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eBook Category: Science Fiction/Suspense/Thriller
eBook Description: 1950s Pulp Alien Invasion Shocker Too Intense for Book Publication! When The Usurpers first appeared in the magazine Imagination during the early 1950s Nebula and Hugo Award winner Robert Silverberg wrote that Geoff St. Reynard's work is "off the beaten track. The concept of aliens masquerading in human form is not at all new but this story is different and powerful, a minor SF classic." Considered too strong by the hard and softcover SF book publishers of the era, The Usurpers has never been republished in the half-century since. Now you can read this SF classic and judge for yourself. Here is a story that is bound to remind you of Night of the Living Dead and The Thing. Science fiction often speculated about whether aliens might walk the Earth masquerading as human beings. Jerry Wolfe discovered it was true! He had seen the aliens in their actual form! He must be high, you say. Don't laugh! Your best friend is one of them! Discover what happens when a handful of brave men and women decide to pit their puny forces against the might of Earth's secret masters and the governments they control! You will find romance, action, and daring speculation in this lost classic, in its first ever book publication!

eBook Publisher: Renaissance E Books/PAGETURNER, Published: 2005
Fictionwise Release Date: August 2005

10 Reader Ratings: Great Good OK Poor

Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [929 KB], eReader (PDB) [186 KB], Palm Doc (PDB) [166 KB], Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [147 KB], Microsoft Reader (LIT) [184 KB] - PocketPC 1.0+ Compatible, Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [213 KB], hiebook (KML) [417 KB], Sony Reader (LRF) [265 KB], iSilo (PDB) [136 KB], Mobipocket (PRC) [171 KB], Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [230 KB], OEBFF Format (IMP) [216 KB]
Words: 49942
Reading time: 142-199 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Adobe Acrobat (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED

"A needy, hollow-eyed, sharp-looking wretch,

A living-deadman."

-The Comedy Of Errors

"BRANDY IN the library, Johnson," I said to the waiter.

I walked through the crowded dining room--it was a Saturday and everyone was in town--and through the huge "mausoleum" with its dozing old men in their deep armchairs dreaming about happier, younger days, and into the library. Selecting one comfortable end of the maroon Breather Chesterfield, I sank into its tool depths and wriggled myself into a position from which I could stare at the terrible scar that runs through the east wall, right down from ceiling through bookshelves to cracked marble floor.

I have a sneaking affection for that dreadful eyesore. It was made by a dud bomb, just a little fellow, who burrowed his way down through our club in the darkest days of the London blitz--and although he utterly spoiled our sets of Dickens, Scott, Meredith, and Hardy, and pulverized seven volumes of The Decline And Fall, not to mention obliterating a first edition of one of Keats' things, I forget which--well, I shall be sorry indeed when the Gloucester Club finally gets around to repairing the damage he did. The ugly swath he cut reminds me of the War, you, see. Oh, I've no nostalgia for it! As any normal man must, I loathe and abominate war. But in those days I had a dozen friends who are gone now; I had comradeship and a high courageous good humor all about me; and I had my left arm, instead of a sleeve which I must pin to the front of my coat every morning. When I look at the scar of the little dud, I can hear the ghosts, of laughter and of jests cracked in the face of Hell's own fire; I can hear Johnny Kildane's voice saying, "Ruddy good barrage the Huns are gettin' tonight" and Art Millan's answering drawl, "Please Jove they'll hang about till we can get up there on their tails!"

I suppose it's much the same sort of thing those old duffers in the "mausoleum" remember as they gaze like so many mummies at the huge portraits of generals and admirals who were already legends when I was born. From the expressions on some of their withered faces, I imagine they can even smell the powder and the smoke drifting over the battlefields ... Lord! We old soldiers are a dreamy lot.

Johnson drifted in bearing a great breather glass with a wee puddle of brandy in the bottom. I warmed it with my hands and sighed a little as I thought about--what I thought about.

And then Jerry Wolfe came into the library, or at any rate, his ghost did. He, or it, came straight over and dropped down on the Chesterfield beside me, and as well as I could with one arm I pressed him or it, to my chest and made loud noises of disbelief.

