"Tell me--what the devil has he done? You should have seen those
things drinking up the lightning!"
"I did," she said. "I know what you mean."
"Is the gateway still open?"
"Yes. They're still coming through. Chuck, I--I don't know what's going
to happen. I--_no_, Daddy!"
There was a sound of a little scuffle, and then the phone went dead.
I stared at the silent receiver for a second, then let it thunk back
on the cradle. I sat down on the edge of my bed and stared at my soggy
socks for a long while.
Abel Harwood fit the classic description of a crackpot perfectly. My
status as an authentic scientist--if only an underpaid engineer--gave
me every right to make that statement.
I had been doing some experimental force-field work, and when I met
Laura she told me her father would be interested in talking to me about
my work. So I had dinner at their home one night, and started talking
about my project--and then old Harwood started talking about his.
It was some hodge-podge. Dimensional tubes, and force vortices, and
subspace converters. A network of gadgetry in the basement that had
taken twenty years and as many thousand dollars to build. A fantastic
theory of bordering dimensions and alien races. I listened as long as
I could, then made the mistake of expressing my honest opinion.
Harwood looked at me a long time after I finished. Then he said, "Just
like all the others. Very well, Mr. Matthews. Kindly don't pay us a
second visit."
"If that's the way you want it," I told him. "But I _still_ think it's
cockeyed!"
And a month later, I still did. Only now there was this vortex in the
street, spewing forth alien entities that drank radiation. Crackpot or
not, Harwood had turned something on that might take some doing to turn
off.
Outside, the storm was continuing. I snapped on my radio, listened
to the crackling of static that was the only sound it produced. Were
Harwood's pets blanketing the radio frequencies, I wondered, as I
twiddled the dials? Were they drinking _them_ too?
I'd know soon enough, I thought.
* * * * *
That was just the beginning, that night when the Invaders came storming
out of Harwood's vortex. The next few days told of terror and panic, of
retreat and the swift crumbling of civilization.
The Invaders, they were called. Thousands of them, wandering around
New York and the metropolitan area, devouring electricity, attacking
people, bringing a reign of terror to the city.
The newspapers the second day said, in screaming two-inch headlines,