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Chapter V. The Cold of Space
This revelation came like a thunderbolt. Who could have expected
such an error in calculation? Barbicane would not believe it.
Nicholl revised his figures: they were exact. As to the formula
which had determined them, they could not suspect its truth; it was
evident that an initiatory velocity of seventeen thousand yards in
the first second was necessary to enable them to reach the neutral
point.
The three friends looked at each other silently. There was no
thought of breakfast. Barbicane, with clenched teeth, knitted
brows, and hands clasped convulsively, was watching through the
window. Nicholl had crossed his arms, and was examining his
calculations. Michel Ardan was muttering:
“That is just like these scientific men: they never do
anything else. I would give twenty pistoles if we could fall upon
the Cambridge Observatory and crush it, together with the whole lot
of dabblers in figures which it contains.”
Suddenly a thought struck the captain, which he at once
communicated to Barbicane.
“Ah!” said he; “it is seven o’clock in
the morning; we have already been gone thirty-two hours; more than
half our passage is over, and we are not falling that I am aware
of.”
Barbicane did not answer, but after a rapid glance at the
captain, took a pair of compasses wherewith to measure the angular
distance of the terrestrial globe; then from the lower window he
took an exact observation, and noticed that the projectile was
apparently stationary. Then rising and wiping his forehead, on
which large drops of perspiration were standing, he put some
figures on paper. Nicholl understood that the president was
deducting from the terrestrial diameter the projectile’s
distance from the earth. He watched him anxiously.
“No,” exclaimed Barbicane, after some moments,
“no, we are not falling! no, we are already more than 50,000
leagues from the earth. We have passed the point at which the
projectile would have stopped if its speed had only been 12,000
yards at starting. We are still going up.”
“That is evident,” replied Nicholl; “and we
must conclude that our initial speed, under the power of the
400,000 pounds of gun-cotton, must have exceeded the required
12,000 yards. Now I can understand how, after thirteen minutes
only, we met the second satellite, which gravitates round the earth
at more than 2,000 leagues’ distance.”
“And this explanation is the more probable,” added
Barbicane, “Because, in throwing off the water enclosed
between its partition-breaks, the projectile found itself lightened
of a considerable weight.”
“Just so,” said Nicholl.
“Ah, my brave Nicholl, we are saved!”
“Very well then,” said Michel Ardan quietly;
“as we are safe, let us have breakfast.”
Nicholl was not mistaken. The initial speed had been, very
fortunately, much above that estimated by the Cambridge
Observatory; but the Cambridge Observatory had nevertheless made a
mistake.
The travelers, recovered from this false alarm, breakfasted
merrily. If they ate a good deal, they talked more. Their
confidence was greater after than before “the incident of the
algebra.”
“Why should we not succeed?” said Michel Ardan;
“why should we not arrive safely? We are launched; we have no
obstacle before us, no stones in the way; the road is open, more so
than that of a ship battling with the sea; more open than that of a
balloon battling with the wind; and if a ship can reach its
destination, a balloon go where it pleases, why cannot our
projectile attain its end and aim?”
“It will attain it,” said Barbicane.
“If only to do honor to the Americans,” added Michel
Ardan, “the only people who could bring such an enterprise to
a happy termination, and the only one which could produce a
President Barbicane. Ah, now we are no longer uneasy, I begin to
think, What will become of us? We shall get right royally
weary.”
Barbicane and Nicholl made a gesture of denial.
“But I have provided for the contingency, my
friends,” replied Michel; “you have only to speak, and
I have chess, draughts, cards, and dominoes at your disposal;
nothing is wanting but a billiard-table.”
“What!” exclaimed Barbicane; “you brought away
such trifles?”
“Certainly,” replied Michel, “and not only to
distract ourselves, but also with the laudable intention of
endowing the Selenite smoking divans with them.”
“My friend,” said Barbicane, “if the moon is
inhabited, its inhabitants must have appeared some thousands of
years before those of the earth, for we cannot doubt that their
star is much older than ours. If then these Selenites have existed
their hundreds of thousands of years, and if their brain is of the
same organization of the human brain, they have already invented
all that we have invented, and even what we may invent in future
ages. They have nothing to learn from us, and we have everything to learn from them.”
