CHAPTER IX.
A LITTLE OFF THE TRACK.
Barbican's mind was now completely at rest at least on one subject. Theoriginal force of the discharge had been great enough to send theProjectile beyond the neutral line. Therefore, there was no longer anydanger of its falling back to the Earth. Therefore, there was no longerany danger of its resting eternally motionless on the point of thecounteracting attractions. The next subject to engage his attention wasthe question: would the Projectile, under the influence of lunarattraction, succeed in reaching its destination?
The only way in which it _could_ succeed was by falling through a spaceof nearly 24,000 miles and then striking the Moon's surface. A mostterrific fall! Even taking the lunar attraction to be only the one-sixthof the Earth's, such a fall was simply bewildering to think of. Thegreatest height to which a balloon ever ascended was seven miles(Glaisher, 1862). Imagine a fall from even that distance! Then imagine afall from a height of four thousand miles!
Yet it was for a fall of this appalling kind on the surface of the Moonthat the travellers had now to prepare themselves. Instead of avoidingit, however, they eagerly desired it and would be very muchdisappointed if they missed it. They had taken the best precautions theycould devise to guard against the terrific shock. These were mainly oftwo kinds: one was intended to counteract as much as possible thefearful results to be expected the instant the Projectile touched thelunar surface; the other, to retard the velocity of the fall itself, andthereby to render it less violent.
The best arrangement of the first kind was certainly Barbican'swater-contrivance for counteracting the shock at starting, which hasbeen so fully described in our former volume. (See _Baltimore Gun Club_,page 353.) But unfortunately it could be no longer employed. Even if thepartitions were in working order, the water--two thousand pounds inweight had been required--was no longer to be had. The little still leftin the tanks was of no account for such a purpose. Besides, they had nota single drop of the precious liquid to spare, for they were as yetanything but sanguine regarding the facility of finding water on theMoon's surface.
Fortunately, however, as the gentle reader may remember, Barbican,besides using water to break the concussion, had provided the movabledisc with stout pillars containing a strong buffing apparatus, intendedto protect it from striking the bottom too violently after thedestruction of the different partitions. These buffers were still good,and, gravity being as yet almost imperceptible, to put them once more inorder and adjust them to the disc was not a difficult task.
The travellers set to work at once and soon accomplished it. Thedifferent pieces were put together readily--a mere matter of bolts andscrews, with plenty of tools to manage them. In a short time therepaired disc rested on its steel buffers, like a table on its legs, orrather like a sofa seat on its springs. The new arrangement was attendedwith at least one disadvantage. The bottom light being covered up, aconvenient view of the Moon's surface could not be had as soon as theyshould begin to fall in a perpendicular descent. This, however, was onlya slight matter, as the side lights would permit the adventurers toenjoy quite as favorable a view of the vast regions of the Moon as isafforded to balloon travellers when looking down on the Earth over thesides of their car.
The disc arrangement was completed in about an hour, but it was not tillpast twelve o'clock before things were restored to their usual order.Barbican then tried to make fresh observations regarding the inclinationof the Projectile; but to his very decided chagrin he found that it hadnot yet turned over sufficiently to commence the perpendicular fall: onthe contrary, it even seemed to be following a curve rather parallelwith that of the lunar disc. The Queen of the Stars now glittered with alight more dazzling than ever, whilst from an opposite part of the skythe glorious King of Day flooded her with his fires.
The situation began to look a little serious.
"Shall we ever get there!" asked the Captain.
"Let us be prepared for getting there, any how," was Barbican's dubiousreply.
"You're a pretty pair of suspenders," said Ardan cheerily (he meant ofcourse doubting hesitators, but his fluent command of English sometimesled him into such solecisms). "Certainly we shall get there--and perhapsa little sooner than will be good for us."
This reply sharply recalled Barbican to the task he had undertaken, andhe now went to work seriously, trying to combine arrangements to breakthe fall. The reader may perhaps remember Ardan's reply to the Captainon the day of the famous meeting in Tampa.
"Your fall would be violent enough," the Captain had urged, "to splinteryou like glass into a thousand fragments."
"And what shall prevent me," had been Ardan's ready reply, "frombreaking my fall by means of counteracting rockets suitably disposed,and let off at the proper time?"
The practical utility of this idea had at once impressed Barbican. Itcould hardly be doubted that powerful rockets, fastened on the outsideto the bottom of the Projectile, could, when discharged, considerablyretard the velocity of the fall by their sturdy recoil. They could burnin a vacuum by means of oxygen furnished by themselves, as powder burnsin the chamber of a gun, or as the volcanoes of the Moon continue theiraction regardless of the absence of a lunar atmosphere.
