Barrington Bayley - The Garments of Caean

‘I’m moving towards a sort of gulch,’ he announced. Be ready to send the lighter down if I tell you.’

The suit moved rapidly over the uneven ground, its tube-clad legs aping the movements he made with his real legs farther up in the metal body. As he came closer to the trees hiding the gully he could see the regular fluting on their trunks, and took it to be some sort of anti-vibration device.

The oscilloscope went frantic and the speaker began to squeal urgently as he approached and then passed between the trees. He paused, and placed a waldo hand on one of the trunks – and in the same instant snatched it away again. A numbing, shuddering sensation had passed right through him.

Peder wondered if there was any form of life on Kyre that was not in the infra-sound racket.

Below him the ground descended in a series of steps. Finding a shallow slope, Peder began to negotiate the first step. He had almost reached the cover of a small copse when his attention was caught by a drama being enacted to his right.

A huge brontosaurus-like beast had emerged from behind a slab of rock. At least, a brontosaurus was the first resemblance Peder could find for it, for it was of comparable size and was massively armoured. But it differed in an important respect: its gigantic head was almost entirely taken up by an enormous snout taking the form of a permanently open square chute. Peder recognized this as the sounding-trumpet of its infra-sound roar.

He panicked momentarily, thinking that the beast was after him. He scooted as fast as his suit would take him towards the copse. But then he saw that he had passed unnoticed; the object of the great saurian’s attentions was a somewhat smaller creature that now turned to face its foe.

Peering from beneath tangled vegetation, Peder recalled some of the hasty pictures taken by the one surviving expedition to Kyre. The expedition had named the big bronto a ‘shouter’. He was fascinated, as it lumbered closer, to see that its armour incorporated the same open-ended tube arrangements as his own armoured suit. The tubes were particularly close-packed around the shoulders, making it look as if it spouted rank upon rank of gun barrels.

The smaller beast, however, Peder did not recall seeing. Instead of a single square funnel, its head sported three barrel-like projections. Its body was even more covered with vibration-baffling devices than its enemy’s; baffle-tubes, heavy movable flaps, thick masses of floss-like fur, as well as sharp spikes to ward off a more physical attack.

The two animals squared off, their baffle-tubes rising and arranging themselves. The shouter’s sounding-horn gaped.

And Peder was flung back among the trees by the shock wave that resulted.

The monitoring speaker inside his suit let out a rasping noise. A strong, steady succession of peaks and troughs marched across the oscilloscope. He heard the sound generator coming into action, desperately trying to counteract the deadly, regular waves of compression and rarefaction.

Peder felt that some of it was getting through. Something seemed to be seizing his guts and turning them inside out. But it was not altogether a painful experience and he was able to watch what was happening with full clarity of mind. The smaller animal had extended long bony flaps like a ruff about its neck and these ablated or broke off before the assault of lethal sound, carrying away the effect of it. Both animals, it seemed, simply stood their ground and shouted infra-sound at one another. Judging from the oscilloscoped trace and the sonic analogue (the speaker had recovered, now, and was giving him a regular ululating yowl), they constantly varied their pitch, each seeking the frequency that would shatter the other.

Then the smaller, three-trumpeted animal began to sag. Cracks appeared in its armour; it trembled like jelly.

And suddenly it collapsed to the ground, its skin rupturing and spilling blood and intestines through jagged rents in a dermal wall that must have been all of a foot thick.

‘What’s going on down there?’ came Mast’s insistent voice.

‘Quiet!’ hissed Peder, as though the shouter could hear them. He was, in fact, frightened out of his wits.

Looking around itself once more, the shouter pointed its square horn to the sky and gave vent to a great infrasound roar of victory. Then it stamped its feet up and down and turned about, as if affirming that the area was its own. Peder guessed that he had just witnessed a fight over territory.

Looking around itself once more, the shouter pointed its snout at a big boulder, perhaps ten feet high, some distance away. Its sound chute strained forward on its thick neck. Peder’s scope and speaker came through strong.

And the boulder exploded into dust. With that demonstration of its might, the shouter lumbered back to its lair.

As concisely as he could, Peder related what he had seen. ‘If I’m standing in the path of that sound beam,’ he concluded, ‘I’ve had it. You’ve chosen the wrong man for this caper, Mast. Send the lighter down. I want to come up!’

‘No lighter until you’ve finished the job,’ Mast answered firmly. ‘Take hold of yourself, now.’

A cold wind swept through Peder’s vitals. In the humming, clicking suit, he realized he was sweating – a cold, clammy sweat.

‘But what if the shouter sees me?’

‘You’ve got your gun, haven’t you? Just make sure you get your shot in before it opens its mouth.’

Peder’s hand moved unconsciously to the grip-hole that operated the heavy-duty energy rifle. He sighed.

A rustling sound made him turn. Shouldering its way through the ground-level shrubs came an animal about the size of a rabbit. He was fascinated to see that it reproduced on a small scale the same baffle-tube and head-trumpet arrangement of its more massive cousins. It made him realize that he had not yet made a real inspection of his surroundings at close quarters. He extended an arm and carefully pulled away some of the brush.

More small animals scurried away at his touch, some turning their heads momentarily to hurl at him beams of vibrations which were easily cancelled by his suit.

Looking overhead, he glimpsed a winged creature squatting on a branch, heavily rigged with scale-like feathers and bearing a conical trumpet in place of a beak. It peered down at Peder, then launched itself into the air and flapped clumsily away.

Peder’s gaze fastened on the bark of the tree itself; insects could be seen crawling about on it. Turning up the magnification he made out several varieties, many of them top-heavy with various devices for casting vibrations. The frequencies with which creatures of this size battled could scarcely be called infra-sound at all, of course; they would intrude into the sonic range.

He reminded himself that he had not yet exploited all the suit’s capabilities. He considered opening the direct audio link for a brief listen, but almost immediately cancelled the thought. The scene looked peaceful enough; but to let into the suit, even for a few seconds, any of the stray vibrations of infra-sound that he suspected pounded at all times through this woodland could prove fatal, or at least cause him serious internal injury.

Instead, he switched on the odour plate. Connected to a corresponding plate on the outside of the suit, it reproduced all the odours that struck that plate, automatically omitting any that could be poisonous. A resinous, fresh smell entered Peder’s nostrils. He was reminded vaguely of a pine forest, except that this was more tangy and contained many altogether foreign undertones, some sweet, some repugnant. It seemed odd that a world so lethal and alien could, at the same time, smell so natural and familiar.

He switched off the plate. The smell, he decided, would become too cloying after a time, and besides he was here for something more serious. He began to consider how to cross the territory that apparently was guarded by the shouter.