Free Lost and Found by Alan Dean Foster

conversation with the Aulaanites because I thought they were pretty, and I wanted to tell them so. We’ve been friends ever since.” He sniffed at some bright pink growing thing that was thrusting a spherical head up through the ground cover. “The curiosity turned out to be mutual. Pyn and Pryrr find my appearance, as they put it, ‘inconceeeeivably undisciiiiiplined.’”
    Leaning back with knees up and palms on the ground, Walker watched something like a miniature elephant crossed with a flock of flamingos amble past in front of them. “I wonder what they thought of me?”
    “Ask ’em,” George advised. “They’re not shy. Very few of the captives are shy. Any that naturally are tend to lose it after spending a few months by themselves alone in their own enclosures.”
    “Months?” Walker looked down sharply. “Some of these beings have been here for months?”
    The dog sneezed, pulled back from the pink pop-up. “That’s what I’ve been told. Among those I’ve spoken to, a few have been here longer than a year. Divide that by the number of worlds represented by the diversity of abducted individuals you see, and it’s clear that our friends the Vilenjji not only know how to cover a lot of ground, but have been very busy.”
    “But what’s it all for?” With a wave of a hand, Walker took in the grand enclosure and its surrounding necklace of smaller, individual living compartments. “Why do they keep picking up individuals from so many different worlds? Just to study them?”
    “I told you: I don’t know. Maybe some of our fellow inmates do. If so, I haven’t met them yet.”
    “Somebody must know,” Walker murmured thoughtfully. “If only from questioning the Vilenjji.”
    “Ah yeah, the Vilenjji.” George snorted. “Our oh-so-talkative hosts.”
    “You said that
you’ve
talked to them.” Walker’s tone was mildly accusing.
    “Couple of times, yeah. Briefly. About all I managed to get out of them, I’ve already told you. They can be damned close-mouthed.”
    Over the course of the following weeks Walker met more of his fellow captives. Some were open and friendly, others shy, a few grudgingly antisocial. The latter he tried to avoid, though none of them were really hostile. Not, as a glum and permanently depressed Halorian observed to him, like a Tripodan. In mass they ranged from the single elephantine Zerak he had first seen while seated on the hillock with George, to the trio of turkey-sized Eremot, with their color-changing fur and comical waddling gait. Some were naturally as bright as a human. Others, like George, had been given the Vilenjji brain boost and had learned subsequently how to communicate and learn. It seemed strange that none were demonstrably more intelligent than an increasingly downhearted commodities trader from Chicago, Illinois.
    “Maybe they can’t catch anyone smarter,” George suggested when Walker broached the subject to him. “Or maybe they’re afraid to try. Or constrained by other considerations. We don’t know. We don’t know anything, really, Marc.”
    “I know that I’m getting out of here,” he shot back defiantly. But in his heart he knew better.
    His isolation as well as his destiny were brought home to him forcefully one day, as it was to everyone else who happened to be wandering within the grand enclosure at that time. One moment all was as it was normally; creatures wandering, conversing, contemplating in silence, some playing interspecies games of their own devising. The next, the artificial sky had vanished, giving way to a shallow-domed transparency. With the sky went the light, so that everyone in the enclosure suddenly found themselves standing or sitting or lying or hovering in darkness. It was not total, however. There was some light. As his surprised eyes adjusted, Walker saw its source.
    Stars.
    Thousands of them. Probably millions, but all he could see were thousands. That was enough, shining in an unbroken spray through the