Dr. Howard and I stared at the two giant geysers of white vapor. It was victory, we knew. Victory, whether partial or complete, over the space-visitors who had held earth beneath such a spell of terror. Far above, cruising on the surface of earth's atmosphere, two of their mighty vessels had struck a field of the air-mines we had released, had crashed in shattering annihilation through the dark night!
Victory! Yet it was not as I had dreamed the victory would be. I had thought of a wild climax after a terrific battle. It was so strange, so different. Just Dr. Howard and I and the khaki-clad soldiers and the wondering villagers, standing there in the soft light of the Georgia dawn, in the quiet fields with only the sound of birds about us, gazing so quietly toward those twin gigantic steam-columns. Then realization of what it meant struck through to my terror-numbed heart. Victory, whether partial or complete—it meant the dissolution of the spell of horror that had gripped earth, the gathering of earth's forces to carry on the struggle, if need be, against foes whom we now knew were not invincible. Victory, and in a few moments the word of it would be flashing out around the earth....
Our victory proved complete after all, at least in so far as it marked the end of the terrible trawlings. Whether the two huge space-ships that had met their end over Georgia were the only ones to come to earth, or whether there were others that were forced to flee by this destruction of their fellows, we cannot say. We know only that after the fall of those two through the night, the colossal trawls did not descend again. But for days, weeks, and months, the world waited in anxious dread for their reappearance.
"We Have Come of Age"
Even now that dread has not disappeared, wholly. For never again will earth seem to us the isolated globe that it once was. We know now that there are ships that come and go out there in the great void, ships from some near or far planet. They came once to visit the earth, to trawl in its air-ocean with their giant scoops, and they may come again. We cannot say that they will not. We can but pray that they will not.
Of their nature we know no more than before. Dr. Howard and the greatest scientists of the world have examined with the utmost minuteness the two great metal wrecks in Georgia, but have been able to learn comparatively little from them, so fused into molten metal were they by their plunge down through the atmosphere. The glittering metal of which they were constructed has proved quite strange and impossible to produce on earth. There have been found half-melted instruments or mechanisms in small number, whose purpose we cannot as yet understand.
What of the beings who manned those mighty ships? That is perhaps the greatest question of all, and the most insoluble. A thin coat of strange glistening slime was found on a few parts of the two wrecks not melted. Whether that is all that remains of the space-visitors of those ships, whether their bodies were solid or liquid or even gaseous or merely force emanations, we can offer only theories.
The world has recovered fully from those days of horror, and in recovering has given to Dr. Howard the honors due him. He is beyond all question the greatest figure in the world today and even on myself, as his companion and assistant, some of his fame has fallen. For he is the hero not of any single group or nation or race of men, but of all mankind.
He has used the tremendous influence that is his alone to urge preparation upon the world, preparation for emergencies of a similar nature that may again arise.