I sat down heavily on the bed and stayed there for what might have been hours, recovering my strength. The Invader had given me just a glancing shock, just enough to stun me and singe my eyebrows—and Harwood had grabbed Laura.
Now I had to find the answer. I had to close the gateway and find some way of killing the Invaders—and get Laura out of her father’s clutches.
It was nearly morning by the time I shook off the last effects of my stunning and was able to think clearly again. I pulled my generator out of the closet and looked at it, wondering what needed to be. done.
The gateway, first of all. It was a doorway to some alien dimension, Harwood had said. All right. I’d accept that at face value.
The Invaders—what were they? Pure radiation? Energy-eaters? They were intangible, immaterial, but yet very much present. Perhaps, I thought wildly, their corporeal bodies were still .in whatever dimension of infraspace they came from, and merely their essences, their elans, had come through?
Could be, I thought. And if it were true, I might have the answer.
Ignoring the fierce pangs of hunger shooting through me, I got back to work and concentrated steadily. The thought of Laura was with me always—the image of her riding off in the sky with her father’s arms locked tightly around her. Riding off as if kidnapped by a witch on a broomstick.
I don’t know how long it took, but finally my generator was finished. Finished, and portable. I strapped it to my back and picked up my longest and sharpest kitchen knife. I didn’t have a gun, but it didn’t matter. If my theory was correct, a knife would be just as good—and if I were wrong, a gun wouldn’t help anyway.
Then, without stopping to ponder, I ran downstairs and out into the street for the test.
Fresh air smelled good after days of being cooped up in my little apartment. I stood in the middle of the street and surveyed the wreckage.
Bodies lay everywhere, charred and lifeless. Overturned automobiles lay piled here and there, stalled trucks, artillery batteries and tanks. The defensive maneuver had failed, and what few people remained were in hiding. I stood alone in the middle of the street, the heavy generator on my back, and waved my kitchen-knife as triumphantly as if it were Excalibur.
“Come and get me,” I yelled. “Come on Invaders. Let’s see what you can do!”
I looked up. There were a few clusters of them, browsing idly around some television antennas atop a neighboring building. They ignored me for a few minutes; maybe they were so surprised to see a living human in the streets that they were unable to move. I shook my fists at them.
“Come down here where I can get at you!” I shouted.
They hovered uncertainly and then they came.
Six of them swooped down, humming and buzzing, glowing faintly and billowing in and out as they dropped toward me. I waited, waited until they were no more than three or four feet above my head, waited until I was dizzy with the strain and suspense and could wait no more.
Then I snapped on the generator.
It was like catching flies in molasses. The six aliens stopped dead in their tracks as my force-field spread out around them, engulfed them, imprisoned them. Suddenly they were forced to contend with more radiation than they could possibly swallow. It pinned them there, nine feet above the ground.
I listened to their frenzied buzzing as they stretched themselves, elongated fantastically in an attempt to free themselves from the unexpected thing that had grabbed them. And then I stretched up on tiptoes and began to stab.
My knife flashed once, twice—and the buzzing became an unbearable shriek. My heart surged as I struck home again and again. Now we had them! Now they were vulnerable!
Snared in the force-field, they no longer were able to flicker out of phase with our dimension every time a weapon approached. They were anchored now, mired in our continuum, helpless before my savage attack.
I kept stabbing until all six of them were torn and wounded, and then I snapped off the force-field. And they were gone. Instantly, without lapse, they popped out of existence like so many snuffed flames.
Six down, I thought grimly. Six down, and untold thousands to go. But now we have a weapon.
I thumbed my power-pack and the field spread out around me. I began to cut my way through the streets to the Harwood house.
The aliens took notice of me, now. No more hovering around tv antennae; they clustered in the air, just outside range of my force-field, and chattered and buzzed for all they were worth. Every once in a while, one would blunder into my field, and a swift upward cut with the knife would take care of him. One cut. They were like balloons, and the first puncture did it. I didn’t dare shut off the force-field to see if they’d pop out of existence, for fear the clouds of them in the air would swoop in on me before I could turn it on again—but as I moved on, through the dead and deserted streets, I could see the string of dead Invaders hanging in the air vanishing one by one as I moved out of range.
And then I was standing in front of Laura’s home, right in front of the vortex itself. It was still there, and the aliens came thundering through at a rate of ten or twenty a minute.
I stepped past the vortex, ignoring the aliens that clustered around me, as helpless against me as humanity had been against them only a few hours before. There was no point in dealing with the Invaders yet—not until the source was cut off.
I strode up to the porch and peered in the window. I saw Laura huddled in a far corner of the sitting-room, and behind her Abel Harwood marching up and down, probably delivering a fiery parental harangue. It was a nightmare scene, with a dead city outside, hordes of alien invaders swarming in the air—and the man responsible for it busy delivering a lecture to his unruly daughter!
I banged on the door.
“Come on out of there, Harwood! ”
He looked up, astonished. I saw Laura’s pale face brighten as she recognized me, then grow downcast as Harwood started to come toward me.
I walked off the porch into the garden and waited there for him. He emerged, eyes blazing, and said, “How did you get here? How did you get past my guards?”
“Your guards don’t worry me any more, Harwood. I’m going to put a stop to all this now!”
He chuckled. “You’re a very troublesome young man, Mr. Matthews. I spared you once, for my daughter’s sake—but I’ll have no such scruples this time.” He gestured imperiously to the thick swarm of Invaders billowing out of the vortex.
“You don’t scare me, Harwood.” I drew a deep breath, reached around back, and cut off the force-field for the barest fraction of a second, then restored it. It was just enough time to trap twenty or so aliens in a glowing ring right above my head.
Smiling, I drew my trusty kitchen knife and began to lay about. I heard Harwood’s flustered exclamations as, one by one, the imprisoned Invaders winked out, darkened, and died.
I finished off the twenty and folded my arms. “Care to send some more, Harwood? It’s easier than swatting gnats!”
He sputtered a few unintelligible words, then rushed from the porch toward me.
He was a big man—big, and heavy. I was under the handicap of the heavy force-field generator, which I knew I had to keep from his grasp or else I was finished. All he had to do was to smash the generator, and I’d be roasted the next second.
Harwood barrelled into me, sweeping away the kitchen knife while I was still debating whether or not to use it. It went clattering into a pile of rocks in one corner of the garden, and then his fists hit me.
I backed away, making sure I kept the generator out of his reach, and flicked out a few defensive gestures. His face was contorted with rage. He was almost blind with fury, and I could hardly blame him. Here I stood, threatening to wreck whatever monument of villainy it was that he had been erecting for twenty years.