The wave created by its descent split more of the ice and rocked the floating lifeboat wildly. Only once before had Ethan and his companions encountered one of the monstrous lifeforms that lived beneath the ice in the dark depths of Tran-ky-ky’s still liquid oceans. Undoubtedly the apparition which had inadvertently if momentarily saved them also had a warm-weather state, just as did the Tran and every other inhabitant of this frozen world. Perhaps in that state it had eyes. Ethan had seen none. In the cold lightless depths other senses came to the fore. Probably the swimming leviathan had sensed the skimmer’s motion.
What would it make of the drifting lifeboat?
He forced himself to stay calm. In shape and movement their craft was little different from the ice floes drifting all around it. He climbed to his knees and peered over the side, his legs immersed in icy water. There was no sign of the skimmer. One minute it had been hanging in the clear air, tormenting them. Now it was gone, along with its advanced weaponry, communications equipment, and crew.
Well, not all its crew. As Ethan stared, one of the two Tran who had jumped clear at the last instant vanished beneath the roiling surface. The other clung to a small ice floe and somehow managed to pull himself out of the water. He lay there, breathing hard and soaking wet and terrified, staring at the ice corpse surrounding him. Ethan wondered how long he’d last. The Tran could tolerate extreme cold, but dampness was something their systems were not accustomed to.
Ta-hoding clung to the steering oar. “It will come for us next. We are finished, doomed.”
“We’re still afloat,” September snapped, “and keep your voice down. That thing may have ears as big as its mouth.”
So they waited, bobbing in the slush and water, expecting at any moment to be engulfed from below. They were not. Not in five minutes, not in ten. Half an hour later they were still drifting aimlessly.
September rose and whispered. “Anybody else see any eyes?” A soft chorus of nos greeted his query. “Then it doesn’t see, or if it does, not well. Probably relies on high-pitched sound, or the pressure produced by other creatures moving through the water, or just movement. Maybe the vibrations the skimmer’s engine generated brought it up. Maybe it doesn’t even know we’re here.”
“It might be kilometers away by now,” Williams suggested hopefully.
“Yeah, and it might be able to get back here real quicklike. So let’s keep it quiet and slow.”
“A legend,” Hunnar muttered. “A creature from hell itself.” He peered cautiously over the side, unable to see more than a meter into the dark water. “Something from the depths of memory. I hope it stays there. If that is the sort of creature we will have to deal with when our world warms and the ice melts, then I hope the seas stay frozen forever.”
“What are we to do now?” Ta-hoding wondered. “Why do we not sink to the middle of the world?”
“We float.” Hunnar had trouble with the little-used word. “The way a small pouch of chiaf floats in a cup of soup.” He was studying their surroundings intently. “Somehow we must get back out onto the ice.”
“What about that one?” Williams pointed to the exhausted sole survivor of the skimmer, lying on his ice floe.
“What about him?” Hunnar sneered. “Let him freeze; let him starve. He is already dead.” He turned away, heading toward the bow. Grurwelk lingered in the stern, staring:
“We could paddle,” Ethan suggested, “except we don’t have anything to paddle with.”
“And we don’t want to make any vibrations in the water,” September reminded him. He started hunting through the storage lockers until he found what he wanted. As they looked on he secured one end of the pika-pina cable to a serpentine hook in the bow. At first Ethan thought he was fooling with the ice anchor, but the anchor remained in its holder nearby.
“What do you have in mind, Skua?”
September grinned at him. “Been more than a year since I’ve been able to go for a swim. Expect I still remember how.”
Ethan eyed him in disbelief. “You get in that water you’ll freeze. A survival suit’s not a spacesuit. It’s designed to operate in air. Besides, you don’t know what’s swimming around down there.”
“Reckon we’re fixing to find out. One thing’s for sure: We can’t just sit here. In a little while this wood’s going to get waterlogged. Then we’ll all be swimming.” He wrapped the loose end of the rope around his waist, then pointed to the left of the bow.
“There’s a lot of big chunks over that way. If I can get some traction I can make it to the ice sheet, then try to pull the boat over. With all of us pulling on the cable we might be able to haul this thing out of the water. Remember, there’s no hull. It’s just araft with runners and a mast. Not nearly as heavy as a regular boat.” Slipping one leg over the side, he put a foot into the water.
“Your suit system’s going to be overwhelmed,” Williams was telling him. “The water will press it flat against your body. You’ll lose the insulating layer of air. There’ll be nothing between you and the material for it to heat. And if you get any water down your neck…”
He didn’t need to finish the sentence. If the ice water got inside the suit, it would ruin the material’s ability to distinguish inside from out. The confused thermosensors would interpret the water temperature as body temperature and adjust accordingly. Heating would effectively cease, and in the water beneath the lifeboat an unprotected human body would perish of hypothermia in a few minutes.
“Don’t worry, young feller-me-lad. I’ve always been pretty good about keeping my head above water.” He dropped the other leg over the side and slipped into the sea, still holding onto the rail. Now he was submerged up to his chest.
“How is it?” Ethan asked anxiously.
September smiled back up at him but you could see it was forced. “Afraid it’s starting to get a mite cool. We’ll see.” The rest of the pika-pina cable was coiled over his right shoulder. It was light and strong but there was still enough of it to weigh him down.
Taking a deep breath, he let go of the rail and dropped the rest of the way into the water, pivoted and began breast stroking toward the solid ice a dozen meters in front of the lifeboat.
Silently those on board urged him on, dividing their attention between his swimming form and the dark water surrounding him. Would the sudden presence of light attract curious dwellers from below? September continued to make progress, swimming silently and strongly without a single wasted motion. He reached the edge of the ice sheet without anything arising from the depths.
Whereupon the next problem manifested itself. September was no seal, able to accelerate in the water sufficiently to leap out onto the ice. The edge of the sheet offered precious little in the way of a handhold.
He tried several times but kept slipping back into the water. Paradoxically Hunnar, who could not swim, could have climbed out easily by digging his long powerful claws into the ice. September didn’t even have long fingernails, which in any case were enclosed by the suit’s gloves.
As they looked on worriedly he reached down into the water and picked up a drifting chunk of ice. Using this he began hammering away at a crack in the surface of the ice sheet, holding himself partway out of the water by leaning his left arm and shoulder on the sheet while simultaneously treading water.