Suddenly a thought impinged on his consciousness, an emotionless, inhuman query:
"Where did you come from?"
He could feel the alien entity that was the octopod probing at his brain cells with invisible feelers of thought. He could no more resist answering than if he had been under the influence of salanedrin, the Venusian truth serum.
"Earth. A planet of the system of Sol." He gave the galactic space coordinates, but realized that they had no meaning outside their frame of reference. "From beyond the stars," he amplified.
"How?" There was shock, surprise, scepticism in the thought.
He visualized the starship, the space warp that had flung him hundreds of parsecs out of his course. But he had the feeling that he might as well try to explain nuclear physics to a Hottentot.
He was conscious of a growing doubt in the minds of his captors—almost as if they were afraid of him. All at once, he felt himself turn, start out of the pavilion.
The Anolyns, he realized, must have finished their examination. But it was a startling sensation to find himself going back across the clearing like a sleep walker.
What had they learned? Had they picked his mind clean? One of the fighting Nehogans separated himself from his fellows and followed him back to the cages.
Without conscious volition, Jupiter stooped and crawled inside. The door shut after him with a "click". The lean red-haired Nehogan squatted on his heels just outside.