“What!” said Michel; “you believe that they
have artists like Phidias, Michael Angelo, or Raphael?”
“Yes.”
“Poets like Homer, Virgil, Milton, Lamartine, and
Hugo?”
“I am sure of it.”
“Philosophers like Plato, Aristotle, Descartes,
Kant?”
“I have no doubt of it.”
“Scientific men like Archimedes, Euclid, Pascal,
Newton?”
“I could swear it.”
“Comic writers like Arnal, and photographers like—
like Nadar?”
“Certain.”
“Then, friend Barbicane, if they are as strong as we are,
and even stronger— these Selenites— why have they not
tried to communicate with the earth? why have they not launched a
lunar projectile to our terrestrial regions?”
“Who told you that they have never done so?” said
Barbicane seriously.
“Indeed,” added Nicholl, “it would be easier
for them than for us, for two reasons; first, because the
attraction on the moon’s surface is six times less than on
that of the earth, which would allow a projectile to rise more
easily; secondly, because it would be enough to send such a
projectile only at 8,000 leagues instead of 80,000, which would
require the force of projection to be ten times less
strong.”
“Then,” continued Michel, “I repeat it, why
have they not done it?”
“And I repeat,” said Barbicane; “who told you
that they have not done it?”
“When?”
“Thousands of years before man appeared on
earth.”
“And the projectile— where is the projectile? I
demand to see the projectile.”
“My friend,” replied Barbicane, “the sea
covers five-sixths of our globe. From that we may draw five good
reasons for supposing that the lunar projectile, if ever launched,
is now at the bottom of the Atlantic or the Pacific, unless it sped
into some crevasse at that period when the crust of the earth was
not yet hardened.”
“Old Barbicane,” said Michel, “you have an
answer for everything, and I bow before your wisdom. But there is
one hypothesis that would suit me better than all the others, which
is, the Selenites, being older than we, are wiser, and have not
invented gunpowder.”
At this moment Diana joined in the conversation by a sonorous
barking. She was asking for her breakfast.
“Ah!” said Michel Ardan, “in our discussion we
have forgotten Diana and Satellite.”
Immediately a good-sized pie was given to the dog, which
devoured it hungrily.
“Do you see, Barbicane,” said Michel, “we
should have made a second Noah’s ark of this projectile, and
borne with us to the moon a couple of every kind of domestic
animal.”
“I dare say; but room would have failed us.”
“Oh!” said Michel, “we might have squeezed a
little.”
“The fact is,” replied Nicholl, “that cows,
bulls, and horses, and all ruminants, would have been very useful
on the lunar continent, but unfortunately the car could neither
have been made a stable nor a shed.”
“Well, we might have at least brought a donkey, only a
little donkey; that courageous beast which old Silenus loved to
mount. I love those old donkeys; they are the least favored animals
in creation; they are not only beaten while alive, but even after
they are dead.”
“How do you make that out?” asked Barbicane.
“Why,” said Michel, “they make their skins into
drums.”
Barbicane and Nicholl could not help laughing at this ridiculous
remark. But a cry from their merry companion stopped them. The
latter was leaning over the spot where Satellite lay. He rose,
saying:
“My good Satellite is no longer ill.”
“Ah!” said Nicholl.
“No,” answered Michel, “he is dead!
There,” added he, in a piteous tone, “that is
embarrassing. I much fear, my poor Diana, that you will leave no
progeny in the lunar regions!”
Indeed the unfortunate Satellite had not survived its wound. It
was quite dead. Michel Ardan looked at his friends with a rueful
countenance.
“One question presents itself,” said Barbicane.
“We cannot keep the dead body of this dog with us for the
next forty-eight hours.”
“No! certainly not,” replied Nicholl; “but our
scuttles are fixed on hinges; they can be let down. We will open
one, and throw the body out into space.”
The president thought for some moments, and then said:
“Yes, we must do so, but at the same time taking very
great precautions.”
“Why?” asked Michel.
“For two reasons which you will understand,”
answered Barbicane. “The first relates to the air shut up in
the projectile, and of which we must lose as little as
possible.”
“But we manufacture the air?”
