ollard attempted to sit up; the struggle was what first caused him to notice his nude body was strapped by polished steel clamps to a long flat porcelain table. Rolling his head to one side, he discovered that the table's rim contained a long shallow trough which had not been scoured too clean. Deepening stains remained of whosever blood it was that had been contributed from the last autopsy performed on the surface of the table.
"Why'm I tied up?" Dollard demanded.
"A temporary precaution," Shir K'han replied, soothingly. The growl of his voice had now reduced itself to a monotonous purr, which reminded Dollard of nothing so much as a ... but then, he shook his head: No! that couldn't be. Mankind replaced by a thinking species of biped felines—descended from a race of giant jungle cats. The development was fantastic.
"Precaution?" Dollard repeated.
"You might have become violent, primate. Only a few anthropoids are extant, now. And They are scraggly skulkers, hiding out in the brush of the second planet—the world you knew as Venus. But even so, many of them have been known to react quite viciously when captured."
"Then, there are humans left?"
"I see you recognize the difference between our race and yours at once." Shir K'han stiffened with pride. "The gap is quite great."
Dollard noticed a very faint striped pattern could be traced in the fuzzy growth on Shir K'han's bared arms.