"Contact completed," said the technician to Peters, in the purple twilight slowly deepening to black starry night. "Slight dimming of Norcriss's life-pulse this time, not so bad as last time."
Peters nodded as he ripped open a fresh packet of cigarettes. "Machine functioning properly?"
"Yes, sir," the technician nodded. "Norcriss could go on at least three more Contacts with the power we have left. Shall I activate him again, sir?"
"Go ahead," murmured Peters, his eyes fastened on the pallid face of the young man on the couch....
VI
Noise. Footsteps on metal. Metal meant refined ores, and that in turn meant intelligence. Yet he couldn't inhabit an intelligent mind!
Jerry opened his eyes and took in the scene before him. His vista was oddly diverted into vertical panels, and then, as his mind settled into full control, he knew that the panels were spaces between bars.
The thought crossed his mind that bars must be vertical everywhere in the universe. Horizontal ones would hold a prisoner as well, but the origin of bars lay in primitive stockades, stakes plunged into the ground about a prisoner. Primordial tribal habits were not easily broken, even after attainment of civilization.
Through the bars he saw—well—men. They were at least bipedal, and walked upright, and had two upper limbs with facile digits at the ends, all in keeping with the nearly universal rule of bilateral identity.