In Confinement
He awakened in shivering terror. His entire body was wet. Water was
falling on him. It was falling on the ground all around and on the
trees--thousands, millions of drops. He choked, as he tried to breathe
the damp, saturated air. Desperately he looked around for some
protection, but there was none. He covered his face as best he could
with his folded arms, and cried out in fear.
There came a shout; and he heard something moving toward him, but he did
not care. Horror of the falling water crowded all other emotions from
his mind.
One of the creatures was standing over him. He heard others approaching.
They were shouting loudly back and forth to one another. In a moment,
there was a circle of them, all around him.
He was too distressed to pay them any attention. After a time one of
them bent down and grasped him under the armpits. He felt himself lifted
into the air. He did not struggle, even when their faces were all around
him--very close.
Now they were walking through the trees, one of them carrying him in its
huge arms, quite gently. He was scarcely conscious of his surroundings.
It was becoming more and more difficult to breathe.
Then he felt himself laid down on something soft and dry. The water was
not falling on him now. He opened his eyes.
They had placed him under a shelter. He could hear the water on the
black covering above him. There was one of them on each side of him,
where he lay on what seemed to be a cushioned seat....
Suddenly there came a rumble, and the seat beneath him quivered and
shook. He struggled to sit up. One of the creatures aided him, and
wrapped a dry cloth about his body. He was grateful.
The seat was bumping up and down violently. On each side, he could see
the trees moving slowly backward. He realized that he was in a vehicle.
It jolted constantly, and he imagined that it must run directly on the
rough ground. It made a continuous and tremendous noise. But it was a
machine of transportation, however crude; and he quickly forgot his
bodily discomfort, as the implications of this fact crowded through his
mind.
He looked with a new interest at his captors. They were talking
together excitedly--evidently about him, for they never removed their
eyes from him. In spite of their strangeness and savagery, they must
have reasoning minds. He could be pretty sure of that, now....
The vehicle came to rest, and to either side he saw structures, made,
evidently, of cut trees. Then his heart leaped again, as he saw that
they had glass. So they knew how to make that! There were only a few
pieces of it let into the walls--but it was certainly glass, and his
hopes rose a bit higher.
They carried him into one of the houses. It was quite dark. They set him
down upon a large table. They were increasing rapidly in numbers,
jostling in through the door and crowding around the table.
In the wall near him there was one of the pieces of glass. Abashed by
the dozens of staring eyes, he looked through this, and saw a broad
field, its soil turned up in long, straight rows--evidently for
planting. Near the center of the field were two creatures, which
immediately commanded his attention.
They were not alike. One was similar to those he had already seen, but
the other was even larger and of a different shape. Four legs carried
the great, bulky body, which rested in a horizontal position, as did the
thick neck and long, tapering head. It was dragging the tool which
turned up the furrows of soil, while the other followed behind,
governing its directions.
Clearly, he thought, there were many types of creatures on Toon. He
would have to try to understand their relations to one another....
Inside the room there was much noise, and the air was hot, damp, and
very unpleasant to breathe. He was not afraid of the creatures now; and
instinctively he realized that it was curiosity that brought them here,
and that they meant him no harm. A few were trying to speak to him,
looking directly into his eyes and making monosyllabic sounds. This
amused him at first. They would not be quite so hopeful if they
understood from where he had come.
But in another moment his amusement had vanished. One of the creatures,
standing near, placed a finger close to where he sat, at the same time
uttering a short disyllabic sound:
"Table!"
A thrill shot through him. He had expected no such intelligence on the
part of his captors. A new wave of hope surged up within him....
Carefully, he repeated the gesture and the word.
* * * * *
His action was followed by a burst of excited conversation in the room.
Several made sharp, guttural noises which he guessed meant gratification
or amusement.
Immediately a number of them took up the game; and he eagerly did his
part, repeating the sounds they made and identifying them with objects.
With every possible gesture he tried to indicate to them his pleasure
and gratification.
He was sorry when they began to go away.
It had been getting steadily darker for some time, when, suddenly, the
room was brilliantly illuminated; and, looking quickly around, he saw a
number of bright globes. This event brought him to a high pitch of
elation. The character of the vehicle in which he had ridden had made
him fear that they knew nothing of electricity, but here was tangible
evidence that they did. His dream of a return to Loten seemed less like
a wild imagining at every moment.
He was beginning to think of these creatures as people, almost human
beings.
Now, only two of them remained. From their glances he knew that they
were talking about him. Finally, one of them lifted him from the table;
and, walking swiftly, carried him through the door, across a short
stretch of open ground, and into a smaller and darker structure, there
laying him down upon a bed of cloths and cushions in one corner of the
single room. The other followed them in, carrying a china dish and cup.
Setting these beside him, they both pointed with their fingers to their
open mouths. He understood immediately, and was glad. He needed
nourishment badly.
But when he looked into the dish his pleasure abated. It contained an
assortment of what appeared to be parts of plants and--he tried to
conceal his horror--animal flesh.
Looking up, he nodded--a gesture that he had quickly learned; and to his
great relief they turned and left the room, closing the door. He heard a
sharp click.
