The ridge was a much more serious if less life-threatening obstacle to their progress than any carnivore, however. Forty thousand years ago that line was where the previous warm cycle had ended. Pack ice from the north had run into pack ice advancing from the south. The two ice sheets had crunched together and pushed up and out, forming a solid wall of blocks and slabs that girdled Tran-ky-ky at its equator.
Ta-hoding barked at his helmsman and the icerigger slowly swung eastward. They sailed parallel to the ridge with the wind behind them, searching for a break the crew could enlarge to create a passage.
During their previous journey to Moulokin, far to the west, they had found such a pass. After enlarging it with picks and axes, they’d used the power of a rifs storm to force the ship the rest of the way through. It was not a technique anyone wished to employ again since it could just as easily result in the destruction of the icerigger as in its safe passage to the southern ice sheet.
Days passed without sighting anything more encouraging than slight variations in the height of the ridge. Ethan and his companions grew discouraged.
“Surely,” Cheela Hwang said to him, “there has to be a place where the ice has collapsed under its own weight, or been cracked by continuing pressure, or has melted enough for us to make a passage?”
“Not necessarily. Any change we’ve observed has been organically induced, as by that shan-kossief thing.” Zima Snyek, their resident glaciologist, was the butt of jokes among the Tran since he spent as much time working with the ice as a kossief. “We know the ridge circles the whole planet. It’s conceivable it might do so without interruption.”
“We haven’t the time or the resources for a circumnavigation.” Hwang was studying a small electronic map. “We’ve already sailed too far to the east. We shouldn’t continue much farther this way.” She glanced up at Ethan. “You told me you broke through the ridge once before.”
He nodded, gestured stemward. “On our journey to Moulokin. It was a do-or-die situation. Break through or get torn to shreds by a rifs.”
“Why don’t we just retrace that route and utilize the existing passage?”
Milliken Williams had been listening, as was his preference, but now spoke up. “First because it’s a long ways to the west. Second because we could easily miss it and sail on by, and lastly because we barely slipped through the first time. Between the weather and subsurface movements, the gap may already have been at least partially filled in. If that’s the case, we’ll never find it. We’d be a lot better off if we could find a suitable way through right here. You’re talking about spending weeks searching for a break that might be undetectable.” He shrugged. “You’re right about one thing, though: If we don’t find something soon, we won’t have any choice but to go back.”
It was Ta-hoding who brought the search to a halt. Like most of them he’d spent endless hours scanning the unbroken barrier paralleling them off to starboard, the wind ruffling his mane and the fur on shoulders and neck. He was very patient, Ta-hoding was, but he, too, had his limits. The day came when he requested a conference.
“It is time to decide how we intend to make our way southward from this region. We cannot sail around the world only to meet ourselves in the same places we have already visited.”
“There is no other way.” Hunnar was as frustrated as any of them. “We have already determined that.”
First Mate Monslawic nodded. “Still we must find one. Let us think hard on this matter as we continue as we have for another day or two. If by then we have not found a place to make a passage, we must turn about and retrace our course. Better to sail all the way back toward Moulokin to search for a way through we know exists than to continue endlessly on an unprofitable heading.” Clearly the Slanderscree’s first mate had given their situation much thought.
“We cannot go back,” Ta-hoding informed him. “We must cross the Bent Ocean within the next couple of days.”
“Why the hurry?” September wanted to know.
By way of reply Ta-hoding pointed toward the bow. Ethan joined the others in staring forward. A few scattered clouds marred the otherwise pristine horizon. Not rain clouds, of course. It never rained on Tran-ky-ky. Most of the planet’s moisture lay permanently frozen on its surface. Even snow was rare, though more common in the planet’s warmer regions. Clouds were seldom seen, even here near the equator.
Ethan wondered what Ta-hoding was pointing at. As it developed it was something visible only to an experienced sailor.
“For the past several days the winds have been erratic,” he told them. Ethan knew the winds of Tran-ky-ky blew with extraordinary consistency from west to east. “That is a strange formation but not an unknown one.” Then he was talking about the clouds, Ethan mused. “Also it is the season.”
“Season for what?” Williams asked.
“Comes soon a rifs. Not today, not tomorrow, but soon. Out of the east. Usually they come from north or south. This comes out of the east. It will be very bad.”
That went without saying, Ethan knew as he stared at the innocuous-looking puffs of cumulus. It meant a complete reversal of normal wind patterns. The atmospheric disturbance required to accomplish that would have to verge on the demonic. Yet Ta-hoding sounded so sure.
“What’s a ‘rifs’?” Jacalan asked.
Hwang let her colleague Semkin explain. “A local superthunderstorm. Several thunderstorm cells cluster in the same area. They start feeding off each other, the way a firestorm feeds on its own heat. On Tran-ky-ky very little actual moisture’s involved. That only seems to make the storm worse.” He was gazing thoughtfully at the clouds.
“I’ve never actually experienced one, of course. None of us have. They’re nearly nonexistent away from the equatorial regions. But Cheela and I have studied them via satellite reconnaissance. The thunderhead crowns will boil up tens of thousands of meters until they scrape the limits of the upper atmosphere. There’s lightning, lots of lightning, and surface winds approaching hundreds of kilometers an hour. Not good kite-flying weather. Any animal with any sense immediately goes to ground to try and wait it out.”
There was silence as his colleagues absorbed the implications, which were obvious even to non-Tran and non-sailors. You couldn’t tack into a three-hundred kph wind, nor could you safely anchor yourself anywhere on the barren ice sheet. The only reasonable chance of safety lay in a protected harbor. There were no harbors of any kind out on the naked ice.
A ship caught in the open and overtaken by the rolling storm front of a rifs had one chance and one only to survive. That lay in adjusting the amount of sail and turning about to run directly before the wind, praying that sails, masts, and crew held together long enough for the storm to pass over.
Once before the Slanderscree had done that and survived, battered and bruised. Attempting it a second time would involve tempting whatever fate had thus far watched over her. Even if they tried it and managed to ride out the storm, it would shove them, probably damaged and unstable, far off their chosen course. The planet itself seemed to be conspiring to keep them from reaching their destination.
Ideally they would make it through the pressure ridge, put on all sail, and fly southward beyond the storm’s reach. Ideally. Ideally, Ethan thought, they would have ignored regulations and smuggled along a few explosive devices with which to blast their way through the barrier. No time left now for what-ifs and maybes.