The Things

Back Cover Text They came not in spaceships of flying saucers, but in microscopic spores drifting through the infinitude of space. 100 billion stars, 100 billion solar systems in SB galaxies like our own milky way galaxy. Why did they have to come to our solar system? Somehow they made it past the powerful gravitational fields of the huge frozen outer planets Neptune, Uranus, Saturn, and Jupiter. They made it through the asteroid belt. They avoided being burnt up on Venus, Mercury, or on the sun. Somehow they manage to land on the only planet in the solar system teeming with life - our planet - Earth. Of all the planets, moons and asteroids in our solar system, why did they come here? They were monstrous, hideous, snakelike, vinelike parasite things that attacked, entered, possessed, then duplicated the bodies of the terrestrial life forms. We humans are terrestrial life forms. Dr. Fugate discovered the alien things, but no one believed him. Now twenty years later those alien things live on and walk among us. Dr. Fugate made one very bad mistake. He reported the things to the government. He trusted the government and he should have known better. The United States government is secretly cooperating with those alien things and the President of The United States is probably one of those things! Now, twenty years later vast numbers of those alien things live and walk among us, and their numbers are increasing. Now Dr. Fugate is desperately trying to find a way to combat the alien things and save the world again. But how? It's too late! And he's too old and too sick, both physically and mentally. He has a bad heart, and he has a bad case of arthritis, and he's depressed. And worst of all he's crazy! He's paranoid schizophrenic. He sees and hears things that do not exist! The alien things send assassination teams against Dr. Fugate, because he knows something that can be used against them. Dr. Fugate realizes that, but he has forgotten what it is. He believes that the answer might lie in the small, now deserted town in Western Kentucky where he first discovered the alien things. Somehow, he will have to return to Kentucky. And he is sure that the alien things will be waiting there, for him.