there’s going to be a lot of corpses lying in Yingyapin harbor, and they won’t be of ice.”

Ethan eyed him in surprise. “I thought you liked fighting, Skua.”

“When it serves a purpose. A little war between our people and the citizens of Yingyapin won’t do anyone any good. The Tran would be the ones to shed the real blood, and for what? You know, we’re supposed to be the advanced race on this world. It would be to our credit to settle this trouble without spilling any more local blood than absolutely necessary.”

XIII

JUDGING BY THE LOOKS he drew from passing humans as he trudged toward the administrative complex, Williams knew he must have looked rather like a Tran himself. Weeks out on the ice ocean could do that to a man. His survival suit was battered and discolored, the face visible behind the ice-scoured visor haggard and unshaven.

His companions from Poyolavomaar drew equally curious stares from the local Tran, garbed as they were in their strange attire. For their part, the Poyo sailors valiantly if unsuccessfully strove to gawk at the peculiar alien constructs as inconspicuously as possible. They were fascinated by the distant shuttle port and the smooth, seamless buildings.

The first thing he’d noted upon their arrival was the presence of a shuttle on the ice landing strip. It was in the process of being lowered to the underground hangar dock. He badly wanted to spill his story to its pilot, who could then relay the details to the interstellar vessel lying in orbit overhead, but decided to follow protocol and talk with the Commissioner first. They would be in touch with the proper authorities soon enough.

If anyone had a right to know what was going on, it was the members of the outpost scientific establishment. But what was right and what was necessary didn’t match up at the moment. He had to meet with the Commissioner so she could disburse the crucial information via the deep-space beam. Friends could wait for news of their comrades until the forces of law had been goaded into motion.

Contrary to Ethan’s belief Williams didn’t think they would need a peaceforcer to drive Bamaputra and his team off the planet. The mere fact that their presence and intentions were now known to the rest of the Commonwealth should be enough to send the would-be deluge makers packing. He could see Bamaputra and Antal scrambling to destroy incriminating records as they called frantically for a ship to evacuate the installation. It was an image he relished. Even so, he was willing to forgo the pleasure of seeing their faces again. It was good to be back in what passed here for civilization, good to be able to relax knowing that whatever else happened from this point on, Tran-ky-ky and its people were safe.

The single security guard seated outside the elevators hardly knew what to make of Williams as the teacher stumbled into the building and threw back the hood of his survival suit. Though the temperature inside was maintained at human optimum he found it almost unbearably hot. Maybe he’d acquired more than just the Tran look. He walked over to the small desk with its garland of advanced electronics, put both fists on the synthetic wood, and leaned forward.

“I insist on seeing the Commissioner immediately. It’s a matter of life and death.”

The guard eyed him as though he were some peculiar life form which had wandered in off the ice—which wasn’t far off the mark, Williams reflected.

“I’ll see if Ms. Stanhope is available.”

“You do that.” Williams stepped away from the desk, a bit taken aback by his uncharacteristic forcefulness. The result of spending more than a year in the company of one Skua September, he told himself. When this was over and done with, he would have to learn how to act civilized all over again.

The guard spoke into a pickup, listened quietly for a moment, then put the earpiece aside. “Marquel says for you to go right up.”

“Marquel? Who’s Marquel?”

“The Commissioner’s secretary. She’s over in Hospitality right now. He’s calling her and says for you to go ahead and come up.”

“Thanks.” He turned and headed for the lift, feeling the guard’s eyes on his back.

Guess I am something of a sight, he told himself as the cab ascended. By the time it reached the apex of the pyramidal structure he found himself wishing Skua and Ethan were there to back him up; Skua with his imposing physical presence and Ethan with his glib talk. He didn’t feel comfortable with people like Stanhope, bureaucrats and exercisers of power. He was much more at home with Cheela and Blanchard and the other scientists. They’d treated him as an equal despite the fact that the degrees he held were considerably less impressive than theirs. Good folks. They were depending on him and here he was wasting time as he had so often in the past on useless second thoughts. Just talk, he told himself. The story would take care of itself. He was a teacher, wasn’t he? It was time for a personal tutorial. Time to educate a Commissioner. She wasn’t going to like what he had to say.

Tough. Standing a little taller, he pushed through into the reception area.

It was empty except for a man not much bigger than himself. Instead of waiting at his desk Marquel had apparently been pacing the floor waiting for Williams to arrive. Now he rushed eagerly forward, the questions coming thick and fast.

“Ms. Stanhope will be here shortly. What happened out there? Where are your companions? What’s going on?”

Anxious as he was to see the Commissioner, Williams saw no harm in giving her secretary a quick rundown on his experiences, concluding by explaining that Ethan and Skua had returned with Hunnar and Ta-hoding to help the Slanderscree’s defenders hold off any further attacks by the renegade humans and their Tran allies.

“You understand how imperative it is that this information be transmitted immediately to the nearest military base so that armed assistance will be forthcoming.”

“Of course, of course.” The secretary was thinking hard. “A terrible situation. No one here had the slightest idea anything of this nature was going on. You know, when you all sailed off in that native ice ship there were a lot of us here who never thought you’d be seen again, and those who thought you would return didn’t expect you to find anything.”

Williams nodded at the door that led into the Commissioner’s office. “Would you mind if we waited in there? I remember there being some soft chairs and I wouldn’t mind sitting down while we wait.”

“No, of course not. Please forgive me.” He opened the double doors and led Williams inside. “It’s just that I was so enthralled by your story.” The doors shut behind them.

“After I tell the Commissioner everything I just told you I’ll need to meet with the heads of the various science departments to inform them of what’s going on. Then I think I’ll sleep for about two days.”

Marquel was nodding sympathetically. “You look like you could do with a long rest.” He pushed open a smaller door leading to a side room. “Make yourself comfortable. I’ll be right back.”

Williams settled down in one of the chairs that faced the Commissioner’s desk. Thick insulated windows looked out over the outpost. Beyond lay the harbor of Brass Monkey with its Tran community and ice ships tied up at the three docks.

Marquel was not long absent. When he stepped back into the office Williams saw that the secretary had changed his clothes. His eyes widened. He didn’t need to ask about the reason for the change. The new attire was self-explanatory.

He spun and bolted for the doors. They were locked. He started pounding on them and yelling.

“That won’t do you any good, you know,” said Marquel.

Williams turned and slid away from the doors, keeping his back against the wall and his eyes on the room’s other occupant. “How did you lock them?”

“Remote inside the desk.” the figure smiled thinly. “I won’t show you where.”

He knew it was Marquel behind the black and crimson hood. He recognized the voice even though most of the face was now concealed. The rest of the tight-fitting black clothing covered the man from toe to neck. It was mildly theatrical, but Williams didn’t laugh at its wearer. There was nothing funny about what it implied. Besides, the slick black material had a practical use. It was highly water-repellent. It would also shed blood.

“You know,” he said conversationally while Williams tried to find another way out of the office, “when you and your friends got rid of Jobius Trell it was a wonderful opportunity for my employers to put someone like myself in a position to oversee their interests here. Until now, though, I haven’t had to do anything except perform as a secretary. I was hoping life would go on that way, but”—he shrugged—“sometimes things don’t always work out the way we plan them. However, our training teaches us to be patient. I hadn’t expected to have to practice my true vocation for the duration of my stay on this world.”

Williams had never seen a Qwarm before, a member of the assassins’ guild, but like most people he’d heard of them. They appeared so often in mass entertainment that myth became mixed with reality. As was often the case with professional criminals, their exploits were highly romanticized, something the Qwarm encouraged. The less seriously people took them, the easier it was for them to practice their art. Their services were very expensive, there weren’t many of them, they were scattered throughout the vastness of the Commonwealth, and in two hundred years the government and the Church had been unable to stamp them out. It was difficult to arouse public opinion against malefactors who materialized but rarely and then vanished.

One had materialized now, across the room from Williams.

“I came aboard, you might say, with the new Commissioner. She’s been very pleased with my work. So have my real employers. I could have killed you and your companions before you left, but if you didn’t find Yingyapin, there was no reason to complicate matters and if you did, I expected Antal and his people to take care of you. Your return is a minor complication easily resolved. It was very thoughtful of you to come straight here, without telling anyone else your story.”

“The security guard downstairs saw me come in.”

“That’s all it’s his business to do.”

“The Tran who brought me here will demand to see me again.”

“You think the Commissioner is going to call for a peaceforcer on the advice of a few excitable natives?” He grinned humorlessly again. “Why do you think Antal didn’t send his remaining skimmer and every ice ship he could muster out after you when the first skimmer didn’t come back? It was because he knew I was here to look after things.”

“Killing me won’t save Bamaputra’s operation.”

“Of course it will. If your friends come back, I’ll kill them, too. Right now I’m a little out of practice, but killing isn’t something you forget how to do. It stays with you, like riding a bike.” He cracked his knuckles, the sound loud in the room. “Your presence here will give me some practice. If you were that September fellow, I might be a little nervous about not having worked in so long, but you won’t be any trouble, teacher.”

This was without a doubt, Williams thought wildly, the craziest conversation he’d ever participated in in his life. At the same time he was coldly aware it might also be his last.

Still, as long as he was talking, he wasn’t dying. Maybe someone would break in on them. Stanhope he didn’t expect. That had obviously been a ploy.

“What about the rest of the scientists here? They’re going to get worried when Cheela Hwang and her colleagues don’t return.”

“That’s Antal’s problem, not mine. He’s a resourceful supervisor. He’ll think of something.” Marquel was starting to edge around the far side of the desk, his movements casual, assured. “Fatal accidents are not unknown on this world. The science staff here will accept a reasonable explanation, have a bit of a cry, then go back to their work.”

“If you work for Bamaputra, then you must have some idea of what this is all about. Even so, I don’t suppose it would do me any good to appeal to your sense of morality, assuming you have one.”

“Oh, but the Qwarm are very moral, my inquisitive friend. Like everything else in life, however, morality is flexible.”

“Not where I come from. So you don’t care that tens of thousands of Tran are going to die if Bamaputra’s plan becomes reality?”

Marquel shrugged. “I am in the business of death. Numbers don’t frighten me. Just between you and me, I don’t like the idea, no. But being a killer myself, I’m hardly in a position to question the motives of others for the killing they may do. In the case of the Tran who will fail to survive the rapid change in climate, they will never connect their deaths with a specific killer. There will be no personal contact involved, no face-to-face acceptance of responsibility. It will appear an act of nature and that’s a shame. One should know who is responsible for one’s passing. There’s no intimacy to the act. As a professional I find that sad.

“With you and me things will be much different. You will know how you are going to die and by whose hands. You’ll go to your grave without questions tickling your soul. Don’t you think it’s best that way? Much better than fading away like a song in some indifferent hospital bed, or being stricken by an attack on the way home from a job. Face-to-face assassination is a positive statement. Each of us goes to his death burdened by enough other unanswered and unanswerable questions.”