Barbican had therefore provided himself with rockets enclosed in strongsteel gun barrels, grooved on the outside so that they could be screwedinto corresponding holes already made with much care in the bottom ofthe Projectile. They were just long enough, when flush with the floorinside, to project outside by about six inches. They were twenty innumber, and formed two concentric circles around the dead light. Smallholes in the disc gave admission to the wires by which each of therockets was to be discharged externally by electricity. The whole effectwas therefore to be confined to the outside. The mixtures having beenalready carefully deposited in each barrel, nothing further need be donethan to take away the metallic plugs which had been screwed into thebottom of the Projectile, and replace them by the rockets, every one ofwhich was found to fit its grooved chamber with rigid exactness.
This evidently should have been all done before the disc had beenfinally laid on its springs. But as this had to be lifted up again inorder to reach the bottom of the Projectile, more work was to be donethan was strictly necessary. Though the labor was not very hard,considering that gravity had as yet scarcely made itself felt, M'Nicholland Ardan were not sorry to have their little joke at Barbican'sexpense. The Frenchman began humming
"_Aliquandoque bonus dormitat Homerus,_"
to a tune from _Orphee aux Enfers_, and the Captain said somethingabout the Philadelphia Highway Commissioners who pave a street one day,and tear it up the next to lay the gas pipes. But his friends' humor wasall lost on Barbican, who was so wrapped up in his work that he probablynever heard a word they said.
Towards three o'clock every preparation was made, every possibleprecaution taken, and now our bold adventurers had nothing more to dothan watch and wait.
The Projectile was certainly approaching the Moon. It had by this timeturned over considerably under the influence of attraction, but its ownoriginal motion still followed a decidedly oblique direction. Theconsequence of these two forces might possibly be a tangent, lineapproaching the edge of the Moon's disc. One thing was certain: theProjectile had not yet commenced to fall directly towards her surface;its base, in which its centre of gravity lay, was still turned awayconsiderably from the perpendicular.
Barbican's countenance soon showed perplexity and even alarm. HisProjectile was proving intractable to the laws of gravitation. The_unknown_ was opening out dimly before him, the great boundless unknownof the starry plains. In his pride and confidence as a scientist, he hadflattered himself with having sounded the consequence of every possiblehypothesis regarding the Projectile's ultimate fate: the return to theEarth; the arrival at the Moon; and the motionless dead stop at theneutral point. But here, a new and incomprehensible fourth hypothesis,big with the terrors of the mystic infinite, rose up before hisdisturbed mind, like a
grim and hollow ghost. After a few seconds,however, he looked at it straight in the face without wincing. Hiscompanions showed themselves just as firm. Whether it was science thatemboldened Barbican, his phlegmatic stoicism that propped up theCaptain, or his enthusiastic vivacity that cheered the irrepressibleArdan, I cannot exactly say. But certainly they were all soon talkingover the matter as calmly as you or I would discuss the advisability oftaking a sail on the lake some beautiful evening in July.
Their first remarks were decidedly peculiar and quite characteristic.Other men would have asked themselves where the Projectile was takingthem to. Do you think such a question ever occurred to them? Not a bitof it. They simply began asking each other what could have been thecause of this new and strange state of things.
"Off the track, it appears," observed Ardan. "How's that?"
"My opinion is," answered the Captain, "that the Projectile was notaimed true. Every possible precaution had been taken, I am well aware,but we all know that an inch, a line, even the tenth part of a hair'sbreadth wrong at the start would have sent us thousands of miles off ourcourse by this time."
"What have you to say to that, Barbican?" asked Ardan.
"I don't think there was any error at the start," was the confidentreply; "not even so much as a line! We took too many tests proving theabsolute perpendicularity of the Columbiad, to entertain the slightestdoubt on that subject. Its direction towards the zenith beingincontestable, I don't see why we should not reach the Moon when shecomes to the zenith."
"Perhaps we're behind time," suggested Ardan.
"What have you to say to that, Barbican?" asked the Captain. "You knowthe Cambridge men said the journey had to be done in 97 hours 13 minutesand 20 seconds. That's as much as to say that if we're not up to time weshall miss the Moon."
"Correct," said Barbican. "But we _can't_ be behind time. We started,you know, on December 1st, at 13 minutes and 20 seconds before 11o'clock, and we were to arrive four days later at midnight precisely.To-day is December 5th Gentlemen, please examine your watches. It is nowhalf past three in the afternoon. Eight hours and a half are sufficientto take us to our journey's end. Why should we not arrive there?"
"How about being ahead of time?" asked the Captain.
"Just so!" said Ardan. "You know we have discovered the initial velocityto have been greater than was expected."
