The cage, he saw, was about two and a half meters long, very narrow and barely high enough for him to sit up in. It was only one of a whole row of such cages, and they were all occupied by men and women like himself.
His gun was gone. His pack, even his clothes had been taken away from him. He grasped one of the bars, pulled himself to a sitting posture. His neck felt stiff and for a moment his head swam dizzily. Then the scene jarred into focus.
Afternoon sunlight overlaid everything like an angry orange wash. Striped tents had been pitched along the river bank. Four of the purple-shelled octopods squatted about a cloth spread on the ground beneath the largest pavilion.
Its sides had been raised to permit the free flow of air, and he could see the creatures plucking food from strange vessels and goblets with their snakey tentacles.
All about the tents green men and copper-skinned hunters milled in a senseless jostling confusion like a circus breaking its stand.
Suddenly, his eyes narrowed. The octopods were being waited on by a hairless pink-skinned species of human. That made four distinct races he'd observed since landing. He ticked them off on his fingers—the cave people, the red-haired fighting men, the green and stolid porters. Now these bald, hairless white slugs of men.
The white men were doing most of the work, herding the porters about, packing chop boxes. Jupiter frowned. An odd little protuberance, he discovered, sprouted from the backs of all their necks.
The protuberances varied in size, some no larger than a small snail shell, others as big as a tangerine. They were plum-colored and looked as if they were made of horn. What the devil could the things be?
He shifted his eyes to a lank, coppery fighting man and saw that he bore one of the things on the back of his neck also. They all did, he realized with a sudden dryness of mouth.
All along he'd been aware vaguely of the stiffness in his spine. With a thrill of alarm, he felt the back of his neck, touched a knob-like thing just below the base of his skull.