“How are you going to do it?” Williams kept sliding along the far wall. If nothing else, he’d make himself a moving target.

“There are many ways. I’d like to be as inventive as possible, but your showing up unexpectedly precludes that. Besides, this is a very straightforward situation. Really no need to make it any more complex than necessary. The best thing for me, of course, would be to make it look like an accident in case I have difficulty smuggling your body out of Administration and over to the incinerator.”

His hand dipped into a narrow pocket that was sewn into one leg of the tight suit. When it reappeared Williams saw the tiny, collapsing stiletto protruding from enfolding fingers. Like Marquel’s attire, the blade and handle were obsidian black.

“That doesn’t look much like an accident.”

Marquel nodded approvingly. “I’m glad to see you’re taking this in the proper spirit. So many can’t. They fall down and weep and wail and plead even though they know it’s all a waste of time. It’ll be a good change to kill someone who knows how to handle the inevitable like an adult.” He held the stiletto up to the light, admiring it.

“You’re right. This wouldn’t look very accidental. But it’s traditional. Much as I would like to use it, it’ll be easier for both of us if you’ll just swallow this.” He held out a pill. For a change it was bright blue instead of black or red.

“Why should I make things easier for you?”

“Because this kills in less than a minute, quietly and bloodlessly. It’ll be just like going to sleep. No pain. Efficient. If you don’t take it, then I’ll have to cut you. That will be slower, messier, and much more uncomfortable for you. The end result will be the same. This office is soundproofed but I’d still have to take the precaution of cutting your vocal cords first. Some people can get very loud.”

He was moving purposefully toward the teacher now, gliding rather than walking across the floor. “Resistance on your part is useless. I’m considerably stronger than I look, much stronger than you, and a great deal quicker. Killing is my job. You know, I’ve never killed a teacher before. I’m not sure any Qwarm has had occasion to kill a teacher. There isn’t much call for it.”

“You’re sure nothing I can say would make you reconsider? Not so much for my life as for all the others that are at stake here.”

“Noble. I like that. Don’t see too much of that these days either. No, I’m afraid there isn’t. An assignment is an assignment. No matter how I might feel personally I have guild rules to abide by.”

“Oddly enough, I do understand your situation.” He sighed. “Well, I almost died out there on the ice half a dozen times this past year.” He extended a hand. “Give me the pill. I’m not one for pain. You’re sure it won’t hurt?”

“Not at all.” Marquel passed the blue capsule across. “Actually I rather envy you. That’s tronafin, a very powerful narcotic. You’re going to enjoy the biggest high of your life, even if it won’t last very long. Not only won’t you feel any pain, you’re going to be overwhelmed with pleasure. You see, we’re very businesslike, not cruel at all—unless somebody’s paying for that, of course. We try to make every effort to …”

A startled expression came over Marquel’s face. The black stiletto rose and struck. Williams ducked and rolled as the blade sliced down into a bookcase and the wall beyond. As he struggled back onto his feet the Qwarm turned and staggered toward him.

Tran artifacts and tools had been used in the decoration of the Commissioner’s office. Very attractive, very ethnographic. One of them was a Tran dart thrower, a tiny, inconspicuous device fashioned from bone and horn. It utilized a small spring made of something akin to baleen to launch a fifteen centimeter-long dart. All the while he’d been chatting conversationally with Marquel, Williams had been shielding it with his body and arming it.

The angle was bad but he knew he wouldn’t have time to remove the device from its hook and aim it. When he’d tilted back his head and raised the pill as if to swallow it Marquel’s attention had been focused on the teacher’s right hand. Just before swallowing, Williams had turned to his right to expose the dart-thrower and had used his other hand to flip the little trigger.

Marquel had been standing within arm’s length. The razor-sharp sliver of bone that the dart was cut from had gone right through his black suit to bury itself between navel and groin. It wasn’t a killing blow but the shock was more than enough to stagger the assassin. Despite the unexpected pain he’d reacted quickly, stabbing with the knife. The pain had slowed his reactions sufficiently for Williams to dodge.

“Teacher.” The Qwarm came toward him as blood began to drip from the wound and stain the floor. Williams kept retreating, trying to keep as much furniture between himself and the injured assassin as possible.

Yes, he was just a teacher—a teacher who’d spent almost two years surviving among sometimes hostile natives on the barren, deadly surface of an inhospitable world called Tran-ky-ky. Two years of battling lethal elements and carnivorous fauna. Two years on an occasional warship called the Slanderscree. Two years battling barbarians and duplicitous humans and their friends. Yes, he was a teacher. One who’d been hardened and toughened by the classroom called reality. His experiences had made him stronger, faster, and like the Tran, cunning.

Despite the long spike protruding from his intestines, Marquel continued to stalk him, the stiletto still clenched firmly in his right hand. Because of the location of the dart the Qwarm’s control of his leg muscles was less than perfect. Sheer willpower kept him advancing.

This continued for several minutes until Marquel realized Williams had maneuvered him completely around the room so that the teacher was back by the artifact-covered wall.

The Tran sword he removed from its mounting was chipped from stavanzer bone. He held it in both hands and waited. No more chasing around the desk. “Come on, then.” He tried to balance the weapon as he’d seen Hunnar Redbeard and others do. Hunnar wielded it with one paw, but it was too heavy for Williams to attempt that.

Marquel’s expression was contorted as he grimaced in pain. “Makes it interesting. Much better.” His words were getting thick, Williams noted. “Better.”

He lunged.

Avoiding the blow, Williams stepped to one side and cut down with the sword. Though slowed by the pain in his gut Marquel was still able to move fast enough to reach out with his left hand and grab the teacher’s wrists, pinning both hands to the sword. The concussion raced up Williams’s forearms. It was as though he’d been struck by an iron bar. The strength in the small man’s fingers was incredible.

His right hand rose and light slipped along the flat of the stiletto. This time Williams was sure his assailant was smiling. His eyes glittered through the ocular openings in the hood.

“Very good, teacher, very good. Much more than I had any right to expect.”

Williams tried to wrench his hands free, but the Qwarm’s grip was like steel. At the same time the teacher brought his right knee up and round and slammed it into the assassin’s lower abdomen, just below the place where the dart still protruded.

A tremor ran through the wounded killer. Somehow he still managed to strike weakly with the knife. It sliced through Williams’s survival suit, the incredibly sharp blade lodging in his right shoulder. The strike was a little high. Marquel intended to drag the point down Williams’s chest until he could use his weight to shove it into his quarry’s heart, but the loss of blood and the continuing pain finally overwhelmed him.

Still holding the teacher’s wrists in a death grip, the Qwarm crumpled to his knees, then fell over on his back dragging his quarry down on top of him. His right hand flopped loosely to the floor. The stiletto remained imbedded in Williams’s shoulder. The assassin blinked; not at the teacher lying on top of him but at the lights in the ceiling.

“I’ll be damned.”

Using his foot, Williams was finally able to pry his hands free of the sword and the assassin’s grasp. He rose and stumbled backward. Gritting his teeth he wrapped his fingers around the handle of the stiletto and yanked convulsively. The pain as the blade emerged from his flesh was tremendous. He staggered but didn’t fall.

A steadily widening pool of blood was forming beneath the dead man. Marquel continued to stare at the ceiling, the look on his face one of astonishment and surprise rather than pain.

Williams staggered over to the Commissioner’s desk. Inside a drawer he found a pop-up board lined with contact switches. Which one activated the sealed doors, which alerted building security?

He was still hunting when the doors unexpectedly parted, to admit not an ally of Marquel’s but the elegantly clad Resident Commissioner. She stared at him a moment before her gaze was drawn to the body in the middle of the floor. Her expression tightened and she took a step backward.

“What the hell’s going on here? Who—wait, I remember you. You’re one of the three who—”

“Williams. Milliken Williams.” He grimaced and clutched at his throbbing shoulder. Had Marquel taken him more seriously, he had not the slightest doubt the stiletto would have been poisoned. “Could I ask you to please call a doctor?” He gestured at the complex control panel. “I don’t know which of these stands for what.”

She walked over to him. Her fingers flew over a couple of the controls. Williams was dimly aware of an alarm sounding somewhere in the bowels of the building. He sat down in her chair, suddenly unable to stand any longer.

“A Qwarm. I’ve read about them but I never expected to actually see one. I’m not that important,” she said.

“How do you think I feel?”

“Stay there.” She activated another panel. “Infirmary? Where’s that doctor I buzzed for? Let’s get some people up here now. I’ve got a man with a knife wound in my chair.” She nodded toward the sprawled body of Marquel. “He was always weak on transcription, but I didn’t have the heart to dismiss him. Never struck me as the violent type. It just goes to show. Is he dead?”

“I sincerely hope so.”

“What’s this all about, anyway?”

“There’s a large illegal human installation operating on the edge of the southern continent. They took us prisoner; we escaped. Ethan, Skua, and the others went back to help those who couldn’t get away. I came back to tell you … to tell you …” Suddenly speech was becoming difficult.

She leaned toward the intercom. “Where’s that medic, dammit.”

A crackling, then a voice responding. “This is Infirmary. What medic, Ms. Stanhope?”

“The medic I just—wait a minute, who is this?”

“Marianne Sanchez, Commissioner. Did you call for a medic?”

“You’re damn right I did. Who took the call? Who was on a moment ago?”

“Not one of the physicians. Josef, I think. Josef Nilachek. He’s with Administration. One of your people.”

“One of …” She looked down at Williams.

The teacher had a phobia about swearing, but he ignored it now. “Shit. Marquel wasn’t alone.”

The shuttle had been unloaded and berthed for maintenance. Nilachek hung back in the shadows until the last member of the service crew emerged from the ship and moved off to chat with his colleagues. He knew what he had to do.

Marquel should have sounded the all-clear and called down for a body bag for his quarry. The fact that the Commissioner had called instead suggested any number of possibilities, none of them good. It was impossible to believe the Qwarm had failed, but then lately it seemed as though nothing was going right. Somehow he was going to have to contact either the company or Bamaputra.

But first he had to ensure that this schoolteacher’s revelations remained on Tran-ky-ky. That meant disabling both the deep-space beam and shuttle-to-ship communications. The beam wasn’t going anywhere so he decided to take care of the shuttle first. It shouldn’t be difficult, and when the small packet of concentrated explosive went off inside the little craft it would attract enough attention to allow him to deal with the beam unopposed.

He had to move fast. First disable communications, then get to this meddlesome teacher and disable him before he could recite the details of his story. Without specific coordinates, the people isolated here at Brass Monkey would never find the installation.

No one saw him slip aboard. A quick glance showed that the shuttle was empty. He hurried down the aisle between the rows of seats. The door to the cargo bay was unlocked. He eased into the cavernous space, ready to deal with any stevedore who might have lingered aboard. There were none to be seen. The unloading process was largely carried out by machines supervised from elsewhere.

He was just placing the explosive when a voice said, “What are you doing there?”

