When the Oversight Committee, responsible for top-secret operations such as Project Chrysalis, learned what the Stealth had discovered at the bottom of the Pit near the back of Cretacea, they were concerned for the safety of the interstellar colonization effort that was being undertaken by the international community. A dozen nations had already become heavily invested in a cooperative venture that was supposed to establish a human presence in a new star system. The members of the committee had misgivings concerning what the colonists might encounter there, despite the seemingly benign appearance of the earthlike planet that had been discovered by the interstellar probe. But the invisibility of their clandestine organization would be critically compromised if they tried to publish their findings, and their evidence might not even be satisfactory enough to dissuade the enterprise. They decided, instead, to do the next best thing. While making only the interstellar spacecraft's command crew and security personnel aware of the appointment, they sequestered Stealth aboard to defend the colonists if any confrontation were to take place. They simply assumed that such a clash would involve the kind of conflict in which the invisibility and superhuman strength of the Stealth could create a decisive difference. By doing so, they seriously underestimated the insidious disposition of the alien opposition. But they also underestimated the resourcefulness of the Stealth and even our indigenous genetics.