Julia took another cigarette. She fumbled in her handbag for a match. She lit the cigarette. "No," she said.
"I rather thought not," he said. "I expected you'd have already told us."
"I've thought about it every way I know how.... I thought about displacing all of them when they land; keeping them displaced, where they couldn't reach us.... But there'll be too many of them. I might be able to hold one mutant in displacement, even if he resisted me. I know more than he does. But five hundred?" She shook her head.
"Could we build a machine to do that job?"
"You'd have the rocket done much sooner."
"... I expect that's right. I hope they just give us time."
"If I think of anything else—"
"Oh, I wanted to mention that," the general said. "I want to give you a phone number. You can reach me any time, day or night, through it." He wrote it on a piece of paper.
Julia memorized it at a glance.
The general made a few more notes. He glanced at his watch again. "I guess that's the size of it, Julia."