"Not at all! not at all!" cried Barbican "A slight excess of velocitywould have done no harm whatever had the direction of the Projectilebeen perfectly true. No. There must have been a digression. We must havebeen switched off!"
"Switched off? By what?" asked both his listeners in one breath.
"I can't tell," said Barbican curtly.
"Well!" said Ardan; "if Barbican can't tell, there is an end to allfurther talk on the subject. We're switched off--that's enough for me.What has done it? I don't care. Where are we going to? I don't care.What is the use of pestering our brains about it? We shall soon findout. We are floating around in space, and we shall end by hauling upsomewhere or other."
But in this indifference Barbican was far from participating. Not thathe was not prepared to meet the future with a bold and manly heart. Itwas his inability to answer his own question that rendered him uneasy.What _had_ switched them off? He would have given worlds for an answer,but his brain sorely puzzled sought one in vain.
In the mean time, the Projectile continued to turn its side rather thanits base towards the Moon; that is, to assume a lateral rather than adirect movement, and this movement was fully participated in by themultitude of the objects that had been thrown outside. Barbican couldeven convince himself by sighting several points on the lunar surface,by this time hardly more than fifteen or eighteen thousand milesdistant, that the velocity of the Projectile instead of accelerating wasbecoming more and more uniform. This was another proof that there wasno perpendicular fall. However, though the original impulsive force wasstill superior to the Moon's attraction, the travellers were evidentlyapproaching the lunar disc, and there was every reason to hope that theywould at last reach a point where, the lunar attraction at last havingthe best of it, a decided fall should be the result.
The three friends, it need hardly be said, continued to make theirobservations with redoubled interest, if redoubled interest werepossible. But with all their care they could as yet determine nothingregarding the topographical details of our radiant satellite. Hersurface still reflected the solar rays too dazzlingly to show the reliefnecessary for satisfactory observation.
Our travellers kept steadily on the watch looking out of the sidelights, till eight o'clock in the evening, by which time the Moon hadgrown so large in their eyes that she covered up fully half the sky. Atthis time the Projectile itself must have looked like a streak of light,reflecting, as it did, the Sun's brilliancy on the one side and theMoon's splendor on the other.
Barbican now took a careful observation and calculated that they couldnot be much more than 2,000 miles from the object of their journey. Thevelocity of the Projectile he calculated to be about 650 feet per secondor 450 miles an hour. They had therefore still plenty of time to reachthe Moon in about four hours. But though the bottom of the Projectilecontinued to turn towards the lunar surface in obedience to the law ofcentripetal force, the centrifugal force was still evidently strongenough to change the path which it followed into some kind of curve, theexact nature of which would be exceedingly difficult to calculate.
The careful observations that Barbican continued to take did not howeverprevent him from endeavoring to solve his difficult problem. What _had_switched them off? The hours passed on, but brought no result. That theadventurers were approaching the Moon was evident, but it was just asevident that they should never reach her. The nearest point theProjectile could ever possibly attain would only be the result of twoopposite forces, the attractive and the repulsive, which, as was nowclear, influenced its motion. Therefore, to land in the Moon was anutter impossibility, and any such idea was to be given up at once andfor ever.
"_Quand meme_! What of it!" cried Ardan; after some moments' silence."We're not to land in the Moon! Well! let us do the next bestthing--pass close enough to discover her secrets!"
But M'Nicholl could not accept the situation so coolly. On the contrary,he decidedly lost his temper, as is occasionally the case with evenphlegmatic men. He muttered an oath or two, but in a voice hardly loudenough to reach Barbican's ear. At last, impatient of further restraint,he burst out:
"Who the deuce cares for her secrets? To the hangman with her secrets!We started to land in the Moon! That's what's got to be done! That Iwant or nothing! Confound the darned thing, I say, whatever it was,whether on the Earth or off it, that shoved us off the track!"
"On the Earth or off it!" cried Barbican, striking his head suddenly;"now I see it! You're right, Captain! Confound the bolide that we metthe first night of our journey!"
"Hey?" cried Ardan.
"What do you mean?" asked M'Nicholl.
"I mean," replied Barbican, with a voice now perfectly calm, and in atone of quiet conviction, "that our deviation is due altogether to thatwandering meteor."
"Why, it did not even graze us!" cried Ardan.
"No matter for that," replied Barbican. "Its mass, compared to ours, wasenormous, and its attraction was undoubtedly sufficiently great toinfluence our deviation."
"Hardly enough to be appreciable," urged M'Nicholl.
"Right again, Captain," observed Barbican. "But just remember anobservation of your own made this very afternoon: an inch, a line, eventhe tenth part of a hair's breadth wrong at the beginning, in a journeyof 240 thousand miles, would be sufficient to make us miss the Moon!"