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Science Fiction Stories

Chilling

Written by Alan Dean Foster

Illustrated by Milivoj Ćeran

"You stupid idiot, you've killed us!"

Arik looked over at his new wife. "I love you too."

They sat on opposite sides of the cave. It was not much of a cave. At its highest the ceiling barely allowed him enough room to stand, and it could not have been more than six or seven meters wide. But compared to the frozen, howling wilderness outside it might as well have been the Garden of Eden. Strange fungal growths carpeted the surface of the interior with a subdued cerulean radiance while coiled flowerless scrubs no higher than a man's knee clustered as close to the bubbling central pool as possible. Twitching yellow-brown tendrils hung from the ceiling, reaching toward the heat. While individual specimens occasionally emitted a soft whistle, without pulling one free from its perch and taking it apart Arik was unable to tell if they were plant or animal. Jen refused to touch them.

One of several thermal springs that dotted the tiny island on which the cave was located, the hot pool was what was keeping the two humans as well as the exotic flora alive. While certain specialized growths like pika-pina and the much larger pika-pedan flourished out on the bare frozen oceans of Tran-ky-ky, rarer flora like the orange fiesin were restricted to locales where the ice world's internal heat reached the surface. The cloud of steam generated by one such thermal vent was what had initially drawn him and Jen to the island. A sister spring was also the cause of their present predicament.

Sitting back against the wall of the cave with his knees drawn up to his chest and his bare hands extended toward the life-preserving warmth of the bubbling spring, Arik reflected that their present desperate situation was not wholly his fault. The Tran who had rented them the small native iceboat should have provided more detailed advice about the possible dangers to be encountered out on the frozen ocean. Or perhaps he had, and Arik's translator had failed to interpret everything. The latter was not an impossibility. Not on a world that had only recently applied for associate Commonwealth membership, where the sale and use of advanced technology was still forbidden to the local sentients, and where along with so much else the study of the strongly guttural native language was still in its infancy.

Jen looked across at him. Having slipped out of the cheap daysuit, she was sitting nearly naked next to the pool. She would gladly have immersed herself if not for the fact that even at the edges its surface temperature was close to boiling.

Some choice they had, he mused. Poach in the pool inside the cave or freeze in the air outside it.

"We're not dead yet." He tried to reassure her.

"Might as well be." She was chewing on a fingernail. Because of the hot spring the air inside the cave was warm enough for them to remove their protective daysuits. Outside—outside was another matter entirely. Another world, in every sense of the word. Tran-ky-ky's vast oceans were frozen solid to varying but usually considerable depths, exposed earth crackled and snapped beneath one's boots, a gust of wind sent sharp pain racing through exposed eyes, and on a more intimate note the moisture in a person's nose caused the hairs to freeze almost instantly on contact with the air.

They had arrived as passengers on a wide-ranging interstellar transport, intending to visit this new outpost of the Commonwealth only for the couple of days the KK-drive craft spent off-loading cargo. When it reentered space plus on its way to the next system, they would go with it. It was a journey as unorthodox as it was costly. Interstellar travel was too expensive and time-consuming to allow people to journey lazily from system to system. Citizens traveled from point to point with very definite destinations in mind.

The atypical postwedding journey was a present from their respective families, each of whom happened to be quite wealthy. All the credit in the Commonwealth, however, had not prevented the new couple's rented iceboat from sinking.

How was he to have known that a subsurface fumarole had melted and weakened the ice close to the island where they had decided to come ashore? Or that anything called a "boat" would promptly sink when exposed to open water? In retrospect, of course, it all made perfect if disheartening sense. Designed to skim across the frozen sea on runners chiseled from solid marblelike stone, the craft had been built to skate, not to float. Why would anyone on Tran-ky-ky build something capable of floating when there was no open water for it to float upon? It was solid ice everywhere, solid ice all the time. Even if the material of which the iceboat had been fashioned had been sufficiently buoyant, the craft still would have been dragged down by the weight of its stone runners.

They had set out for the day trip from the outpost of Brass Monkey. Located not far north of the planetary equator, it was the headquarters of the sole humanx settlement on the planet. Journey farther north, they had been told, and the climate made functioning difficult for even those humans equipped with modern arctic gear. Far to the east lay the enormous volcano whose Tran name translated as The-Place-Where-the-Earth's-Blood-Burns. According to the small but steadily expanding information file on Tran-ky-ky, between the volcano and the mountainous lands of Arsudun where Brass Monkey was located lay a multitude of small islands. Some of these were home to distinctive biological environments abounding with endemic species, many of which had yet to be identified and scientifically described. The island on which they currently found themselves marooned was one such outpost of unique indigenous biological diversity.

