"I believe Dr. Norvel has those figures. I didn't stay long enough to see the results of her computations. She figured it out. They rushed me off somewhere else."
"I'll have to ask her.... Now. I'm counting on there being five hundred saucer ships in the first wave. With luck, our Air Force will get a few of them. You say—ah, yes, right here: 'If hit in the air, the pilots cannot displace out of the ship because they would be killed by the fall to Earth.' That's correct, isn't it?"
Julia nodded. "Yes."
"But I expect we'll have to destroy the majority of them after they land; luck only goes so far."
"If they scatter all over the planet?" Julia asked.
"We have bombers alerted."
"Suppose they land in a city? You'd have to bomb immediately. You'd have to destroy the whole area before they could escape. You wouldn't have any time to evacuate the population. But even so, they could destroy the bomber crews with their focus rods before the planes were over the target—"
"Automatic bombers," the general said. "I hope we've got enough of them. As for the populations, I hope they don't land in our cities." He puckered his lips. "I've alerted all our ground forces. We'll have our whole supply of atomic artillery available. Whenever we discover a focus rod in operation, we intend to hit the center of the area of destruction with everything we've got."
"What do you honestly think?" Julia asked.
He shuffled papers, thinking. He looked up from the report. "... it will take us over a week to get even partially ready. If they strike before that, we'll be able to kill some of them. If they give us a week, we might even hope to kill half of them—half of the first wave—before we're destroyed.... I was hoping you might offer us an alternative, or a supplement; or something."