"You are faced with an enemy more terrible than any you ever dreamed of, approaching you through interstellar space at many times the speed of light. You see what we can do, but this is only a fraction of _their_ power. Your only hope is to accept our offer of help, plan with us how to stop the Task Force before it ever lands. Or you'll have hundreds of these red globes stalking the countryside, and hundreds of ships against which your planes will be useless as they are right now against the skimmers." No answer. Makvern said to Wyatt, "We have to stop somewhere. This is your country--what do you suggest?" Wyatt looked at the screen. They were in front of the Supreme Court building. Soldiers were firing at them from the approaches, the steps, the portico. Some of them had already been stunned and were lying on the pavement. While he watched a white beam shot out from the globe's projector and burst in green fire among a group on the steps. Wyatt's patience, worn thin by long anxiety, suddenly snapped. "This place is as good as any," he told Makvern, and then he shouted into the radio, "All right, damn it, I'm an American citizen and I came here in good faith. I haven't committed any crime, and I don't see why I should have to hide and cower in the streets of my own capital, which were paid for out of my taxes. So I'm getting out of this globe, unarmed, and if any damned fool shoots me down he can take it up with his conscience later on." He got up and snapped at Makvern. "Open the hatch. And pull that stunner in." "Brinna was right, they're panicky," Makvern said. "They'll kill you. Wait a bit." Wyatt swore. "We _can't_ wait, it's now or nothing! They'll stay panicky until they actually see that I am an Earthman and not a bug-eyed monster lying to them over the radio. Then we may get somewhere with them." Makvern hesitated a moment and then pressed a button. The hatch opened and a thin ladder extended itself. Wyatt went down it. He went down slowly, and it was a warm day in Washington but he was as cold as mid-December. The sweat of fear was clammy on him and his legs shook. The soldiers in the immediate vicinity were all unconscious or had taken cover, but more would undoubtedly come. He hoped their field command posts would relay his radio message to the men with the guns. He reached the foot of the ladder and stood there. There was a great silence. Then a soldier with a rifle edged cautiously around one of the pillars of the portico. Wyatt watched him, thinking _He will raise that gun and fire and that will be the end of it._ The man's voice reached him, thin with distance and surprise. "Hey, it's a man. It's human. It ain't no monster after all--" From inside the open hatch of the globe Wyatt heard a radio-transmitted voice speaking. "If you will withdraw your--er--aircraft as a sign of good faith, our representatives will come to--"