The American colonel snorted: "This whole tale's preposterous! It's an attempt to cash in on the actual mystery of what happened up-country."
The Greek general protested gently. His English was so heavily accented as to be hard to understand, but he pointed out that Coburn knew details of the event in Náousa that only someone who had been there could know.
"True enough," said the American officer darkly, "but he can tell the truth now, before we make fools of ourselves sending him to Athens to be unmasked. Suppose," he said unpleasantly, "you give us the actual facts!"
Coburn nodded. "The idea you find you can't take is that creatures that aren't human can be on Earth and pass for human beings. There's some evidence on that right here." He nodded to the Greek major who was the junior officer in the room. "Major, will you show these other gentlemen the palm of your hand?"
The Greek major frowned perplexedly. He lifted his hand and looked at it. Then his face went absolutely impassive.
"I'm ready to shoot!" snapped Coburn. "Show them your hand. I can tell now."
He felt the tensing of the others in the room, not toward the major but toward him. They were preparing to jump him, thinking him mad.
But the major grinned ruefully: "Clever, Mr. Coburn! But how did you pick me out?"
Then there was a sensation of intolerable brightness all around. But it was not actual light. It was a sensation inside one's brain.
Coburn felt himself falling. He knew, somehow, that the others were falling too. He saw everyone in the room in the act of slumping limply to the floor—all but the Greek major. And Coburn felt a bitter, despairing fury as consciousness left him.