There was no sign of the bustle and hustle of a mighty city. The indolent and the loafer all moved in a precision pattern that gave the impression of smooth machinery that wasted no motion in accomplishing its end.
Its end?
What could any such perfection need with an end? Was this not the end?
No, Wan Nes Stan knew that this was not the end. This was not perfection, any more than any Terran city was the ultimate in combined beauty and utility. This was not the least of the Galactic cities, nor was it the best. It—was average.
This was home.
He no longer looked down upon the crawling, struggling race of creatures that called themselves homo sapiens any more than any Terran looked derisively at a dog. They knew the dog's place in the scheme of things and Wan Nes Stan and the rest of the Galactic Ones knew homo sap's place. There was no scorn in his mind now. The fact that he had once aspired to rule Terra did not appear to him to be a lowly ambition; Wan Nes Stan knew that it was a laudable ambition at one time in his rise—
"... When he became of age he put away childish things."
Wan Nes Stan checked into a hotel, using his assumed name. It was accepted without question, which pleased him greatly since he had need of procuring some Galactic currency so that he could pay bills. It gave him a place to stay until he could swing a deal, make a move, or steal a pocketfull of whatever the Galactic Ones used for money.
Assuming that the Galactic Ones were running their hotels in a manner similar to Terran establishments, Wan Nes Stan ordered newspapers, a library list, and dinner. Ordering these, he found, was to his liking. There was complete rapport. The steak he ordered by projecting it as a whole, giving the waiter a complete mental impression from sight to texture. It was superb, just as he had pictured.
Then he addressed himself to the papers.