Again, Boone peered forth.
Now he lay in a sort of amphitheatre, it seemed—a bubble joined on all sides by a thousand other, smaller bubbles.
Each lesser sphere held one of the Helgae.
Fascinated, Boone studied them through the clear walls of his cage; and never did man look on stranger creatures.
For their bodies were mottled, shapeless blobs—limbless, with no visible trace of sensory organs. They could as well have been lumps of mud or metal, for all that Boone could see.
Perhaps the men at the Titan base had been right. It outraged human reason even to dream that such things could have intelligent, independent life.
Only then an alien thought flashed through Boone's mind—a thought without meaning, couched in terms no mammalian brain could ever have defined.
Boone groped; floundered.
Another thought-tendril reached him, even less translatable than the first. He felt an uneasiness, a twinge almost of conscience, as if this were a thing that duty demanded he should grasp.
But effort made no slightest difference. Though he strained till his temples throbbed, the concept remained beyond his powers to understand.