"It will certainly look like the same sort of ship that landed out in Iowa, and there won't be enough left when the blasting is over to tell for sure whether the mangled mess that they drag out of it later is man, Alien or oily rags. Those guns do a good job."
Something touched Faircloth's mind, lightly, like a quiet knock. He swung around, his eyes wide. "He's here," he said, and then he saw that Jean already knew. "Tell him to come up."
She nodded, and closed her eyes. Moments later they heard the footsteps on the stairs, hesitant footsteps. Then the door swung open. They stared at him for a moment, and then both men were wringing the man's hand, offering him a glass, and he sank down on the cot they had prepared for him, exhausted. "You must be dead," Paul said quietly.
"I am, I am," said the man. "Mind if I lie down?"
He was an ordinary looking man. He was slender, about thirty, and very pale. A single-factor Psi-High had no distinguishing physical characteristics; there really was no reason to expect a double-factor psi-positive to look any different. But somehow they had half expected a god-like creature, and he just looked like a frightened young man.
His face was mild and rather sad. But his eyes were clear and sharp, and the mouth was in a grim line, as he sank back on the couch. "I was afraid you'd never spot it," he said. "For a while it looked as though the whole thing would backfire. I mean when Towne was planning the shift in the Council and trying to force an election. I was afraid—and in the midst of that, you started your cat-and-mouse game—"
Faircloth nodded. "We had no choice. We didn't know, and you didn't dare reveal what you were doing at that point."
The man shook his head. "It was better this way, much better. I planned to kill Towne and then let you capture me. Counting on you to work the propaganda right. Then nobody would have known that the Alien was killed before he even got started."
Faircloth smiled. "The computer even listed that as a possibility. Low probability, but that was on the basis of what we knew. We hadn't even considered it—yet every living Psi-High has known for a long time that someday two Psi-Highs would have a child. We could only guess what the child might be like."
The man looked up at them sadly. "The child would be lonely beyond words," he said. "He would be able to hide, yes. He would be able to slow down his psi-powers in order to appear like an ordinary Psi-High. He could never have revealed it. Not even to his closest friends."