“Mille diables!” cried Michel Ardan,
“it is cold enough here to freeze white bears!”
Barbicane let half-an-hour go by, more than sufficient
time to allow the instrument to descend to the level
of the temperature of space. The thermometer
was then rapidly drawn in.
Barbicane calculated the quantity of mercury spilt
into the little phial soldered to the lower part of
the instrument, and said—
“One hundred and forty degrees centigrade below
zero!” (218 deg. Fahr.)
M. Pouillet was right, not Fourier. Such was
the frightful temperature of sidereal space!
Such perhaps that of the lunar continents when the
orb of night loses by radiation all the heat which
she absorbs during the fifteen days of sunshine.
HYPERBOLA OR PARABOLA.
Our readers will probably be astonished that Barbicane
and his companions were so little occupied with the
future in store for them in their metal prison, carried
along in the infinitude of ether. Instead of
asking themselves where they were going, they lost
their time in making experiments, just as if they
had been comfortably installed in their own studies.
It might be answered that men so strong-minded were
above such considerations, that such little things
did not make them uneasy, and that they had something
else to do than to think about their future.
The truth is that they were not masters of their projectile—that
they could neither stop it nor alter its direction.
A seaman can direct the head of his ship as he pleases;
an aeronaut can give his balloon vertical movement.
They, on the contrary, had no authority over their
vehicle. No manoeuvre was possible to them.
Hence their not troubling themselves, or “let
things go” state of mind.
Where were they at that moment, 8 a.m. during that
day called upon earth the sixth of December?
Certainly in the neighbourhood of the moon, and even
near enough for her to appear like a vast black screen
upon the firmament. As to the distance which
separated them, it was impossible to estimate it.
The projectile, kept up by inexplicable forces, has
grazed the north pole of the satellite at less than
twenty-five miles’ distance. But had that
distance increased or diminished since they had been
in the cone of shadow? There was no landmark by
which to estimate either the direction or the velocity
of the projectile. Perhaps it was going rapidly
away from the disc and would soon leave the pure shadow.
Perhaps, on the contrary, it was approaching it, and
would before long strike against some elevated peak
in the invisible atmosphere, which would have terminated
the journey, doubtless to the detriment of the travellers.
A discussion began upon this subject, and Michel Ardan,
always rich in explanations, gave out the opinion
that the bullet, restrained by lunar attraction, would
end by falling on the moon like an aerolite on to the
surface of the terrestrial globe.
