The World at Bay

No one believed Professor Elrick of the London Radar Research Laboratory when he announced in 1977 that Earth was in imminent danger of attack. Ever since his discovery of the dark star, Nero, the Professor and his young assistant, Jim Shannon, had studied the planet and its satellites through the radaroscope with a growing sense of impending doom. There seemed to be positive proof that the third planet, Poppea, had a civilization which was technologically far more advanced than Earth's! The grim truth of the Professor's warning came upon an unprepared world with a frightful concussion that seemed to rock the planet in its orbit. The space fleet from Poppea had hit Earth's atmosphere! When the English government realized the dire circumstances, the Home Guard was called out, the ack-ack guns manned and plans drawn up for London's evacuation. But the measures that saved the heroic island during World War II proved ineffective against the grotesque Poppeans. Gray-skinned, horny-limbed, they landed in impregnable space ships, releasing bacteria-laden white powder.