The Icerigger Trilogy: Icerigger, Mission to Moulokin, and The Deluge Drivers (3 page)

“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.

H
E 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.”