"Lady?"
"Lete--Lete--Lete," she insisted, jabbing herself in the chest each
time.
She had small flashing white teeth, a pretty face, brown as sepia. In
fact she was sepia all over, a warm rich tint that made Jupiter Jones
uncomfortably conscious of the fish-belly whiteness of his own skin.
But it was her eyes that caught his interest. The iris was large,
yellow, flecked with green like a cat's eye. The pupil wasn't round but
a narrow slit.
He wondered if Lete was her name or the name of her tribe or what. He
pointed at another captive, said:
"Lete?"
The girl revolved her right shoulder with an impatient gesture that
fascinated him.
"Io. Io. Ca'min 'Kagan'!" she said, or so the words sounded. Then she
touched her breast. "Na'min 'Lete'."
Obviously the girl was trying to tell him that the cave people were
called "Kagan", but that her name was "Lete".
Pointing eagerly at the scaly octopods beneath the pavilion he said,
"What are they?" in a questioning tone.
For an instant fear mirrored itself in Lete's yellow eyes. She
shuddered, then she seemed to grasp what he wanted and said: "Anolyn."
"Anolyn," he repeated, "Anolyn." Next he pointed at the fighting men.
They were "Nehogans", the porters were "Rik'gans".
Lete was an enthusiastic teacher and Jupiter began to acquire a sizable
vocabulary. He didn't know how long they kept it up. Hours possibly.
They were interrupted by the sudden opening of his cage door.
He stared at it in amazement, for it had swung back apparently of its
own volition. There was no one within a dozen feet. There had been a
"click", and then it had opened.
Before he could grasp what was happening, he found himself crawling out
of the cage and standing up. Then he started for the pavilion where the
purple-shelled octopods--the Anolyns as Lete called them--were waiting.
His brain reeled. He tried to stop. He couldn't! He had absolutely no
command over his muscles!
It was like a nightmare. And yet his conscious mind wasn't in the least
affected.
He entered the pavilion stooping slightly and stopped--like a machine
subject to its operator's whim.
The Anolyns made no sound. They regarded him in utter silence, their
tentacles waving in the air like the feelers of a cricket.
"What do you want?" Jupiter tried to ask and found that his tongue
clove to the roof of his mouth. He'd been struck dumb!
The sweat popped out on his face, but his expression remained as
unchanged as a wooden mask.