"We aren't licked yet," nodded Lane cheerfully. "But look, Billy, I'm still befuddled by Downing's stinking slow, methodical way of doing things. As I get it, Toralen Ki and Hotang Lu told us that we'd all be increased in mental stature after the Transformation."
"Sure. We are."
"I don't notice anything."
Thompson grinned. "You won't. You never will. No Terran ever will. We'll all go on just the same as we were, apparently. It is a Terran characteristic that a personal change always seems to be an opposite change in the rest. We'll all go on as we are and the rest of the Galaxy will appear to get stupider. The change is and has been—and will continue—to be gradual enough so that you will believe that you've always been possessed of a near-perfect memory. But play chess with your pals, and you find that you are still even because the other guy can lay just as complicated traps as you can with your increased ability to reason. But you see, it is like that old analogy. If the entire Galaxy and everything in it were increased by one hundred times, you would not be able to detect the change. That's because your yardstick changes, too."
"Relativity, speaking," grinned Lane.
"Classification: Pune. Definition: Pun that needs an oxygen tent. Or better, the perpetrator a half-hour immersion in liquid helium." He looked around and saw Stellor Downing, leaning against the door with a half-amused expression on his face. "Hello, Stellor."
"Howdedo. A nice job of selling you did on Vorgan."
"Yeah, and a nice pinch he put me in."
"Maybe you shouldn't have niggled him so far."
"I was a little rough on him," agreed Billy. "But I pushed him right to the limit of my safety. I applied all the traffic will bear. I had to, to show my boldness and to intrigue his fancy, since I knew that in all their victorious twenty thousand years of conquest they had never hit a race that stood up and told him off, face to face."