Mowry's Capture and POW Internment

Mowry’s capture ends his flight in a sudden collision with a waiting group and begins twelve days in a prisoner-of-war compound. The arrest is sharpened by a bitter mismatch: he insists that he is a Terran, but his captors answer as though his claim is a performance, while the camp’s order gives him few ways to make himself heard.

Capture on the Road

Heart pounding, Mowry runs south along the road until he bolts full-tilt into forty figures who are already looking his way. They have been alerted to him. In the starlight, the men wear dark green uniforms and hold objects that gleam; the scene turns his desperate flight into an encounter with a group prepared to stop him.

A Terran voice tells him to take it easy and addresses him as Blowfly, a Spakum tag Mowry does not resent. He recognizes the insult as understandable: every Sirian is a blowfly to the Spakums. But the exchange does not resolve his predicament. The speaker’s mocking familiarity, rather than Mowry’s identity, sets the terms of the encounter.

A Claim Treated as a Joke

When the man with the whop-gun orders Rogan to take him to the cage, Mowry protests that he is a Terran, flapping his hands. The sergeant’s response—that Mowry looks the part—dismisses the claim instead of investigating it. The weapon, which Mowry describes as looking like a cannon, makes the order concrete; Rogan carries it out, and Mowry is taken away.

Mowry tries to meet disbelief with absurdity as well as insistence: he says his name is Napoleon and claims to be an emperor. He gestures with the hand holding the whop-gun, but the sergeant waves the cannon again and repeats the order to take him to the cage. The joke does not loosen the captors’ control. The scene’s comedy rests on an immediate reversal: Mowry can name himself, but the people holding him decide what his words mean.

Twelve Days in the Compound

Mowry spends twelve days moving about the prisoner-of-war compound. It is very large and already very full, and it grows fuller quickly. Prisoners are fed regularly and guarded constantly, a routine that provides for their immediate needs while keeping them under continuous control.

Some prisoners boast about what will happen to their foes; that talk stops only after three of them are somehow strangled in their sleep. The account gives no explanation of who killed them or how it happened. Its blunt uncertainty marks the danger inside the camp: regular feeding and constant guards do not amount to safety, and the sudden deaths alter what prisoners are willing to say.

Repeated Appeals and the Parade

At least a dozen times, Mowry takes an opportunity to attract a patrolling sentry’s attention when no Sirian is nearby. He gives his name and says he is a Terran. Each attempt meets a curt pun: the sentry replies, “Says Y-O-U,” hefts his gun, and continues his patrol. Mowry’s repeated appeals show that he does not simply accept the identity imposed on him, but repetition brings no recognition from these encounters.

The episode ends this stretch of confinement with prisoners assembled in serried ranks. A captain stands on a crate, raises a loud-hailer, and calls across the camp, asking whether anyone is named James. The supplied scene stops at the beginning of that call, so it does not establish what follows. Its placement nevertheless contrasts the parade’s public search with Mowry’s earlier, unanswered attempts to identify himself: after twelve days of being treated as an implausible claimant, he is present among prisoners as someone the camp may be trying to name.