Farradyne grinned. Obviously it had been so long ago since any trouble had been this way that the guard-system had become lax. Farradyne praised laziness and complacency highly as he sped across the open space on silent feet and passed the gate on his way to the outside.
Dawn was breaking and the chill of the morning nipped at him. He had broken free, but it was just as dangerous for him to remain in front of the open gate as it might have been for him to be roaming around the spaceport in the full light of day. He turned to the right and started to walk along the road toward a group of small buildings a few hundred yards from the spaceport.
The second item Farradyne needed came later. He had sauntered along several deserted streets in the gray of dawn and down a couple of alleys and through a vacant lot or two until he was quite some distance from the spaceport. Here, in a dimly lighted district Farradyne met his Planet X clothing.
The stranger did not have a chance. He had been drinking or sniffing whatever the enemy used for celebration and he had used too much. Farradyne's hard fist came out of somewhere and the stranger went down like a log, silently. Farradyne dragged him into an alley and stripped him to the skin.
His own clothing Farradyne stuffed in a trash barrel, pushing the bundle down below the rest of the rubbish in the hope that the barrel would be collected by a couple of hard-working and uncurious men who would never note the alien cut to the cloth.
He left the fellow naked to suffer both a hangover and a lot of embarrassment.
Then in the pleasantly bright dawn, Farradyne walked boldly down the city street jingling a bunch of native coins in the side pocket of his costume and feeling just a trifle silly, like an introvert at a fancy-dress ball. The trousers were striped gaudily and the loose jacket hugged his waist a bit on the too-tight side. There was a widish hat and a pair of shoes that could have been put on either foot. He looked like a character out of an old-time musical comedy and he hoped that his costume was not the kind worn by Planet X-ians as formal evening wear because then he would look silly to them wandering around in the morning light like a man caught far from home at six ack-emma in a tuxedo.
Eventually he passed a shop window and saw other garb like the junk he was wearing and he felt better.
He had every faith in the belief that people are disciplined against striking up an acquaintance with a total stranger, and so he turned into what was obviously a main thoroughfare and strolled along it until the streets began to fill with people.