He sat down on a chair and removed the special shoes he was wearing. These native Estrellans were very man-like in shape as well as mentality, but there were enough structural differences so it had taken the expert cosmetician many hours to fix him up to look like one of them. These shoes, for instance, because Estrellans had unusually large feet, were really shoes-within-shoes, to fit his feet correctly inside and yet appear large enough on the outside not to attract attention.
In the spaceship high above, intent thoughts had been coursing through the mind of the being. Finally, certain commands were impressed upon the mind of the Estrellan native the being controlled, that would set in motion a new train of events.
The native cringed as those thoughts came into his mind. They were not the kind of things he would ever consider, of himself. They outraged his every sense of right and justice. It made him actually, physically sick even to contemplate them, and he wondered briefly how he had ever come to get such ideas.
Yet something, he could not guess what, forced him to do them, despite his every struggling, heartsick effort not to obey the commands he did not even know were commands.
[CHAPTER 5]
As SSM George Hanlon continued undressing, he recalled his parting with his father on Simonides.
"How soon do I start?" he had asked, boyishly eager, at the close of their interview. "Right away?"
"Whoa, son, not so fast," the admiral laughed. "You'll have to have a series of inoculation-shots against the Estrellan diseases. Then you'll have to learn a lot, and especially, you'll have to be disguised to look like a native, which isn't easy. Here are reels of the language, customs and geography. Get a room in the hotel here and sleep-learn them. I think you'll find the language not too hard—it's a simple, uncomplicated one, outside of their habit of putting the verbs ahead of the nouns, and then the adjectives or adverbs. As to their way of thought—well, that's far different. Even with your ability to read their minds, I'll bet you have trouble in really understanding them for some time. I'm not always sure I do, even yet."