Foster, Alan Dean - Icerigger 1

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***************************************************

Author: Alan Dean Foster

Title: Icerigger

Series: The Icerigger trilogy

(Humanx Commonwealth)

Series No: 1 of 3

Original copyright year: 1974

Genre: Science Fiction

Date of e-text: 04/18/2001

Prepared by:

Last Revised: / /

Revised by:

Version: 1.0

Comments: Download both lit and txt version.

Please correct any errors you find in this e-text,

update the txt file’s version number and redistribute.

***************************************************

By Alan Dean Foster : Published by Ballantine Books:

The Icenggger Trilogy

ICERIGGER

MISSION TO MOULOKIN

THE DELUGE DRIVERS

The Adventures of Flinx of the Commonwealth

FOR LOVE OF MOTHER&8209;NOT

THE TAR&8209;AIYM KRANG

ORPHAN STAR

THE END OF THE MATTER

FLINX IN FLUX

MID&8209;FLINX

BLOODHYPE

THE HOWLING STONES

The Damned

Book One: A CALL TO ARMS

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Book Two: THE FALSE MIRROR

Book Three: THE SPOILS OF WAR

THE BLACK HOLE CACHALOT

DARK STAR THE METROGNOME and Other Stories

MIDWORLD NOR CRYSTALTEARS

SENTENCED TO PRISM SPLINTER OF THE MIND'S EYE

STAR TREK@ LOGS ONE&8209;TEN VOYAGE TO THE CITY OF THE DEAD

WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE . . . ... WHO NEEDS ENEMIES?

MAD AMOS PARALLELITIES

PHYLOGENESIS <<new DIRGE* <<new

* forthcoming

Books published by The Ballantine Publishing Group are available at quantity discounts on bulk

purchases for premium, educational, fund&8209;raising, and special sales use. For details, please

call 1&8209;500&8209;733&8209;3000.

***************************************************

SBN 345&8209;25176&8209;8&8209;1513

First Printing: March, 1974

Fourth Printing: December, 1975

Cover painting by Dean Ellis

Printed in the United States of America

BALLANTINE BOOKS

A Division, o` Random House, Inc.

201 .East 50th Street, New York, N.Y. 10022

***************************************************

For

Carol Fran

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Here’s proof of insanity in the family

***************************************************

Chapter one

The man in the Antares bar-lounge didn't quite bang his bead 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 maple-wood 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 Mailings of the robot bartender, now on the

verge of electron psychosis, stagger be-tween the tables, and try again.

Now he struggled to his feet, downed another slug of what-ever 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. Com-pany 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 'oar 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

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the. floor. Money exchanged 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. Put 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 admo-nitions 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!" be 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 espe-cially 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 en-gaged in a scientific experiment to settle

the matter once and fen 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 yachts-man 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 bad come first, like

Bererac'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.

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"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 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 cata-logue of dubious attributes til 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 be-hind and the resultant menage a 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 posi-grav 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 til 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 piroueting 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 coin-cidence that nightside happened to fall

on the ship as it orbited in sleep period. Ethan seemed to be the only non-crew mem-ber 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 humans outpost on the forbidding surface.

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file:///F|/rah/Alan%20Dean%20Foster/Foster,%20Alan%20Dean%20-%20Icerigge %201%20-%20Icerigger.txt***************************************************Author:AlanDeanFosterTitle:IceriggerSeries:TheIceriggertrilogy(HumanxCommonwealth)SeriesNo:1of3Originalcopyrightyear:1974Genre:ScienceFictionDateofe-te...

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