But why would anyone need one of the bulkier, more expensive survival suits just to go out for a midday jaunt? A simpler, cheaper, disposable daysuit would serve perfectly well.
For a day.
He started to shiver. “We’re going to have to risk bathing in a shallow part of the pool. Near the far edge.” He nodded. “The water temperature is tolerable there.”
“For the moment and barring any tectonic surprises,” she responded. “But sure, let’s risk that. You can go first.”
“We’ll step in together.” He revised his suggestion.
“Not a chance, Arik. If you suddenly start to cook, I need to be able to pull you out. And vice versa when it’s my turn.” She eyed him evenly. “And don’t say anything to me about how romantic a mutual dip would be. I’m not in the mood.”
Their present situation was not, he decided, what was generally meant when a relationship was described as blowing hot and cold. He edged over until he was sitting up against her. His left arm went around her shoulder.
“Look, I’m sorry, okay? The information file on this world said the oceans here never melt. Nothing was said about keeping an eye out for liquid water in the vicinity of volcanic activity.” He hugged her. This time she leaned into him instead of away, which was encouraging. Or maybe she was just looking for a little extra warmth.
“We’re going to die,” she reiterated glumly. “Married less than two months and I’m going to die.”
“Someone will find us. They must have started searching this morning, even in this weather, and-”
As if in direct response to his encouraging words a shape appeared outside the entrance to the cave. Springing to his feet and bending over to avoid bumping into the low ceiling, he started excitedly forward.
“See, I told you!” he called back to the equally excited Jen. “Everything’ll be all right now. Hey!” Slipping his gloves back on and resealing them to the wrists of the daysuit he started forward while waving his hands. “Hey, we’re in here! We’re okay!” Behind him, Jen was hastily climbing into her own suit.
The shape stopped and turned to look at him. It was a big man. No, he quickly corrected himself, it was bigger than a man. Its ventral side narrowed to a sharp V-shape where bone had fused to form a solid keel. A pair of legs on either side resembled hairy flippers that terminated in downward-curving double spikes. There was no neck. Jutting out from the stout cylindrical body, the tapering head terminated in a wide, flat mouth suitable for snatching things off the ice. The jaws were filled with curved, hooklike teeth that pointed in all directions, designed to impale and hold squirming, fast-moving prey. Protected by double transparent eyelids, both pale green eyes focused avidly on Arik.
Behind him Jen inhaled sharply. Neither of them had any idea what the creature was. They did not remember it from the very limited guide. Evolved to live and thrive on naked ice, Tran-ky-ky’s fauna was as exotic as its flora. From the look of it, this particular carnivore probably traveled by lying on its skatelike keel bone and pulling itself forward by jamming its cramponish flipper-spikes into the ice. That it could also drag itself forward on solid ground was self-evident from the way it now began to pull itself into the cave. It was likely, Arik decided as he retreated, that the menacing beast was not nearly as agile on land as it was out on the open ice.
It was, however, plenty big enough to completely block the only exit.
As it shoved its head farther into the cave opening it emitted a deep, reverberant moan that sounded more like the cry of something giving birth subsequent to a delayed pregnancy than it did a predatory challenge.
“Do something!” Jen yelled as she hurriedly resealed her gloves.
Keeping one eye on the lurching, advancing predator, Arik searched the cave as he continued to back up. They had no weapons. What would anyone need with weapons on a one-day sightseeing trip? It was a moot regret. Even if they had brought one along it would have gone down on the iceboat with the rest of their equipment.
Jen picked up a rock and threw it. It produced a reverberant thunk as it struck the intruder, the same kind of dull sound she had heard when she had once been forced to slap an over-amorous dolphin.
The stone bounced off the carnivore exactly as if it had hit a hunk of solid rubber. Hacking up another eager moan, the creature continued to drag itself deeper into the cave. Its bulk scoured gravel and rock dust from the walls. There was no possible way they could get around it.
“Keep the pool between it and us!” Arik had retreated to join Jen and take her hand. He squeezed it firmly and she replied in kind. “It’s adapted to permanent cold, so it might avoid the hot water. If it comes at us from the left, we go right. If it comes right, we make a run for it around the other side of the pool.”
“Great,” she commented dryly. “Then what?”
Then - they would be outside, he realized. In their failing daysuits. Could the creature run them down? And if so, would it start to consume them before they froze and died?
Arching back its head, the intruder bellowed sharply. It was a completely different sound from the enthusiastic moaning it had been emitting thus far. The source of the cry soon became apparent.
