Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from Astounding Stories March 1933. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
He picked Sylva up in his arms and ran madly.
Invasion
By Murray Leinster
It was August 19, 2037. The United Nations was just fifty years old.Televisors were still monochromatic. The Nidics had just won the WorldSeries in Prague. Com-Pub observatories were publishing elaboratefigures on moving specks in space which they considered to be Martianspaceships on their way to Earth, but which United Nations astronomerscould not discover at all. Women were using gilt lipsticks that year.Heat-induction motors were still considered efficient prime movers.
Thorn Hard was a high-level flier for the Pacific Watch. Bathyletiswas the most prominent of nationally advertised diseases, and was tobe cured by RO-17, "The Foundation of Personal Charm." Somebody namedNirdlinger was President of the United Nations, and somebody elsenamed Krassin was Commissar of Commissars for the Com-Pubs. Newspaperswere printing flat pictures in three colors only, and deploring thehigh cost of stereoscopic plates. And ... Thorn Hard was a high-levelflier for the Pacific Watch.
That is the essential point, of course—Thorn Hard's work with theWatch. His job was, officially, hanging somewhere above thetwenty-thousand-foot level with his detector-screens out, listeningfor unauthorized traffic. And, the normal state of affairs between theCom-Pubs and the United Nations being one of highly armed truce,"unauthorized traffic" meant nothing more or less than spies.
But on August 19th, 2037, Thorn Hard was off duty. Decidedly so. Hewas sitting on top of Mount Wendel, in the Rockies; he had aravishingly pretty girl sitting on the same rock with him, and he waslooking at the sunset. The plane behind him was an official Watchplane, which civilians are never supposed to catch a glimpse of. Ithad brought Thorn Hard and Sylva West to this spot. It waited now,half-hidden by a spur of age-eroded rock, to take them back tocivilization again. Its G.C. (General Communication) phone mutteredoccasionally like the voice of conscience.
The colors of the mountain changed and blended. The sky to westwardwas a glory of a myriad colors. Man and girl, high above the world,sat with the rosy glow of dying sunlight in their faces and watchedthe colors fade and shift into other colors and patterns even moreexquisite. Their hands touched. They looked at each other. Theysmiled queerly, as people smile who are in love or otherwise not quitesane. They moved inevitably closer....
And then the G.C. phone barked raucously:
"All Watch planes attention! Urgent! Extreme high-level trafficreported seven-ten line bound due east, speed over one thousand. AllWatch planes put out all detectors and use extra vigilance. Note: thespeed, course, and time of report of this traffic checks with Com-Pubobservations of moving objects approaching Eart