Not Only Dead Men

In this last tale from the Immediate Past, some sort of saurian visitants are in trouble and land their spaceship on Earth, near a whaling vessel peacefully pursuing its maritime affairs. The spaceship is fleeing from another sort of alien, a true monster that is a threat to both human and saurian.

The solution to this fantastic three-way struggle is one that—in the final paragraph or so of the story—provides one with a dizzying expansion of horizon that suddenly becomes Galaxy-wide in scope. Curiously enough, this enormous change is somehow comforting to the human animal, who until now has felt his bitter aloneness in the Cosmos.

For we are not alone, this story says; we are not alone. . . .