Ice Yachting Under A Lethal Star

When your employer is a hundred years older than you are, you will spend much of your time playing nurse-maid. That was a complication Letitia didn't need, because Letitia's real job was to nudge their planet to a warmer orbit, a risky job that required her full concentration. Having the old fool declared incompetent would have solved the problem, but her employer was not incompetent, in fact she appeared to be growing more competent every day. More competent, perhaps, but making some strange decisions. She'd brought in an anti-social child as trainee, and she'd announced a major conference with a shrivelled misogynist as guest of honour. Strange because the employer hated conferences and she'd once threatened to murder the guest of honour. Something was up, but whatever the plan was, it wasn't being shared with her hard-working employees. Then there was the bizarre business of the ice yacht.

The Degeneratron is an international research project to send probes to distant galaxies. It is also a money-sucking white elephant. After six years and two hundred and twelve billion dollars its only accomplishment is a tenuous connection to a single, boring planet. That planet, a foggy, smelly gravel pile supports a single life form: smelly Kreote plants. Nothing else. No insects. No bacteria. Not even a lousy virus. Trevor Tarklington has drawn the short straw and is taking new equipment to squeeze further knowledge from the planet before the connection is lost forever. Trevor's daily reports form the first part of this story. Trevor's capsule arrives off target and crushes the foot of Aaron Hurleman, the person waiting to help him from the transport capsule. In his panic to leave the cramped cylinder, Trevor also breaks Aaron's nose. Aaron's injuries send him back to Earth, leaving the team short-handed. The two remaining members are Dan Dennison, project manager and expert at everything, and Deborah, a short, round, silent woman with no patience for clumsy new arrivals. Dan explains that with Aaron gone it would be best it Trevor remained for the duration. That solves two problems. The first is manpower. The second is that Dan has been keeping a secret from the controllers back on Earth, and he doesn't want Trevor to return and give it away. The secret is that there is a another form of life, one that makes even less sense than the smelly Kreote plants. It consists of an army of cartoon-like bugs who parade in columns while humming marching tunes. Dan intends to solve the problem of the planet's bizarre life forms himself. He wants no interference from Earth. The disgusting smell of the planet is due to the oil produced by the Kreote plants. The first explorers reported that it has a mild narcotic effect. It causes dreams. The oil has another property. If one oil molecule develops a flaw, other oil molecules copy the flaw. Dan suspects that the planet is a giant library, constantly storing and refreshing memories. The plants produce the oil that copies and stores the memories. The bugs cultivate the plants, but where do the memories originate? During their explorations, they discover portals to a real world, one rich with plants, animals and clear skies, but their connection to Earth is failing. They have to return immediately. Dan tells Trevor and Deborah that they must go back to report what they've discovered so far, but he is going to remain. There is an unexplored world right at his finger tips. Trevor and Deborah return to the cylinder, but at the last moment, Deborah decides that she can't abandon Dan. As soon as Trevor crawls inside, she slams the hatch shut and sends him back alone. Trevor realizes that all of their records are back on the fog world. He has nothing to back up his tales of marching bugs and alternate worlds. Worse, the people on Earth will have to take his word for it that he didn't deliberately abandon the rest of the team to slow starvation on a hellish planet.....

