ALIEN BEINGS LOOSE HERE
The third day, there were no more newspapers. No one dared leave his home—not with the Invaders at large. No newspapers, no radio, no television—the channels of communication began to break down.
On the fourth day, armed forces from the rest of the country began to arrive. They combed the city, searching for the creatures. Bullets had no effect, though. They passed right through the bodies of the Invaders, splattered off buildings and lampposts as though there had been nothing in the way.
DAMN HARWOOD, I thought, as I stood at my window and watched the fruitless attempts to drive away the Invaders. All the time, I knew, that damnable vortex was still open, and more and more of them were pouring through every second.
It was funny, in a way, that the world should end this way. It was the end of the world, of course; we had no defense against them, and they burned and killed unstoppably. The streets were blockaded, we could go nowhere, see no one. Communication was impossible; telephones were no longer working, ever since the Invaders had discovered what a juicy supply of radiation the coaxial cables provided. We were walled up with ourselves, waiting for the end.
As I paced my room impatiently, I thought of Laura, there with her father—her father who had, unwittingly or otherwise, brought this destruction into the world. Then I looked around at my equipment, my partially-designed force-field generators. An idea struck me.
We were completely defenseless against the Invaders now. But maybe, if—
I worked through the night and on into the morning, soldering and reconnecting. I had only the barest shred of a plan, and that a mostly wishful one, but I had nothing else at all to do but work.
Finally morning came. Again there was the booming of guns from outside, as the army continued its attempts to drive out the Invaders. I glanced out the window and saw three of the translucent globes hovering over the charred body of a man in military uniform, and shuddered. I went back to my generator, and worked until hunger reminded me that there was no food left in the house.
This was the end, then. I was nowhere near the solution of my problem, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to work for long without food. I glanced outside again. The air was thick with the things; I didn’t dare risk a break.
So I turned back to my generator and forced myself to keep working. I did. I worked far on into the afternoon, getting more and more tired—until, sometime near nightfall, I fell asleep.
I slept. Suddenly, I was awakened by the simultaneous touch of a hand on my shoulder and clap of thunder outside. I looked up.
“Laura! What are you doing here?”
“I had to get away,” she said. She was soaked to the skin, cold and shivering. She was wearing only a flimsy housecoat over some sort of pajamas. “Daddy wasn’t looking, and I ran out of the house. I ran all the way.”
“But how’d you get past the—the—?”
“The Invaders?” She pointed outside. “There’s a storm going on. They’re all in the sky, drinking up , the lightning again. They didn’t bother me at all on the way over. Much better food available, I guess.” She shivered again.
“Look, you’ve got to get out of that wet stuff.” I told her. I threw her a towel and my bathrobe. “Here, get into this, and then we can talk.”
“Okay.”
She disappeared into my other room, and returned a few minutes later, looking drier but just as pale and frightened. She peered inquisitively at the machine I had been building, then turned to me.
“Chuck—Dad’s out of his mind!”
“I’ve known that a long time,” I said.
“No—I don’t mean that way. He’s really insane, Chuck. You know that he’s been in contact with these Invaders? That he deliberately brought them here!”
“No!”
She nodded. “He reached them through some short-wave transmitter of his, and made mental contact with them. They showed him how to build the Gateway—and he let them through! They promised to give him the world, when they get through with it!”
I clenched my fists and stared angrily at the cloud-swept sky. “The madman! He was getting his revenge for the years people laughed at him, I guess. But—what’s to happen to us?”
“I don’t know. The creatures won’t harm him, and they’re under orders not to touch me unless I leave his protection—which I have. But as for you and the rest of the world, I don’t think Daddy cares at all. Chuck, he’s out of his head!”
“We’ve got to stop him,” I said grimly. “We’ve got to close that gateway and drive off the things he’s let through. But how?”
“The generator’s in his basement,” Laura said. “If we could get in there and smash it, somehow, and—
“How would we kill the Invaders that have already come through? There must be thousands of them!”
“We’ll find some way, Chuck. There must be a way.” I looked out the window. The rain was letting up, and there were only occasional flashes of lightning in the dark tormented-looking sky. “The Invaders will be coming back soon,” I said. “Do you want to risk a dash over to your place to try to get at the generator?”
She nodded. “If we wait any longer, we won’t be able to make it. But—”
She gasped and pointed to the rear window. I turned, saw what she was trying to show me. Abel Harwood, hovering twenty feet off the ground, riding on a cloud of Invaders.
“Come out of there, Laura!” His voice was somehow amplified and it seemed to shake my little room. Horror-stricken, we watched as the buzzing horrors bore Harwood closer and closer to my window. Laura shrank back against the wall and tried to flatten herself into invisibility. With a sudden nervous gesture I pushed the table containing my unfinished generator into the closet, and turned to face Harwood.
He was right outside the window now. I saw the old man’s staring eyes blazing at me, as he stood there astride two of the Invaders. They droned like defective neon signs, a horrifying slow buzz.
I picked up a heavy soldering iron and waited as they reached the window. Then Harwood reached out and contemptuously smashed the glass and stepped through—stepped right off the backs of his hideous mounts and into my room. One of the Invaders entered also, squeezing its bulk through the window. There was a pungent odor of ozone in the air.
“Get back, Harwood. You can’t have her,” I said.
He laughed. “Who are you to give me orders? Come here, Laura.”
Laura shrank back even further. I gripped the hot soldering iron tightly and sprang forward, plunging it into the Invader that hovered between me and Harwood. I stabbed again and again—and it was like stabbing air. Finally Harwood made an impatient gesture, and the Invader glowed a brilliant red for an instant.
I dropped the soldering iron and clutched at my burned hand.
“For the last time, Laura—will you come with me?”
“No! I hate you!” she shrieked.
Harwood frowned and started toward her. As he came past me, I grabbed him with my one good hand and tried to pull him back. I had thirty years on him, but my right hand was badly seared and he was no weakling even at his age. He shoved me away and sent me sprawling against the wall. I saw him grab Laura roughly. The alien hummed ominously above my head.
I made a mad dash for Harwood, caught him by the throat, started to squeeze. The humming sound grew louder, and then suddenly there was a blinding wave of heat sweeping through the apartment, and I fell back, clawing at the floor.
When I was able to open my eyes, a few minutes later, I dashed to the window just in time to see Harwood holding the struggling form of Laura and riding off into the night on the backs of his extra-dimensional Invaders.