“That’s better,’ the man said. ‘Check his responses, Lavelle. He still looks a little dopey. Damn this language.’
He turned away and the woman – her name had certainly sounded like Lavelle – came into view, obviously in no hurry. She was metallic, too, but her metal was black, though her eyes were grey-green. The integument was exceedingly like a skin, yet seeing her Carl was even more convinced that it was either clothing or a body-mask, for there was nothing at all to see where Carl instantly looked. Also, he noticed a moment later, either she had had no hair or else her skull cap – if that was what she wore -was very tight, a point that hadn’t occurred to him while looking at the man.
She took Carl’s pulse, and then looked expertly under his upper eyelids. ‘Slight fugue, that’s all,’ she said with a startling pink flash of tongue. Yet not quite so startling as Brand’s speaking had been, since a pink mouth in a black face was closer to Carl’s experience than was any sort of mouth in a silver face.’He can go down to the cages any time.’
Cages?
‘Demonstration first,’ Brand, now out of sight again, said in an abstracted voice. Carl chanced moving his head slightly and found that his horizon headache was actually a faint one-side earache, which made no sense to him at all. The movement also showed him the dimensions of the room, which was no larger than an ordinary living room – maybe 12′ by 13′ – and painted an off-white. There was also some electronicapparatus here and there, but no more than Carl had seen in the pads of some hi-fi bugs he knew, and to his eyes not much more interesting. In a corner was a dropdown bunk, evidently duplicating the one he now occupied. Over an oval metal door – the only ship-like feature he could see – was a dial-face like that of a huge barometer or clock, its figures too small to read from where he lay, and much too closely spaced too.