n't stay long enough to
see the results of her computations. She figured it out. They rushed me
off somewhere else."

"I'll have to ask her.... Now. I'm counting on there being five hundred
saucer ships in the first wave. With luck, our Air Force will get a few
of them. You say--ah, yes, right here: 'If hit in the air, the pilots
cannot displace out of the ship because they would be killed by the fall
to Earth.' That's correct, isn't it?"

Julia nodded. "Yes."

"But I expect we'll have to destroy the majority of them after they
land; luck only goes so far."

"If they scatter all over the planet?" Julia asked.

"We have bombers alerted."

"Suppose they land in a city? You'd have to bomb immediately. You'd have
to destroy the whole area before they could escape. You wouldn't have
any time to evacuate the population. But even so, they could destroy the
bomber crews with their focus rods before the planes were over the
target--"

"Automatic bombers," the general said. "I hope we've got enough of them.
As for the populations, I hope they don't land in our cities." He
puckered his lips. "I've alerted all our ground forces. We'll have our
whole supply of atomic artillery available. Whenever we discover a focus
rod in operation, we intend to hit the center of the area of destruction
with everything we've got."

"What do you honestly think?" Julia asked.

He shuffled papers, thinking. He looked up from the report. "... it will
take us over a week to get even partially ready. If they strike before
that, we'll be able to kill some of them. If they give us a week, we
might even hope to kill half of them--half of the first wave--before
we're destroyed.... I was hoping you might offer us an alternative, or a
supplement; or something."

Julia took another cigarette. She fumbled in her handbag for a match.
She lit the cigarette. "No," she said.

"I rather thought not," he said. "I expected you'd have already told
us."

"I've thought about it every way I know how.... I thought about
displacing all of them when they land; keeping them displaced, where
they couldn't reach us.... But there'll be too many of them. I might be
able to hold one mutant in displacement, even if he resisted me. I know
more than he does. But five hundred?" She shook her head.

"Could we build a machine to do that job?"

"You'd have the rocket done much sooner."

"... I expect that's right. I hope they just give us _time_."

"If I think of any