"Tut, tut!  Don't use nasty words.  I don't think they will.  In the first place he is a mine of information; even the public has some dim notion of that.  He might be worth more than Newton and Edison and Einstein and six more like them all rolled into one.  Or he may not be.  I don't think they would dare touch him until they were sure.  In the second place, at the very least, he is a bridge, an ambassador, a unique interpreter, between the human race and the only other civilized race we have as yet encountered.  That is certainly important but there is no way to guess just how important.  How are you on the classics?  Ever read H.  G.  Wells' The War of the Worlds?"