He watched the fire and remembered other days - outings in the country and walking trips when they had built a fire and lay around it, staring at the sky, seeing the old, familiar skies of Earth.
And here again was another fire.
And here, again, a picnic.
The fire was Earth and so was the picnic - for the people of Kimon did not know of picnics. They did not know of picnics and there might be many other things of which they likewise did not know. Many other things, perhaps. Barbaric, folkish things.
Don't look for the big things, Morley had said that night. Watch for the little things, for the little clues.
They liked Maxine's paintings because they were primitives. Primitives, perhaps, but likewise not very good. Could it be that paintings also had been something the Kimonians had not known until the Earthmen came?
Were there, after all, chinks in the Kimonian armor? Little chinks like picnics and paintings and many other little things for which they valued the visitors from Earth?
Somewhere in those chinks might be the answer that he sought for Morley.
He lay and thought, forgetting to shield his mind, forgetting that he should not think because his thoughts lay open to them.
Their voices had faded away and there was a solemn nighttime quiet. Soon, he thought, we'll all be going back - they to their homes and I to the hotel. How far away, he wondered. Half a world or less? And yet they'd be there in the instant of a thought.