CHAPTER V.
THE COLDS OF SPACE.
How could they imagine that the Observatory men had committed such ablunder? Barbican would not believe it possible. He made the Captain goover his calculation again and again; but no flaw was to be found in it.He himself carefully examined it, figure after figure, but he could findnothing wrong. They both took up the formula and subjected it to thestrongest tests; but it was invulnerable. There was no denying the fact.The Cambridge professors had undoubtedly blundered in saying that aninitial velocity of 12,000 yards a second would be enough to carry themto the neutral point. A velocity of nearly 18,000 yards would be thevery lowest required for such a purpose. They had simply forgotten toallow a third for friction.
The three friends kept profound silence for some time. Breakfast now wasthe last thing thought of. Barbican, with teeth grating, fingersclutching, and eye-brows closely contracting, gazed grimly through thewindow. The Captain, as a last resource, once more examined hiscalculations, earnestly hoping to find a figure wrong. Ardan couldneither sit, stand nor lie still for a second, though he tried allthree. His silence, of course, did not last long.
"Ha! ha! ha!" he laughed bitterly. "Precious scientific men! Villainousold hombogues! The whole set not worth a straw! I hope to gracious,since we must fall, that we shall drop down plumb on CambridgeObservatory, and not leave a single one of the miserable old women,called professors, alive in the premises!"
A certain expression in Ardan's angry exclamation had struck the Captainlike a shot, and set his temples throbbing violently.
"_Must_ fall!" he exclaimed, starting up suddenly. "Let us see aboutthat! It is now seven o'clock in the morning. We must have, therefore,been at least thirty-two hours on the road, and more than half of ourpassage is already made. If we are going to fall at all, we must befalling now! I'm certain we're not, but, Barbican, you have to find itout!"
Barbican caught the idea like lightning, and, seizing a compass, hebegan through the floor window to measure the visual angle of thedistant Earth. The apparent immobility of the Projectile allowed him todo this with great exactness. Then laying aside the instrument, andwiping off the thick drops of sweat that bedewed his forehead, he beganjotting down some figures on a piece of paper. The Captain looked onwith keen interest; he knew very well that Barbican was calculatingtheir distance from the Earth by the apparent measure of the terrestrialdiameter, and he eyed him anxiously.
Pretty soon his friends saw a color stealing into Barbican's pale face,and a triumphant light glittering in his eye.
"No, my brave boys!" he exclaimed at last throwing down his pencil,"we're not falling! Far from it, we are at present more than 150thousand miles from the Earth!"
"Hurrah!" }"Bravo!" } cried M'Nicholl and Ardan, in a breath.
"We have passed the point where we should have stopped if we had had nomore initial velocity than the Cambridge men allowed us!"
"Hurrah! hurrah!"
"Bravo, Bravissimo!"
"And we're still going up!"
"Glory, glory, hallelujah!" sang M'Nicholl, in the highest excitement.
"_Vive ce cher Barbican!_" cried Ardan, bursting into French as usualwhenever his feelings had the better of him.
"Of course we're marching on!" continued M'Nicholl, "and I know thereason why, too. Those 400,000 pounds of gun-cotton gave us greaterinitial velocity than we had expected!"
"You're right, Captain!" added Barbican; "besides, you must not forgetthat, by getting rid of the water, the Projectile was relieved ofconsiderable weight!"
"Correct again!" cried the Captain. "I had not thought of that!"
"Therefore, my brave boys," continued Barbican, with some excitement;"away with melancholy! We're all right!"
"Yes; everything is lovely and the goose hangs high!" cried the Captain,who on grand occasions was not above a little slang.
"Talking of goose reminds me of breakfast," cried Ardan; "I assure you,my fright has not taken away my appetite!"
"Yes," continued Barbican. "Captain, you're quite right. Our initialvelocity very fortunately was much greater than what our Cambridgefriends had calculated for us!"
"Hang our Cambridge friends and their calculations!" cried Ardan, withsome asperity; "as usual with your scientific men they've more brassthan brains! If we're not now bed-fellows with the oysters in the Gulfof Mexico, no thanks to our kind Cambridge friends. But talking ofoysters, let me remind you again that breakfast is ready."
The meal was a most joyous one. They ate much, they talked more, butthey laughed most. The little incident of Algebra had certainly verymuch enlivened the situation.
"Now, my boys," Ardan went on, "all things thus turning out quitecomfortable, I would just ask you why we should not succeed? We arefairly started. No breakers ahead that I can see. No rock on our road.It is freer than the ships on the raging ocean, aye, freer than theballoons in the blustering air. But the ship arrives at her destination;the balloon, borne on the wings of the wind, rises to as high analtitude as can be endured; why then should not our Projectile reach theMoon?"
