It could have been any museum on Terra, for the lifeforms displayed were as bizarre as any of the stranger bits of art work on the earth or other of Sol's planets. He came upon a quiet hallway that had a non-scale model of the solar system; it was a working orrery that told Farradyne nothing other than that this system had eleven planets and a batch of satellites. None of the planets had rings like Saturn. He looked for something that could identify the parent sun for him, but he found nothing familiar about any of the displays, except one.
There was a small model of Sol and its planets on a pedestal, and while the sight was familiar, the lettering below the display was not. If the legend said anything about distance and direction, it was not only in the alien's terms, but in the alien's written language.
To find out where in the sky he was, Farradyne needed a fast course in Planet X-ian language, and then a six months' concentrated course in uranography. He began to understand that the matter of being lost is only a dislocation of your own frame of reference. Cities do not have large signs around the streets saying "This is Chicago" because any man in his right senses knows that he is not in Detroit, and if he does not, there are better places for him than either city.
He shunned the opportunity of visiting the enemy planetarium. Having some lecturer explain the heavens as seen from Planet X in a trio-voice would get him nowhere.
He left the museum and began to trudge back toward the spaceport. He was hungry again, and the morning and early fore-afternoon had been frustrating, even though it had been enlightening to find that the aliens lived and breathed and enjoyed themselves like people instead of the cold inhuman monsters he had expected.
Again Farradyne watched his fellows carefully. It seemed that one medium slug would buy him a wad of paper that could be nothing other than the afternoon news, after which he would get two smaller slugs in change. He strode to the newsstand with a what-the-hell feeling and tossed down one of the medium slugs. He scooped up one of the papers and two of the smaller slugs and walked away without saying a word. The newsman watched the transaction without turning an eye. Then Farradyne folded the paper through the middle and tucked it under his arm and sauntered along like the absent-minded professor until he found a quick-grab joint that opened on the sidewalk.
He stood at the counter scanning the wall-menu as though he knew what it said until the waitress sounded off at him. He looked down at her with a frown of irritation, and then waved two fingers at a hot plate full of flat square things floating in an oily sea of juice. He unfolded his paper and immersed himself in a page while the waitress scooped two of the flat things from the plate and slid them between folds of something like a bun. She shoved them beneath the lower edge of Farradyne's paper on a flat plate and stood there mewing at him like a trio of alley cats.
Acting in an absent manner Farradyne took two of the larger slugs from his pocket and dropped them on the bar. The waitress took one, deposited it in a register with a shrug, as if she had seen oddly absorbed characters before, and returned with three of the smaller slugs which she piled on the bar beside Farradyne's remaining coin.
He munched his greasy God-knows-whats and while he mentally complained about the flavor and the greasiness, he was forced to admit that they were more satisfying than his earlier cold can of mixed space rations.
Then he folded his paper (wondering whether he had been absorbed in a lonely hearts column, the local stock market, or a nice lurid sex-slaying) and sauntered off toward the spaceport. He made it in easy steps, angling this way and that and wandering like Haroun al Raschid, but feeling more like that other fabled Arabian who was forced to remain in the body of a stork because his bird's mouth could not pronounce the magic word in the proper language. No one paid him any attention.