"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.
"It is that which in my opinion, accounts for this trawling from above. It may be that for centuries, while we have pondered on the planets and stars, ships from those planets and stars have been coming and going far above us, filled with creatures who have evolved in space as we have evolved in air and fish have evolved in water. We would know no more, dream no more, of the existence of those space-ships than the creatures at the seas' bottoms know of the great liners going and coming far above them.
"But suppose some of these beings, possessing space-ships, become curious as to what lies at the bottom of this air-ocean of ours. They could not venture down into it. What would they do? 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.
"I believe that is what is now going on. 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!
"And make no mistake! 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."
It seems unnecessary to describe the turmoil that was aroused by this startling statement of Dr. 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? The idea was too humorous. The public's indignation dissolved into laughter.
The Third
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.