Patrick Fahy

“ The aliens had gone by then, only a few shining metal huts in the Siberian tundra giving mute evidence that they had been anything other than a nightmare.
It had seemed exactly like that. A nightmare in which all of Earth stood helpless, unable to resist or flee, while the obscene shapes slithered and flopped over all her green fields and fair cities. And the awakening had not brought the reassurance that it had all been a bad dream. That if it had happened in reality, the people of Earth would have been capable of dealing with the terrible menace. ”

“ When the lion had exhausted his atomic armor and proud science against the invincible and immortal invaders of Earth—for they could not be killed by any means—the mouse attacked and vanquished them.
The mouse, the lowest form of life: the fungoids, the air of Earth swarming with millions of their spores, attacked the monstrous bodies, grew and entwined within the gray convolutions that were their brain centers. And as the tiny thread-roots probed and tightened, the aliens screamed soundlessly. ”

“ The aliens had not sought revenge because their minds were totally occupied with saving themselves. The stricken ones had simply lost the power.
The knowledge was useless to him. There was no way they could attack his mind without his knowing it.
Possibly they could steal away his consciousness by drugging or bludgeoning, but it would be racial suicide to attempt it. In the split moment of realization he would kill every human being on Earth. There would be nobody left to operate on his brain, to make him a mindless, powerless idiot for the rest of time. ”