s at that time that their science had brought the
Schree type into existence. There were perhaps a hundred of them at work
in the big chamber--a chamber bewilderingly filled with hanging surgical
non-glare lights, filling the place with a shadowless illumination,
revealing great, gurgling bottles of fluid with tubes and gleaming metal
rods; pulsing elastic bulbs; throbbing little pumps, with row on row of
gauges and dials and little levers along the walls.

There were a score of ominous-looking operating tables, some occupied,
some empty, about them gathered group after group of white-masked
Schrees. These were taller than men, near seven feet, with very bony
arms and legs, a skeletal structure altered into attenuation, with
high, narrow skulls, great liquid eyes, no brows, hairless skulls
showing bare and pointed above the white surgical masks.

Very like the Jivro caste, yes, but different as men are different from
insect. They walked with a long graceful stride, not hopping as the
priests' class. Their eyes were mournful and liquid with a dog-like
softness, their hands were snake-quick and long, they looked like
sad-faced ghouls busy about the dismemberment of a corpse--a corpse of
someone they had loved, and they appearing very sad about the necessity.
Such was their appearance; mournful, ghoulish, yet human and warm in a
repressed, frustrated way.

The tall, sad-eyed Schrees turned from the preparation of two rigs like
dental chairs, except that they were not that at all, but only similarly
surrounded with gadgetry incomprehensible to me. We had stood isolated,
waiting, with four guards between us and the door.

As we were each placed in one of these chairs, our wrists and ankles
fastened with straps of metal, I expected almost any horrible torture to
be inflicted upon us.

They shot a beam of energy through my head and I heard words, sentences,
a rapid expounding of alien grammar and pronunciation which sank deep
into my brain. My memory was being ineradicably written upon with all
the power needed to make of me whatever they wanted. But apparently
their only purpose now was to give me a complete understanding of their
language. An hour, two, swept by, and now the heretofore almost
unintelligible gibberish about me became to my ears distinct and
understandable words. I was now acquainted with the tongue of the
Schrees, far better than little Nokomee had taught me the somewhat
different tongue of the Zervs.