Gathered in a circle were a score or more of Hatcher's people.
McCray didn't know they were Hatcher's people, of course. He did not know even that they were animate beings, for they lacked all the features of animals that he had been used to. No eyes. No faces. Their detached members, bobbing about seemingly at random, did not appear to have any relation to the irregular spheres that were their owners.
The woman got unevenly to her feet, her faceplate staring toward the creatures. McCray heard a smothered exclamation in his suit-phones.
"Are you all right?" he demanded sharply. The great crystal eye turned round to look at him.
"Oh, the man who spoke to me." Her voice was taut but controlled. The accent was gone; her control was complete. "I am Ann Mei-Ling, of the Woomara. What are—those?"
McCray said, "Our kidnappers, I guess. They don't look like much, do they?"
She laughed shakily, without answering. The creatures seemed to be waiting for something, McCray thought; if indeed they were creatures and not machines or—or whatever one might expect to find, in the impossible event of being cast away on an improbable planet of an unexplored sun. He touched the woman's helmet reassuringly and walked toward the aliens, raising his arms.
"Hello," he said. "I am Herrell McCray."
He waited.
He half turned; the woman watching him. "I don't know what to do next," he confessed.