"It _will_ reach the Moon!" nodded Barbican.
"We shall reach the Moon or know for what!" cried M'Nicholl,enthusiastically.
"The great American nation must not be disappointed!" continued Ardan."They are the only people on Earth capable of originating such anenterprise! They are the only people capable of producing a Barbican!"
"Hurrah!" cried M'Nicholl.
"That point settled," continued the Frenchman, "another question comesup to which I have not yet called your attention. When we get to theMoon, what shall we do there? How are we going to amuse ourselves? I'mafraid our life there will be awfully slow!"
His companions emphatically disclaimed the possibility of such a thing.
"You may deny it, but I know better, and knowing better, I have laid inmy stores accordingly. You have but to choose. I possess a variedassortment. Chess, draughts, cards, dominoes--everything in fact, but abilliard table?"
"What!" exclaimed Barbican; "cumbered yourself with such gimcracks?"
"Such gimcracks are not only good to amuse ourselves with, but areeminently calculated also to win us the friendship of the Selenites."
"Friend Michael," said Barbican, "if the Moon is inhabited at all, herinhabitants must have appeared several thousand years before the adventof Man on our Earth, for there seems to be very little doubt that Lunais considerably older than Terra in her present state. Therefore,Selenites, if their brain is organized like our own, must have by thistime invented all that we are possessed of, and even much which we arestill to invent in the course of ages. The probability is that, insteadof their learning from us, we shall have much to learn from them."
"What!" asked Ardan, "you think they have artists like Phidias, MichaelAngelo and Raphael?"
"Certainly."
"And poets like Homer, Virgil, Dante, Shakspeare, Goethe and Hugo?"
"Not a doubt of it."
"And philosophers like Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Bacon, Kant?"
"Why not?"
"And scientists like Euclid, Archimedes, Copernicus, Newton, Pascal?"
"I should think so."
"And famous actors, and singers, and composers, and--and photographers?"
"I could almost swear to it."
"Then, dear boy, since they have gone ahead as far as we and evenfarther, why have not those great Selenites tried to start acommunication with the Earth? Why have they not fired a projectile fromthe regions lunar to the regions terrestrial?"
"Who says they have not done so?" asked Barbican, coolly.
"Attempting such a communication," observed the Captain, "wouldcertainly be much easier for them than for us, principally for tworeasons. First, attraction on the Moon's surface being six times lessthan on the Earth's, a projectile could be sent off more rapidly;second, because, as this projectile need be sent only 24 instead of 240thousand miles, they could do it with a quantity of powder ten timesless than what we s
hould require for the same purpose."
"Then I ask again," said the Frenchman; "why haven't they made such anattempt?"
"And I reply again," answered Barbican. "How do you know that they havenot made such an attempt?"
"Made it? When?"
"Thousands of years ago, before the invention of writing, before eventhe appearance of Man on the Earth."
"But the bullet?" asked Ardan, triumphantly; "Where's the bullet?Produce the bullet!"
"Friend Michael," answered Barbican, with a quiet smile, "you appear toforget that the 5/6 of the surface of our Earth is water. 5 to 1,therefore, that the bullet is more likely to be lying this moment at thebottom of the Atlantic or the Pacific than anywhere else on the surfaceof our globe. Besides, it may have sunk into some weak point of thesurface, at the early epoch when the crust of the Earth had not acquiredsufficient solidity."
"Captain," said Ardan, turning with a smile to M'Nicholl; "no use intrying to catch Barby; slippery as an eel, he has an answer foreverything. Still I have a theory on the subject myself, which I thinkit no harm to ventilate. It is this: The Selenites have never sent usany projectile at all, simply because they had no gunpowder: being olderand wiser than we, they were never such fools as to invent any.--But,what's that? Diana howling for her breakfast! Good! Like genuinescientific men, while squabbling over nonsense, we let the poor animalsdie of hunger. Excuse us, Diana; it is not the first time the littlesuffer from the senseless disputes of the great."
So saying he laid before the animal a very toothsome pie, andcontemplated with evident pleasure her very successful efforts towardsits hasty and complete disappearance.
"Looking at Diana," he went on, "makes me almost wish we had made aNoah's Ark of our Projectile by introducing into it a pair of all thedomestic animals!"
"Not room enough," observed Barbican.
"No doubt," remarked the Captain, "the ox, the cow, the horse, the goat,all the ruminating animals would be very useful in the Lunar continent.But we couldn't turn our Projectile into a stable, you know."
"Still, we might have made room for a pair of poor little donkeys!"observed Ardan; "how I love the poor beasts. Fellow feeling, you willsay. No doubt, but there really is no animal I pity more. They are themost ill-treated brutes in all creation. They are not only banged duringlife; they are banged worse after death!"
