"Try to understand, to believe. Your world is going to be attacked. Not tonight, but within a short time. I want you to take a warning to your government, so that we may be prepared when the attack comes."
"I see," said Wyatt. He had a wild desire to laugh. He saw himself going to Washington and telling various personages at the White House and the Pentagon that a beautiful girl landed in a funny round ship and told him the Earth was going to be attacked and so they should call out the armed forces to be ready.
"They'd shoot me first," he muttered, "and then throw me in a padded cell." He stepped closer to the girl. Her face was handsome, perfectly human and perfectly alien at one and the same time. It was not a soft face. It was used to decision and command. The red mouth, he thought, would never pout or be petulant, but it could easily be cruel. "Who's going to attack Earth? Who are you?"
She said impatiently, "It does not matter who I am, except that I'm in a position to know what I'm saying. Listen. There is a huge interstellar task force out there, working its way through this sector of the galaxy, plundering as it goes. These fringe areas are too far away from our center of power at Uryx—a star-system you never heard of here—to make permanent conquest practical, so all we are interested in is loot. Our advance scouts go far ahead of the main body. We scouts have been here before. I've been here before. Now I'm warning you. The main force will be at Alpha Centauri when I return to it. When it is finished there, Earth is next."
"I don't believe you," Wyatt said. But in spite of himself, he did.
He was close to the foot of the stair now, close enough almost to touch the tall, slim girl with the black hair blowing around her forehead and the brilliant, wary eyes. The strange ship loomed above them both. Wyatt looked at it and shivered and gnawed his lip.
"Why are you warning me?" he said suddenly. "You're part of the force. Why do you want to betray it?"
"I have my reasons," she said, "and they are good ones. But you wouldn't understand them. In any case, the warning is true. Don't question it."
She started to withdraw from him, up the metal steps.
"Wait," said Wyatt. "Nobody on earth would listen to me if I told them that story. They'd only think I was crazy. Listen, if you really want to have your warning taken seriously you'll have to go to Washington yourself."