The Garments of Caean

A grin spread over Grawn’s broad, ugly face. ‘Don’t bug Mast so much,’ he told Peder good-humouredly. ‘You’re ruining the tone of the operation, for Chrissake.’

‘Yeah, you’ve got too little faith in Mast,’ Castor added. He was thin and below medium height, with square shoulders and a slight stoop. He had once suffered damage to his eyes, and the retinal function had been partially replaced by light-sensitive contact lenses which gave them an odd, metallic glitter. Castor exuded seediness: already the new suit Peder had given him – he had given them all new clothes as a gesture of good faith – looked grubby and crumpled.

‘We’ve been with him a long time, and we’ve done all right,’ Castor continued. ‘He works everything out before he starts, and having sunk half a million in this caper he’s not likely to go at it half-cocked.’

‘Though he likes to take the odd gamble,’ put in Grawn, his grin widening yet further.

‘Like the gamble he took with your eyes,’ snapped Peder to Castor, instantly regretting the words. Castor’s accident, he had gathered, had been due to a mistake of Mast’s.

Mast returned to the cabin, the stain only half eradicated and still spoiling the soft sheen of the velvet. ‘I’ve just taken a look in the cockpit,’ he said. ‘We’ve arrived; the yacht’s going into orbit now. Are you ready, Peder?’

‘Y-yes. I suppose so.’ Peder’s stomach tightened up into a knot and he began to tremble slightly.

‘Good.’ Mast looked eager. ‘No point in wasting time. Let’s get down to work!’

He led the way to the hold below the cabin. The space here was quite large; everything extraneous had been cleared out of the yacht for the sake of speed and to gain maximum room for their expected cargo. At the loading end stood a small planetary lighter for descending to and returning from Kyre: Mast had no intention of risking the Costa herself.

Near the lighter, in pride of place, hung the baffle suit, a bulky object covered all over with clustered, variously sized tubes resembling organ pipes. Peder felt somewhat like a condemned criminal entering the death chamber as they approached it. There were three layers of baffle-tubes so that the suit, though vaguely manlike, was so gross and grotesque that it looked more like something designed to trap and encase a man than to protect him.

Castor operated a winch, lowering the suit jerkily to the floor. Then he unlocked its front, swinging it open like an iron maiden, and with a sardonic smile made a gesture of invitation for Peder to step into the cavity thus revealed.

Peder swallowed. By now the Costa would be in orbit, the auto pilot swinging her along those co-ordinates which Mast had obtained; mysteriously, but nevertheless somehow obtained (by means of a lucky break, as he would have put it) and which had made the whole mission possible. This was it. Peder felt that unfriendly forces, invisible hands, were impelling him forward against his will.

He hesitated, then stepped back. ‘Why me?’ he said. ‘This is unfair. There are four of us.’

‘Come, come,’ said Mast, a look of complete reasonableness appearing on his lean, handsome face. ‘You are our expert. That’s why you’re here in the first place, to value the goods. How can you do that if you don’t go down?’

‘But that doesn’t go for the first trip down,’ Peder argued. ‘We haven’t found the wreck yet. Perhaps we won’t find it for two or three trips, so you don’t need my expert knowledge yet. You, Grawn, or Castor would probably be much better at looking for it than I would.’

Mast pursed his lips. ‘I think you are pessimistic … but perhaps you have a point. We will cast lots.’

He took a small randomizer from his pocket. ‘Choose your numbers. One to four.’

‘One,’ said Peder instantly.

Castor and Grawn semeed scarcely interested in the proceedings. Castor murmured a casual, indifferent ‘Two’, and Grawn followed with a grunted ‘Three’.

‘Then that leaves me with four,’ Mast said animatedly, apparently entering into the spirit of things. He inserted the appropriately numbered domino-like chips. They rattled about the slotted framework of the randomizer for several seconds, shuffling and rebounding. Then one was suddenly ejected. Peder bent to inspect it.

One.

So it was Peder after all.

‘Well, well,’ exclaimed Mast. He gave Peder a look of comradely concern. ‘I hope you feel happier about it now, Peder?’

Peder nodded dismally. He offered no resistance as they helped him into the suit and clamped it shut. He had worn it several times before, during their training sessions, and oddly, once he switched on the externals and began to communicate with his surroundings through them his panic abated and he began to consider the task before him more calmly. The motors came on; he turned and lumbered towards the lighter, negotiating the enlarged hatch awkwardly.