His pores opened, and he drank—for one micro-second, two micro-seconds, three, four, five—and suddenly he found himself reeling into the stratosphere, up, up, out of the cloying air into the comfortable, naked void, trailing neutrons, extravagantly, strewing protons, hiccoughing electrons. At last he stabilized his mass-energy ratio, drew in his peripheral photons and shimmered to a trembling focus.
Instantly he was surrounded with Vegans, chittering with curiosity, dipping and oscillating their silvery disks in the raw, unfiltered light of the yellow sun.
"Did you learn anything?"
"A little."
"Did you—metamorphose as a native?" they asked expectantly.
"I did," he admitted reluctantly.