...Or the Flat of the Floe

He saw Fred looking expectantly at him, and recalled that he had asked him a question. "Perhaps I should have said an ice floe rather than a berg," he corrected himself, "since I imagine that you will need something reasonably flat rather than steep-sided. It wouldn't be much use landing on the ice if the 'gondola', as you call it, was immediately to slide off into the water."

With greater experience of Jan's accent, Fred could now understand him far better than he could when they first picked him up. But, as a landlubber from a country with a temperate climate, what an "ice floe" might be was a mystery to him. The better informed Sartoma explained: "An iceberg is like a small mountain of ice floating in the ocean. They are formed when a glacier coming down from the mountains reaches the sea. An ice floe is a flat sheet of ice floating on top of the water. They are formed when the ice covering a frozen sea breaks up in the spring or summer. If they are big enough, and the currents are right, then they can drift a long way south before they melt. Are there ice floes in these waters then, Jan?"

"There are some, both bergs and floes, though usually not enough to seriously endanger my people's ships. A cold current brings them south. There would be more if we were further north. Of course, even if we were to find one, there would be no guarantee that it would be large enough to land on."

1. "But how would we find one in the dark?" Checkers asked. "My eyes are keen, and Astra's are no doubt keener still, but they would still struggle to distinguish a floe from the surrounding ocean. Or can Astra hang on till dawn?"

Add New Option

Go Back

View Forward Story Tree
View Back Story Tree