"Hey! How do you make that out?" asked his companions, surprised.
"Because we make their skins into drum heads!" replied Ardan, with anair, as if answering a conundrum.
Barbican and M'Nicholl could hardly help laughing at the absurd reply oftheir lively companion, but their hilarity was soon stopped by theexpression his face assumed as he bent over Satellite's body, where itlay stretched on the sofa.
"What's the matter now?" asked Barbican.
"Satellite's attack is over," replied Ardan.
"Good!" said M'Nicholl, misunderstanding him.
"Yes, I suppose it is good for the poor fellow," observed Ardan, inmelancholy accents. "Life with one's skull broken is hardly an enviablepossession. Our grand acclimatization project is knocked sky high, inmore senses than one!"
There was no doubt of the poor dog's death. The expression of Ardan'scountenance, as he looked at his friends, was of a very rueful order.
"Well," said the practical Barbican, "there's no help for that now; thenext thing to be done is to get rid of the body. We can't keep it herewith us forty-eight hours longer."
"Of course not," replied the Captain, "nor need we; our lights, beingprovided with hinges, can be lifted back. What is to prevent us fromopening one of them, and flinging the body out through it!"
The President of the Gun Club reflected a few minutes; then he spoke:
"Yes, it can be done; but we must take the most careful precautions."
"Why so?" asked Ardan.
"For two simple reasons;" replied Barbican; "the first refers to the airenclosed in the Projectile, and of which we must be very careful to loseonly the least possible quantity."
"But as we manufacture air ourselves!" objected Ardan.
"We manufacture air only partly, friend Michael," replied Barbican. "Wemanufacture only oxygen; we can't supply nitrogen--By the bye, Ardan,won't you watch the apparatus carefully every now and then to see thatthe oxygen is not generated too freely. Very serious consequences wouldattend an immoderate supply of oxygen--No, we can't manufacturenitrogen, which is so absolutely necessary for our air and which mightescape readily through the open windows."
"What! the few seconds we should require for flinging out poorSatellite?"
"A very few seconds indeed they should be," said Barbican, very gravely.
"Your second reason?" asked Ardan.
"The second reason is, that we must not allow the external cold, whichmust be exceedingly great, to penetrate into our Projectile and freezeus alive."
"But the Sun, you know--"
"Yes, the Sun heats our Projectile, but it does not heat the vacuumthrough which we are now floating. Where there is no air there canneither be heat nor light; just as wherever the rays of the Sun do notarrive directly, it must be both cold and dark. The temperature aroundus, if there be anything that can be called temperature, is producedsolely by stellar radiation. I need not say how low that is in thescale, or that it would be the temperature to which our Earth shouldfall, if the Sun were suddenly extinguished."
"Little fear of that for a few more million years," said M'Nicholl.
"Who can tell?" asked Ardan. "Besides, even admitting that the Sun willnot soon be extinguished, what is to prevent the Earth from shootingaway from him?"
"Let friend Michael speak," said Barbican, with a smile, to the Captain;"we may learn something."
"Certainly you may," continued the Frenchman, "if you have room foranything new. Were we not struck by a comet's tail in 1861?"
"So it was said, anyhow," observed the Captain. "I well remember whatnonsense there was in the papers about the 'phosphorescent auroralglare.'"
"Well," continued the Frenchman, "suppose the comet of 1861 influencedthe Earth by an attraction superior to the Sun's. What would be theconsequence? Would not the Earth follow the attracting body, become itssatellite, and thus at last be dragged off to such a distance that theSun's rays could no longer excite heat on her surface?"
"Well, that might possibly occur," said Barbican slowly, "but even thenI question if the consequences would be so terrible as you seem toapprehend."
"Why not?"
"Because the cold and the heat might still manage to be nearly equalizedon our globe. It has been calculated that, had the Earth been carriedoff by the comet of '61, when arrived at her greatest distance, shewould have experienced a temperature hardly sixteen times greater thanthe heat we receive from the Moon, which, as everybody knows, producesno appreciable effect, even when concentrated to a focus by the mostpowerful lenses."
"Well then," exclaimed Ardan, "at such a temperature--"
"Wait a moment," replied Barbican. "Have you never heard of theprinciple of compensation? Listen to another calculation. Had the Earthbeen dragged along with the comet, it has been calculated that at herperihelion, or nearest point to the Sun, she would have to endure a heat28,000 times greater than our mean summer temperature. But this heat,fully capable of turning the rocks into glass and the oceans into vapor,before proceeding to such extremity, must have first formed a thickinterposing ring of clouds, and thus considerably modified the excessivetemperature. Therefore, between the extreme cold of the aphelion and theexcessive heat of the perihelion, by the great law of compensation, itis probable that the mean temperature would be tolerably endurable."
