"This isn't a crackpot fear of aliens," he said, as soon as I stopped talking. "I've seen aliens before, in all parts of the Galaxy. I don't panic."
"Then you must have tried something else before hollering Uncle," I said. "Like, perhaps, keeping all of your men inside the dome here when the time for another abduction approaches?"
He waved a hand impatiently. "We've tried everything a large group of top-flight minds can think of," he said. "My own organization has an exceptional research staff, as I'm sure you know. The Aliens work by mental control. We've had everyone brought into this building, have double-checked them, and have sealed the doors with a time lock. It turned out that one of the men was missing—we'd only imagined he was among us when we assembled.
"We scoured the planet before we landed and saw no signs of the Aliens. We've seen no Alien ships land since we arrived. We have no idea where they are, except that there's one sizable area not far from here that we can't seem to penetrate. The only evidence we have that the Aliens arrived after we did is that they told us so. Whatever that's worth.
"We've brought in some of mankind's best Mental Control Operators. People like you, who are able to walk around in a poisonous atmosphere in sub-zero weather without any protection or any clothes at all. Every one of them is now among the victims. The Aliens apparently thought it would be a good joke to take them."
He paused. "So you see, we don't expect you to be around very long. Just so you call in the military before the Aliens call you in, we'll try to control our grief when you go."
"That's courteous of you," I said. "But you are suffering under an understandable misapprehension. You seem to believe—probably because of my somewhat unorthodox costume when I arrived—that I am a Master Controller. In point of fact, nothing could be farther from the case. I have no such powers. Or almost none, anyway.
"I arrived naked because of the enormous expense of teleportation. Those machines require gigantic amounts of power and skilled technicians. At ten thousand a pound, I saved the company five thousand by leaving my kilt behind, and even more when you consider my shoes. As for a protective suit—why, such an unnecessary cost would have been thrown out by our accountants in a minute."
Obadiah Jones sneered at me in disbelief, but I tolerantly ignored his attitude. "Let's admit, for the time being, that these Aliens are better at Mental Control than we are," I said. "Then does it make sense for us to fight them with their own weapons, giving them cards and spades before the start of the game? Now take me to the edge of this place where you say we can't go."