Presently, very faintly, there was light again and sound — a dim, blurred web of it lacing around him. He was vaguely aware of something and, after a while, he realized that he was breathing.
He was breathing heavily. It had a strange hoarse sound in his ears but it was nice to be breathing again. It meant that he was not dead after all. He lay waiting for the terrible giddiness to leave him, so that he could see again.
But he did not really need to see.
Across the dark confusion of his mind, a pattern began to grow. It was woven of unfamiliar things. Rustlings, scratchings, clickings, the different tempos of breathing — noises that should have been almost sub-auditory but instead were clear and sharp.
They were the background of the pattern, the warp. The threads of the woof were brighter, stronger. They were — smells.
The rich dark smell of horse, strong gray wolf-taint, the sullen crimson reek of tiger, the bright sharp acridity of a great bird. And man-smell, in itself a tapestry of odors, more subtle and complex than those of the beasts.
Eric Nelson realized with incredulous horror that not only did he know each separate smell but he knew the particular individuality of each. They had names — Hatha, Tark, Quorr, Ei, Kree and Nsharra.
He leaped broad awake then, on a surging shock of fear, and opened his eyes on a world he had never seen before.
It was a world without color. A world of gray shadings, black and white. He could perceive objects clearly but he perceived them on a strange plane. His field of vision was low and horizontal and there was no perspective. The big shimmering glass gallery appeared as a flat picture painted on a gray wall.
But he could see. With terrible clarity he could see himself, Eric Nelson, sleeping in a wooden chair six feet away! Instinctively a cry of horror rose to Nelson's lips, and was voiced as a howl.