Finally: As we said, we were going to explain partially our presence and purpose, but obviously you know more than we had thought. Would you mind revealing the extent of your knowledge?
Gray reached to the foot of the bed and took up his night robe; partly because it was chilly, partly to give himself time to consider his answer. Perhaps he shouldn't have said that. He was alone in this small house; he had no knowledge of their intentions toward him.
But he had gone too far now. He said, "Not at all. I am not sure of where we stand, but things should be much clearer, shortly. First of all, your spaceships are tiny. Probably less than ten pounds."
About four, Mr. Gray.
"Which explains why our instruments did not record them; the instruments weren't disrupted, your ships were really too small to register. That's where we made our first mistake. We assumed, for no valid reason, that you were approximately our own size. We were willing to picture you as non-human and possessing limbs, organs, and even senses different from ours; but we have pictured 'aliens', as we've been calling you, as approximately our own size. Actually, you must be quite tiny."
Quite tiny, Markham Gray. Although, of course, the way we think of it is that you are quite huge.
He was becoming more confident now; widely awake, it was less strange to hear the words come from his commonplace home model telviz set. "Our second mistake was in looking for you throughout space," he said softly.
There was hesitation again, then, And why was that a mistake, Markham Gray?
Gray wet his lips. He might be signing his death warrant, but he couldn't stop now. "Because you are not really 'aliens,' but of Earth itself. Several facts point that way. For instance, your ships are minute models of Earth ships, or, rather, of human ships. You have obviously copied them. Then, too, you have been able to communicate with humans too easily. An alien to our world would have had much more trouble. Our ways, our methods of thinking, are not strange to you."
You have discovered a secret which has been kept for many centuries, Markham Gray.