"Like the rooms we live in!" Nina burst out.
Huth blinked, and assented, "Like the rooms you live in."
Before Lucifer could assimilate this bit of information, Huth had stopped before the first door.
Inside was a shrunken monstrosity of a creature. It had the torso of a grown woman, but its legs were bone thin, twisted and scarcely eighteen inches long. It was hairless; its face was one ovular blob of flesh, in which the eyes, mouth and nostrils were knife-edge slits. It seemed to be watching the rain-streaked window.
There were two beings in the next room, apparently male and female. Both were naked, and seated cross-legged on a thick mat. They were playing a complicated game with marked and colored blocks. The woman's body was covered with a fine, brown hair. Her breasts were tiny for the dimensions of her body. Her head was also small out of all proportion, as was the male's. Lucifer saw that though both were eyeless they were playing their game rapidly and skillfully. Their hands were lumps of flesh, with just rudimentary fingers.
"They are quite sentient," Huth observed. And he added with pride, "You would classify them as definite psi positives—altogether our most successful experiment of this type!"
As they neared the next door, it suddenly became opaque. Huth led them past it without comment. Nina winced, and her fingers tightened convulsively.
They were led quickly down the rest of the corridor. Some of the doors were opaque. Through others, they caught glimpses of more grotesquely distorted creatures, some asleep, some lurching or crawling about their rooms.
The corridor ended in a large multi-purpose type of room in which semi-human creatures of all shapes and sizes were milling about.
Huth opened the door. "Go on in," he said.