Beware, the Usurpers!

I lay in the warm bed and for a long time I tried to think of something that I knew I should recall, and at last, after hours of waking and dozing and waking again, I had it; it...

Ten days later they took off the bandages. The doctor had changed them and examined my eyes a number of times, but always in what was to me total darkness; I believe he used som...

We went into the deserted hall of Exeter Castle. "Look, Colonel," I said, "will you tell them about this? They'll be upstairs. Tell 'em that it works, that I can see as Jerry Wo...

"I don't see any other way to begin. We've been scratching for a plan ever since we first heard of the usurpers; and nobody's come up with one, for the good reason that we have...

We stood at the bar of a dingy little pub on the outskirts of the dingy little district of Seven Dials. Geoff, who was learning to orient himself by sounds, heard the clunk of h...

Safe in our rooms, with Johnson sitting, very unlike a waiter, behind a bottle of brandy and a tray of sandwiches, and Geoff lying on the Chesterfield smoking a pipe he could no...

Packing a few shirts and such in a Gladstone bag, I left London in the black Jaguar, ostensibly on a casual motoring jaunt. I headed up through the East Anglian Heights, stoppin...

It was a mean street, one of the meanest in the whole city. The moon was vivid, and straight overhead, so that my shadow lay in a black little pool around my feet. I sought a da...

I did not take the Jaguar into Birmingham proper; I put her into a half-smashed, bombed-out old building I found quite by chance some few miles out of the city, and prayed that...

We went, taking along a bottle of gin for medicinal purposes. I sat him down in the dilapidated rocking chair, in my bedroom and, staring into his brown face intently, said, "I'...

I walked out of Birmingham alone, just before noon, heading for the bombed-out old building in which I had left the Jaguar, with my Gladstone bag locked in her dickey, or rumble...

It is a hundred and fifteen or twenty miles from Birmingham to London. Having gambled the fate of the world on a silly trick, and won back my two-seater from the very hands of t...

It was grand to see my half-dozen sub rosa crusaders gathered together again, sitting expectantly on sofas and chairs in Alec's room, watching me with friendship and love. What...

We ate a noble meal, sat long over the port, and came out into a deep July night canopied with a velvet turquoise sky in which the full moon was riding high. We began to stroll...

At three o'clock or thereabouts, there was a knock at the door. We all "stared at each other with a wild surmise," and then Colonel Bedford resolutely flung it open. I was sitti...

After three or four minutes of stuffing useful things into our pockets and a couple of overnight bags, we went downstairs to the ground floor; turning toward the back door, we r...

It was dark when we passed through Exeter Parva. So far as we could tell, there had been no pursuit; nevertheless I felt nervous and on edge, remembering what titanic forces wer...

Surprisingly, we all slept very well that night. Each of us (save Geoff and Marion) took an hour and a half at sentry-go, roaming through the monstrous old place peering out of...

Marion and the doctor roamed the upper floor, watching developments from the windows; when the first rush came, they were to fire down on the enemies' heads. Geoff was ensconced...

The aliens who ringed the castle did not attack in force: but they maintained a kind of sullen, dangerous watchfulness over the place, and every time one of us showed himself at...

Behind me I heard firing start up again, though not with any great volume. Below me as I leaned out of the window I saw a number of usurpers come running out of the broken door...

There were sixteen of them left--sixteen out of two hundred and fifty. No wonder the castle's great hall was swimming with blood! No wonder we all looked like red Indians! "Who'...

A week had gone by. The seven of us sat over our dessert in London's finest dining room: Arold Smiff well-scrubbed and ill at ease, Geoff cheerful as ever. Alec busy savoring th...

(About the robots that they left behind, my hunch was right; for they are learning to take care of themselves, to walk and speak and act decently, and many have even begun to re...