Organizing a mass evacuation in a matter of minutes isn’t easy under the best of circumstances. Fortunately the panicky flight of Antal and his crew helped Hunnar and Elfa to convince the citizens of Yingyapin that for the moment at least safety lay in abandoning their homes and striking out across the ice. Once persuaded, the townspeople moved swiftly. Yingyapin was so poor there was little in the way of goods to remove anyway.
Once a few of the more prominent families stepped out onto the ice the rest followed in a rush. Males and females supported their cubs between them. They formed a long, broad column chivaning toward the mouth of the harbor.
Last to leave was a repentant third mate, Kilpit Vyo-Aqar. “If there is any danger, it should fall upon me,” he told Elfa. “I have no excuse for what Mousokka and I did except to say we were driven by the twin demons of homesickness and loneliness.”
“You don’t mutiny because you are homesick,” she shot back as they raced across the ice sheet to catch up with the Slanderscree. “If so much as one citizen is left behind, I will hold your life forfeit. Later we may find a means to forget your treachery.”
“Yes, princess.” The joy and relief in the mate’s face was overwhelming.
Rumbling continued to sound from inside the mountain as the icerigger and skimmer led the entire population of Yingyapin out to sea.
“We’ll have to find an island or secondary inlet somewhere along the coast to settle them temporarily,” Hunnar declared. “They can sleep and talk and wait for aid from Poyolavomaar.”
“We can ferry supplies,” Colette told him via her translator. “Portable shelters, food, medicine, that sort of thing. Later we can—”
She was interrupted not by an explosion but by a titanic blast of superheated steam from the side of the mountain facing the ocean. The pressure hurled rocks and debris a kilometer into the sky. Boulders as big as the skimmer were scattered like pebbles. Ta-hoding tried to find another place to hang more sail.
The initial eruption was followed by a second which punched a hole in the cliff that delineated the edge of the continental shelf. The powerful storm started to dissipate as rapidly as it had formed. Rain ceased.
“See,” Hunnar murmured as he reboarded the skimmer, “the earth bleeds.”
It looked as if half the mountain was glowing pale crimson from the heat within. The periodic rumbling had been replaced by a steady whisper from deep within the rock.
They were far out on the ice now, the Slanderscree steadily accelerating under full sail but with Ta-hoding moderating their speed so the population of Yingyapin could keep pace. City and harbor had fallen out of sight astern, though they could still see the line of cliffs that marked the rim of the continental plateau. As they stared, it began to collapse. Together he and Colette waited for the final explosion that never came.
The plateau imploded slowly, collapsing in on itself like a fallen cake as the tremendous freed heat of the three fusion plants spread out like a wave from the incinerated installation. As it melted, the rock absorbed the heat.
Grurwelk Seesfar continued to prove her name was not casually given. From the mainmast lookout bin she called down to the deck.
“The ice melts! Its corpse comes marching!”
“Waves,” Ethan murmured. There was no word for “wave” in the entire Tran language.
A loud cracking sound precipitated a rush to the railings on both the skimmer and much larger icerigger. Small at first, the crack appeared beneath the Slanderscree’s right fore runner. It gave birth to several smaller cracks while it continued to widen. Dark water bubbled up from eons-old depths.
Screams and fear calls rose from the chivaning citizens of Yingyapin. No solid deck lay between them and the horror sweeping out of the continent. It was far more frightening than an earthquake.
The oceans of Tran-ky-ky were trying to make a comeback.
But the Slanderscree did not tumble down into the liquid center of the world, nor did the terrified evacuees. The melange of water and broken ice that initially appeared in their wake grew and then stopped. Even as he observed it through one of the skimmer’s monoculars Ethan saw it beginning to refreeze. Gradually the spreading cracks receded behind them. The icerigger lurched once to port, leveled off, and stayed on top of the surface.
The energy from the overloaded installation had spent itself. Had Bamaputra truly believed he had one chance in ten of surviving the overload, or had he known all along the containment fields would fail under the strain? They would never know, just as they’d never known much of anything about that steely-minded, quietly megalomaniacal little man. His component parts were now mixed irrevocably with the minerals of the world he would have remade. He’d followed a private vision and now he was entombed with it.
Eventually they slowed to give the cubs a chance to rest. Sail was furled and the young and sick were allowed to come aboard the already crowded Slanderscree. There wasn’t nearly enough room for all, but Ta-hoding had no intention of crawling back to Poyolavomaar.
Long unbreakable cables of woven pika-pina were dropped over the stern. The citizens of Yingyapin took hold and relaxed all but their arms as the great ice ship towed them effortlessly across the frozen sea, like a living tail at the end of a kite.
Save for a vast field of man-made lava now rapidly cooling behind them, there was nothing to show that the installation had ever existed.
An appropriate uninhabited island was located and the population of now vanished Yingyapin established as comfortably as possible. The Slanderscree resumed its homeward trek, leaving with the displaced a promise to send back help as soon as it arrived at Poyolavomaar.
T’hosjer T’hos, Landgrave of that fine city-state, listened with interest to their tale and immediately dispatched half a dozen large ice ships groaning with supplies to assist the homeless wanderers of Yingyapin. In an earlier time he might have sent pillaging soldiers instead. The Union was already proving its worth.
On the long journey between Poyolavomaar and Arsudun, Colette du Kane proved to Ethan that fusion stations were not the only thing in this part of Tran-ky-ky that could generate prodigious amounts of heat.
Millicent Stanhope, Resident Commissioner of Tran-ky-ky, stood bundled in her survival suit and watched as the hundred or so prisoners from the installation at Yingyapin were herded into an empty above-ground warehouse. They would be kept separated from the rest of the outpost’s buildings in a heated structure, but with only minimal clothing. That would keep them from causing trouble for the outpost’s constabulary, which consisted of exactly five people.
Already that morning she’d requested a peaceforcer via the deep-space beam to come and pick up this awkward contingent of law-breakers. It was going to be awhile before even a very fast ship could traverse the emptiness between its base and distant Tran-ky-ky. Meantime the prisoners were going to have to be fed and cared for and watched over. Their arrival blew her carefully laid plans for her six-month tour of duty all to pieces. She turned to confront Ethan and Skua September.
“I thought I told you two I didn’t want to be bothered with anything out of the ordinary?”
“Well, I expect we could have let them go on destroying the planet,” September replied. “That would’ve kept things quiet.”
“Until after retirement. My retirement.” She sighed deeply. “You did the only thing you could do, of course. I hope there are no more surprises.”