His hand went for the beamer bolstered under his shoulder, relaxed when he saw the speaker. A woman, one of the passengers judging by her attire.

“I might ask you the same question.” He made sure the packet was concealed by his body. “Me, I’m staff. A little repair work.” He nodded toward the doorway that led back to the passenger compartment. “You shouldn’t be in here.”

“Idiots lost a piece of my luggage. Thought I’d come look for it myself. How the hell do you lose baggage in space?”

“I don’t know, but you’ll have to leave. It’s against regulations.” Nilachek was beginning to get nervous. One of the maintenance people might show up at any minute. He started toward her. “If you’ll just come with me, I’m sure we can find your missing luggage. Maybe someone’s found it already.” He took her arm and turned her toward the door.

She shook him off irritably. “These twits couldn’t find their backsides with both hands. Why do you think I came to look for myself?” She turned back to the compartment, frowned. “What’s that over there?”

“What’s what?” He began to edge his hand toward the concealed beamer he carried.

“That plasticine packet over there, between those two conduits?”

“Just patching a small leak. Would you like me to explain how it works? I’d be happy to show you.”

“Yeah, you bet I would. Especially why a patch on a leak needs a timer on it.”

He started to pull the beamer. With unexpected speed the woman slammed the edge of her left palm against his elbow, simultaneously swept her right leg around in a wide arc to slam her heavy foreleg against his ankles. His feet went right out from under him and he landed hard on the metal decking, still trying to extract the beamer. She jumped on top of him and the wind went out of him completely. Stars danced in front of his eyes as he fought for breath. All wrong, this was all wrong. He could hear her screaming for help at the top of her lungs and tried desperately to slide out from under her, but she weighed more than he did. A good deal more.

Williams sat patiently as the doctor sprayed a coagulant and epidermal fixative on his shoulder, then slapped a square of fast-adhering artificial skin over the wound. Nearby, Millicent Stanhope was talking to her security people as the body of her former secretary was loaded onto a stretcher for removal. As Marquel left the office for the last time, she turned to the visitor occupying her chair.

“How did you do it?” She gestured toward the open doors. “Handle him, I mean. They’re professionals. What are you?”

“A teacher, like I told you. Never been anything but a teacher. But a good teacher never stops being a good student. You learn a lot out there.” He nodded toward the frozen landscape visible through the high windows.

“Your collection, or maybe I should say Jobius Trell’s old collection, saved me. Marquel knew all about contemporary weapons but he didn’t know anything about Tran-ky-ky. I knew he wouldn’t let me get to anything obvious, like a sword or war axe. But that dart thrower is small and it looks more like a tool than a weapon. If he hadn’t been a professional killer, I don’t think I could have brought it off. A nonprofessional wouldn’t have been sufficiently relaxed or confident.”

Stanhope nodded slowly. Her desk buzzed for attention. The temporary new receptionist sounded slightly shaken.

“Someone here to see you, ma’am. She’s very insistent. She—hey, you can’t do that.”

The doors had just closed in the wake of the coroner’s crew. Now they slid apart again to admit two young men. They wore side arms and their eyes immediately searched every centimeter of the office. One of them was half escorting, half dragging a smaller man. This individual’s right arm had been bandaged and his face was puffy with bruises.

A large, extremely well-dressed woman sauntered in and stopped between her bodyguards. She indicated the battered Nilachek with a contemptuous flick of her wrist.

“I understand this belongs to you.” She was staring straight at the Commissioner.

Milliken Williams sat up straight in the high-back chair and gaped at the new arrival as the doors closed behind her. At the same time she noticed him. Her eyes shifted from the Commissioner’s face and a sardonic grin spread over her own features.

“Hello, Milliken. Long time not seen. What are you teaching this year?”

XIV

THE EMPEROR OF ALL Tran-ky-ky gazed over the ramparts of his castle and was not pleased. He’d taken the advice of his human allies and waited for those on board the great ice ship to come crawling to him for food and shelter. Far too many weeks had passed without so much as a moan from the ship.

Eventually he had made the decision to wait no longer but to attack. For the past several days his imperial forces had repeatedly assaulted the defiant ones trapped in his harbor. His soldiers had tried and failed to set it afire with catapults. They had assailed it with arrows only to watch while the defenders took shelter behind the ship’s solid wooden walls. They had even tried the small, magical light weapons of the skypeople only to discover that at least two of those on board had similar devices of their own, in whose employment they were far more skilled than his own troops.

As if that were not galling enough, the unspeakable Tran crewing the icerigger possessed strange horizontal bows which fired short, heavy bolts with enough force to penetrate the thickest hide armor.

Now he could only watch in frustration as still another assault was beaten off and his rapidly demoralized troops retreated back across the ice. He turned furiously on the two skypeople who had promised him so much and thus far had delivered so little. Corfu ren-Arhaveg stood silently nearby.

Despite the fact that the taller of the two skypeople was the one who did most of the talking whenever they met, Massul knew who was really in command. He directed his fury at the smaller, darker-skinned human whose face was clearly visible behind the visor of his survival suit.

“Where is the great victory you promised me? Whence comes my dominion over the world? I cannot even control the harbor of my capital city.”

“What are you worried about?” said Bamaputra via his translator. “They’re trapped here. Of those who escaped all appear to have been forced to return. If any did not, we have arranged for them to be taken care of as soon as they return to the other skypeople place. It’s more likely they drowned.” The dumping of the lifeboat in open water had been reported by those on board the skimmer before its communicator had mysteriously gone silent. Bamaputra regretted the apparent loss of the skimmer as well as the large energy weapon it carried, but such losses had to be expected when dealing with combative primitives like the Tran. The important thing was that most, if not all of the would-be escapees had been forced to return to Yingyapin harbor.

When equipping the installation it had been decided that there was hardly any need for more than one large energy weapon. That decision was beginning to look shortsighted, though not insurmountable.

The endless ranting and raving of their emperor was becoming wearying.

“If I am to command my own subjects, let alone those yet to come, I must at least be able to demonstrate hegemony over my own state.” He gestured violently toward where the Slanderscree squatted just inside the harbor barrier. “Why have we not been able to defeat those who mock me?”

“Because they are well-organized, well-led, determined, because they have a couple of stolen hand beamers of their own now, and because their people are better fighters than yours.”

Massul turned away angrily to stare out over the parapet. “You said that you would train my soldiers, that you would make them into an unbeatable fighting force.”

“Such things take time, and more than just better weapons.” Antal nodded toward the icerigger. “Whoever’s guiding the defense of that ship knows what they’re doing. I suspect the giant has something to do with that. I didn’t like his looks from the moment we set on eyes on him. Should’ve had him shot right off. The scientists are no problem. Then there’s that other one, doesn’t look like much of anything. The one who said he was a salesman. Funny sort. Tricky. I don’t like him either. What was his name?”

“Fortune,” Bamaputra murmured. “Ethan Fortune, I believe.”

“Yeah, him. I can’t figure him at all. Just when you think you had him pegged he’d say something unexpected. Should’ve shot him, too.”

“Why can you not fly over and shoot down at them from your sky boats?”

“First because we’ve only got one skimmer left,” Antal told him. “Second because their hand beamers have the same range as all our others. I’m not risking the skimmer unless I’m sure it’s worth the risk.”

“This is an affront to my royal person,” said the outraged Massul. “What more reason do you require?”

Antal turned to the administrator and switched to Terranglo. “Ninety percent of what this stooge says is gibberish and the other ten percent is vanity.”

“What concerns me,” Bamaputra said, “is that one or more of those who went out on the smaller boat may have made it back to Brass Monkey. I wish we had some way of knowing for certain.”

“Doesn’t matter. Anyone gets through, Marquel and Nilachek will take care of things.”

“I do not share your confidence in last-minute remedies.”

“So what do you want to do?”

“I was wondering if we could increase output at the installation to the point where the warming of the atmosphere and the melting of the sea ice would increase ten or twelve fold. Even if the alarm has been raised, we could still hold out here for a while. If we could melt enough of the ice sheet, the process, would become self-sustaining, with the sun heating the open water sufficiently to continue melting the ice.”

Antal licked his lips. “I wouldn’t want to try it. You run those reactors at that kind of rate and you’re liable to have a containment field collapse. We didn’t plan for that kind of output.”

Bamaputra gestured toward the Slanderscree. “We didn’t plan for that, either. We must proceed as if the worst has occurred, until we hear otherwise.”

“You’ll never get the technical people to agree to it.”

“They have no choice. There is nowhere for them to go and they are involved as deeply as you or I. Even if someone from that lifeboat reached Brass Monkey, and even if they somehow avoided the attentions of our people there, it will take the authorities time to react. They will first seek confirmation of a civilian’s story, then meetings will have to be held, group decisions made. Votes will have to be taken. Authorizations will have to be approved.

“While they dawdle we can strengthen our defenses here, dig ourselves in better, and acquire proper defensive armament.”

The foreman didn’t quite laugh at him. “This isn’t a military installation, Shiva, and our personnel here aren’t soldiers. A peaceforcer could blow us right out of that mountain without our even seeing it.”

“I am aware of that. But they will talk first, try to avoid bloodshed. By the time they finally arrive and we finally agree to surrender we may have progressed to the point where it will be simpler for the authorities to adapt to the altered climate than to try and reverse it. We must try, anyway.” He turned to Massul and explained what they were going to do.

The emperor did not react as expected. “No, you are wrong about one thing. We do have a choice. You may not, but we Tran do. I will do battle with my kin, but I cannot fight sky boats and light swords. You ask too much.”

“Do you want to be emperor or not?” Bamaputra asked irritably.

“Better a live Landgrave than a dead emperor. I will fight Tran, but I will not fight skypeople with energy weapons. We will surrender.”

“I beg your pardon?” Bamaputra said politely. “Surrender?”

“Do you take me for a fool? If those skypeople”—and he nodded toward the icerigger—“are more powerful than you, why should I not ally myself with them? Do you not think they will accept me? I think they will. Yingyapin is small today, but great cities often arise from villages. We can still serve as a haven for the disenchanted and disenfranchised.” He waved a paw. “I disown you. Do what you will inside your mountain, but henceforth you may do it without my aid.”

Antal confronted him. “Listen, you furry cretin, you don’t have the skills or the knowledge or the ability to command anything without our help! Have you forgotten, ‘your majesty,’ who put you on your crummy throne here?”

“You are not the only skypeople who are willing to help the Tran. I see that now. Perhaps you are not even the best. I no longer believe your stories.” Again he indicated the icerigger. “Those who fight alongside the other skypeople do not act like the exploited and deceived. I begin to wonder on what they tried to tell me of your intentions. Yes, I begin to wonder. I have decided. We will surrender to them. I am still emperor here.”

“That’s right, you are.” Antal stepped back and gestured sharply. Corfu nodded, whispered to two of the soldiers who had been serving as honor guard. The three of them grabbed Massul fel-Stuovic and carried him to the edge of the parapet.

