“Well?” asked Nicholl.
“Why it was not enough!”
“No.”
“We shall not reach the neutral point.”
“The devil!”
“We shall not even go half way!”
“Nom d’un boulet!” exclaimed
Michel Ardan, jumping up as if the projectile were
on the point of striking against the terrestrial globe.
“And we shall fall back upon the earth!”
THE TEMPERATURE OF SPACE.
This revelation acted like a thunderbolt. Who
could have expected such an error in calculation?
Barbicane would not believe it. Nicholl went
over the figures again. They were correct.
The formula which had established them could not be
mistrusted, and, when verified, the initial velocity
of 16,576 metres, necessary for attaining the neutral
point, was found quite right.
The three friends looked at one another in silence.
No one thought about breakfast after that. Barbicane,
with set teeth, contracted brow, and fists convulsively
closed, looked through the port-light. Nicholl
folded his arms and examined his calculations.
Michel Ardan murmured—
“That’s just like savants!
That’s the way they always do! I would give
twenty pistoles to fall upon the Cambridge Observatory
and crush it, with all its stupid staff inside!”
All at once the captain made a reflection which struck
Barbicane at once.
“Why,” said he, “it is seven o’clock
in the morning, so we have been thirty-two hours on
the road. We have come more than half way, and
we are not falling yet that I know of!”
Barbicane did not answer, but after a rapid glance
at the captain he took a compass, which he used to
measure the angular distance of the terrestrial globe.
Then through the lower port-light he made a very exact
observation from the apparent immobility of the projectile.
Then rising and wiping the perspiration from his brow,
he put down some figures upon paper. Nicholl
saw that the president wished to find out from the
length of the terrestrial diameter the distance of
the bullet from the earth. He looked at him anxiously.
“No!” cried Barbicane in a few minutes’
time, “we are not falling! We are already
more than 50,000 leagues from the earth! We have
passed the point the projectile ought to have stopped
at if its speed had been only 11,000 metres at our
departure! We are still ascending!”
“That is evident,” answered Nicholl; “so
we must conclude that our initial velocity, under
the propulsion of the 400,000 lbs. of gun-cotton,
was greater than the 11,000 metres. I can now
explain to myself why we met with the second satellite,
that gravitates at more than 2,000 leagues from the
earth, in less than thirteen minutes.”
“That explanation is so much the more probable,”
added Barbicane, “because by throwing out the
water in our movable partitions the projectile was
made considerably lighter all at once.”
