The Sky Road
Triton
The Sky Road
A captured world: Triton runs around Neptune backwards. The cap is pink nitrogen frost in dark streaks of dust, all lying one way — downwind. Black geysers throw columns a hundred and fifty blocks high, and the wind bends them into long tails; a geyser throws whoever steps on it forty blocks up. Around the cap lies the cantaloupe crust — dimples rim to rim — and the smooth blue ice of frozen lakes behind a scarp: it is slippery. In the lake ice and in the crust lie lodes of captive ice: two Cooling Units from one set of parts, and a bucket of coolant without a pump. Plume-eaters hang in the columns. In the cap stands the Anchor Chain — nine links of dark iron, each as tall as a tower; above them the chain goes on into the sky as light. Climb it link by link. When the nitrogen wind rises, it pushes: hold on.
gravity0.08 gairnone — wear a suitorbit30.07 AU
- Moon of Neptune, 2,707 km across
- Day: 141 h, orbits backwards
- A captured world of the Kuiper Belt
Views
Creatures
Structures
The Anchor Chain
Nine links of dark iron, each as tall as a tower, rise out of the pink ice — and go on into the sky as light, toward Neptune. On Neptune the Windbearers keep a storm anchor from a ship that does not exist; this is the other end of its chain. Triton runs backward around its planet. Captives do.
Black Spring
A mound of dark dust around a nitrogen geyser. Every forty seconds it throws a black column into the sky, the wind bends it over, and the dust comes down in a long tongue — always on the same side.
Windbearers' Mooring
A mooring of those who came down the chain from Neptune: a deck on piles, two masts, an anchor post of the same dark iron. The sails are torn by the nitrogen wind; the stores are still here.
Ores
Weather
- Nitrogen Wind. The cap sublimes in the sunlight and the gas runs for the night side — always the same way, the way the dust streaks lie. It pushes whoever stands in the open, and the tails of the geysers grow twice as long.
Events
- The Geyser Ring. Rings of nitrogen jets spout around their mother vents, and one gap runs round and round. Slip through it to the captive ice inside — before the mother vent exhales
- The Nitrogen Rink. The cap frost sublimates from below and Triton's ice loses its grip — the wind carries you. Gas pockets burst underfoot, holding captive ice