The Garments of Caean

He and Amara emerged from the mouth of a caverned-out asteroid where they had been inspecting a food factory. Accompanying them was Sarkisov, their Sovyan guide. His bulking metal form waited patiently on the threshold while they paused to take in the view once more.

It was quite a sight. All around them were the spreading fields of rock and ice chunks, a seemingly limitless labyrinth that shifted and slid together as the rings orbited, creating the illusion of grottoes and deep canyons constantly merging and melting into one another. It was the constant motion that made the perfect silence so eerie, Estru thought. And then there was the light – a limpid, soft, lucid radiance which made the fragmented rock and ice glow, which was sent endlessly spearing and reflecting through the apparent infinity of slowly dissolving grottoes.

Sovya, the gas giant, filled more than a third of the sky, her vast globe glimmering, glinting and flashing with the storms exploding deep within her atmosphere. Compared with that angry, raging world the airless realm of the rocks was calm and idyllic, a paradise that was to the suit-people what meadows, forests and lush watered valleys were to planet dwellers.

What Estru thought of as the eternal silence of the rings was in one sense spurious, however. It did not extend to the world of human intercourse: on the radio wavebands Domashnabaza was alive with talk. Yet a casually traversing eye might have failed to notice the Sovyan civilization at all, given the rings’ span of two hundred thousand miles. Only if one knew exactly what to look for did the miracle make itself evident. Estru, turning up his helmet’s vid magnification, could pick out the larger, asteroid-sized rocks that had been converted into permanent caves, platforms and casemates, many of them sculpted into elegant shapes. Some maintained group formations by automatic course adjustment. Others were linked together by chains. Many carried powerful steel buffers to absorb the shock of the collisions that frequently occurred, albeit gently, as the rocks drifted along. Also visible were metallic glints that were crowds of suit-men on the move. A large glint, intermittently visible as the rocks shifted, was the Callan.

Amara, encased like himself in a brass-coloured, heavily armoured spacesuit, spoke to their metalloid guide.

‘Ochen interesno. Nu, mozhete nam pokazat dyetkiye sady?’

With difficulty Estru followed her Sovyan Russian: ‘Very interesting, but how about letting us see the nurseries?’

Sarkisov’s reply was deep-bellied and indignant. ‘Takiye lichnye veshchi nye ochen piyatno smotret!’ ‘Such matters are not pleasant to see, or for our eyes!’

Estru sighed. Determined to keep treading on taboos, Amara had persisted in her impudent demands throughout their stay in Domashnabaza (literally, Homebase). She had even pressed to be shown the hospitals – a suggestion which to the Sovyans was nauseating.

She just didn’t seem to appreciate, either, that her metalloid disguise was far from perfect and that to the Sovyans she was a far from reassuring sight. The Ziodean suits measured only seven feet in height as compared with the Sovyans’ twelve, so that they must have resembled fantastic little goblins in Sovyan eyes. There were other physical differences, too. The Ziodean helmet was quite different from the Sovyan head, which was a robotic type of structure lacking any organic content. Even more discerning, from the Sovyans’ point of view, must have been the fact that the Ziodean spacesuits possessed legs, which were quite redundant in a purely spatial environment.

Estru did not blame them for becoming both exasperated and suspicious. Several times they had asked to see Alexei Verednyev, and were far from satisfied with Amara’s evasive explanations as to why he did not appear.

Peremptorily the huge suit-man motioned them along the lip of the food asteroid’s slot-like opening. While Amara continued to argue, Estru taped in his recorder and added notes to his running commentary.

‘Life in the rings is highly mobile. Although there is no weather, leaving aside bursts of solar radioactivity, and therefore no proper need of shelter, the Sovyans maintain private dwellings which have propulsors and can move about the rings at will, each emitting a coded radio address by which it can be located at any time, thanks to a public triangulation service.