Oh, how exhausted I was.  The events of the past 48 hours had broken me physically and plunged my mind into such confusion that I had been incapable until now of mourning the loss of my comrades or even of picturing concretely all that was involved for me in the looting of our launch.  It was with relief that I welcomed the half-light, then isolation in the almost total darkness that followed, for the dusk was very swift and we drove all through the night.  I racked my brains to discover some sense in the events I had witnessed.  I needed this intellectual exercise to escape from the despair that haunted me, to prove to myself that I was a man, I mean a man from Earth, a reasoning creature who made it a habit to discover a logical explanation for the apparently miraculous whims of nature, and not a beast hunted down by highly developed apes.

I reviewed all that I had observed, often without being aware that I was doing so.  A general overall impression prevailed:  these apes, male and female, gorillas and chimpanzees, were not in any way ridiculous.  I have already mentioned that they had never struck me as being animals in disguise, like the tame primates exhibited in our circuses.  On Earth a hat on the head of a she-ape was a hilarious sight to some people, a painful one to me.  Not so here.  Both head and hat were in keeping, and there was nothing at all odd about any of their gestures.  The she-ape sipping a drink through a straw looked like any other lady.  I also remember having seen one of the hunters extract a pipe from his pocket, fill it methodically, and light it.  Well, nothing about this act has shocked my sensibilities, so natural were his movements.  I had had to think about it before recognizing it as a paradox.  I pondered over this at great length and, for the first time since my capture, I deplored the disappearance of Professor Kaminski.  In his wisdom and knowledge he would doubtless have been able to find an explanation for these paradoxes.  What had happened to him?  I was sure he was not among the victims that had been shot.  Was he among the captives?  It was not impossible; I had not seen them all.  I dared not hope that he had succeeded in preserving his liberty.

With my feeble resources I tried to piece together a theory, but it was unacceptable.  Could the inhabitants of this planet, the civilized beings whose towns we had seen, could they have succeeded in training apes so as to instill more or less rational behavior in them---this, after patient selection and efforts lasting several generations?  After all, on Earth, there are chimpanzees who manage to perform astonishing tricks.  The very fact that they had a language was perhaps not so outlandish as I had thought.  I now recalled a discussion I had had on this subject with a primatologist at the Moscow Zoon.  He had told me there were learned scientists who spent a large part of their time trying to teach primates to talk. They claimed there was nothing in the conformation of these animals to prohibit it.  Until then all their efforts had been in vain, but they were persevering, maintaining that the only obstacle was the fact that apes were unwilling to talk.  Maybe one day they had proved willing on the planet Silauros?  This enabled these hypothetical inhabitants to use them for certain rough work, like the hunt during which I had been taken.

I held on for dear life to this explanation, recoiling in horror at the thought of another, simpler one, so essential did it seem for my safety that there should exist on this planet properly rational creatures, that is, men like me, to whom I could tell the truth about myself.

Men!  Of what race, then, were the beings who the apes had killed and captured?  Some kind of backward tribe?  If that were the case, how cruel the masters of this planet were to tolerate and perhaps decree such massacres!

I was distracted from these thoughts by a figure creeping towards me.  It was Novaya.  Around me, the prisoners were lying in groups on the floorboard.  After a moment's hesitation, she snuggled up against me, as on the previous night.  once more I vainly tried to discern in her eyes the gleam by which the gesture of hers might have been construed as an act of friendliness.  She turned her head away and presently closed her eyes.  In spite of this I felt comforted by her mere presence and eventually fell asleep beside her, trying not to think of the morrow.