 He became vividly conscious that his knowledge of Malacandra was minute, local, parochial. It was as if a sorn had journeyed forty million miles to the Earth and spent his stay there between Worthing and Brighton. He reflected that he would have very little to show for his amazing voyage if he survived it: a smattering of the language, a few landscapes, some half-understood physics—but where were the statistics, the history, the broad survey of extraterrestrial conditions, which such a traveller ought to bring back? Those handramits, for example.