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September had ripped up one or two of the acceleration couches. The luron upholstery had been shaped into a pair of fat pads and strapped to his big dogs. It seemed the luron was sufficiently rough to give some purchase on the ice. Tough and long-lasting, the artificial material would not wear off no matter how rugged the surface. And the padding did more than just cushion his feet: it also put some crucial distance between them and the heat-sucking ice.
    The improvised snow-shoes looked awkward, but as a method of temporary transportation it far exceeded sliding on one’s fundament.
    Ethan took a closer look at the personage who’d saved or condemned them. Not exactly a giant, but damned large, bigger even than the recently deceased Kotabit. A good two meters up, broad in proportion.
    He tried to take the other’s measure, failed, and was upset without immediately knowing why. After all, he wasn’t going to try and sell this guy anything. He took in the white hair, predator beak of a nose, and the incongruous gold earring. There was a deal of the old English lord about him, with a lot of Terran-Arabic. Bedouin stock, maybe.
    September stopped, his breath coming in short heaves. A miniature fog-bank swirled about that scimitar proboscis. He extended a hand and grinned down at Ethan. The hand was sandwiched in between layers of torn seat-foam. Ethan stared at it.
    “Not as good as those survival gloves you’ve got on, maybe, but it keeps a body warm … after a fashion. It’s hard to handle things, but then, I don’t expect to be doing much watch-making for a while.”
    “That’s for sure.” Ethan grinned back and shook the hand. Or rather, allowed himself to be shaken by it. “You must be Skua September.”
    “Better be,” the other replied, “or else someone badly fooled Mrs. September. Although she preferred a climate more on the toasty side.”
    He stared over Ethan’s head into the distance. Slapping both hands together a couple of times, he blew intently between the layers of foam. His eyes never left the horizon while he spoke.
    “How are you getting on, young feller? That was quite a swack you took. Couple of minutes there, I was afraid you weren’t going to come out of it. Be hard enough to rouse yourself here without piling a coma into the bargain.”
    “Perchance to dream? No, a prolonged sleep certainly wouldn’t be a good idea, here,” Ethan agreed. “You’d never know quite when you finally froze. And I don’t want to miss that when it happens.”
    September nodded. “Ought to be interesting at that. Wonder how a body’d freeze here. From the top down or the inside out?” He crossed arms and slapped opposite shoulders. “What do you know about this refrigerated habitat? I only took the standard general tourist mestape—language, highlights, so forth. So did the little fellow—Williams. I think he’ll be okay. Quiet. Not taciturn, just likes to keep to himself. And that unspeakable fermentation, Walther, can surely manage the local patois. Although I’d sooner remove his tongue before I’d let him do any translating. You?”
    “Well I’m a salesman, and—”
    September didn’t let him continue. “And so you’ve stuffed yourself as full of verbs and prepositional phrases and epiglottal stops as a grilled pepper! Excellent, young feller.”
    Ethan shrugged. “It’s no more than anyone else in my position would have done. I also had a few general planetary recordings on native conditions—cultural stuff, flora and fauna, the like. Just business.”
    “Or survival.” He gave Ethan a friendly pat on the back that made him cough even with thick padding to insulate the blow. “Fine foresight, lad. Exemplary! As of now, you’re in charge.”
    “Huh?” Somehow Ethan got the feeling he’d missed an important paragraph or two in amongst the praise. “In charge of what?”
    “Why, in charge of seeing our little party return safely to civilization, of course. Expedition’s got