 Which relationship best describes the dynamic between the prisoners and the figures controlling them?
If it only had a lease that could be broken— Roger Tennant, crossing the lawn, could see two of the three wings of the house, which radiated spoke-like from its heptagonal central portion. Above it her comely face was sullen beneath its sleek cocoon of auburn hair. Their captors had no idea of how a woven design should behave. He could sense the restless stirring of the woman within Dana, just as he could feel the stirring toward her within himself—desire that both of them loathed because it was implanted within them by their captors. Within the dome of the barrier, it looked more like a well-kept if bizarre little country estate. They entered the house, which had no roof, continued to move beneath a sky that glowed with light which did not come from a sun or moon. The other two women were sitting in the heptagonal central hall. Eudalia, who had borne twin girls recently, was lying back, newly thin and dark of skin and hair, smoking a scentless cigarette. Eudalia had been a female foreman in a garment-cutting shop before being captured and brought through. Tennant wanted to put an encouraging hand on her shoulder, to say something that might cheer her up, for she was by far the youngest of the three female captives, barely nineteen. It arrived before the meal, materializing against one of the seven walls of the roofless chamber. Dana stood almost in the center of the room, carmine-tipped fingers clasped beneath the swell of her breasts. Somehow it brings things closer...."
 The prisoners serve as entertainment for the figures, who seem to have made a game out of snatching up humans and manipulating their thoughts and behaviors.
 The prisoners are being groomed to serve as future collaborators in an intergalactic sex trafficking stint, carried out through the fourth dimension.  The prisoners serve as entertainment for the figures, who seem to have made a game out of snatching up humans and manipulating their thoughts and behaviors.  The prisoners have committed some sort of Earthly crime, and their punishment -- in order to avoid the death penalty -- is to spend a sentence in a labor camp operated by the figures.  The prisoners have volunteered to be part of the figures' experiment for a specific time period, under the agreement that they will be returned to Earth in the condition they left it.