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.