First one spear, then a second, then two more struck the animal from behind, the sharp points driving deeply into the thickly insulated flesh. As the beleaguered creature roared and bellowed in pain it rocked back and forth against the walls of the cave. Stone shards and ice crystals broke loose. The creature’s dying cacophony was awful to hear. A dust cloud of pulverized rock filled the cavity that housed the pool, causing both humans to break out coughing.
It took twenty minutes for the embattled carnivore to die. Then all was silent except for the hot spring’s persistent bubbling and the whine of the wind outside.
Waving dust away from his face, Arik advanced cautiously toward the exit. Something he could not see was pulling the now deceased beast backwards and out of the cave. He strained for a better look.
“It’s okay,” he told Jen. “I can count spears sticking out of it.” His heart leaped. “It has to be the natives. We’re saved!”
There were half a dozen of them; tall, densely furred, dressed in heavy, well-made clothing fashioned of wind-breaking leathers and the cured skins of lesser fauna. Large furry ears stuck out from the sides of their heads while oval catlike eyes gazed into the wind from behind double lids. Two of them boasted beards that blended without a break into the fur that covered their elongated faces. The membranous dan that formed wind-catching wings hung limp from wrists to waists.
Sharp knives emerged from scabbards and flashed in the brilliant sunlight as they began to cut up the dead carnivore. Sunlight glinted off the extended, backward curving claws o
n their feet. Called chiv, these remarkable evolutionary adaptations allowed the Tran to skate on their bare feet across the endless expanses of ice.
Arik was so relieved to see them that when he hurried outside he did not even bother to snap down his protective face shield. “Hello, hello! O’Morion, are we glad to see you! We’ve been stuck here for-”
The fist that struck him was as unyielding as it was unexpected. When his momentarily blurred vision cleared again it was to reveal two of the natives standing over him, swords drawn. Piercing eyes that were feline yet alien bored into his own. He ignored the chill that was creeping over his face.
“Hey, what’s the idea? What…?” He started to rise.
One of the Tran put a foot on his chest and shoved. Gently, or the triple razor-sharp chiv on the bottom of his foot would have sliced into the human’s daysuit. The pair of armed locals began chattering animatedly among themselves. Though Arik knew nothing of the local language, the tone of the natives’ conversation did not strike him as cordial.
“Arik!”
Looking to his right he saw that two more of them were dragging Jen out of the cave. She’d had the foresight to flip down her face shield. Behind her the remaining pair of Tran continued to work on the carcass of the dead predator.
“Keep calm,” he called to her. He thought frantically back to what he had read of this world. Despite its recent application for associate Commonwealth membership, many of the natives of Tran-ky-ky still lived in a semifeudal society. It was said that there still remained a number to be convinced of the benefits of Commonwealth membership. Not all had voted in favor of it.
Could it be, he found himself thinking uneasily, that those who had landed on the island might just possibly fall into the latter social group?
With only primitive blades at their disposal two of them were rapidly reducing the remains of the dead carnivore to chops, steaks, and the equivalent of local cuts. Steam rose from the gaping, disemboweled corpse. Would he and Jen be next?
After cleaning his blade in the snow and then wiping it dry against his gray jerkin, the tallest Tran scabbarded it and walked over to gaze down at the humans. As the alien approached, Jen stepped slightly behind her husband where he lay on the ground. They eyed the natives warily. After inspecting them both, the knife wielder focused yellow eyes on Arik. At a gesture, the Tran with a foot on the human’s chest stepped back and allowed him to stand.
“I hight Signur Draz-hode.” Though he sounded as if he was talking with a mouthful of molasses, the Tran’s terranglo was quite intelligible. With a clawed hand he indicated his companions. As he raised his arm, his right dan unfurled like half a translucent cape “We are kurgals of the Virin Clan.” Leaning forward, he studied the two humans more closely. “Though you have not the look of invaders, that does not absolve you.”
“Invaders?” Behind her face shield, Jen blinked. “We’re not invaders.”
“We’re tourists,” Arik added helpfully.
“’Tourists’?” The Virin Signur Draz-hode’s command of terranglo was not perfect.
“Visitors,” Jen explained. “Sightseers. Casual travelers who are here for only a day to see some of your unique world. To enjoy its ice oceans and snow-covered mountains, its plant and animal life.” Maintaining a smile, she nodded in the direction of the gutted, steaming carcass nearby. “Like that.”