When the day comes that you are tested, will you be equal to the challenge? Jon Jameson, investment advisor, has always wondered if he'd have the courage to rescue someone by racing into a burning building. Not that he's likely to be called on to do so. He leads an easy life: a good job, a beautiful wife and one financial indulgence. Jon collects houses. House collecting is an expensive hobby, but he's not greedy. A bit of patience, an eye for a good deal and careful negotiation will bring the collection together. The rent he collects from his small collection is re-invested, one hundred percent, to bring his properties to the state he believes they deserve. One hundred percent. Not one penny for anything else, not even for his wife, Frieda, who handles the day-to-day business of maintaining those properties. That is not what she signed up for. When Jon's test comes it has nothing to do with burning buildings. One of his co-workers has crossed the line legally, and Jon is dragged down with him. Through no fault of his own, Jon Jameson is not only unemployed, he is unemployable. Frieda is not supportive. Jon screwed up. Jon can solve it. She continues to live and spend as usual, including her habit of purchasing twenty lottery tickets per week. While checking them for her, Jon discovers one worth sixty-million dollars. He should tell her, but they're not legally married. Frieda and her spoiled daughter getting rich while he remains a pauper? Unthinkable. He palms it. Life becomes complicated. Frieda buys lottery tickets. Jon never does, and everyone knows it. How to claim it? He needs to get Frieda and her daughter to go away - far away. He also needs a junior partner, someone with enough nerve to cash the ticket and someone who won't arouse Frieda's suspicions when the winner's name hits the media. A real-estate agent he met once, Adriana Compote, seems perfect. She agrees. There's a lot of work to do, but they need to avoid any kind of contact until well after the ticket is cashed. They need a go-between and someone to do the leg work. Fife, the man who accidentally caused Jon's downfall, and who is just as unemployable, is brought on board. Adriana will collect the money, use it to create a high-end, real-estate company and then hire Jon as vice-president and Fife as manager. All three will draw overly-generous salaries (plus bonuses). What could go wrong? Despite his desperate financial condition, Jon cannot get Frieda to leave. The morning of the day that Adriana is going to surrender the ticket, Frieda discovers a note from Jon to someone called "Adriana Compote", a name that will be all over the news by evening as a lottery winner who bought at the same kiosk and in the same quantity that Frieda did. Jon calls Fife and tells him to call it off, but it's too late. Adriana has already submitted the ticket. She sends back a message telling Jon to grow a pair and "handle it". He does. To the surprise of the three conspirators, their business, Vintage Properties, makes money buying and renovating high-end houses. Jon looks forward to adding the best to his collection, which at the time consists of nothing, because he had to sell his modest collection to cover expenses. As a joke, a business acquaintance tells him about a mansion north of Toronto that "needs work". The mansion is a ruin. Built at the end of the nineteenth century, it was the domain of Randolph Cranshaw a tyrant who liked to keep his wife and daughters isolated in a place where he had them under his control. Money came easily, but social status and a career in politics eluded him because of his reputation. Frustrated by those failures, Cranshaw poured his money into the house and, above all, into the extensive gardens that spread south to a cottage that he built to house a series of extra-marital affairs. Long after the era of the Cranshaws, a highway bypass cut the former estate in half. The rotting ruins of the mansion lie at the top of the north section. The cottage, still occupied, remains at the bottom edge of the severed southern part. The garden has gone wild for a century. The decayed mansion is beyond rescue, but the cottage is in good shape. Nestled deep in the trees along a secluded lane, it calls out to Jon offering seclusion and safety. He feels the need for both, because he is being followed. Is it because of the lottery win or is it the unexplained disappearance of Frieda and her daughter? Perhaps leaving their bodies in the deep-freeze of a basement apartment wasn't the best long-term solution. He carries their frozen remains to the remote mansion property for burial but discovers that digging among trees is impossible; there are too many roots. Instead he buries them in the cellar of the mansion. The graves will remain undisturbed as long as the land remains a wood lot. No sooner has the mansion been turned into a cemetery then a client turns up at Vintage Properties to ask about the property. Jon becomes even more paranoid. He convinces Fife to purchase the cottage property and rent it to him. Not only will it give him an untraceable place to rest, it will also allow him to keep an eye on the property to the north without attracting attention to himself by buying it. He investigates the history of the estate and concludes that the cottage was Cranshaw's love nest. More investigation turns up a name: Elizabeth Levisham. Elizabeth first visited the Cranshaw estate at the age of fourteen. Five years later, at the age of nineteen, she appeared in a picture of a skating party on the garden pond. In the picture, Randolph Cranshaw stands behind her, smiling and with one hand resting on her shoulder. Mrs Cranshaw stands off to the side, not smiling. In nineteen twenty-nine, at the age of twenty three, Elizabeth stayed in the cottage for an extended period. When she left, a gossip column in the local paper commented that she would be "much missed" by the Cranshaws. The columnist was fired the next day. Despite an extensive search, Jon can find no record of Elizabeth Levisham after the day she left the cottage. He becomes suspicious that she never did leave...... .

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1922 edition. Excerpt: ... PAGE Plan of Typical Ice-Yacht--"Jack Frost" ... 25 Elevation and Details of Runners and Rudder of Typical Ice-Yacht 27 Backbone, Runner-Plank and Plan of Hull ... 38 Detail of Backbone and Runner-Plank .... 39 Details of Construction and Rig 44 Section of Runners 49 Detail of Runners, Chocks, and Steering Gear . . 51 Rudder Post Details 56 Sail Plan 60 Sail Plan and Measurements of Ice-Yacht ... 64 Detail of Backbone and Runner-Plank of 350-Square footer 65 Detail to Scale of Runners of 350- and 400-Square Footers 67 Detail of Iron Work of 350- and 400-Square Foot Classes 68 Sail Plan and Measurements of 400-Square Footer 70 Dimensions and Plans of 400-Square Footer . . 71 Detail of Runners to Scale 75 Details of Iron Work 77 Details of Mast Step 78 Gammon Iron at Inboard End of Bobstay . . . 79 Plans of Improved Ice-Boat 86 Old Style Ice-Boat 87 Plans Showing Relative Position of the Load in Regard to the Line of Support 8g Courses Old and New Boats Must Follow in Rounding a Mark 90 Details of Runners and Runner-Plank .... 93 Details of Runners and Steering .Gear .... 95 Conventional Type of Ice-Boat 102 Plan of New Type with Movable Backbone . . . 103 Profile of New Type 105 Diagram Showing Increase of "Righting Moment" 108 Modification of Stanbrough Boat . . . . . . 112 Sail Plan of 14-Foot Scooter 163 Construction Plan of Scooter 171 Cross Section of Scooter 173 Details of Runner Construction of Scooter ... 175 CHAPTER I The History And Development Of IceBoat In America A LTHOUGH ice-boating, or ice-yachting as it is sometimes called, has been an organized sport in this country for nearly half a century, but little comprehensive information in regard to it is obtainable, no data have been kept of the evolution of th