Panic shook him, sent blood throbbing to his head and brought consciousness back hard. His eyes opened and he was suddenly sitting bolt upright.
"But Lamson, you were twenty days behind—" And the racing thought froze solid in his fumbling brain. Then there was a torrent of thoughts and memory overran them, buried them, and red desert was rushing up to engulf him. He screamed and fell back with his hands clawing at his eyes.
"You are in no danger. You had thought our planet lifeless; it was an error. We live underground, John Love. That is why you did not see us, or surface indications of our existence. A group of us speak your language, because for eleven days we have been studying your brain and analyzing your thought-patterns."
Johnny was bolt upright again, and now his eyes were wide and his hands were knotted, and where there had been only light and shadow before there was full sight now. Swiftly he was off the low cot and on his feet looking for the speaker, arms ready to lash out and hit.
But he was alone in the small, sterile-looking chamber, and his muscles were so much excess baggage. He tried to recover his balance: he had forgotten about the slight gravity. He tried too hard, and his body crashed, confused, into a wall. A—damn them, a padded wall!
He regained his feet. Stood still, and raced his eyes about him. There it was—above the cot. A small round, shuttered opening—some sort of two-way communication system. He wondered if they could see him, too. If they could, that part of it worked only one way.
"All right, whoever you are, so you've analyzed me!" He had to direct his sudden anger at something, so he shouted at the shuttered aperture. "Now what...."
There was silence for a tiny eternity, and he could feel them probing, evaluating him, as a human scientist would study a rare species in a cage. The feeling ignited a new anger in him, and made him want to curse the teachings that had conditioned his lifetime of thinking to the belief that Man was more than an animal.
He'd been sold short....
"Damn you! God damn you, what are you going to do to me?"