"Don't you feel it?" Joe asked. "This first time the Earth shackles are loosed? Don't you feel the power and understanding and strength the stars give you out here?
"This is where I belong," Joe said. "Out here where you can see what you're reaching for. That's why I had to come." He stopped and a slow embarrassed flush crept over his face.
"See what I mean?"
Surprisingly, it was Bairn who answered:
"Thanks, kid, you're good for something all right. I don't know what it is about you, but you give a guy a sense of—peace, I guess you'd say."
"Belonging?" Arden put in. "That it, Johnny?"
"Yeah, that's it," Bairn said, and turned back to his orientation board. "So run along, kid."
Arlie Arden, leading the way down the circular staircase that went to the power room, said abruptly:
"You're no city man, are you, Joe? I've never seen cloth like that made in the cities. That tunic you're wearing looks like it's made up for the north forests."
"No," Joe answered shortly, "I'm not a city man. I'm a wooder." They left the stairway, moved along a tube passage.