The Garments of Caean

‘There seems to be some of the stuff about,’ he replied. ‘Must be some animals somewhere around. Nothing’s coming through, though.’

‘There you are, then,’ Mast said reassuringly. ‘I told you you had nothing to worry about.’

Peder silently cursed Mast. It was all very well for him to talk, safely up there in orbit. And Peder hadn’t even encountered any of the infra-sound beasts yet.

Just the same he felt more confident. Curious stuff, this infra-sound, he thought. All it consisted of was sound waves of very low frequency, say five beats per second. Yet if it happened to hit any largish object’s naturally resonating frequency, then that object simply crumbled. The principle had once been used to create weapons capable of levelling cities, so Peder had read somewhere.

‘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.