"It's a book," she said, "an album of photographs. Look here."
The next picture was an equally miraculous one of half a dozen monkeys sitting on a tree trunk. Adam looked at it, then at the farthest trunk in their box of a room. Undeniably it was the same one.
Under the picture was a line of squiggles that probably spelled out the scientists' equivalent of "monkeys."
"They were here, in this place," said Adam. "The giants must have experimented on them too." He turned his eyes up to the woman and saw that she was white and drawn. "What happened to them?" he asked. "There aren't any monkeys here now."
"Exactly," she said. She put on the next picture, and after a moment the next.
Dogs greeted his eyes, so real he could almost hear them pant; a cow gazed stolidly at him; a cheetah sat on a mound of straw with clown's head cocked inquisitively; two cockatoos perched in rigid still life on the silver rod of the prison box.
"What happened to them?" he asked again.
"The experiments ended," she said.
Then there flashed out a thing like a blue sponge with legs, a thing which sat in the cat's-cradle they had speculated so much about. From its center two ruby eyes blazed with three-dimensional fire. That never came from Earth! Mars or Venus could have produced it, maybe, or a planet so far from Earth that it bore no name. He said as much, his voice quavering.
She stared at him. Moistening her lips, she said, "If that was here, in this box, then where are we?"