"At how many degrees is the temperature of the interplanetary spaceestimated?" asked M'Nicholl.
"Some time ago," replied Barbican, "this temperature was considered tobe very low indeed--millions and millions of degrees below zero. ButFourrier of Auxerre, a distinguished member of the _Academie desSciences_, whose _Memoires_ on the tempe
rature of the Planetary spacesappeared about 1827, reduced these figures to considerably diminishedproportions. According to his careful estimation, the temperature ofspace is not much lower than 70 or 80 degrees Fahr. below zero."
"No more?" asked Ardan.
"No more," answered Barbican, "though I must acknowledge we have onlyhis word for it, as the _Memoire_ in which he had recorded all theelements of that important determination, has been lost somewhere, andis no longer to be found."
"I don't attach the slightest importance to his, or to any man's words,unless they are sustained by reliable evidence," exclaimed M'Nicholl."Besides, if I'm not very much mistaken, Pouillet--another countryman ofyours, Ardan, and an Academician as well as Fourrier--esteems thetemperature of interplanetary spaces to be at least 256 deg. Fahr. belowzero. This we can easily verify for ourselves this moment by actualexperiment."
"Not just now exactly," observed Barbican, "for the solar rays,striking our Projectile directly, would give us a very elevated insteadof a very low temperature. But once arrived at the Moon, during thosenights fifteen days long, which each of her faces experiencesalternately, we shall have plenty of time to make an experiment withevery condition in our favor. To be sure, our Satellite is at presentmoving in a vacuum."
"A vacuum?" asked Ardan; "a perfect vacuum?"
"Well, a perfect vacuum as far as air is concerned."
"But is the air replaced by nothing?"
"Oh yes," replied Barbican. "By ether."
"Ah, ether! and what, pray, is ether?"
"Ether, friend Michael, is an elastic gas consisting of imponderableatoms, which, as we are told by works on molecular physics, are, inproportion to their size, as far apart as the celestial bodies are fromeach other in space. This distance is less than the 1/3000000 x 1/1000',or the one trillionth of a foot. The vibrations of the molecules of thisether produce the sensations of light and heat, by making 430 trillionsof undulations per second, each undulation being hardly more than theone ten-millionth of an inch in width."
"Trillions per second! ten-millionths of an inch in width!" cried Ardan."These oscillations have been very neatly counted and ticketed, andchecked off! Ah, friend Barbican," continued the Frenchman, shaking hishead, "these numbers are just tremendous guesses, frightening the earbut revealing nothing to the intelligence."
"To get ideas, however, we must calculate--"
"No, no!" interrupted Ardan: "not calculate, but compare. A trilliontells you nothing--Comparison, everything. For instance, you say, thevolume of _Uranus_ is 76 times greater than the Earth's; _Saturn's_ 900times greater; _Jupiter's_ 1300 times greater; the Sun's 1300 thousandtimes greater--You may tell me all that till I'm tired hearing it, and Ishall still be almost as ignorant as ever. For my part I prefer to betold one of those simple comparisons that I find in the old almanacs:The Sun is a globe two feet in diameter; _Jupiter_, a good sized orange;_Saturn_, a smaller orange; _Neptune_, a plum; _Uranus_, a good sizedcherry; the Earth, a pea; _Venus_, also a pea but somewhat smaller;_Mars_, a large pin's head; _Mercury_, a mustard seed; _Juno_,_Ceres_, _Vesta_, _Pallas_, and the other asteroids so many grainsof sand. Be told something like that, and you have got at least the tailof an idea!"
This learned burst of Ardan's had the natural effect of making hishearers forget what they had been arguing about, and they thereforeproceeded at once to dispose of Satellite's body. It was a simple matterenough--no more than to fling it out of the Projectile into space, justas the sailors get rid of a dead body by throwing it into the sea. Onlyin this operation they had to act, as Barbican recommended, with theutmost care and dispatch, so as to lose as little as possible of theinternal air, which, by its great elasticity, would violently strive toescape. The bolts of the floor-light, which was more than a foot indiameter, were carefully unscrewed, while Ardan, a good deal affected,prepared to launch his dog's body into space. The glass, worked by apowerful lever which enabled it to overcome the pressure of the enclosedair, turned quickly on its hinges, and poor Satellite was dropped out.The whole operation was so well managed that very little air escaped,and ever afterwards Barbican employed the same means to rid theProjectile of all the litter and other useless matter by which it wasoccasionally encumbered.
The evening of this third of December wore away without furtherincident. As soon as Barbican had announced that the Projectile wasstill winging its way, though with retarded velocity, towards the lunardisc, the travellers quietly retired to rest.
POOR SATELLITE WAS DROPPED OUT.]