“Put me down! Put me down this instant!” The wind caught his dan and they billowed tautly around him. “I am emperor here. I am emperor of all Tran-ky-ky, Landgrave of Yingyapin! I command you to …”

A moment later Antal stepped to the edge of the stone rampart and looked over the side. A couple of curious passers-by had gathered around the stain on the ice below. After a while they tilted back their heads to look upward. Then they turned and chivaned off in opposite directions.

The foreman stepped back from the parapet. “So much for one problem.”

“Would that all our problems were so easily solved.” Bamaputra turned to the merchant. “Corfu ren-Arhaveg, I hereby appoint you Landgrave of Yingyapin and Emperor of all Tran-ky-ky. Don’t let it go to your head.”

“At your service, sirs.” Corfu executed that strange sideways Tran bow. “There may be some resistance among members of Massul’s court.”

“We’ll take care of that,” Bamaputra assured him. “You understand what we’re going to do here? We’re going to try and speed up the warming trend.”

“I understand, sir. I think it for the better. Why wait until one is old and stooped to enjoy success?”

“Why wait indeed?” Bamaputra muttered.

Antal put a hand on Corfu’s shoulder. “Keep trying to take the ship. Don’t risk too many of your troops. We want to keep them busy out there so they don’t have a chance to sneak out. Eventually they’ll get hungry and give up. Meanwhile we’ve got to get back to our work. We’ll leave you a communicator, one of our ‘wind-talkers,’ so you can get in touch with us if anything unexpected turns up.”

Corfu straightened. “Friend Antal, worry not. You can rely on me.”

“Yeah, I know. That’s why we’ve made you emperor. Should’ve done it months ago instead of sticking with that poor crazy bastard.” He turned to leave.

“A moment.” Bamaputra spoke softly.

Antal frowned, turned back to face his boss. “Something wrong?”

“Very wrong. Listen.”

They did so, until Corfu was moved to ask, “The wind?”

“No. No, not the wind.” Bamaputra’s lips were taut, his expression frozen. “Not the thrice-damned wind.”

“How much longer can we hold out?” Cheela Hwang was leaning over the railing, staring at the distant windswept city. Ethan stood nearby.

“A week,” he told her “Hunnar thinks maybe two or three.”

“Then what?”

“Then we try to strike some kind of deal with our ‘friends.’ ” He nodded in the direction of the harborfront.

“You can’t deal with people like that.”

“You can’t starve to death, either. Besides which we’re running low on crossbow bolts and beamer charges.”

She sighed, turned to study him closely. “Then Milliken didn’t get through.”

“We don’t know that. Not yet. Milliken’s very resourceful. Deceptively so. There’s still a chance.”

“Yes, he’s quietly competent.”

Now it was Ethan’s turn to stare at her thoughtfully. “You sort of like our friend Milliken, don’t you?”

She looked past him, toward the mechanical boom that barred the Slanderscree’s exit. “Sort of.”

He turned away so she wouldn’t see him smile. As he did so he frowned. “You hear something, Cheela?”

She stared over the bow. “Hear something? Only the wind.”

“No, something besides the wind. Higher pitched.”

Others heard it as well. Those soldiers and sailors not manning defensive positions made a concerted rush for the bow. Ethan and Hwang followed, along with the icerigger’s entire human complement.

“Skimmer!” he finally yelled when he was certain. “It has to be a skimmer!”

“Your excitement’s premature, feller-me-lad.” September had come up behind them. Panting hard, he strained to peer past the gate. “A skimmer it is for sure, but whose?” He held the huge Tran battle axe that had been a gift from the Landgrave of Wannome. With its edge resting on the deck, his left ankle crossed over his right as he leaned on the axe’s handle for support, he looked for all the world like some silver-suited ghost resting casually on an ancient umbrella in some posh trendy neighborhood on Earth or New Paris. The barbarian boulevarder, Ethan mused.

“Could the evil skypeople have called another sky boat from somewhere to come and help them recapture us?” Hunnar wondered worriedly.

“It’s possible.” Already Ethan was losing some of the initial enthusiasm the approaching skimmer had engendered. “If that’s the case, there isn’t much we can do about it. They might be supplied by skimmer at regular intervals. The critical thing is, how is it armed? I don’t see them having another cannon. No need for two heavy weapons here. Maybe they had another skimmer out doing survey work and they called it back when the one tracking us didn’t return. What do you think, Skua?”

“I don’t know what to think, feller-me-lad. If our friend Antal had access to more heavy artillery, I think we’d have been treated to a demonstration long before now. So I can’t explain what this one’s doing showing up all of a suddenlike.” He glanced back toward the city. “If this was going to be an attack, they’d be hitting us from both sides.”

“By the same token it can’t be from Brass Monkey,” Cheela Hwang told them. “There are no skimmers at Brass Monkey. Only ice cycles. The presence of skimmers would violate …”

“We know, we know,” Ethan said impatiently. “It’s against regulations to utilize advanced transportation systems in backward regions of backward worlds. Too much of a shock to the natives. I’m getting sick of that regulation.”

The humming grew steadily louder. “I don’t think it’s the one we first ran into out on the ice, the one whose crew we shot up that came back later with the cannon in tow,” September declared hesitantly. “Sounds much bigger, like a cargo shifter.” His wavy white hair fluttered in the wind like a glowing nimbus around his great head as he stared into the distance. Then he pointed with an arm the size of a foremast spar.

“There she is!”

“Can you see who’s aboard?”

September could not, but the Tran could. “Many of your kind,” Hunnar informed them. “It is truly a bigger sky boat than the one that tried to sink our lifeboat.”

“Cannons, guns,” September growled anxiously. “What can you see?”

“I see no such large weapons, no lightning-thrower.” Hunnar leaned over the railing. “I see—by the beard of my grandfather!”

“What, what is it?” Ethan pressed him.

“It is the scholar!”

“The scholar?”

“Williams, he sees Williams,” September said gleefully. “Our scholar.”

“It is so. The respected one has returned with help.”

“But that’s impossible.” Hwang had to stand on tiptoes to see past them. They could make out individual shapes moving on the deck of the huge air-repulsion craft, but not faces. “There are no skimmers based at Brass Monkey.”

“I don’t give a toot if the little bookworm pulled it out of his shoe!” September was dancing and twirling like a madman, scattering Tran and humans alike. “The teacher’s come back and school’s in session!”

“I don’t understand.” Ethan managed to be a bit more restrained in his reaction to Williams’s return. “Where did he get the skimmer?”

“We will know soon enough,” Hunnar said, “because the skyboat comes straight for us.”

September was right about its size. It was a large industrial transport vehicle, fully a third as big as the Slanderscree itself. The survival-suited figures that lined its railing hefted weapons that sparkled in the sun. No cannon, but plenty of rifles, each with greater range and power than the most modern hand beamer and certainly more deadly than anything in Bamaputra’s limited armory.

As they looked on, it floated effortlessly over the harbor gate to settle alongside the icerigger. Williams would have briefed its driver on where to hover. Then the diminutive schoolteacher was cautiously walking across the boarding ramp that the Slanderscree’s sailors extended over to the sky boat.

He’d survived the difficult two-way journey in good condition, only to find himself nearly smothered by the effusive greetings and congratulations of those he’d left behind. Cheela Hwang almost suffocated him all by herself.

“We ain’t going to get any answers out of him right away.” September grinned as he appraised the extended clinch. “Come on, let’s go over and see where he found these folks.”

Ethan followed his friend. “Maybe after a while each outpost automatically rates a small military contingent. Maybe they arrived in our absence just in time for Milliken to request their services and assistance. They could have come down as part of one of the recent monthly shipments.”

“Maybe.” September hopped off the boarding ramp onto the skimmer’s deck. Ethan followed.

Men and women of varying ages watched them quietly. Many chatted among themselves and ignored the new arrivals. All looked competent and professional. This wasn’t a group of volunteers Williams had recruited at Brass Monkey. These people were comfortable with weapons.

He continued to cling to his theory that for some reason a small military presence had been assigned to the outpost, until someone else emerged from belowdecks. At first he couldn’t make out the face because light flaring off a window temporarily blinded him, but he recognized the voice instantly. A moment later she saw him.

“Hello, Ethan. It’s good to see you again. I wasn’t sure I’d ever be saying those words.”

September grunted. “Now don’t this just take the cake.”

It was more eloquent than anything Ethan had to say. He was speechless.

She pouted prettily. “Can’t you say something? Here I drop everything to come back to this frigid place just in time to save your frozen neck, and I don’t even get a hello kiss?”

A powerful hand shoved Ethan toward her. He glared back at September, who only grinned broadly. “You heard the lady, young feller-me-lad. Kiss ’er.”

Ethan gingerly touched his lips to those of the woman who’d emerged from the interior of the skimmer. She pulled back, frowning.

“If that’s the best you can do I’m taking my people and going straight back to Brass Monkey. You can sit out here and play dice with ice cubes until your fingers turn blue.”

“Sorry, Colette. I’m still in shock a little.” He put both arms around as much of her as he could and bussed her good and hard. She responded passionately while the troopers on the skimmer looked on with interest.

September had sidled over to a tall, lean fellow about his own age who had the look of a Man in Charge. “Ethan there, he and Ms. du Kane go back a ways.”

“No kidding.” The soldier studied the on-going clinch casually. “I wondered why we were coming to a place like this. Ms. du Kane said she had unfinished business here. Always it’s unfinished business, but none of us suspected this was what she had in mind.” He glanced up at September. “You know her, too, then?”

“You heard about the time she and her paterfamilias were kidnapped?”

“Oh. You must be Skua September. Everyone’s heard about it. They’d make a tridee sequence out of it if some production company thought they could get away with it, but the missus won’t let ’em and she’s got too strong a legal program on her side. So it’s all true?”

“Yep. Every bit of it.”

“None of us are surprised she came through.” He nodded toward the embracing couple. “I’ve been with the du Kane family twenty years. She’s tough as duralloy, but not a bad boss.” He extended a gloved hand. “I’m Iriole, Roger Iriole. I’m in charge of the household troops, though most people would say bodyguards.”

September’s huge hand enveloped the slightly smaller one. “Thought it might be something like that. You folks couldn’t have shown up at a better time. How’d you get those past customs?” He gestured at the energy rifles.

Iriole shrugged. “Ms. du Kane usually gets what she wants. Apparently she knows what this world is like and she wanted to make sure she came prepared.” He turned and stared toward the city. “Mind telling me what’s going on? What you’re all doing here and why you’re so glad to see a bunch of guns? Your schoolteacher friend gave us a quick rundown on the way out but I confess I didn’t get much out of it.”

“Not real complicated. Just your usual case of genocide for profit.” He preceded to explain in as few words as possible.

Meanwhile Ethan and Colette had walked to the side of the skimmer that faced the Slanderscree.

“The old ship doesn’t look much different than I remember her.”

“Not much has changed. You haven’t been away that long.”

“Feels like years. That’s Hunnar Redbeard, isn’t it? And Elfa Kudrag …”

“Kurdagh-Vlata,” he corrected her. “They’re married now.”

