his wrist, and, grabbing his daughter, threw
himself flat on the concrete.

Hesitating only an instant, Aku, his lieutenant, and the MPs hit the
ground as both spaceships vanished in a cataclysmic eruption of flame
and steel.

Raising his head, Rothwell grinned crazily into the exploding debris,
imagining nineteen other ships suddenly disintegrating under the rocket
guns of nineteen different nations. He saw Earth, like a giant
porcupine, flicking thousands of atom tipped missiles into space from
hundreds of submarines and secret bases--the war power of the great
nations, designed for the ruin of each other, united to destroy the
alien fleet.

He turned to Aku, "Midgets, volunteers with miniature TV cameras ..." he
stopped.

The commander and his lieutenant had flung their arms about each other
and were crying like babies. Tentatively, Aku reached towards him.
"Those things, the _Eleele_, from another galaxy." He struggled for
words. "They captured your scout crew and implanted memories of
thousands of ships to create fear and make it easier to take slaves
before blasting you." He glanced up at the flashes in the sky. "This was
their only fleet."

* * * * *

Rothwell glared. "You helped them."

Aku nodded miserably. "We had to. They thought you'd trust us because we
look almost human. It was a trick that worked before." Tears streamed
across his face, matting the golden fur. "You see, the radioactive
planets your men reported, one of them was--home."

THE END

Transcriber's Note:

This etext was produced from _Amazing Stories_ January 1959.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.
copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and
typographical errors have been corrected without note.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Alien Offer, by Al Sevcik

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ALIEN OFFER ***

***** This file should be named 26956.txt or 26956.zip *****
This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
http://www.gutenberg.org/2/6/9/5/26956/

Produced by Greg Weeks, Stephen Blundell and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
will be renamed.

Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation