"Anything you can do I can do better—and faster!"
"Baloney. Toralen Ki can start right now, if the other half isn't afraid."
"Afraid—!"
"Well, are you?" sneered Downing.
"That doesn't even rate an answer. I'll take your mind over."
"Uh-huh. This time we'll have an answer. O.K., Billy. Bring on your devil-gadget and we'll play ball."
Toralen Ki looked about him, his face a mask. Stonily silent, he walked to the greenhouse and looked out over the landscape. He basked in the warm sunshine, and thought how much it reminded him of the bright sunshine of Tlembo. The buildings on the edge of the clearing were vast; Toralen Ki felt dwarfed by them, and he felt all alone and utterly alien in this world of giant beings.
A phonograph was playing somewhere, a piece of Terran music that suited the Tlemban fancy, and Toralen Ki was drinking it in.
The greenhouse was slid open in one section, and mingled with the soft phonograph were the myriad sounds of living. Faintly there came the raucous rattle of a rivet gun, the rumble of a sky train passing overhead on its way to the antipodes. He slid the section shut, closing the sounds of this alien world of monsters from his ears. He pressed a button and the steel shutter closed off the light that was so much like his own Tlemban sunshine.