In a moment he had grasped the vastness of everything, and he knew that the cages were large enough for him.
He tried to stop again, but the two careful machines carried him on without effort.
The barred door of one empty cage lifted for him, and the machines set him gently down inside. One of them stayed with him.
"You must wait here," it said, "until additional sections of the new grid are ready to be tested.
Meantime, you may request any comforts you wish."
Concealed relays behind him shut and locked the door again.
His black guardian stood abruptly motionless, the glow of the walls glistening faintly on its slim silicone nudity.
Muttering sardonic thanks, Forester looked about the cage.
He found a cot, a table and a chair, a tiny bath behind another door.
Partitions shut off the other cells, but the thick dark came in through the bars, crushingly.
Limping to the cot, he sat down on the edge of the hard mattress.
The cold air had an antiseptic bitterness that choked him, and the gray walls closed until he was shuddering with a helpless claustrophobia.
"You have no reason for alarm, sir," came the golden monotone of his keeper.
"Because you will feel nothing at all."
He watched its blind serenity, trying not to shiver.
"As a very distinguished physicist, sir, you should be interested in our research and pleased with your own part in it," the machine continued brightly.
"Because we are following the methods of your own science.
The basis of our work is a single simple assumption: if paramechanical forces can cause mechanical effects, then mechanical means can also generate paramechanical forces."
He tried to listen.
Sitting cold and ill on that hard, narrow cot, he tried to breathe the bitter air. He tried to push back the suffocating dark. He rubbed his swollen knee, and tried to understand.
"We have proved that basic assumption," purred the humanoid.
"With the aid of a few good men, we have designed instruments for the detection and analysis of paramechanical energies.
A few bad men have also aided, however unwillingly, as experimental subjects."
Shivering on the cot, Forester wondered what had become of little Jane Carter.
He had lost her in the dark while he struggled with his keepers, and he couldn't see into the other cages.
He couldn't find her now.
"As another scientist, sir, you will understand our methods," the machine went on.
"Our human subjects, under strict control, are caused to exert paramechanical forces.
We proceed to measure those forces, to investigate the mechanics of their origin and determine the nature of their effects, and finally to duplicate them by mechanical means."
Forester had slumped abjectly back against the cold partition.
Watching the intent machine, he nursed his knee and clung to one thin thread of hope.
"The final result of this research will be the perfected paramechanical grid.
Any human body under its direction will be operated far more efficiently than is ever possible by the slow, uncertain biochemical processes of the natural brain.
It can regulate men to prevent all the accidents caused by their clumsy feebleness.
It can stimulate the restoration of lost or damaged members, and correct the faulty functions which so often impair the well-being of fragile human bodies and minds.
It can even mend the decay of time, to make men almost as durable as our own units."
Forester shrank from the bright steel eyes of the machine, clutching his single thread of hope.
"So you see that our methods are sound and our goal is good," it finished serenely.
"You see that you have no cause for any personal fear, and your own love of scientific truth should make you eager to do your own small necessary part in this greatest possible humanitarian undertaking."
The humanoid ceased all movement, in absolute efficiency, as that golden melody ended.
Forester sat uncomfortably before it on the cot, nursing his knee and his hope.
Desperately, he clung to memory of that sealed and secret limestone cavern, where no humanoid could go.
For Mark White must still be there, unvanquished, still toiling with his adepts to turn their freakish psychophysical powers into a fighting science of the mind.
Perhaps-
His breath caught, and the feeble strand of his hopeless hope became a mighty thing. For he saw a huge, red-bearded figure striding out of the dark beyond the cages, still majestic in a tattered silver cloak.
"Mark!"
He lurched to his feet, his knee strong again. "Mark White!"
Darting past his frozen keeper, he tried to shake the massive, coldly glowing bars. "Mark - here I am!"
But that tall figure ignored his call.
It stalked on by, and all his hope went with it.