He estimated that it was just past noon local time. He had to estimate because their communicators had gone down with the iceboat. He chose not to try to guess the temperature outside the cave. When they had arrived at the island his communicator had declared that the temperature was minus twenty-one centigrade with a wind chill double, possibly triple that. Cold enough to kill. Tonight it would drop to that point. Tomorrow morning—tomorrow it might not matter. Like everything else they had brought with them, their self-heating meals had gone down with the iceboat. Having been raised in a privileged family where only the quality and never the quantity of the food he had eaten had ever been in question he had no idea how long a person could survive sans nourishment. Even in the semiprotected environment of the cave.

Of course, if the spring that supplied the hot pool turned out to be inconsistent and chose to stop bubbling for awhile, the heat it provided would be quickly sucked from the small cavern. They would die swiftly and without having to worry about food.

"Visit some of the Commonwealth's most exotic locations before we settle down on Earth, you said. Experience the hard-to-see worlds while we're still young enough to do so in comfort, you said."

Muttering under her breath, Jen moved her feet closer to the bubbling pool. She wished she could ease her legs into the boiling water. Arik felt it was too risky. Reluctantly, she agreed with him. If the temperature rose suddenly she ran a real risk of being scalded. She had to settle for scooping her hands quickly in and out of the water and splashing her face and body.

"I didn't hear any violent objections from you when the trip was being organized," he shot back.

"I had this, in retrospect, unreasonable expectation that you might know what you were doing." One hand gestured in the direction of the cave opening. Outside, the wind sang subzero. "You could at least have had the sense to bring along our gear pack when we got off the boat."

Said gear pack, which held all their food, drinks, chemical reaction space heater, and most important of all any means of communicating with civilization, had gone down with the iceboat when it had fallen through the thin pane of ice that had been undermined by the hidden fumarole. At least they had water, though they dared not drink directly from the effervescent pool. It reeked of sulfur and other minerals. For all they knew, it was rich in dissolved arsenic. So they grabbed snow from outside the cave entrance and held it in their hands just above the hot mineral water until it melted.

They did not even have a cup, he reflected morosely.

"I didn't see you carrying anything off the boat when we came ashore," he reminded her accusingly.

"I didn't think we'd be here more than ten or fifteen minutes," she countered unhappily. "Half an hour at most."

He saw no point in arguing further. Mutual accusations accomplished nothing. Half an hour maximum. That had been the plan. It was no one's fault, certainly not his, that the subheated ice had given way beneath the modest weight of their iceboat. If they had been traveling airborne, now, in a proper skimmer . . . But the use of such advanced technology outside the boundaries of the station was forbidden.

He'd had no trouble navigating the simple single-sail iceboat. An experienced open-water sailor, he had found the native rigging not so very different from that of a small sailing vessel back home. The native Tran had been using multiple permutations of such craft for centuries. He and Jen had even had the opportunity to take a tour of its most recent elaboration, the massive icerigger Slanderscree that had been tied up in the harbor.

"Someone will find us," he assured her more gently. "We were supposed to have been back late yesterday afternoon. The native who rented us the iceboat will have informed the proper authorities."

Using spread fingers, she brushed out her shoulder-length blonde hair. Rich and beautiful, he thought as he looked at her. If someone did not find them today, by tomorrow she might be rich and dead. She would certainly make the more attractive corpse of the two.

"It's one thing for the people at the station to be informed that we're missing," she muttered unhappily. "It's another for someone to find us."

Rising, he walked around the small pool and sat down close to her. Her anger had moderated sufficiently so that this time she did not object. "Emergency position locators are designed to keep operating under severe conditions. Even submerged in ice water it could still be functioning."

"Unless harsh chemicals from the hot vent corroded it as soon as it sank."

Now why did she have to go and point that out, he asked himself? If their personal communicators and the locator that had been on the iceboat had failed, then no one would know where they were. While they had not traveled all that many kilometers from Brass Monkey, they had not sailed in a straight line. As tourists, they had taken their time and wandered around. They would be difficult to track even if the original angle of their departure had been observed and noted.

Unlike Jen, he had stayed dressed. Looking down, he checked the weather seals at wrists and ankles. The daysuit was designed to keep an individual comfortable while outside even in Tran-ky-ky's climate. But the chemicals in the fabric that combined to generate heat when the suit was put on were intended to last no more than a couple of days. In contrast, a fully powered cold climate survival suit of the type worn by the scientists at the outpost would use a combination of solar, chemical, cell, and the body's own internal heat to keep a traveler warm indefinitely.

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 on 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.

Their 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