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—"