"The entire first series. A one to A seven."
"Then since you know that much, perhaps I'd better fill you in with some more recently obtained information. To begin with, their name is officially Maletes, which can be translated roughly as The Big Men. The designation may seem strange to you. But it fits much better than that stupidly patronizing 'Hop O' My Thumb', which some bright journalist called the first one he saw, and which has since become their usual name among us. There's nothing elfin or pixielike about them, and on their own planet, compared to the other animal life, they're really big.
"Moreover, they're heavy. The adults average no more than ten inches high, but they run to about forty pounds. They're as strong as human beings, not to speak of being quicker and more active. Pit a wildcat against an unarmed man, and what chance do you think the man has? Well, a Hop is more dangerous than a wildcat, even without taking into consideration his superior intelligence."
"You're exaggerating, dad."
"No. I saw an exhibition on their planet. They put several Hop fighters against their own native animals, as well as against several specimens they had captured on outer planets. In every case but one the Hop came out the victor. The sole exception was a Jovian strom, a kind of lizard, and that managed a draw not so much because it was twice the Hop's size as because it's the fastest-moving creature in the System."
"But we wouldn't be fighting without weapons."
"They'd have the advantage there too. Their weapons are better than ours. In nuclear physics and biological warfare, they're ahead of us. Not too far ahead, I'll admit. Give us a hundred years—possibly even fifty—and we'd be up to them. But we haven't those fifty years, and there's no way of stalling them that long."
"How about psychological weapons?"
"No chance. We couldn't get close enough to make a beginning. They're aware of the danger, and they've taken precautions against it."
"They'd have to come to us. They'd have to attack—"