Is that the best you have to offer? one of them sneered.
Let's kill him! Get it over with!
How could I fake it? Walt demanded. He realized now what a pathetic hope it had been. He needed time; given that, the birth certificates would be very helpful in convincing them. But without time, he couldn't give them all the background they needed. And they weren't going to give him time.
Lyrian traitor!
You can't hold us all off, Walt. We're going to kill you.
Walt saw them—saw them mentally—landing their four ships. In a few minutes they would be upon him.
He began to tremble in impotent rage. He backed toward the door to escape from the confining walls. He tried to make his shielding even stronger against their focus rods.
Julia, waiting in the laboratory, heard her heart beating loudly and rapidly. The one saucer had landed. Walt had boarded it. The four were drifting, waiting. There was a hum from the signal generator behind her. Let him be all right, let him beat them off! she prayed.
What's happening? How can I help?
... Perhaps because her mind was so fatigued that it was almost functioning on the automatic level of sleep, she realized at last why the two compartments in the space station had been kept separate. After the second wave of mutants destroyed the first—under the impression they were the Earth survivors of a war—the aliens would silence the second frequency transmitter. Earth would be populated by less than thirty male mutants. The race of man would not breed back. In a few years, the planet would be ready for its conquerors.