 What is the purpose of the strange objects in Herrell’s cell?
Whatever it was, he had no business in it; for five minutes before he had been spaceborne, on the Long Jump from Earth to the thriving colonies circling Betelgeuse Nine. Their job was to watch McCray, and they would do their job; and even more, not one of them could have looked away to save his life from the spectacle of a creature as odd and, from their point of view, hideously alien as Herrell McCray. One brush with them, in ages past, had almost destroyed Hatcher's people.
 To make him feel at home.
 To make him use his senses.  To make him feel at home.  To make him use his space suit.  To make him feel confused.