The Icerigger Trilogy: Icerigger, Mission to Moulokin, and The Deluge Drivers by Alan Dean Foster

and see if you can position Arsudun with respect to any major landmarks or outstanding surface features.
    “Me, I’m going to think about keeping warm tonight. I’d rather not build a fire inside our compartment. Close quarters. But I don’t see a way around it. I suppose we should be thankful we ran up against a wood supply, of sorts. If we’d come to rest in the middle of this,” he indicated the endless ice-ocean, “we’d really be in trouble.”
    It occurred to Ethan that nothing on the shuttle was burnable. Naturally not. Nor was the packaging for the self-heating meals, nor the padding in the acceleration couches. Patrick O’Morion himself couldn’t have made a fire with the materials available on the shuttle. You might start a fire with the heater from some of the emergency rations, but you still had to have something to burn.
    A man would be better off back on old Terra, in the days when transportation was made of organic wood and burned organic residue for fuel, too.
    September gestured at the island. “We can cut trees with the beamer. I hope they’re not too full of sap or we’ll never get ’em to burn. Wonder what they use to keep it from freezing?”
    The mention of freezing made Ethan take another look at the sun. He was alarmed to see how far it had dropped. With it went a good deal of the day-heat—no, you couldn’t rightly call it heat—of the more manageable cold. He recalled that the day here was about two hours shorter than Terra’s, or ship-time.
    The door to the storage compartment opened with a squeaky protest Colette du Kane stuck her head out into the wind. A big badger or woodchuck checking out of hibernation, Ethan thought. He was angry at himself—what had she done to him? But he couldn’t keep thinking along those lines.
    I can’t help myself!, he thought in silent apology. She wasn’t psychic, and didn’t look over at him. Instead, her gaze seemed intent on the drowsing sky.
    “Find anything?” she asked. The question was directed past Ethan’s right ear. He shouldn’t have resented it, but he did.
    “Some trees. But it’d be rough cutting ’em now.”
    “Come on, Skua,” blurted Ethan unthinkingly. “Let’s take a whack at those trees. Give me the beamer.”
    “Thought you didn’t want to bother with it,” said the big man, surprised.
    “I changed my mind. I’ll cut and you carry … and don’t do that!” September’s hand paused in mid-air. “Another friendly pat on the back from you and I won’t even be in condition to lift this .” He took the beamer and held it tightly in one gloved hand.
    “All right, Ethan. I’d like to get a decent cord cut soon as possible. Before it gets much darker, anyway. Or windier,” he concluded, hiking multiple collars higher on his neck.
    They turned to leave the ruined boat. Colette watched them thoughtfully until they disappeared. Then she shook her head and smiled ever so slightly before closing the door behind her.
    The sun had vanished into a frozen grave and exchanged itself for a baleful icy eye of a moon by the time they pushed into the small metal room. Ethan was concentrating completely on not shaking himself to pieces. He was shivering so violently he could visualize bits and pieces of himself flying off and bouncing across the duralloy floor. A finger here, an eyeball there. At least they were out of that infernal wind. Only the protective face heaters set in the hood of his survival suit had kept his skin from freezing. How September had stood it he couldn’t imagine.
    And it was going to get worse. Much worse.
    Something bumped from behind and he managed to stumble out of the way as September staggered in behind him. The big man was buried under a huge load of wood, cut cleaner than the finest axe could manage.
    Ethan shifted to one side, away from the door, and sank slowly to the floor. If he got out of this with all his component parts intact, he was going to take a nice, peaceful, warm desk job