“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.