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An icejammer was a type of skis/skids-equipped ground vehicle used on icy moons or planets.

Similar to large enclosed passenger snowmobiles, they used a special type of surface tension on the lower part of their skis to propel themselves forward, rather than using a system of powered tracks for forward propulsion.

Icejammers saw use in the settlements and roadways on Hela, the icy moon of the gas giant Haldora.

Rashmika Els had travelled to the Caravan regularly circling Hela aboard an icejammer of two of her acquaintances, husband and wife couple Crozet and Linxe.

Description

She rounded a huddle of radiator fins and there it was, looking much like the other parked icejammers except that the snow had melted from the flanged radiator above the engine cowlings. It was too bright to tell if there were lights on inside the machine. There were fan-shaped arcs of transparency in the windscreen where the mechanical wiper blades had flicked aside the snow. Rashmika thought she saw figures moving behind the glass.

Rashmika walked around the low, splayed-legged jammer. The black of its boat-shaped hull was relieved only by a glowing snake motif coiling along the side. The single front leg ended in a broad, upturned ski blade, with smaller skis tipping the two rear legs.

- excerpt from chapter Four of Absolution Gap [1]


The icejammer was moving as quickly as it could in ambulatory mode, but once it cleared the slush and obstacles of the village and hit a well-maintained trail, it locked its two rear legs in a fixed configuration and began to move by itself, as if pushed along by an invisible hand. Rashmika had heard enough about icejammers to know that the trick was down to a layer of material on the soles of the skis that was programmed with a rapid microscopic ripple. It was the same way slugs moved, scaled up a few thousand times in both size and speed. The ride became smoother and quieter then; there was still the occasional lurch or veer, but for the most part it was tolerable.

(...)

Crozet steered the icejammer with two joysticks set one on either side of his seat.

- excerpts from chapter Six of Absolution Gap [2]

Appearances

References

  1. Absolution Gap (2003), chapter 4
  2. Absolution Gap (2003), chapter 6

See also

Planetary vehicles
LAND VEHICLES
Electric cars | Volantor | Wheeler | Crawler | Icejammer
Cable-car | Chasm City Zephyr
AERIAL VEHICLES
Volantor | Aircraft | Airship
ATMOSPHERIC SHUTTLES *
Coalition shuttle | Flotilla delta-winged shuttle
Cutter | "Claw" shuttle | Lighthugger orbital shuttle
MARINE VEHICLES
Boats | Diving tug
* - these double as spacecraft and aircraft
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