Most of the people were elderly men. Their clothes were tattered and stained by nutrient solution. Some were threadbare. Many had been wearing laboratory coats of ceramic fabric, which had chipped and fallen away in patches.
They must have been in the crystals for a long time.
I watched John bend anxiously over a group of elderly men.
"Doctor Firnivale. Professor Marrpole. Doctor Hutk. And Williams."
The men we had just released nodded in turn.
"You, Dr. Firnivale," John said. "Did you give the advanced geo-physics lectures?"
"Through that crook's hearing aid," said the tattered man on the cellar floor. "Yes, I did. I could hear the questions and I told him the answers. So did all these others here."
"Professor Marrpole, I recognized you from a stereo-record you made on magnetic differentiation on small planets. Is that how David Adam Smith became the world authority when you disappeared?"
"Yes," the man with the shaggy beard confirmed. "He caught me by asking me to stand on a plate for a live recording."