- A mere six months older, Jan returns to Earth after eighty years hitchhiking the galaxy.
- The Overlords treated him well during his stay—they hadn't even been all that surprised to find him on the ship, which Jan found a wee-bit disappointing.
- Their world was so technologically advanced that Jan felt like a man from the Stone Age dropped into the modern world.
- An Overlord named Vindarten took charge of Jan and did what significantly advanced aliens do with a human in their midst: experiments and research.
- During one of his first trips outside—not that he could go anywhere on his own, since he can't fly like the Overlords—Vindarten took him to a museum and showed him the Earth exhibit, filled with the ever advancing technology of Earth's many civilizations.
- One of the other exhibits frightens Jan something awful: a giant eye from a extraterrestrial beasty, but Vindarten doesn't understand his startled reaction.
- Other wonders of the Overlord world include a creature Jan mistakes for a mountain stalking across the horizon.
- Vindarten refuses to let Jan take a picture of the creature, and Jan realizes the Overlords have masters, too.
- When the ship touches down on Earth, Karellen is already waiting for Jan.