Foster, Alan Dean - Icerigger 2 - Mission to Moulokin

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Alan Dean Foster - Mission to Moulokin

Mission to Moulokin

Alan Dean Foster

A Del Rey Book

Published by Ballantine Books

Random House, Inc., New York, and si-multaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 78-70603

ISBN 0-345-33322-5

Manufactured in the United States of America

First Edition: April 1979 Tenth Printing: May 1989

Cover Art by Michael Herring

For Mike and Helen Green, beloved Uncle and Aunt always, and damn the indifferent genetics of it all…

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 thou-sands 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 immo-bilization 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 lo-cals 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

re-markable 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

dep-redations of Sagyanak the Death and her Horde. Such wandering tribes of nomadic barbarians, whole

cities living on their icerafts, periodically visited the perma-nent 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 de-signs

adapted from the ancient clipper ships of Terra's seas, a huge raft rigged for ice running was

con-structed— the Slanderscree.

With Sir Hunnar and a crew of Tran sailors, the survivors set out on the dangerous, lengthy journey. They

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Alan Dean Foster - Mission to Moulokin

surmounted the threats posed by the remnants of the Horde, perilous local fauna such as guttorbyn and

rampaging stavanzers—some the size of small space-craft, a monastery of religious fanatics and the

explo-sion of a gigantic volcano.

More troublesome to Ethan were his relationships with Elfa Kurdagh-Vlata, the daughter of the

Land-grave who had stowed away aboard the Slanderscree, and with the affectionate but sarcastic and

domineer-ing 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…

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

Slcmderscree'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

com-panions to shed their heavy hessavar furs for lighter attire, such as the hide vest and kilt the knight

cur-rently 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

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Alan Dean Foster - Mission to Moulokin

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

hu-man 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

esti-mation.

"They want to know," Ethan explained in Tran while gesturing at the small scout boat skittering

along-side 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 sim-ply 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 main-mast. Many months of living among the Tran had given

Ethan the ability to rapidly translate the look-out'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 shiver-ing 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 or-ders,

other Tran were manipulating the two huge air-foils at bow and stern to slow the icerigger still more.

Meanwhile the laborious and dangerous process of reefing in sails was proceeding rapidly. Ethan

mar-veled 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 border-ing the ship's railings Ethan struggled to remain

up-right 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 subse-quent 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

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Alan Dean Foster - Mission to Moulokin

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 survi-vors. 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

impres-sive 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 di-minutive schoolteacher's manner was as dark

and quiet as his coloring. September might be suited phys-ically to Tran-ky-ky, but Williams melded into

it men-tally. 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 intel-lectual 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 per-sonality, accustomed to manipulating corporation

heads and ordering about Commonwealth representa-tives. 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 stow-away 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 attrac-tion 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

friend-ship 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 look-outs and the bowsprit pointer, Ta-hoding skillfully

directed the Slanderscree toward an open dock pro-truding from the harbor shoreline. The dock was

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sim-ply 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 ice-rigger'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 Slander scree. 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

deli-cate human flesh. The lee of an island or indoors were the only places you were out of the wind on

Trank-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

out-stretched 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.

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AlanDeanFoster-MissiontoMoulokinMissiontoMoulokinAlanDeanFosterADelReyBookPublishedbyBallantineBooksCopyright©1979byAlanDeanFosterAllrightsreservedunderInternationalandPan-AmericanCopyrightConventions.PublishedintheUnitedStatesbyBallantineBooks,adivisionofRandomHouse,Inc.,NewYork,andsimultaneousl...

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