“How is this union you stayed here to help get started coming along?”

“Well enough. Several important city-states are formally allied and others are debating joining.”

“Sounds promising.” A darker undertone abruptly slipped into her voice. “Milliken’s told me all about what’s going on here. We’ll put a stop to that right now.”

“It’s not your problem. Why not let the authorities take care of it?”

“Milliken’s worried about the time that would take and the damage these unmentionables could do in the interim. I don’t just live for commerce, Ethan. I have larger values just like everyone else. We’re going to put these people under citizen’s arrest and haul the ringleaders back to the outpost. Then the government can take over.” She indicated the crowded railing opposite.

“The Tran did well by my father and me. We owe them.”

“How is your father?”

“Hellespont du Kane died four months ago. If you’ll remember, Dad hadn’t been well for years. His mind wasn’t the only part of him that was failing, and dragging him across Tran-ky-ky didn’t do him any good. He was too far gone for any kind of transplant, but I don’t think he would’ve made himself a candidate anyway. He was tired. His passing wasn’t unexpected. I’d been running the day-to-day operations of the conglomerate for years anyway. I told you that.”

“I remember. You were pulling strings from behind the scenes.”

“It’s all out in the open now. Has been for four months. I liked it better the other way. Much easier when the old man was there to serve as a figurehead. He was a lot more tactful than I am. You probably remember that, too.”

He tried not to smile. “I remember you always saying exactly what you thought.”

“Precisely. That’s no way to run a major commercial concern. I need somebody else to talk for me, someone who’s experienced with business people and able to smooth ruffled feelings.”

He swallowed. “You haven’t, ah, bonded with somebody by now?”

“ ‘Bonded’? You make it sound like I’m looking for glue.” She glanced down at herself. “If I lost a hundred pounds, I’d need every one of these soldiers to keep the men off me. As it is there are plenty who try, but I know it’s just the money they’re interested in. The money and the power. They’re terrific aphrodisiacs, Ethan, but they don’t get you honesty.” Those piercing green eyes locked on his and wouldn’t let go.

“I could never be sure of any of them. Not the way I’m sure of you. Because of what we went through together more than a year ago. You told me then you couldn’t marry me, Ethan. You wanted time, you said. Time to consider, time to think. That’s why I’ve come back. You’ve had plenty of time to think.”

“Actually there hasn’t been time for long stretches of contemplation this past year, what with all the fighting and unifying and exploring.”

“Don’t tell me I’ve wasted this trip, Ethan. I mean, I’m glad I was able to show up in time to help out and rescue the lot of you and save the planet and all that, but that’s not why I’m here. I’m formal head of the family du Kane now. I don’t have to ask anyone’s permission for anything. I know what I want.”

“You always knew what you wanted, Colette.” He smiled affectionately. “Ten minutes after you were born I’m sure you were telling the doctors how to handle you.”

Her eyes glittered. “I had to. It probably took two of them to carry me. Ethan, I need someone to share my life. You’re the only man I ever met who accepted me for what I am. Whether it was the situation or what doesn’t matter. You liked me for myself. I need a companion and a helpmate. I need … I need you. I’ve never needed anything else in my life.

“So I put all my business on hold and crossed a few hundred parsecs to ask you the same question you said no to a year ago. I thought that maybe after another year on this world you might be ready for some permanent luxury and relaxation. I won’t make too many demands on you.” She dropped her eyes and for the first time he had to strain to make out what she was saying. “I still love you, even if you don’t love me. But if you’ll give me a chance, I promise you I’ll do everything I can to make it work between us. If it’s a submissive woman you want or even a fully equal one, then there’s no chance. I wasn’t brought up that way. Blame it on my family, my father if you want to.” She lifted her face and stared into his again.

“But if you say yes, I guarantee you’ll never have to sell so much as a pocket communicator again and you’ll lead the kind of life most people only dream about.”

“Colette, I …”

“Whatever you’re going to say, give it another minute. It’s cost me plenty, both financially and emotionally, to do this. I’m not going to beg. If you say no this time, I promise you’ll never see me again. But if you say yes, boy, if you say yes, you’d better mean it. I can’t stand anything that’s tenuous or halfway. It’s all or nothing, Ethan. No partial commitments.”

He turned away from her to stare past the Slanderscree, letting his gaze rove beyond the harbor gate to the vast ice ocean. Was there anything more he could do here? Anything else he could accomplish for the Tran? If he accepted, he would lose his freedom, but Maxim Malaika had taken care of that by sticking him with a permanent position at Brass Monkey. So if he was so worried about his freedom, why had he taken that post? Because it offered the prospect of being able to retire in ten years instead of twenty or thirty? Hell, Colette was offering him the chance to buy and sell people like Malaika.

Wouldn’t he be in a better position to aid the Tran and their development as the titular head of one of the Commonwealth’s most powerful commercial families?

All right, so what if Colette was no raving beauty? So what if there was enough for two of her? She might be ample but she wasn’t unattractive. And how much did physical beauty have to do with living with another person for the rest of your life anyway? He was no tridee star himself. Life was what you and your mate made of it and you couldn’t, shouldn’t, prejudge it according to other people’s perceptions of what was good and what was bad, what was attractive and what was ugly.

When he turned back to her he found those remarkable eyes waiting for him. They were pleading even as she couldn’t plead aloud. He glanced across to September, found the giant smiling paternally and nodding slowly.

“What the hell. Of course I’ll marry you.”

She threw herself into his arms. The impact nearly sent both of them over the side of the skimmer. “Very sensible,” she told him. Then she gave him a quick, firm kiss and hugged him to her so hard he thought his ribs would crack.

A few of her soldiers smiled and decorously looked elsewhere. The Tran on the icerigger labored under no such cultural restraints. They let loose with a farrago of appreciative growls and roars.

Finally she released him, still intact, and turned toward Yingyapin. “That’s settled, then.”

“There’s just one qualifier.”

She looked back sharply. “What’s that?”

“I don’t want it to be a Tran ceremony.”

She looked puzzled, not understanding, while Skua September burst out laughing.

“Done. Now let’s take care of this slime that thinks it can make an inhabited world its private development. Want anyone else to come with us?”

“Cheela Hwang should come along to represent the science staff. And Hunnar and Elfa. Also a young Tran named Seesfar, who I think deserves to see that we’re not all motivated by self-interest.” He unsnapped the beamer from his belt. “I’ll leave this with Ta-hoding. With the firepower you’ve brought along, I won’t need it.”

“All right.” She looked past him. “Roger!”

Iriole came over and saluted.

“You know what’s going on here?”

The soldier jerked his head in September’s direction. “I have been briefed.”’

“What do you think about it?”

“If I may be allowed to say so, ma’am, it stinks.”

“You’re allowed to say so and you’re quite right. We’re going to make a few citizens’ arrests. We’re going to shut this operation down. I saw that they finally put in a deep space communications system at Brass Monkey. When we get back there I’m going to get on the horn. I know the counselor for this whole volume of space. We’ll have a peaceforcer brought in to haul the rest of these maggots off-planet in comfortable cells.” She shoved a clenched fist into the air.

“Tran-ky-ky for the Tran!” Then she added in a softer tone, “That felt pretty good. In business you can’t always be sure you’re doing the right thing. No such uncertainty here. It’s a nice feeling.”

Hunnar, Elfa, Seesfar, and Cheela Hwang were brought aboard, the Tran marveling at the prospect of flying not across the ice but through the air.

“Roger and his people will take care of things up here,” Colette informed them. “Why don’t you go below until the arguing’s over?”

“I’d rather stay outside,” Ethan told her.

“No way. I’m not having my prospective husband’s head shot off just after he’s accepted my proposal.”

“It’ll be all right. They’ve only got a few hand beamers over there. When they see how badly we’ve got them outgunned, I don’t think there’ll be much fighting. You might have more trouble with their Tran allies. They’re stubborn.”

“I remember that much. No offense,” she told Hunnar and Elfa through her suit translator.

“There is no offense in truth,” he replied. “We are stubborn.” He smiled, displaying sharp canines.

XV

BAMAPUTRA DID NOT LOOK toward the harbor as he turned up another of the steep switchbacks that led up the mountainside away from Yingyapin. He did not have to. Antal’s monocular had already revealed the unexpected presence of long weapons on board the unmarked skimmer. The new arrivals were obviously in league with his enemies on board the ice ship. His foreman had assured him there was no way they could win a pitched battle against well-disciplined people carrying rifles. All they could do for now was retreat to the installation and seal themselves inside the mountain.

Corfu accompanied them, wailing and raging at an interfering fate and wondering why they didn’t stay and fight.

“Better it is to die for what one believes in than to run and hide in a hole in the ground!” He was having trouble keeping up with the humans, whose feet were far better designed than his for climbing.

“A foolish and primitive notion.”

“They’ve got us outgunned,” Antal told him. He gestured with his own hand beamer. “I’ll explain it one more time. Our light weapons are not as powerful as theirs.”

“Then what are we to do?”

“First we make sure they can’t touch us.” The foreman nodded toward the entrance to the installation which lay one last switchback ahead. “We lock ourselves out of their reach. Then we bargain. They could probably blast their way in, but that would mean casualties on both sides. I think they’d rather talk.”

“Talk.” Bamaputra wasn’t breathing hard at all. “What is there to talk about? These are not government representatives. I do not know who they are but they are not that. Not that it matters. It is enough that they are friends of those whose destiny we once controlled. Their destiny was our destiny, and now that control has slipped through our fingers.”

“We can still try to strike a deal with them,” Antal insisted. “We can hold out till the regular supply ship arrives.”

“Don’t be a fool.” They had reached the cleared area which fronted the entrance to the installation. As they watched, the huge door rolled up into the solid rock, admitting them to the complex beyond. “We are finished here. The project is finished. They will communicate with the authorities. We will not be given time to reach our own relief ship. Now if there was a way to disable their skimmer …”

“Not a chance. They’ve got rifles down there. They can sit around and pick off anyone, human or Tran, who tries to get close.”

“As I feared.” They were inside the complex now. Curious engineers and technicians looked up from their work as their supervisors walked past. Corfu was already getting hot, but he followed anyway. He had nowhere else to go.

“There’s got to be something we can do,” Antal muttered. “If they take us back, it means mindwipe at least.”

“Better to die. The body lives on but the soul perishes.”

Antal eyed him askance. “What do you mean, ‘soul’? Mindwiping just removes whatever the psytechs identify as criminal tendencies. When it’s over you’re still the same person you were when you went in.”

Bamaputra was shaking his head. “Are you so credulous as to believe the government’s propaganda? They leave you enough to function with, but you are not the same person. Something vital has been taken away.”

“Sure. The criminal part. Just the criminal part.”

“But we are not criminals, you and I. We are visionaries. I do not think I could stand to lose the visionary part of myself.”

