The alien bowed once more, then turned on his heel and walked back to his ship. This time, he got inside and closed the door. Then the blue ship moved.
Slowly, like a car backing out of a garage, it pulled out of the hole in the satellite. Nowhere on its surface was there a mark or a scratch. When it was finally free of the satellite, it turned a little, its nose pointing off into space. A pale, rose-colored glow appeared at the tail of the ship, and the cigar of blue metal leaped forward. To all intents and purposes, it simply vanished.
"That," said the major in awe, "is what I call acceleration."
"Here's the way I see it, Mr. President," said MacIlheny several hours later. "When he cracked up by accidentally plowing into Number Four, something happened to his energy supply. Maybe he was already low, I don't know. Anyway, he was out of fuel."
"What do you think he used for fuel?"
"The most efficient there is," said MacIlheny. "Pure energy. Imagine some sort of force field that will let energy in, but won't let it out. It would be dead black on the outside, just like that whatever-it-was in the alien's ship. He just set off the H-bomb inside that field; what little radiation did get out made the field look gray—and that's a damned small loss in comparison with the total energy of that bomb."
"You know, Fitz, I'm going to have a hell of a job explaining where that bomb went," said the President.
"Yeah, but we've got his gun or whatever in exchange."
"But how do you know our technicians will be able to figure it out?"