“Plausible,” Scobie said. “Congratulations, Jean.”
“Nobody thought of the possibility in advance?” Garcilaso scoffed. “What kind of scientists have we got along?”
“The kind who were being overwhelmed by work after we reached Saturn, and still more by data input,” Scobie answered. “The universe is bigger than you or anybody can realize, hotshot.”
“Oh. Sure. No offense.” Garcilaso’s glance returned to the ice. “Yes, we’ll never run out of mysteries, will we?”
“Never.” Broberg’s eyes glowed enormous. “At the heart of things will always be magic. The Elf King rules-”
Scobie returned his camera to its pouch. “Stow the gab and move on,” he ordered curtly.
His gaze locked for an instant with Broberg’s. In the weird, mingled light, it could be seen that she went pale, then red, before she sprang off beside him.
Ricia had gone alone into Moonwood on Midsummer Eve. The King found her there and took her unto him as she had hoped. Ecstasy became terror when he afterward bore her off; yet her captivity in the City of Ice brought her many more such hours, and beauties and marvels unknown among mortals. AIvarlan, her mentor, sent his spirit in quest of her, and was himself beguiled by what he found. It was an effort of will, for him to tell Sir Kendrick of the Isles where she was, albeit he pledged his help in freeing her.
N’Kuma the Lionslayer, Bela of Eastmarch, Karina Far West, Lady Aurelia, Olav Harpmaster had none of them been present when this happened.
The glacier (a wrong name for something that might have no counterpart in the Solar System) lifted off the plain as abruptly as a wall. Standing there, the three could no longer see the heights. They could, though, see that the slope which curved steeply upward to a filigree-topped edge was not smooth. Shadows lay blue in countless small craters. The sun had climbed just sufficiently high to beget them; a Iapetan day is more than seventy-nine of Earth’s.
Danzig’s question crackled in their earphones: “Now are you satisfied? Will you come back before a fresh landslide catches you?”
“It won’t,” Scobie replied. “We aren’t a vehicle, and the local configuration has clearly been stable for centuries or better. Besides, what’s the point of a manned expedition if nobody investigates anything?”
“I’ll see if I can climb,” Garcilaso offered.
“No, wait,” Scobie commanded. “I’ve had experience with mountains and snowpacks, for whatever that may be worth. Let me work out a route for us first.”
“You’re going onto that stuff, the whole gaggle of you?” exploded Danzig. “Have you completely lost your minds?”
Scobie’s brow and lips tightened. “Mark, I warn you again, if you don’t get your emotions under control, we’ll cut you off. We’ll hike on a ways if I decide it’s safe.”
He paced back and forth, in floating low-weight fashion, while he surveyed the jokull. Layers and blocks of distinct substances were plain to see, like separate ashlars laid by an elvish mason-where they were not so huge that a giant must have been at work. The craterlets might be sentry posts on this lowest embankment of the City’s defenses ….
Garcilaso, most vivacious of men, stood motionless and let his vision lose itself in the sight. Broberg knelt down to examine the ground, but her own gaze kept wandering aloft.
Finally she beckoned. “Colin, come over here, please,” she said. “I believe I’ve made a discovery.”
Scobie joined her. As she rose, she scooped a handful of fine black particles off the shards on which she stood and let it trickle from her glove. “I suspect this is the reason the boundary of the ice is sharp,” she told him.
“What is?” Danzig inquired from afar. He got no answer.
“I noticed more and more dust as we went along,” Broberg continued. “If it fell on patches and lumps of frozen stuff, isolated from the main mass, and covered them, it would absorb solar heat till they melted or, likelier, sublimed. Even water molecules would escape to space, in this weak gravity. The main mass was too big for that; square-cube law. Dust grains there would simply melt their way down a short distance, then be covered as surrounding material collapsed on them, and the process would stop.”