The foreman frowned, but Bamaputra appeared to be completely in control of himself. “Yeah, well, I’ll take care of securing the station, making an announcement about what’s happened and what we can expect. There’s only the pedestrian entrance and the cargo dock to seal. No matter how much portable firepower they can bring to bear I still think we can keep ’em out long enough to do some bargaining. Meanwhile you can start shutting stuff down.”

“Shutting down, yes, of course,” Bamaputra murmured softly. “There are records to destroy, chips to erase, people to protect.” He turned on Antal so sharply that the foreman jumped in spite of himself. “Whatever you do, do not negotiate with this September person. Try to talk to the scientists. If we are fortunate, there may be a government official among them. Such types will go to almost any length to avoid bloodshed. I will see to the pumps and reactors while you brief the staff.”

“Got it.” They separated, leaving behind a confused and panting Corfu ren-Arhaveg.

Only much later did Antal reflect on his supervisor’s words. Seeing to the pumps and reactors did not necessarily mean shutting such systems down.

There was some desultory resistance put up by the ragtag imperial armed forces of Yingyapin. It didn’t last long. Spears and swords weren’t much of a match for beamers and energy rifles. Despite the pleas of Hunnar and Elfa, Colette directed her troops to shoot only to wound. After all, as Hwang explained to her, the citizens of Yingyapin were as much victims of the visiting humans’ deceit as anyone aboard the Slanderscree. Once the truth could be explained to them they should become useful members of the expanding Tran union.

When the last soldier had dropped his weapons and fled, those on board the skimmer considered what to do next. Iriole was studying the entrance to the buried installation through a monocular.

“Door looks pretty solid. I’m not sure we can blast our way past.”

“We shouldn’t have to,” said September. “They know it’s in their best interests to surrender peacefully. They can’t go anywhere. The threat of busting in should be sufficient to induce the lower echelons, at least, to come out with their hands in the air. Can the skimmer make the climb?”

Skimmers were designed to travel no more than thirty meters above a solid surface. They were not designed for ascending steep inclines. They were not aircraft. Still, if they moved slowly, Iriole thought they might be able to make it to the level area fronting the entrance. He looked to his employer for instructions.

“Let’s give it a try.”

Ethan put his arm around her. Somehow it seemed the right thing to do. Didn’t feel bad, either.

“Everybody take a seat and strap down,” Iriole told them. “We’re going to tilt some and I don’t want anybody falling out.”

When the awkward climb had been accomplished and they landed outside the massive doorway, Grurwelk Seesfar wanted to go back down and make the exhilarating ascent all over again.

“Mr. Antal, sir?”

The foreman turned to the young technician who’d barged in on him. “What is it? I’m busy?”

“I think you’d better come with me, sir.”

“Can’t. I’m trying to do a dozen things at once right now. Didn’t you hear me over the com system? Don’t you know what’s going on?”

“Yes, sir. But I still think you’d better come with me. It’s Mr. Bamaputra, sir.”

He removed his right hand from the sensor screen and turned to her. “What about Mr. Bamaputra?” he asked quietly.

“You’d better come quick, sir.” That’s when he noticed that she was so frightened she was shaking.

A crowd had gathered outside the central control room. It contained the master panels for programming reactor output. Armored glass enclosed it on all four sides, standard protection for the sensitive heart of the installation. Except for Bamaputra the room was deserted. It was also locked from the inside.

A single speaker was set in the glass next to the transparent door. “Shiva, what are you doing in there?”

The supervisor turned to smile back at him. “Preserving a vision, perhaps. Surely you recall our discussion wherein we talked about greatly accelerating the melting of the ice?”

The technician who had fetched Antal pointed into the room. As the foreman scanned the readouts she’d indicated the small hairs on the back of his neck began to tense. The figures he read belonged only in manuals, not on green screens. They continued climbing even as he stared.

“Shiva, you’re going to overload the whole system! You’ve probably gone beyond several limits already. You need to let us in so we can emergency override and shut the system down.”

“If we do that now, we will not be able to start up again,” Bamaputra explained quietly. “I have ample food and water in here with me. I really can’t allow override and shutdown at this point. It would interfere with the vision.

“I believe you underestimate the system’s integrity. It will hold at these levels and we will accomplish fifty years’ work in a few months. I am counting on you to bargain with these people to buy me that much time.”

“You’re going to blow the whole place!”

“I am not. Talk to the engineers.”

Frantically the foreman sought out one of the installation’s chief techs, asked her for an unbiased appraisal.

“He’s right,” the woman said. “Nothing will explode. It will melt. Not just the reactor cores: everything. If containment fails, there’ll be a short, quick release of heat. It will dissipate rapidly.”

“How much heat?”

She didn’t bat an eye. “Millions of degrees.”

“What do you think the chances are of maintaining containment?”

The woman turned to the older man standing behind her. His jaw and neck displayed the marks of an addict. “I’d say about one in ten.”

Antal whirled back to the speaker. “Did you hear that? Your chances of bringing this off are one in ten.”

“A better chance than a Commonwealth court would give us.”

“The opposite side of that,” the foreman shouted, beyond frustration now, “means there’s a ninety percent chance you’re going to turn the inside of this mountain into slag.”

“Then you’d better hurry and leave, wouldn’t you say?” Bamaputra’s tone was icy.

“He is crazy.” Antal stepped away from the speaker and the transparent wall. “He’s gone crazy.” He turned to the engineers. “What do you think we ought to do?”

The older man was sweating profusely. “I think we ought to get the hell out of here.”

The foreman hesitated a moment longer, then jabbed the red alarm button nearby.

Bamaputra watched calmly from the director’s chair as the panicky exodus commenced. He was not surprised. You couldn’t blame them. None of them, not even Antal, was a real visionary. Throughout history those who had made the great discoveries, accomplished the memorable scientific feats, never had better chances than one in ten. Most of them began their experiments with worse odds.

This was the only way. The calculations had to be adjusted to take into account the greatly reduced time factor. He turned to the multiple readouts. The ice sheet would begin melting rapidly now. Very rapidly. At the same time, the quantity of water vapor and carbon dioxide being pumped into the atmosphere would rise twenty fold. The system would hold. A magnetic fusion containment field wasn’t like a stone or metal wall.

Let them all leave. He could hold out alone, if need be. Despite the interference he would accomplish everything he’d set out to do. If you had vision, you sometimes had to take a chance. Turning dreams into reality always entailed a certain amount of risk.

Better to depend on machines. The instrumentation surrounding him functioned silently and without complaint, doing its job in a predictable and dependable manner. He’d never liked people much. Come to that, he’d never been very fond of himself.

Better to risk one’s life in search of the perfect abstract than to surrender to temporal temptation. He might die, but his vision would live on in the form of a transformed Tran-ky-ky. The money had never meant anything to him. Revelation lay only in achievement.

The skimmer hovered just off the ground as a squad of Colette’s bodyguards climbed over the side. Those remaining aboard kept their weapons trained on the entrance to the installation.

Ethan began examining the walls on either side of the door. “There should be a speaker here somewhere. Surely they put in something that would enable them to talk with any Tran who might come up here.”

Before they could locate the hypothetical speaker the camouflaged door began to open.

“Back to the skimmer,” snapped Iriole. The squad retreated. Fingers tensed on triggers.

There was no fighting. The technicians and engineers, support and maintenance personnel who came stumbling out of the tunnel in their survival suits weren’t armed. They kept their hands in view at their sides or held above their heads. As those on the skimmer looked on, the evacuees began staggering down the trail leading to the harbor below.

There was no sign of Shiva Bamaputra, but Hwang picked Antal out of the crowd immediately. There was no threat in his pose this time. All of the cockiness had gone out of him.

“We’ve got to get away from here!” he said wildly.

“Why? What’s the hurry?” September folded his arms and adopted the stance of a man with all the time in the world. “We’ve things to do.”

“Do whatever you want but don’t do it here. Bamaputra’s gone mad.” He gestured back toward the dark tunnel. “He’s running the whole system on intentional overload, way beyond its design peak. Locked himself in control central. You won’t pry him out of there, not even with rifles. It’s five-centimeter plexalloy paneling, molecular welded.”

“Now why would he want to go and do that?”

“He’s trying to accelerate the terraforming process. We talked about it lots of times, but not on this scale. He’s got an outside chance of bringing it off. Way outside.”

“What happens if the system fails?” Williams asked him.

“Melt down.” It was the young female technician who spoke. “You get large-scale melt down. The containment fields in the reactors collapse.”

“You mean the installation melts?” Ethan asked her.

She stared over at him. “I mean the mountain melts. Maybe more, I don’t know. And I’m not planning on hanging around to work out the calculations. You better not either.”

“Right. Resume positions,” Iriole told them. They retreated back aboard the waiting skimmer.

“Wait a minute!” Antal rushed the craft, stopped short as the muzzle of a rifle swung in his direction. “What about us?”

“You’ve all got survival suits,” September told him as the skimmer slowly drifted over the edge of the steep slope and commenced its downward flight. He pointed to the switchbacked path. Some of the installation personnel were already halfway down. “Better not run too fast or you’re liable to fall and tear ’em.”

Antal stared at the descending vehicle. Then he turned and joined his former employees in a mad scramble to get down the mountain.

Those on board the skimmer followed the frantic flight of their former adversaries as they drifted safely toward the harbor.

“What do you think?” September asked their teacher.

“I don’t know. We don’t have any idea what their setup here is capable of or where its limits lie. Obviously Bamaputra believes he’s keeping within them.”

“He seems to be the only one,” Ethan commented.

“That doesn’t mean he isn’t right.”

“I don’t like the idea of going off and leaving him holed up in there,” September muttered. “Won’t do us much good to escort this lot back to Brass Monkey if we don’t shut down what they’ve left behind.”

“Let’s get back to the ship and decide there,” Ethan suggested. “Roger, what do you think our chances are of blasting into this control room and taking him?”

“Not good, if that other one was telling the truth. Plexalloy’s tough.”

“The foreman had one good point,” Williams reminded them. “What are we going to do with them now that they’ve put aside their weapons?”

“Let ’em stumble around Yingyapin for a while,” September said. “Let the Tran there see what their all-powerful friends are really like. By the time they make it to the harbor I don’t think we’ll have to worry about keeping watch over ’em. Maybe we can lash a couple of ice ships together and tow the whole bunch of miscreants back to Brass Monkey. They’ll be too cold to give us any trouble. The trip back may not force confessions out of all of ’em, but it sure as hell will make ’em humble.”

They were moving out across the ice, heading for the Slanderscree, when Ethan pointed toward the mountain that contained the terraforming station.

“Something’s happening up there. Some kind of activity.”

September squinted, cursed under his breath. “Can’t see. Eyes are getting old, like the rest of me. Hunnar! Can you see anything up there?”

The knight joined them. “Truly I can, friend Skua. Clouds are coming out of the mountain. I think mayhap your mad kinsman is making a rifs.”

