That message, short as it was, was sufficient to cause the last stable forms of life in England to break up, melt away. Those crowds of people who had remained, hoping against hope, now fought their way madly toward the seacoast to escape, to life. Over those fleeing hordes ran a shout, a threat, a warning. “They are coming!” They called it to one another, autos racing through country villages shouted it, the mobs on the roads voiced it fearfully, soldiers resting by the wayside repeated it thoughtfully, looking toward the north. Over England, over Europe, over the whole world it ran, swiftly, terribly:

“They are coming! They are coming!”

-7-

And now the last great hour of Earth’s destiny was swiftly closing down, with that massing of the invaders above the Scottish hills. Crouched beside the window of the cabin, Hunter watched them pouring up from the pit, from their atomic world, masses of tiny disks that grew with inconceivable speed to full size, that moved away and made room for the others to rise. Up, up, up, gigantic masses of the disks, countless hordes of the monsters they held, a vast force of invaders before which all human resistance would be vain, he knew.

After that night of the invaders’ first attack on Earth, that night of his imprisoning in the cabin, he had watched through a day and another night and now well into this day, except for a few hours of sleep that he had snatched. Watching, waiting, fearful of the ever-present guardian disks above, like them waiting, waiting. And now this flood of the disks, this up-springing of all their mighty forces. As he gazed at them now, floating up from the pit in dark, endless masses, it seemed to him that the malignant spirit of Powell laughed again beside him.

Boom! Boom! Boom! The rumbling thunder of the expanding disks seemed to him like the sound of a mighty bell, tolling the end of the reign of man. Boom! Boom! Boom!

He glanced up, saw the hundreds of disks above spreading out in a long double line, in an irresistible formation, awaiting the others that were still rising from the pit. But as Hunter watched them circling and forming above, the sky seemed to darken suddenly, the sunlight to be cut off, to vanish. And along the line of invaders above ran a quick start, a sudden nervous shock.