Homecoming Horde

The room was sealed as tightly as possible. Haverford had checked it for cracks, made sure the windows were caulked, and now kept constant guard. He was alone. He could never tell when the alien invaders would break through.

I must be nearly the last, he thought. It was strange, this feeling of being alone on Earth. But it was probably true.

The aliens had come six days before. Haverford remembered picking up their ultimatum on his ham set:—

That was all it had been—an ominous warning, rather than a threat or an order. The way the message had been worded left little doubt that they were conquerors—conquerors from space.

Haverford had been amused, at first. A solitary recluse, he had little dealings with his fellow men, at least not in person. The costly ham set that occupied nearly a third of his one-room flat was his sole contact. Through radio he kept in regular touch with "friends" in Yokohama and Buenos Aires, Texas and Oregon, while actually leaving the confines of his own room at increasingly rare intervals.

He had, naturally, picked up the Lanthaii messages on his set. There wasn't an amateur operator in the world that hadn't detected them. That was when he began to feel it wasn't a joke.

Reports came in. Dazo Osaki, the Japanese contact, reported hearing the strange message; Lionel Bentham in Sussex picked it up also, as did Miguel Bartirone in Buenos Aires. EARTHMEN, THE LANTHAII ARE COMING. BEWARE! Someone—there was no doubt of it—was beaming the message at the entire Earth from outside.

And then the Lanthaii had come.

Haverford, pacing his room nervously, remembered the day of their landing. He had been talking to Bentham, the Englishman, a slow-speaking, phlegmatic sort.

"—so I mean to write to my man in Parliament, y'know, and ask him to plump for the legislation. It'll be a great boon for ham operators if—Lord! What's that! What's that?"

Haverford had stared at the transmitter in shocked surprise as Bentham's voice was replaced with the screeching of static, then some other sounds he did not understand, followed by a quick, sharp, repulsive clicking, and—

Silence.

"Bentham! Bentham!"

Silence.

That had been the beginning. The Lanthaii had landed, all right. The alien invaders were sweeping the world.

Haverford got the details from a news broadcast. They had come in silvery ships, hundreds of them. Thousands.

"You should have seen it," Bartirone told him, speaking in his accented English. "All over Buenos Aires, in midday—suddenly, the sky was blotted out. Ships. Silvery ships. They seemed small. They started to land."

"Have you seen the invaders yourself?"

"No. Not yet. They haven't come this far west in the city yet. But—"

The Argentinan's voice stopped. Haverford listened numbly, knowing despite himself exactly what had happened. The invaders had come.

He rose, looked around his room. He had enough food in the freezer and on the shelves to last for months. Haverford was a frugal man; by buying in quantity, he saved precious cash that was used for augmenting the radio set.

He decided to hide in his home—to seal it from the outside world, to wait. Perhaps the invaders would be driven back; perhaps Earth would fall. But he would be safe. He would not be killed in the war of conquest.

He made sure there was no way his room could be entered. Just as he was about to nail fast the bolt that held the door shut, he heard knocking.

Three sharp knocks. Haverford leaped for the bolt, drove it home, hung tensely against the door.

"Who is it?" he asked.

"Mrs. Kelley," came the reply.

He almost fainted from relief. He had expected the aliens—and it was only the landlady. Cautiously, he threw open the door.

"Yes?"

"Have you heard, Mr. Haverford? About the invasion, I mean?"

"Yes, I've heard. What of it?"

"I just thought I'd tell you," she said, shrugging. "I know you don't go out much or read the papers, and I thought maybe—"

"I've heard over the radio," he told her stiffly. "Is there anything else I can do for you?"

"No—not at all."

"Very well, then. If anyone comes to see me, you can tell them I'm not looking for visitors."

"Yes, Mr. Haverford."

She disappeared into the darkness of the corridor. Haverford slammed the door, shot the bolt home, nailed it fast. So far as the outside world was concerned, he was as good as dead.

He set to work sealing himself in.

Two days passed—two days in which gradually, one by one, his contacts here and there over the globe were silenced. Bentham had gone first, then Bartirone. His two Japanese friends were gone now too; the Orient was overrun by the invaders. South America as well.

Word was coming from the States of alien advances. New York was in Lanthaii hands, and no broadcasts were being made from there. The United Nations delegates had fled to an unnamed city and were continuing to talk—to discuss the situation, no doubt, Haverford thought bitterly.

But talk would do no good. Soon the entire world would be in alien hands, and there would be no stopping them. None at all.

Texas went. Oregon. The aliens were obviously working their way toward the center of North America: so far Chicago had reported no alien attacks, but United States forces in the seacoast states had been driven back.

Haverford ate his frozen foods sparingly, and spent long hours at the radio.

One by one his contacts were snuffed out. He ran down the lists in his code book, calling people he hadn't buzzed in years, just trying to hear human voices again.

"Come in, W3XFA. Come in, W3XFA."

No answer. None at all.

The aliens held all of Asia, most of Europe; he got a brief response from Belgium on the third day, but was unable to pick up the signal an hour later. An underground worker in an Iron Curtain country called him that afternoon—and then he went. The marauders from space covered the globe.

Haverford looked at his map. They were working in an ever-tightening ring. Soon they would be in Chicago. Then the strength of his improvised fortress would be sorely tested.

By the fourth day, he was down to just one contact—a man in upper Illinois, a ham operator out of a Chicago suburb.

"You there, Haverford?"

"I'm here. What do you hear?"

"Nothing. The aliens are everywhere. I can see them from my window, swarming in the streets. They've won, all right. Mankind is defeated."

"You can see them, eh? Must be a ghastly sight." Haverford's own window faced the back.

"It is. There must be millions of the ugly beasts, and not a human being in sight. Haverford, who ever expected it would come like this?"

"No one did. No one ever dreamed of it."

"They must breed fantastically rapidly if they can send an invasion force of this size. Imagine it, Haverford—a living tide of Lanthaii spilling out from their home world, covering all of the universe and—"

"Yes? I hear you," Haverford said.

"Something outside my door. It's them, Haverford! It's them!"

The set went dead. Haverford stared dully at it for a moment, then turned it off. There was no one else to talk to. He was alone.

He was the last survivor. Unless there was someone else, cowering in a skyscraper basement somewhere, hiding in a thick field of corn—

But the Lanthaii were methodical killers. They had set out to exterminate the human race, and—

Haverford stiffened. What was that scrabbling, scratching noise in the hall? It sounded like—

He knew what it was. The Lanthaii were coming. They were wiping out the stragglers now, the few like Haverford who had remained alive. They were wiping the Earth clean of life, leaving it bare and ready for them.

The scraping at the door grew louder. The bolt strained; the hinges started to give. Haverford watched coldly, knowing that he hadn't done the job well enough. They were going to be able to get through.

A dark line appeared down the center of his door. It began to crack. It yielded.

Haverford turned frantically to his radio set, desperately sending out a call for help. But of course nobody heard him, nobody answered. He was alone and he knew it. Except for them.

He wheeled to face them, to go down fighting. He looked in horror at them—insects—huge, ugly, and alien. They came on. He backed to the wall. And in the last moment as time seemed to stand still he became aware of an insignificant detail, laughable, yet tragically ironic. A fly buzzed around his head. An earth fly. A pitiful creature, a nothing—an insect.

The fly lighted on the floor a few feet ahead of him, crawling slowly toward the alien horde pouring through the door. And the aliens broke their ranks, passing around the fly, almost respectfully, he thought. Or was it paternally?...

Then they reached him.