Not a rifs in the traditional sense, but a massive storm front was forming with incredible speed above the highest peak. Lightning began to flash inside the boiling mass of cumulonimbus and thunder boomed across the harbor. The cloud bank continued to thicken until it dominated the visible sky. And then something else happened, something so extraordinary it stimulated excited discussion among the scientists and awe among the Tran.

For the first time in forty thousand years, rain fell on Tran-ky-ky.

“Liquid ice.” Warm drops pelted the skimmer. “Water.” Elfa stared in astonishment at the tiny pool that accumulated in her cupped paws. “Who thought ever to see such a thing?”

A shout from the mainmast lookout drew their attention. The heavy metal gate which had barred the icerigger’s flight was slowly swinging open, sliding out of the way on its multiple runners. On board the Slanderscree, Ta-hoding gaped at the retreating barrier, then began bellowing orders. Sails were unfurled, spars adjusted, stays pulled taut.

“What of the humans who came out of the mountain?” Ethan asked Hunnar.

“They are …” The knight paused a moment to be certain of what he was seeing. “They are running through the city. The townspeople are staring at them. Now a few begin to throw stones.”

A new sound, deeper and more ominous than the thunder. Shouts and yells from both those on the icerigger and in the city acknowledged its power. The rumbling arose deep within the solid rock of the continental shelf, a gigantic hiss. It was as though something monstrous was awakening inside the earth.

“Look at that. Even I can see that.” September nodded toward the docks. In haste and confusion the personnel from the installation were pouring out onto the ice. They promptly began slipping and sliding all over the place. Their repeated failures only made them redouble their frantic efforts.

“Any arms?” asked Colette du Kane.

Iriole was peering through a military monocular. “None visible, ma’am.”

“Hell. Pick them up and put them aboard the big ship, I guess. The prosecution’s going to want as many witnesses as possible.” She turned demurely to Ethan. “If that meets with your approval, my love?”

He didn’t doubt for an instant that the question was rhetorical, but he appreciated it nonetheless.

“You have my consent,” he replied grandly.

“Thank you.” She actually batted her eyelashes at him. They exchanged a grin.

Then and there he decided this wasn’t going to be a bad marriage after all.

The skimmer had to make several trips to transfer all of the refugees from the ice to the Slanderscree, which fortunately had ample room since it had been traveling with a minimal crew ever since departing Poyolavomaar. Body searches revealed that the technicians and engineers had fled the station unarmed. Most were too exhausted to have offered any resistance even had they wished to.

The foreman was in the second group. Antal didn’t look in control of anything including himself as he scrambled frantically onto the skimmer’s deck.

“Move, move, we’ve got to get out of here!”

“Not yet,” Ethan told him.

“Why, what’s the hold up?” The foreman was staring worriedly at the storm raging over the mountain.

Ethan gestured onto the ice. Led by Hunnar and Elfa, a group of sailors from the icerigger were chivaning at maximum speed toward Yingyapin.

“We still have to warn the people you were going to use.” He eyed Antal accusingly. “You could have done that on your way out.”

“No time, we don’t have any time. Don’t you understand?”

“Perfectly,” said Ethan softly. “We’ve talked to your engineering people. If the installation melts, it won’t affect us.”

“Not the installation, not that.” The foreman was on the edge of hysteria. “You can’t imagine how much heat a complete and sudden melt down up there will release. There are three industrial fusion plants operating on overload inside that mountain, for god’s sake!”

“We know.”

“No you don’t know. If the containment fields fail, more than the installation will melt. Rock will melt.” He paused for impact. “Ice will melt a lot faster.”

“Oh, hell,” Colette muttered. Together she and Ethan turned away from the city. The Slanderscree was heading out of the harbor, loaded down with its contingent of Tran and scientists and refugee humans. It was accelerating slowly under Ta-hoding’s skillful guidance, but was it accelerating fast enough?

“They’ll make it,” he murmured. “We’ll wait here for Hunnar and Elfa and the rest.” He favored Antal with a look of disgust. “What are you worried about? You’re safe. A skimmer’s as stable traveling over water as over a solid surface. Meanwhile I’m sure we can find a portable recorder or two. Why don’t you tell your story? For the records?”

The foreman hesitated, licked his lips.

“Or maybe,” Colette said sweetly, “you’d prefer to walk?”

“Or swim, as the case may be.” September was looking at him hard. “Come on, man, the only way you’ve a chance of surviving your former employer’s wrath is in protective custody. Tell it all now without coercion and you might even escape mindwipe.”

Antal looked at him, then nodded to Ethan. Iriole provided recording materials, a guard, and privacy belowdecks.

“People will do anything for money.” Colette du Kane’s jaw was set as she leaned over the railing. “I know. My father was like that. But he was lucky. He grew out of it before he died.” She gestured toward the city as another violent rumble came from inside the mountain. “Hunnar and his people better get back here fast. They can skate like hell, but I doubt there’s one among them who can swim.”

Organizing a mass evacuation in a matter of minutes isn’t easy under the best of circumstances. Fortunately the panicky flight of Antal and his crew helped Hunnar and Elfa to convince the citizens of Yingyapin that for the moment at least safety lay in abandoning their homes and striking out across the ice. Once persuaded, the townspeople moved swiftly. Yingyapin was so poor there was little in the way of goods to remove anyway.

Once a few of the more prominent families stepped out onto the ice the rest followed in a rush. Males and females supported their cubs between them. They formed a long, broad column chivaning toward the mouth of the harbor.

Last to leave was a repentant third mate, Kilpit Vyo-Aqar. “If there is any danger, it should fall upon me,” he told Elfa. “I have no excuse for what Mousokka and I did except to say we were driven by the twin demons of homesickness and loneliness.”

“You don’t mutiny because you are homesick,” she shot back as they raced across the ice sheet to catch up with the Slanderscree. “If so much as one citizen is left behind, I will hold your life forfeit. Later we may find a means to forget your treachery.”

“Yes, princess.” The joy and relief in the mate’s face was overwhelming.

Rumbling continued to sound from inside the mountain as the icerigger and skimmer led the entire population of Yingyapin out to sea.

“We’ll have to find an island or secondary inlet somewhere along the coast to settle them temporarily,” Hunnar declared. “They can sleep and talk and wait for aid from Poyolavomaar.”

“We can ferry supplies,” Colette told him via her translator. “Portable shelters, food, medicine, that sort of thing. Later we can—”

She was interrupted not by an explosion but by a titanic blast of superheated steam from the side of the mountain facing the ocean. The pressure hurled rocks and debris a kilometer into the sky. Boulders as big as the skimmer were scattered like pebbles. Ta-hoding tried to find another place to hang more sail.

The initial eruption was followed by a second which punched a hole in the cliff that delineated the edge of the continental shelf. The powerful storm started to dissipate as rapidly as it had formed. Rain ceased.

“See,” Hunnar murmured as he reboarded the skimmer, “the earth bleeds.”

It looked as if half the mountain was glowing pale crimson from the heat within. The periodic rumbling had been replaced by a steady whisper from deep within the rock.

They were far out on the ice now, the Slanderscree steadily accelerating under full sail but with Ta-hoding moderating their speed so the population of Yingyapin could keep pace. City and harbor had fallen out of sight astern, though they could still see the line of cliffs that marked the rim of the continental plateau. As they stared, it began to collapse. Together he and Colette waited for the final explosion that never came.

The plateau imploded slowly, collapsing in on itself like a fallen cake as the tremendous freed heat of the three fusion plants spread out like a wave from the incinerated installation. As it melted, the rock absorbed the heat.

Grurwelk Seesfar continued to prove her name was not casually given. From the mainmast lookout bin she called down to the deck.

“The ice melts! Its corpse comes marching!”

“Waves,” Ethan murmured. There was no word for “wave” in the entire Tran language.

A loud cracking sound precipitated a rush to the railings on both the skimmer and much larger icerigger. Small at first, the crack appeared beneath the Slanderscree’s right fore runner. It gave birth to several smaller cracks while it continued to widen. Dark water bubbled up from eons-old depths.

Screams and fear calls rose from the chivaning citizens of Yingyapin. No solid deck lay between them and the horror sweeping out of the continent. It was far more frightening than an earthquake.

The oceans of Tran-ky-ky were trying to make a comeback.

But the Slanderscree did not tumble down into the liquid center of the world, nor did the terrified evacuees. The melange of water and broken ice that initially appeared in their wake grew and then stopped. Even as he observed it through one of the skimmer’s monoculars Ethan saw it beginning to refreeze. Gradually the spreading cracks receded behind them. The icerigger lurched once to port, leveled off, and stayed on top of the surface.

The energy from the overloaded installation had spent itself. Had Bamaputra truly believed he had one chance in ten of surviving the overload, or had he known all along the containment fields would fail under the strain? They would never know, just as they’d never known much of anything about that steely-minded, quietly megalomaniacal little man. His component parts were now mixed irrevocably with the minerals of the world he would have remade. He’d followed a private vision and now he was entombed with it.

Eventually they slowed to give the cubs a chance to rest. Sail was furled and the young and sick were allowed to come aboard the already crowded Slanderscree. There wasn’t nearly enough room for all, but Ta-hoding had no intention of crawling back to Poyolavomaar.

Long unbreakable cables of woven pika-pina were dropped over the stern. The citizens of Yingyapin took hold and relaxed all but their arms as the great ice ship towed them effortlessly across the frozen sea, like a living tail at the end of a kite.

Save for a vast field of man-made lava now rapidly cooling behind them, there was nothing to show that the installation had ever existed.

An appropriate uninhabited island was located and the population of now vanished Yingyapin established as comfortably as possible. The Slanderscree resumed its homeward trek, leaving with the displaced a promise to send back help as soon as it arrived at Poyolavomaar.

T’hosjer T’hos, Landgrave of that fine city-state, listened with interest to their tale and immediately dispatched half a dozen large ice ships groaning with supplies to assist the homeless wanderers of Yingyapin. In an earlier time he might have sent pillaging soldiers instead. The Union was already proving its worth.

On the long journey between Poyolavomaar and Arsudun, Colette du Kane proved to Ethan that fusion stations were not the only thing in this part of Tran-ky-ky that could generate prodigious amounts of heat.

Millicent Stanhope, Resident Commissioner of Tran-ky-ky, stood bundled in her survival suit and watched as the hundred or so prisoners from the installation at Yingyapin were herded into an empty above-ground warehouse. They would be kept separated from the rest of the outpost’s buildings in a heated structure, but with only minimal clothing. That would keep them from causing trouble for the outpost’s constabulary, which consisted of exactly five people.

Already that morning she’d requested a peaceforcer via the deep-space beam to come and pick up this awkward contingent of law-breakers. It was going to be awhile before even a very fast ship could traverse the emptiness between its base and distant Tran-ky-ky. Meantime the prisoners were going to have to be fed and cared for and watched over. Their arrival blew her carefully laid plans for her six-month tour of duty all to pieces. She turned to confront Ethan and Skua September.

“I thought I told you two I didn’t want to be bothered with anything out of the ordinary?”

