Going through that entrance was still a shock, he thought, and always would be no matter how often he did it. There was no physical sensation, just the shattering realization that one had arrived in the center of an enormous reception area with a transparent roof, and that it was not on the second floor but the twentieth. Like the perpetually white stairs and the omnilingual signs, instantaneous matter transmission was just another piece of technological intimidation aimed at making the backward Earth people more amenable.

The reception area was carpeted and furnished in warm, relaxing shades of gold and green and brown, and covered with random groupings of chairs and reading desks. All but a few of the chairs were empty, and the desks were heaped with Federation literature. Three of the distant walls were covered by large pictures, each of which showed a stylized, almost heraldic, representation of one of the member races of the Federation of Galactic Sentients. There were close to two hundred of the pictures ranged around the three walls and, so far as Martin could see, none of them was duplicated.

Along the wall facing him, like a row of unmanned reservation desks at an air terminal, were the examination computers.

By the time he reached them the old man had been passed through, and he could hear the young couple talking quietly to the visual display unit of the examiner. But they were several desks away and Martin could not tell whether they were asking or answering questions. Then suddenly they lifted their hands from the top surface of the unit and moved around the desk to disappear through one of the two doors beyond it, the door bearing the symbol which appeared on all of the Federation’s literature and equipment. He had been watching the successful candidates so closely that he walked into the outer edge of another desk.

The display unit lit up, and the words which appeared on it shone white against a field of deep green.