Edmond Hamilton

“ These beings, who may be infinitely beyond us in intelligence and science, and who are undoubtedly completely different from us in every respect, care naught for the wreck and ruin they may be causing with their trawls. Any terror they might loose upon us would mean nothing to them. For to them, high above, we at the air-ocean's bottom are no more than the blind, strange creatures that we fish from our own watery seas' depths are to us. ”

“ Far above us, at the surface of our atmospheric ocean, there are cruising ships or a ship, which we cannot see, holding beings from some great planet of whose nature we dare not guess. They cannot descend into our atmosphere but they are letting down their great trawl from above to drag the bottom, which is earth's surface, to see what lies upon it! ”

“ The world at large did not share those doubts. There was wide-spread horror over the Mannlertown catastrophe, but it was the rather abstract horror aroused by some unprecedented accident of which the very strangeness somehow dulls the edge of reality. And none seemed to doubt the dictum of the scientists concerning the gigantic missile from space that had shot into the earth's atmosphere grazing its surface and then shooting out again. ”

“ Would they not let their ships cruise to and fro on the surface of the air-ocean, and let down great trawls to drag the bottom far below, just as we men trawl an ocean into whose depths we dare not descend. ”

“ So there is a great air-ocean, and at its bottom we live. The pressure at its bottom is tremendous, even as the ocean's pressure is tremendous near its bottom. But like the creatures that live far down in the sea's depths, we are so habituated to that pressure, and our bodies braced internally against it, that we do not feel it. If we were to be taken into empty space our bodies would explode as would fish taken from the sea's depths. And in the same way, were creatures accustomed to empty space to enter our atmospheric ocean they would undoubtedly be crushed to death by its pressure. ”

“ Howard's. It is hard to expose the wilful blindness of a world that now looks back upon that blindness with something like terror.
Dr. Howard's theory became the target of every form and degree of criticism during the ensuing days. His idea was susceptible to ridicule, and the scientists whose meteor-theory he had questioned seized the opportunity. Did we live at the bottom of an ocean, an atmospheric sea? Were we merely crawling things upon earth's surface, to be fished for and examined curiously by unimaginable beings and vessels far above? ”

“ This fifth blow took place at one of New York's residential suburbs, Scarsdale, and while it took a toll of life exceeded only by that of the Chicago horror, it was different from the others in one odd respect. The great trawl seemed to descend and gouge along the earth with somewhat smaller speed than in the other instances, and was seen very plainly and even escaped from in time by some people in the vicinity.
It was described as being very like the familiar steam-shovel scoop in shape, but of a glittering metal that all agreed was not native to the earth. ”

“ Just as we look upon fish as inhabitants of the ocean, so some beings from outer space may look upon us as being inhabitants at the bottom of an atmospheric ocean.
Such beings, possibly gigantic in size and power, coming in the vicinity of our earth, may, for purposes of curiosity or exploration, decide to discover what we queer beings are, and what this little planet is that we inhabit. ”

“ This warning, surely, we are heeding; yet even with the loss of that old false security, we do not face the future with fear. Whatever beings of power the universe holds, we realize now that we too are beings of power. We have fought for our planet against the space visitors and have held it. As a race we have come of age. ”

“ We human beings do not think of ourselves as living at the bottom of an ocean; but a little reflection will show that to be the case. The atmosphere is an ocean, fifty to sixty miles in depth, covering all the earth. Our knowledge of it indicates that, becoming more and more rarefied, it has a fairly definite surface or limit a few score miles above us, beyond which lies empty space. ”

“ Howard strove above all else to keep the manufacture of the air-mines going. Under his urgent pleadings the governments of earth used their troops to protect and continue that manufacture as well as might be, instead of using them to suppress the growing riots. The production of the globes leaped again to almost a thousand a day. Each day saw them whizzing up to join the thousands upon thousands already floating at the surface of earth's atmosphere. ”