I say "ghost" for two reasons: one, I had thought he was long since dead and buried; and two, he looked as though he'd just taken out a long-term lease on a marble tomb and was about to move in. Haggard, greying at the temples, his eyes sunken, his suit torn and dirty, he, looked positively ghastly.

Nevertheless, it was really old Jerry, and I beat him on the back and crowed happily, much to the horror of the older members seated near us.

"Wolfe, you flea-covered sun-baked, lousy old relic of a bygone day, how the flaming hell are you?" I yammered.

The ghost grinned, with just a faint touch of the old Wolfe gaiety, and said, with more feeling than I'd ever heard put into the words before, "Alec, old horse, you are a sight for sore eyes. But please don't advertise my presence so loudly, will you?"

Johnson materialized at my elbow. I gave him the high sign for a bottle of Scotch, and with a grave nod he faded again. "Jerry," I said happily, "I thought you'd got it years ago."

He gave me a lopsided and feeble imitation of the justly celebrated Wolfe smile, and said, "Well, it hasn't been years, but I've had it."

Then before I could hem and haw and ask him what he meant, Johnson came up, apparently through the floor, with a bottle of the best and a siphon on a tray with a couple of glasses. I splashed about five fingers into a glass, dampened it slightly with soda, and passed it to Wolfe, who looked as if he needed it. When we were alone again, he leaned back against the maroon leather and stared into his drink as though it had been a crystal ball.

"Alec Talbot, you one-armed paperhanger, you are a veritable sight for sore eyes," he repeated. Then he took a sip that would have drowned a medium-sized rhinoceros, and was silent.

He was still a handsome big man, was Jerry Wolfe, as he sprawled there on the Chesterfield beside me in his worn blue suit; lean, just-tanned-enough face, small mustache, long, rangy body, he looked precisely like the man I had last seen at Dunkirk, years upon years ago ... and yet there were the differences. His eyes, for one thing. His grey hair. And his face was somber--not exactly sullen, but without the faintest trace of happiness in it. I leaned closer and squinted at his sunken eyes. They were a cool ice-blue, as they'd always been, and all around them were little short dashes of pink-white scars, like tiny hen-tracks, running clean across the bridge of his nose and scattering out from his eyes toward the ears.

"You've caught one," I said.

Ruefully he touched a finger to his eyebrow. "We were playing the silly-mad asses with some old Tower muskets we'd found in a secret cache near Peshawar," he said. "It was shortly before we vacated India. We were almost the last to leave. Some fool--you know him, and I won't tell you his name--let off one of them at a Rampur hound that was lolloping past. We were all fairly tight, so there was some excuse. Well, I was standing just beside it, the muzzle of the musket I mean, and the flash took me spang across the eyes. They were in a bandage when we left India. The medico took them off on the boat comin' back."

"So you've been in India," I said.

"Five years."

"I'd thought you were dead. Most of our old gang is, you know."

"All the better for them," said he cryptically. "Pour me another, will you, Alec?"

I sloshed him out another half-pint, put a spray of soda on the surface. "I don't know," I said reflectively. "I've lost a flipper, but I'm glad to be around even so. The sun still shines once a month."

"Listen to me, old hound," said Jerry Wolfe, fixing me with those sunken, scarred, hypnotic ice-blue eyes. "I'm going to tell you my yarn, must tell it to you, and when I'm done you'll either curse me for a maniac, or damn me for telling you what no man on the earth should know. I don't want to tell you, you understand, but I must tell someone, as the man always says before he spiels his little speech; and you're the first and only candidate I've met whom I could tell. And it's vital. So frightfully vital."

"Haven't you seen any of our boys at all 'til now?" I asked, feeling pretty uncomfortable at his queer words. "Kinkaid's in town somewhere, and--"

"Kinkaid," said Jerry, looking as if the name put a dark brown taste into his mouth. "I've seen him. Couldn't very well tell him."

"Well, go ahead, old chap," I said, thinking it couldn't be as bad by half as he was looking, and that it was probably some deep dark sin that he'd brooded on till it got out of proportion. "Let's have it."

"All right, Alec, and forgive me in advance, will you?"

"For what, Jerry?"

"For spoiling your sleep for the rest of your life," said he, and after another long drink he went on to tell me his story.