to make a deal for them, eh? Well, Mr.
Coburn, you'll find it's going to be a let-down instead! You're not
officially under arrest, but I wouldn't advise you to try to start
anything, Mr. Coburn! We're apt to be rather crude in dealing with
emissaries of enemies of all the human race. And don't forget it!"

And this was Coburn's first inkling that he was regarded as a traitor of
his planet who had sold out to the Invaders. All the plans made from his
information would be based on the supposition that he intended to betray
mankind by misleading it.

[Illustration]

V

It was not yet forty-eight hours since Coburn had been interrupted in
the act of starting his car up in Ardea. Greek newspapers had splashed
lurid headlines of a rumored invasion by Bulgarians, and their rumored
defeat. The story was not widely copied. It sounded too unlikely. In a
few hours it would be time for a new set of newspapers to begin to
appear. Not one of them would print a single word about the most
important disclosure in human history: that extra-terrestrial Invaders
moved blandly about among human beings without being suspected.

The newspapers didn't know it. On inside pages and bottom corners, the
London papers might refer briefly to the remarkable rumor that had swept
over Greece about an invasion force said to have crossed its border. The
London papers would say that the Greek government officially denied that
such a happening had taken place. The New York papers would be full of a
political scandal among municipal officials, the Washington papers would
deal largely with a Congressional investigation committee hearing, Los
Angeles would have a new and gory murder to exploit, San Francisco news
would be of a waterfront strike, Tokyo would talk of cherry blossoms,
Delhi of Pakistan, and the French press would discuss the political
crisis. But no newspaper, anywhere, would talk about Invaders.

* * * * *

In the United States, radar technicians had been routed out of bed and
informed that night fighters had had a fight with an alien ship manned
by non-humans and had destroyed it, but their radars detected nothing at
all. An hour after sunrise in Naples they had come up with a
combination of radar frequencies which were built to detect everything.
Instructions were going out in code to all radar establishments on how
to set it up on existing equipment. Long before that time, business
machines had begun