The flesh he immediately put aside. He did not like to think what its
origin might be. He studied the plants. They had evidently been
subjected to a heat process, but had not been chemically refined in any
way. The percentage of nourishment in them must be very low, and it
would be necessary for him to eat great quantities to sustain his
strength. He wondered how long his stomach could stand it.
These people must eat almost daily to sustain themselves on such fare,
he reasoned, marvelling.
With a pronged implement that they had given him, he set to work to mash
the food into as soft a mass as possible. This process they accomplished
easily with their fangs, he knew.
The taste was anything but pleasing, and he had great difficulty in
swallowing; but he finally managed to assuage his hunger, and felt
better. He drank a little water from the cup, which contained enough to
supply him for at least five days.
This done, he stretched himself out upon the bed, and gave himself over
to pleasant reflection. A far cry, he thought, from the man lying
helpless in the desert, devoid of all hope, to the one who had
established contact with a race of intelligent beings who would
doubtless be willing to help him return to his own native world. He
reflected that if the flying ship had hot happened to come near him, he
would most certainly have perished by now--perished in a foreign world,
far away from those he loved, never knowing there was a chance for his
salvation. But now he had taken the first step.... Anything was possible
now.
His attention returned to his surroundings. The bare room was lighted by
a bulb hanging from wires in the center. From it dangled a cord, the
purpose of which he quickly guessed. The walls and floor were bare wood,
and rough. Along the whole length of one wall extended a low, narrow
table, or bench, strewn with a miscellaneous collection of objects which
aroused his curiosity.
He crawled to the bench, and pulled himself erect by grasping its edge.
He was just tall enough to see along its surface. Near him rested a
large roll of what he first thought was cord; but on closer examination
he decided that it was metal wire covered with a fibre insulation.
Obviously it was for the conduction of electricity. Scattered around it
were a number of cylinders of varying sizes, which he saw were wound
closely with very fine wires. Clearly, these people did more with
electricity than make light, he thought, encouraged.
* * * * *
There was nothing else in the room except a pile of rusty metal in one
corner. The whole place was depressingly dirty and dreary. He thought
that he would feel better without the light. He made his way to the
center of the room, and stretched upwards. Finding that he could just
reach the cord, he jerked it; and returned in the darkness to his cot.
He lay there quietly, trying to calm his nerves. He wondered what they
would do with him....
He was still wondering the same thing at the end of four days. They did
not move him. They did nothing except come and look at him--a great many
of them at first, but less and less as time went on. They came in the
daytime--never at night. They fed him; and a few still tried to talk to
him. This pleased him, and he strove eagerly to understand and imitate;
but they soon got tired and stopped.
He learned to distinguish the males and females among the people that
came, by differences in stature, length of hair, and clothing. He
observed, with complete bewilderment, that the males often carried in
their hands burning cylinders which they raised regularly to their
mouths, blowing out smoke into the air. He guessed, finally, that this
must be some sort of sanitary precaution.
Now, however, he was left alone most of the time. They brought him food,
and then went away. He was uneasy. Physically, he felt far from well.
The damp air made his throat and chest ache; and he feared that the long
deprivation of sunlight was hurting him. He could not understand.
Gathering his courage one day, he attempted to open the door. He reached
up and turned the knob the way he had seen the people do. But it would
not move when he pushed. He remembered the clicking sound he had heard
every time after they went out.
He became frightened. He did not understand this confinement. Why would
they not let him out?
There passed another day, of mental torture. Would they let him die in
this dark, dreary place? Had all his efforts merely led to a lonely,
purposeless death?
He wondered what they would do if he went out of his own accord; and
finally decided that he must do it, even at the risk of offending them.
Further inactivity he could not bear.
Within five minutes he had formed a plan of action. It was night--the
best time to work; for he must work undisturbed for a time.
He made his way to the bench, and collected three of the wound wire
coils, which he dropped to the floor. With a cutting tool that he found
he managed to get a length of wire from the large roll. The tool was
very heavy.
Next, he crawled to the corner, and selected a number of small pieces of
metal. He rested for a while, studying the light bulb which hung in the
center of the room. From the light it gave and the size of the filament,
he roughly estimated the power of the current.
Then, with a graphite writing instrument that he had found, he drew a
diagram on the floor. He took a very long time doing this, and labeled
it carefully. When he had finished, the little window at the end of the
room showed that dawn was breaking outside.
Hurriedly then, he set to work with the metal, the coils, and the
wire,--twisting, winding, connecting and cross-connecting--constantly
glancing at his diagram and at the window. Finally, when it was broad
daylight outside, he gave a sigh of satisfaction.
He had achieved an ugly, jumbled apparatus, vaguely cylindrical in shape
with a point of metal at one end. He laid it on the floor; and making
his way to the bench, secured two more lengths of wire. He crawled under
the bench to where the power line for the light ran down the wall, and
there connected them. Then, securing his cup of water, he dipped into it
the ends of his two wires, and observed them for a moment. Satisfied, he
carried them to his cylindrical apparatus, and connected one of them at
the end opposite the metal point. The other he did not immediately
connect.