question:  Who were the horde members?
context: They were something more—and something less—they were, in short, humanity's hopes for survival! She seemed to be restless to end her fool's errand here, two hundred light years from the waiting hordes on Earth. The starlanes between Earth and her potential colonies were rough on the men who traveled them now. They looked like overgrown fireballs, but seemed to have an almost sentient curiosity about anything moving on the ground. Earth couldn't turn out enough starmen in the schools, so promising kids were being shipped out for training as cadets on their twelfth birthday. They were ugly enough, looking like insects in spite of their internal skeletons, with anywhere from four to twelve legs each on their segmented bodies. But something had happened to the exploration party fifteen years back, and to the more recent ship under Hennessy that was sent to check up. Even the deep gorge where they'd found Hennessy's carefully buried ship was completely hidden by the fog. There were three of the blobs dancing about over the grazing animals now, as they often seemed to do. Earth had ordered him to detour here, after leaving his load of deep-sleep stored colonists on Official World 71, to check on any sign of Hennessy. Now the three were streaking at fantastic speed to a spot near the ship, to hover excitedly above something that moved there. Under the dancing blobs, a horde of things was heading for the cadets. Shaggy heads, brute bodies vaguely man-like! One seemed to be almost eight feet tall, leading the others directly toward the spacesuited cadets. There was a momentary halt, and then the leader lifted one arm, as if motioning the others forward. One, at the front, was stuttering into life, and Gwayne dashed for it as the exit port slid back. Then Gwayne spotted them; surrounded by the menacing horde. The creatures dived downward into lower ground, beginning to disappear into the mists. Then it cleared to show the mob of creatures doubling back on their own trail to confuse the pursuers.
output:  Hennessy’s crew and the children of the exploring party
options:  Angry aliens  Aliens pretending to be Hennessy’s crew and the children of the exploring party  Lonely aliens  Hennessy’s crew and the children of the exploring party