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Alan Dean Foster - Mission to Moulokin


Mission to Moulokin
Alan Dean Foster

A Del Rey Book
Published by Ballantine Books
Copyright ┬й 1979 by Alan Dean Foster
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copy-right Conventions. Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, a division of
Random House, Inc., New York, and si-multaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 78-70603
ISBN 0-345-33322-5
Manufactured in the United States of America
First Edition: April 1979 Tenth Printing: May 1989
Cover Art by Michael Herring



For Mike and Helen Green, beloved Uncle and Aunt always, and damn the indifferent genetics of it allтАж

PROLOGUE
It all began with a bungled kidnapping.
The two men who'd attempted to abduct the wealthy Hellespont du Kane and his daughter Colette from
the KK-drive liner orbiting the ice world of Tran-ky-ky had been forced to take along two witnesses, a
diminutive schoolteacher named Milliken Williams and a salesman, Ethan Fortune.
They hadn't counted on the additional presence of the white-haired giant who'd been sleeping off a drunk
in the back of their intended escape lifeboat. Skua September had not taken politely to being abducted.
His resultant action caused the lifeboat to crash thou-sands of wind-swept kilometers from the only
human settlement on the frozen planet below. Those actions also caused the death of one kidnapper and
the immo-bilization of the other.
Crossing the perpetually frozen oceans of Tran-ky-ky, with their subfreezing temperatures and unceasing
winds, seemed impossible until a party of curious lo-cals from the native city-state of Wannome reached
them. Cautious and wary at first, human and Tran soon became friends, aided by the actions of one
re-markable young Tran, the knight Hunnar Redbeard.
The arrival of the humans and their lifeboat of rare metal on metal-poor Tran-ky-ky served Redbeard
well. It enabled him to use it as a sign that Wannome and its island of Sofold should resist the coming
dep-redations of Sagyanak the Death and her Horde. Such wandering tribes of nomadic barbarians, whole
cities living on their icerafts, periodically visited the perma-nent towns and city-states of Tran-ky-ky
demanding tribute and ravishing all who dared refuse payment.
With the aid of crossbows and one other critical invention concocted by the teacher Williams and the
local court wizard, Malmeevyn Eer-Meesach, the
Horde was defeated utterly. Then reluctantly, Torsk Kurdagh-Vlata, Landgrave and ruler of Wannome,
agreed to keep his promise to help the shipwrecked humans reach the Commonwealth outpost of Brass
Monkey.
Using duralloy metal from the ruined lifeboat to provide unbreakable ice runners, and employing de-signs
adapted from the ancient clipper ships of Terra's seas, a huge raft rigged for ice running was
con-structedтАФ the Slanderscree.
With Sir Hunnar and a crew of Tran sailors, the survivors set out on the dangerous, lengthy journey. They