“ In the same way, a mine attached to a great globe in which is a complete vacuum would rush up through our air-ocean!
"We can construct those globes of the strongest and lightest material known—steelite. As you all know, steelite is the recently devised metal that has immensely greater strength than steel but the merest fraction of its weight. The tensile strength of a substance, its hardness and other qualities, depend directly upon the arrangement of its molecules. ”

“ A forty-foot globe of steelite can be made, with a charge of explosives of terrific power attached to it that will detonate when the globe is touched. This done, all air is exhausted from the hollow globe by great pumps, until the vacuum inside it is almost complete. The enormous strength of the steelite shell prevents its being crushed by the atmosphere's pressure as an ordinary steel shell would be. ”

“ He stated that he had studied closely the scene of the first cataclysm, and had derived therefrom a theory as to its cause which he believed was substantiated by the second occurrence.
"No one who has considered carefully the Mannlertown catastrophe," he stated, "can credit for a moment the idea that it was caused by a meteor. Had a great meteor actually grazed the earth that night, the sky for a thousand miles would have flamed with its passing, even had it been able to pass out of earth's grip after entering it, which is an incredible hypothesis. ”

“ Howard's reports showed that on the 22nd but four hundred air-mines had been released in comparison with the twelve hundred released but three days before.
Mankind was giving up the battle in despair!
Panic was breaking loose over the earth, a panic and dread that nothing could restrain. Toiling thousands quit their work upon the manufacture of air-mines in hopeless despair. Mobs began to appear in the streets of London, New York, Shanghai, and Sydney, and rioting became general. The world was going mad with fear! ”

“ We must send up thousands of great mines constructed so that they will float up to the surface of earth's atmospheric ocean and remain near that surface where, we know, the ships of these space-beings are coming and going. ”

“ Released, the vacuum globe with its deadly charge will shoot up through the atmosphere with terrific speed. Its lightness for its size will be such that it will not halt until it floats on the very surface of our atmosphere. ”

“ I shook my head, for I could see that already many, tired of the ceaseless work, were crying out that the scheme was a crazy one. Others had begun to say that whatever space-visitors had been above had already departed. But these statements were swiftly silenced on the next morning, that of the 16th, by the fifth catastrophe. ”

“ We must accept, then, the theory that on two different occasions within the last few days a giant scoop of some sort has been lowered from outer space, dragged across the earth's surface for several miles with incredible speed, and then jerked upward again, taking with it the matter it has cut from the earth! ”

“ It may even be that our present peace is only a respite and that we have repelled the first attack of these unknown beings only to have them coming again upon us in infinitely greater numbers. Sometime in the future, I think, man will have advanced in knowledge to the point where he too will venture into the void, will be able to meet his attackers face to face. ”

“ A very conceivable fact was brought forward to demolish the "ridiculous" theory. If space-ships were passing to and fro constantly outside our atmosphere, why had they never been glimpsed by astronomers? Dr. Howard replied promptly to this by giving a list of unknown objects sighted by astronomers in space in the last decades, by Sporer and Wartman and Grek and Ferguson and Loomis, and scores upon scores of others, objects seen against the sun or moon or planets, and which had never been identified.
There was no more criticism on that score, but a side-issue was raised. Dr. ”

“ By the recent discoveries of Browning we know that when steelite is synthetically made the arrangement of the molecules is such that it forms an extremely strong and rigid substance. This gives the material unheard-of strength with unheard-of lightness. ”

“ You alone among scientists have comprehended the nature of this menace. We have called you here to suggest some method of meeting it."
Dr. Howard was silent and thoughtful for a moment, gazing from one to another of the anxious faces at the table, then the President spoke again.
"You must be well aware of what the result of continued catastrophes of this sort will be. Already the wildest panic has gripped the section around Chicago, and the rest of the country. The whole world in fact is trembling upon the brink of a similar panic. The very uncertainty of these disasters encourages panic. ”

“ That such beings may have actually come near the earth, is asserted forcibly by Charles Fort in his amazing book, "The Book of the Damned," in which he brings forward evidence to show that over a period of the past 150 years there has been evidence of strange extra-terrestrial activity, presumably from sentient beings. ”