He rose and began to explore his prison.
Almost at once he found an opening. Cautious testing told him that there was a passage beyond. He could see nothing, but the air that blew in to him was very heavy with strange smells. Instinct told him that it was a trap. He crouched irresolute, his hands opening and closing in desire for a weapon. There was no weapon. Presently he went into the passage, moving without sound.
He went a long way, his shoulders brushing stone on either side. Then he saw light ahead, red and flickering, and the air brought him the taint of smoke, and the smell of man.
Very, very slowly, the creature called Burk padded toward the light.
He came close to the end of the tunnel, and suddenly a barred gate dropped behind him with a ringing clash. He could not go back.
He did not wish to go back. Enemies were in front of him, and he wished to fight. He knew now that he could not come upon them secretly. Flexing his great chest, he leaped out boldly from the tunnel mouth.
The tossing glare of torches dazzled his eyes, and a wild mob howl deafened him. He stood alone on a great block—the old slave block of Valkis, though he did not know that. Men and women thronged the square, leaving a wide open space around the block. They stared up, jeering at the Earthman who had tasted the forbidden fruit that even the soulless men of the Low Canals would not touch.
The creature called Burk was still a man, but a man already shadowed by the ape. During the hours he had bathed in the light of Shanga, he had changed physically. Bone and flesh had altered under the accelerated urging of glands and increased metabolism.
Already a big, powerful man, he had thickened and coarsened along lines of brutish strength. His jaw and brow ridges jutted. Thick hair covered his chest and limbs and extended in a rudimentary mane down the back of his neck. His deep-set eyes had a hard and cunning gleam of intelligence, but it was the intelligence of the primitive mind that had learned to speak and make fire and weapons, and no more than that.
Half crouching, he glared down at the crowd. He did not know who these men were, he hated them. They were of another tribe, and their very smell was alien. They hated him, too. The air bristled with their enmity.