"You want me to take it off?" I said, in bewilderment. "But I'm half frozen already."
The sugarfoot was adamant. Again it pointed to the blouse, and did that slip-it-over-your-head motion.
I gave up fighting it. The creature was obviously not inimical to me. Even if it were, I thought, I owed it something for pulling me out of that stone coffin.
Hoping pneumonia was less painful than outright suffocation, I obediently tugged it, loose from within my belt, and slid the thing over my head and off.
The sugarfoot took it from me, turned it inside-out, and held it out close to my face for inspection, in the dim criss-cross lighting of tiny Phobos and barely larger Deimos, as they scurried across the cold black sky.
I stared stupidly at the inside surface of the blouse, the black one which Baxter had insisted I wear, and then I caught the glint of reflected moonlight where there should have been plain shirt material. Tiny metallic filaments had been woven into the garment, too light and flexible for the wearer to feel them, but strong enough not to break with constant flexing.
I nodded, and handed the blouse back to the sugarfoot. "I see them. Wires," I said. "But what does it mean?"
The sugarfoot pointed toward the Security prison, which at this point of the topography was on the outside of the hills which surrounded Marsport. Security had burrowed into those hills to make themselves an escape-proof dungeon. Even though I was out of it, I hadn't yet, in the real sense of the word, escaped. It was easily twenty below zero, and the air was thin as the inside of a vacuum tube.
I was dizzy, and sick, and barely able to keep from falling, but I made myself ask, "What's the blouse got to do with the prison?"
The sugarfoot pointed to the prison, the blouse, and made a circular gesture with his finger.