Straightening, Draz-hode turned into the wind to eye the corpse. Fully adapted to the unrelenting climate, he needed no face shield. “A sodj? There is nothing unique about a sodj. Even in taste it is ordinary. But it was the best we could find on this hunting journey.” He looked back at her. “Until now.”
“Until…?” She swallowed hard. “You’re-you’re going to eat us?”
It took a moment for the Tran to dissolve the human words in his mind. When he finally did, he howled with laughter. At least, Arik assumed it was laughter. It certainly was a howl. When the Tran translated for his hunting companions, they promptly mimicked his vocalization. To Arik it sounded like a chorus of tenors warming up for a concert by engaging in a coughing contest.
Eventually Draz-hode recovered sufficiently to regard the female human once more. “We might - later. For now, we have the sodj. You are invaders. You come to our world and turn everything upside town. You insist we make a government not of peoples and clans but of all mixed together without regard to history or honor. You trample tradition under your soft, chiv-less feet!”
“We don’t,” Jen argued as forcefully as she dared. “We don’t trample anything. We’re not politicians. We’re just tourists.”
“You’ll be better off as citizens of the Commonwealth,” Arik could not resist saying. “You’ll have modern conveniences, medicine, technology, exposure to the arts and culture of other races-”
Draz- hode interrupted him roughly. “Who asked for the things of which you speak? Not I. Not the Virin. Yet your allies and our traditional enemies try to force them upon us. So be it. The Virin can adapt to new circumstances without foregoing the old. You wish to see some of our ‘unique’ world? You will be given that opportunity.” He added something in the guttural yet attractive local tongue.
His companions came forward. Using cord woven from strips of pika-pedan they secured the prisoners’ arms behind their backs. One of the natives automatically started to furl the dan he expected to see running from Arik’s waist up to his arm before remembering that humans did not possess the tough membrane that allowed the Tran to speed across the ice with only the wind at their backs to propel them.
“What are you going to do with us?” a worried Arik asked their captor.
Draz- hode did not hesitate. “Ransom. It is an old and venerable custom among our kind. We will find out if it operates similarly among your people.” He exposed sharp teeth. “Call it cultural exchange.”
“We’ve traveled here on our own,” Jen put in. “It would take a long time to work out the details of such a trade.”
Walking up to the female human, Draz-hode bent forward so that his face was close to hers. For a second time, he showed his teeth. “In that eventuality we will find out how you taste. If it turns out that you are not worth money, you will still be valuable as food.”
As he and Jen were marched down the uneven slope toward the waiting iceboat Arik noted that their captors did not bind their legs. There was no need. If they did somehow manage to escape they could not possibly walk all the way back to Brass Monkey. They could not walk, period. Unlike the Tran whose razor-sharp chiv protruded from the undersides of their feet, the boots he and Jen were wearing would find them slipping and sliding all over the ice if they tried to hike more than a few meters.
Thei
r captors’ iceboat was considerably bigger than his and Jen’s day rental. It had a higher mast, a crude bowsprit equipped with a foresheet, a pika-pedan railing, and a much larger central cabin. Essentially an arrowhead-shaped raft mounted on runners of cut and polished stone, it also featured a pointed stern to which a fourth runner was attached. Unlike the three forward runners that were fixed in position, the one aft was attached to a tiller that served to steer the craft.
With proportionately longer arms than a human, the lean and muscular Virin had no trouble hauling their prisoners up onto the open raft. Once all were aboard, the single square sail was let out. As soon as the boat cleared the lee of the island and encountered a steady breeze it began to rapidly pick up speed.
“Don’t worry,” Arik whispered to his new wife. “One of the search parties will find us.”
She glared moodily back at him. “First, you’re assuming there are search parties out looking for us. Second, you’re assuming at least one of them will have some idea where to look. Third, at the speed we’re making now we’ll soon be far from any hypothetical area where any hypothetical search party might choose to hypothetically search. Fourth, you’re an idiot.”
Lying on his side on the rough-hewn deck of the iceboat, hands bound behind him, he pondered her reaction. “Do you want a divorce?”
“You really are an idiot,” she snapped. “Or maybe just a man. I know that you love me, really and for certain. I’d rather be married to an idiot who I know truly loves me than a genius who thinks of me as little more than an ornament to his own brilliance. Or,” she added, “just because I’m beautiful and rich.”
Jim Baen’s Universe Page 2
