I succeeded in sleeping till dawn through a defensive mechanism against the intrusion of thoughts that were too unbearable.  My sleep was interrupted, unfortunately, by terrible nightmares, in which Novaya's body appeared in the guise of a monstrous snake coiled around my own body.  I opened my eyes to the light.  She was already awake.  She had drawn a little away from me and was watching me with her eternally bewildered gaze.

Our vehicle slowed down and I saw we were entering a town.  The captives had risen and were squatting beside the bars, glancing out beneath the tarpaulin at a spectacle that seemed to revive their emotions of the previous day.  I followed their example; I pressed my face against the bars and for the first time I viewed a civilized city on the planet Silauros.

The first shock hit me at the moment we began driving down a fairly broad street.  There was a strange hush over everything.  I expected to see things at least a little like the exciting bustle of Earth cities--cars honking, taxis swooping, clots of people pushing about in the hurry of urban life.  What I saw, when I had gotten over my surprise at the quiet, were that all the passersby were apes!  There was a tradesman, a kind of grocer, who turned around cautiously to watch us go by; he was an ape.  The passengers and drivers of the electric cars, minibuses and deliverycarts flashing past us were dressed in the same way as people at home were and they were apes.

My hopes of discovering a civilized human race became chimerical, and I spent the last part of the ride in gloomy despair.  Our vehicle slowed down even more.  I then noticed that the convoy had been split up during the night, for it now consisted of only two vehicles, the others apparently having taken another direction.  After passing through an entrance gate, we came to halt in a courtyard.  Some apes immediately surrounded us and tried to calm down the captives' mounting agitation with a few blows of their pikes.

The courtyard was enclosed by buildings several stories high with identical rows of windows.  The general effect was that of a hospital, and this impression was confirmed by the arrival of some new figures who came forward to meet our guards.  They were all dressed in white smocks and little caps:  they were apes.

They were apes, every one of them, gorillas and chimpanzees.  They helped our guards unload the carts.  We were removed from the cages one by one, stuffed into big sacks, and carried inside the building.  I put up no resistance and let myself be hauled off by two gorillas dressed in white.  For several minutes I had the feeling that we were going down some long corridors and climbing some staircases.  Eventually I was dumped down on the ground; then, after the sack had been opened, I was tossed into another cage; this time a stationary one, its floor covered with hay.  I was all by myself.  One of the gorillas carefully locked the door from the outside.

The room in which I found myself in contained a large number of cages just like mine, lined up in rows of two and facing a long passageway.  Most of them were already occupied, some of them by my companions of the roundup who had just been brought here, others by men and women who were likely captured sometime earlier.  The latter could be recognized by their attitude of resignation.  They looked at the newcomers with a listless air, barely pricking up their ears when one of them gave a plaintive moan.  I also noticed that the newcomers had been placed, the way I had, in individual cells, whereas the old hands were generally locked up in pairs.  Putting my nose through the bars, I saw a bigger cage at the end of the corridor containing a big number of children.  Unlike the adults, these appeared to be extremely excited by the arrival of our batch.  They gesticulated, jostled one another, and pretended to shake the bars, uttering little cries like young chipmunks at a quarrel.

The two gorillas returned carrying another sack.  My friend Novaya emerged from it, and once more I had the consolation of seeing her put into the cage directly across from mine.  She protested this operation in her own way, trying to scratch and bite.  When the door was closed on her, she rushed to the bars, tried to break them down, gnashing her teeth and whimpering enough to break one's heart.  After a few minutes of this behavior, she caught sight of me, stood stock-still, and extended her neck slightly, like a surprised animal.  I gave her a cautious half-smile and a little wave, which to my intense delight she clumsily tried to imitatie.

I was distracted by the return of two gorillas in white jackets.  The unloading had been finished, for they carried no further bundle, but they pushed before them a hand cart laden with food and buckets of water that they dished out to the captives, thus restoring order among them.

It was soon my turn.  While one of the gorillas stood guard, the other entered my cage and placed before me a bowl containing some mash, a little fruit, and a bucket.  I had decided to do what I could to establish contact with these apes, who seemed to be the only rational and civilized beings on the planet.  The one who brought my food did not look altogether unpleasant.  Observing my tranquility, he even gave me a friendly tap on the shoulder.  I looked him right in the eye, then, putting my hand on my chest, gave a ceremonious bow.  I saw intense shock on his face as I raised my head again.  I then smiled at him, putting all my heart into this gesture.  He was just about to leave; dumbfounded, he stopped short and uttered an exclamation.  At last, I had succeeded in attracting attention to myself.  Wishing to reinforce this success by showing all my abilities, I uttered rather stupidly the first phrase that popped into my skull:

"I---I am a man from Earth.  Earth, you understand.  I've come an awfully long way to meet you."

The meaning was not important.  I only needed to talk in order to reveal my true nature to him.  I had clearly achieved my objective.  Never before had such stupefaction been seen on an ape's face.  He stood breathless and gaping, and so did his companion.  They both began talking to each other in undertones, but the result was not what I had been counting on.  After peering at me suspiciously, the gorilla briskly drew back and stepped out of the cage, which he closed behind him with even greater care than before.  The two apes then looked at each other for a moment and began roaring with laughter.  I must have represented a truly one-of-a-kind phenomenon, for they could not stop having fun at my expense.  Tears were streaming down their faces, and one of them had to putdown the bowl he was holding to take out his handkerchief.

My disappointment was such that I immediately broke into a demonic rage.  I, too, began shaking the bars, baring my teeth and cursing them in Russian.  When I had exhausted my reservoir of expletives, I went on giving off incoherent yells, the only result being that they shrugged their shoulders.

Nevertheless, I had succeeded in drawing their attention to me.  As they went off, they turned around several times to look back at me.  When I had finally calmed down, completely exhausted, I saw one of them extract a notebook from his pocket and scribble something in it after carefully recording a sign inscribed on a panel at the top of my cage, which I assumed to be a number.

They vanished.  The other captives, agitated at first by my demonstration, had resumed eating.  There was nothing else I could do but eat and rest while waiting for a more favorable opportunity to reveal my true nature.  I gulped down another mash of cereals and some delicious (alien) fruit.  Opposite me, Novaya stopped munching every now and then to dart a furtive glance my way.