**Let's try to make peace with the earthings,** one of the aliens thought. **It's better than ... than exposing ourselves to physical violence!**
**That would be suicide: once they realized what we had been planning to do to them.**
**I don't trust them.**
**Let Forential send down all his charges to kill the female!**
**Don't be hysterical!** the Elder thought hysterically.
Forential knew that to send down his charges first might alert Earth to the danger of invasion: twenty-seven saucer-ships would not go unnoticed. But even if they would, even if Earth remained unaware, such a course would completely disrupt the plan of conquest.
**She hasn't realized the menace yet,** the Elder thought. **Walt will kill her. Walt will kill her, won't he, Forential?**
**Yes.** If only one of us went to make sure, Forential thought. To help him ... no.... None of us would risk it. It's too dangerous.
The aliens did not have any equipment to make their single person ships invisible. It took bulky distortion machinery; the single person ships were too large to cover with mental shielding.
Twenty years ago, yes (Forential thought) we could have risked it. But now the radar screens around all the major countries are too tight. We could not, like Walt, destroy our ship. We would need it to return in.