Way Station

As keeper of the way station, Enoch Wallace was the only human privileged to communicate with the rest of the galaxy. He looked like any other man on Earth, except that he was 124 years old and showed no signs of aging. And his house seemed like any other, though mysteriously impregnable. All was quiet around Enoch's isolated farm - until someone raided the family graveyard and discovered and unknown horror. Neighbors saw Enoch Wallace as an ageless hermit, striding across his untended farm as he had done for over a century, still carrying the gun with which he had served in the Civil War. They must never know that inside his unchanging house, he met and conversed with a host of unimaginable friends from the farthest stars.
More than a hundred years before, an alien being named Ulysses had recruited Enoch as the keeper of Earth's only galactic transfer station. Now Enoch studied the progress of Earth as he tended the tanks where the aliens appeared, and the charts he made indicated that his world was doomed to destruction. His alien friends could only offer help that seemed worse than the dreaded disaster.
Then he discovered the horror that lived across the galaxy . . .

Clifford Simak, winner of Hugo, Nebula, Grand Master, and other science fiction awards, was never more clearly a master of modern SF than in this novel of a simple farmer who bridged the gap between humanity and the stars. This powerfully entertaining and thought-provoking work is one of the all-time great favorites of science fiction.

"This is the story of Enoch Wallace, who fought in the Civil War and returned to the simple house where he was born, in rural Millville, Wisconsin. He still resides there today, but Enoch hasn't aged since the war ended in 1865, and neither has his home, impregnable to any known weapon. For years he has secretly manned a way station for a galactic federation's transit network, acting as Earth's unassuming diplomat to the stars." --Cover