Dr. 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.
And yet it seemed all so futile. It was not like striking back at a visible enemy, this frantic manufacture and release of the mines. Men would have been happier by far, I think, had they faced more terrible enemies in the plain light of day. I know that in those last days of an apparently disintegrating world I would have been easier in mind.
"It's a race against time now, Ransome," said Dr. Howard. "We cannot continue the production of air-mines much longer—and civilization is crashing now!"
"But is there no other way?" I cried. "My God, Howard, these air-mines are useless—we've sent up tens of thousands and they can be no more than a sprinkling in the vast extent of the atmosphere's surface. To try some other way—"
"There is no other!" he exclaimed. "Ransome, we must fight it out to the end! The air-mines—they're our one chance!"
"But we can't send up many more," I said. "The rioting in Germany has become so bad that all the factories save two that were making mines there have quit. We've no more than a dozen factories left in Europe and hardly more than that in America!"
"As long as we can release one mine we'll do so!" he declared. "Man's crisis is here—and he's got to have the courage now to fight in the dark against an unknown foe for his existence!"
Somehow Dr. Howard's indomitable will held together in those last days the thread of organization between the factories and their sources of supply, despite the wide-spread outbreaks that were going on. Fewer and fewer were becoming the air-mines released, but still they were being made and sent whizzing upward.
But on the 25th it became apparent to all that our last efforts were flickering out. Then late on that day came news of the tenth trawl. It had descended a hundred miles south of Rio de Janeiro to crash across a plantation with the loss of a score of lives. And hardly had that dread news spread around the earth than came word that the trawl had again flashed down a few hours later to gouge a terrific scar from the side of one of the peaks of the Peruvian Andes.
The end! With the spreading of those two reports it seemed so. For they so deepened the blind and unreasoning fear that had gripped mankind that the production of air-mines all but ceased on that day, only a few dozens continuing to be assembled and released. Panic-mad mobs caused chaos in the greater cities. Every organization of civilization seemed breaking down, and troops called to suppress wild outbreaks fought pitched battles with the mobs.