“Well, I expect we could have let them go on destroying the planet,” September replied. “That would’ve kept things quiet.”

“Until after retirement. My retirement.” She sighed deeply. “You did the only thing you could do, of course. I hope there are no more surprises.”

“Just one,” Ethan said hesitantly. She glared at him. “Maybe this isn’t the right time or place, but I don’t see why it would have to be done in your office.”

“Why what would have to be done in my office, young man?”

Hunnar looked at Ethan, who nodded and moved aside. The knight took Elfa’s paw and the two of them approached solemnly. They towered over the Commissioner but she didn’t back away.

Elfa cleared her throat, an intimidating sound in itself, and recited the words Ethan and September had helped her prepare.

“As ranking representatives of the Union of Ice of Tran-ky-ky, we wish to hereby formally apply to you, the Resident Commissioner, on behalf of all our people for application to associate membership status in the government of peoples and systems known as the Commonwealth.”

Colette clapped politely when she finished, though her survival suit gloves muffled the sound. Behind his visor September grinned broadly.

“Well,” Stanhope said finally, “is there to be no end to the day’s surprises? You are aware what requirements you must meet? In order to qualify as a recognized planetary government you must be able to prove suzeranty over a substantial portion of the population.”

“With Wannome, Arsudun, Poyolavomaar, Moulokin, and many smaller city-states now united under the same articles of cooperation I believe we of Tran-ky-ky can now satisfy your regulations.”

“They qualify easy,” said September, “and by the time the sector government gets around to completing the paperwork this here Union will have doubled in size.”

“Can I be certain everything they tell me is true? After all, I’m still new here. I wouldn’t enjoy being fooled.”

“Milliken Williams knows Tran-ky-ky as well as Ethan or I. Why not appoint him your personal adviser for native affairs? He’ll be straight with you.”

Stanhope considered. “The schoolteacher? He’s not leaving with you?”

September and Ethan exchanged a grin. This time it was Ethan who replied. “Our friend and a member of the science staff here, a Cheela Hwang, have formed rather a strong attachment for one another. Don’t be surprised if you’re approached in the near future to perform a marriage. Resident Commissioners are qualified to do that, I believe.”

“Yes. Dear me!” She shook her head tiredly. “Will I never be permitted to rest? I will certainly make use of Mr. Williams’s unique body of knowledge. That’s an excellent suggestion, young man.” She turned her attention back to the patiently waiting Tran.

“As for your application, I will take it under advisement and pass it along to those specialists most familiar with your situation. If they approve, I’ll see to it that recommendation for approval is given to the sector council.” To Ethan’s surprise, she turned to wink at him.

At which point he realized that there were no specialists on Tran-ky-ky’s situation—except for three travelers named Fortune, September, and Williams. He winked back. She was asking them to approve their own request.

“We will need weapons,” said Elfa excitedly, “and sky boats, and wind-talkers and all the other wonderful devices we have seen and …”

“Easy, easy,” Stanhope admonished her. “First your request has to be drawn up and passed along. Then it has to be read and dissected, discussed and argued, voted upon—oh, lord, the paperwork, the forms!” She shook her head, already exhausted by the prospect of the work ahead. “And I thought this was going to be a simple, relaxing few months.”

“Consider though,” Colette told her. “Upon retirement you’ll be bringing a whole new world into the Commonwealth family, a new sentient race. That is an honor few diplomats even dream of supervising.”

“That’s true. Yes, that’s true.” Stanhope straightened perceptibly. “Instead of slipping silently into oblivion, I expect it will be my duty to go out in a blaze of glory. Well, one must make sacrifices, I suppose. I’ll just have to force myself to see this through.

“Now if that’s everything, I have much to do and I’d like to begin by getting out of this infernal wind.”

“Infernal wind?” September spread his arms wide. “Why, this is nothing but a light breeze on Tran-ky-ky.”

“You can have it. And so can my successor when my tour of duty is done.” Her voice dropped and she began muttering to herself. “Have to have the formal ceremonies celebrating Tran-ky-ky’s inclusion into the Commonwealth … before that, of course. Yes, a lot of paperwork to do.” She turned and headed for the nearest entrance to the administrative complex, a small but nonetheless impressive figure receding into the blowing ice. Ethan watched her knowing that the immediate future of Tran-ky-ky was in good and capable hands.

“Now we must see to our ship.” Hunnar put a paw on his shoulder. “Can you not come down to bid us farewell?”

Ethan looked up at the knight, seeing for the last time the membranous dan fluttering in the wind, the sharp teeth, the large feline eyes, and the dense red-brown fur. The Tran were going to cause quite a stir when their first representative appeared in council. Of course their appearance would be mitigated somewhat by the special suits they would be forced to wear to keep comfortable. Survival suits designed to cool instead of heat. Comfort was a very relative term between intelligent species.

“I’m afraid we can’t,” September told him. “Ethan and I, well, we’ve been away from the fleshpots too long as it is.”

Grurwelk Seesfar stared at him. She was returning with the Sofoldians to Wannome. She would eventually return to Poyolavomaar as their official inter-state representative. It would allow her to do a great deal of traveling, which she loved above all else.

“You practice cannibalism on your home world?”

September swallowed, coughed. Some terms just did not translate properly.

“Understand,” he told them, “we haven’t regretted a minute of our stay among you. Well, maybe a minute or two, but on the whole it’s been enlightening, yes, enlightening. Bless my soul if it hasn’t.”

“Ta-hoding will sorrow,” Elfa said, sounding none too in control of herself at the moment.

“Maybe we’ll come back for a visit someday,” Ethan told her. “When it’s a hot summer where we are. Or maybe we’ll run into you on another world.”

“Another world.” Elfa tilted her head back and stared out of wide yellow eyes at the perfect blue sky. “A strange thought.” Then she reached out and embraced him so hard he could feel her claws ripping into the back of his survival suit. First Elfa and then Colette du Kane. What was there about him that made him irresistible to amazons of two races?

Then there were no more farewells to give, no more good-byes to say. The Tran whirled and chivaned down an icepath leading to the harbor and the tall-masted icerigger that would, at last, carry them back home.

“If you cry with your visor up like that, young feller-me-lad,” September warned him, “you’ll get ice on your cheeks.”

Colette du Kane put a protective arm around her husband-to-be. “Let him cry. What are you, some kind of emotionless man?”

“Not emotionless,” he replied easily, “just some kind.” Together the three of them turned and headed for the warmth of the nearest sealed corridor.

A Biography of Alan Dean Foster

Alan Dean Foster (b. 1946) is the bestselling author of more than one hundred science fiction and fantasy novels. His prolific output and accessible style have made him one of the nation’s foremost speculative fiction writers.

Born in New York City in 1946, Foster was raised in Los Angeles and attended ’filmmaking school at the University of California, Los Angeles, in the 1960s. There he befriended George Lucas, with whom he would later collaborate. Rather than trying to break into Hollywood, however, Foster took a job writing copy for an advertising firm in Studio City, California, where he remained for two years, honing the craft that he would soon put to use when writing novels.

His first break came when the Arkham Collector, a small horror magazine, bought a letter Foster had written in the style of suspense legend H. P. Lovecraft. Encouraged by this sale, Foster began work on his first novel, The Tar-Aiym Krang (1972), which introduced the Humanx Commonwealth, his most enduring creation. He went on to set more than twenty novels in the Humanx universe; of these, Midworld (1975) is among his most acclaimed works.

The Tar-Aiym Krang was also the first of the Pip and Flinx series. The hero, Flinx, is an orphan thief whose telepathic powers hold the key to finding his parents and understanding his identity. Foster has chronicled the adventures of Flinx, and his acid-breathing sidekick Pip, in fourteen novels, and has explored their universe in fourteen other stand-alone works.

In 1983, Foster began the eight-book Spellsinger series, about a college student trapped in a magical dimension. He also wrote the Icerigger trilogy, published between 1974 and 1987. In 1990, his stand-alone novel Cyber Way received the Southwest Book Award for Fiction, making Foster the first science fiction writer to win this prize. Foster has also found success writing novelizations of Hollywood films, including the Alien trilogy, Star Wars: A New Hope (in which he expanded Lucas’s idea into an entire universe), and the 2009 Star Trek movie.

In addition to creating imaginary planets, Foster travels extensively throughout our world. After finishing college, he spent a summer in the South Pacific, camping in French Polynesia and living with a family of Tahitian policemen. He has scuba dived on unexplored reefs, pan-fried piranha in the “green hell” of Peru’s jungle, and captured film footage of great white sharks’ feeding frenzies in Australia—which was used by a BBC documentary series. These and other adventures are the basis of his travel memoir Predators I Have Known (2011).

Foster is an avid athlete who hikes, bodysurfs, and once studied karate with Chuck Norris. Since taking up powerlifting—at the age sixty-one—he has won numerous world and regional titles. He and his wife, JoAnn Oxley, live in Prescott, Arizona, in a home built of brick salvaged from a turn-of-the-century miner’s brothel.

Foster with a lemur on his shoulder.

Drawings Foster made as a child, “when,” he says, “I should have been paying attention in school.”

Foster is a champion bench presser. In 2011, he won the gold medal in the RAW Eurasia Championships in Odessa, Ukraine.

Foster wearing a Tuareg headdress on one of his trips. Here, he is at the intersecting border of Burkina Faso, Niger, and Mali.

Foster with the late heavy metal singer Ronnie James Dio, of the band Dio, in 2003.

Foster with Tommy Remengesau Jr., President of the Republic of Palau, in 2008.

Foster standing in front of the Ukraine’s ruined Chernobyl nuclear power plant in 2011.

Foster using a Dayak blowgun in Sarawak, in northern Borneo.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Icerigger copyright © 1974 by Alan Dean Foster

Mission to Moulokin copyright © 1979 by Alan Dean Foster

The Deluge Drivers copyright © 1987 by Alan Dean Foster

cover design by Tania Blain

978-1-4532-7412-5

This edition published in 2011 by Open Road Integrated Media

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New York, NY 10014

www.openroadmedia.com

EBOOKS BY ALAN DEAN FOSTER

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Table of Contents

Title

Contents

Icerigger

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter III

Chapter IV

Chapter V

Chapter VI

Chapter VII

Chapter VIII

Chapter IX

Chapter X

Chapter XI

Chapter XII

Chapter XIII

Chapter XIV

Mission to Moulokin

Prologue

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter III

Chapter IV

Chapter V

Chapter VI

Chapter VII

Chapter VIII

Chapter IX

Chapter X

Chapter XI

Chapter XII

Chapter XIII

Chapter XIV

Chapter XV

Chapter XVI

Chapter XVII

Chapter XVIII

The Deluge Drivers

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter III

Chapter IV

Chapter V

Chapter VI

Chapter VII

Chapter VIII

Chapter IX

Chapter X

Chapter XI

Chapter XII

Chapter XIII

Chapter XIV

Chapter XV

A Biography of Alan Dean Foster