“Only in part. We make only the oxygen, my worthy Michel;
and with regard to that, we must watch that the apparatus does not
furnish the oxygen in too great a quantity; for an excess would
bring us very serious physiological troubles. But if we make the
oxygen, we do not make the azote, that medium which the lungs do
not absorb, and which ought to remain intact; and that azote will
escape rapidly through the open scuttles.”
“Oh! the time for throwing out poor Satellite?” said
Michel.
“Agreed; but we must act quickly.”
“And the second reason?” asked Michel.
“The second reason is that we must not let the outer cold,
which is excessive, penetrate the projectile or we shall be frozen to death.”
“But the sun?”
“The sun warms our projectile, which absorbs its rays; but
it does not warm the vacuum in which we are floating at this
moment. Where there is no air, there is no more heat than diffused
light; and the same with darkness; it is cold where the sun’s
rays do not strike direct. This temperature is only the temperature
produced by the radiation of the stars; that is to say, what the
terrestrial globe would undergo if the sun disappeared one
day.”
“Which is not to be feared,” replied Nicholl.
“Who knows?” said Michel Ardan. “But, in
admitting that the sun does not go out, might it not happen that
the earth might move away from it?”
“There!” said Barbicane, “there is Michel with
his ideas.”
“And,” continued Michel, “do we not know that
in 1861 the earth passed through the tail of a comet? Or let us
suppose a comet whose power of attraction is greater than that of
the sun. The terrestrial orbit will bend toward the wandering star,
and the earth, becoming its satellite, will be drawn such a
distance that the rays of the sun will have no action on its
surface.”
“That might happen, indeed,” replied Barbicane,
“but the consequences of such a displacement need not be so
formidable as you suppose.”
“And why not?”
“Because the heat and cold would be equalized on our
globe. It has been calculated that, had our earth been carried
along in its course by the comet of 1861, at its perihelion, that
is, its nearest approach to the sun, it would have undergone a heat
28,000 times greater than that of summer. But this heat, which is
sufficient to evaporate the waters, would have formed a thick ring
of cloud, which would have modified that excessive temperature;
hence the compensation between the cold of the aphelion and the
heat of the perihelion.”
“At how many degrees,” asked Nicholl, “is the
temperature of the planetary spaces estimated?”
“Formerly,” replied Barbicane, “it was greatly
exagerated; but now, after the calculations of Fourier, of the
French Academy of Science, it is not supposed to exceed 60° Centigrade below zero.”
“Pooh!” said Michel, “that’s
nothing!”
“It is very much,” replied Barbicane; “the
temperature which was observed in the polar regions, at Melville
Island and Fort Reliance, that is 76° Fahrenheit below
zero.”
“If I mistake not,” said Nicholl, “M.
Pouillet, another savant, estimates the temperature of space at
250° Fahrenheit below zero. We shall, however, be able to verify
these calculations for ourselves.”
“Not at present; because the solar rays, beating directly
upon our thermometer, would give, on the contrary, a very high
temperature. But, when we arrive in the moon, during its fifteen
days of night at either face, we shall have leisure to make the
experiment, for our satellite lies in a vacuum.”
“What do you mean by a vacuum?” asked Michel.
“Is it perfectly such?”
“It is absolutely void of air.”
“And is the air replaced by nothing whatever?”
“By the ether only,” replied Barbicane.
“And pray what is the ether?”
“The ether, my friend, is an agglomeration of imponderable
atoms, which, relatively to their dimensions, are as far removed
from each other as the celestial bodies are in space. It is these
atoms which, by their vibratory motion, produce both light and heat
in the universe.”
They now proceeded to the burial of Satellite. They had merely
to drop him into space, in the same way that sailors drop a body
into the sea; but, as President Barbicane suggested, they must act
quickly, so as to lose as little as possible of that air whose
elasticity would rapidly have spread it into space. The bolts of
the right scuttle, the opening of which measured about twelve
inches across, were carefully drawn, while Michel, quite grieved,
prepared to launch his dog into space. The glass, raised by a
powerful lever, which enabled it to overcome the pressure of the
inside air on the walls of the projectile, turned rapidly on its
hinges, and Satellite was thrown out. Scarcely a particle of air
could have escaped, and the operation was so successful that later
on Barbicane did not fear to dispose of the rubbish which
encumbered the car.
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