Barbicane and Nicholl could not help laughing at their companion’s uneasiness. Then Nicholl, who wanted to have done with it, reminded them of the second question to be settled.
“Has the moon been inhabited?” he asked.
The answer was unanimously in the affirmative.
During this discussion, fruitful in somewhat hazardous theories, although it resumed the general ideas of science on the subject, the projectile had run rapidly towards the lunar equator, at the same time that it went farther away from the lunar disc. It had passed the circle of Willem, and the 40th parallel, at a distance of 400 miles. Then leaving Pitatus to the right, on the 30th degree, it went along the south of the Sea of Clouds, of which it had already approached the north. Different amphitheatres appeared confusedly under the white light of the full moon—Bouillaud, Purbach, almost square with a central crater, then Arzachel, whose interior mountain shone with indefinable brilliancy.
At last, as the projectile went farther and farther away, the details faded from the travellers’ eyes, the mountains were confounded in the distance, and all that remained of the marvellous, fantastical, and wonderful satellite of the earth was the imperishable remembrance.
XIX
A Struggle with the Impossible
For some time Barbicane and his companions, mute and pensive, looked at this world, which they had only seen from a distance, like Moses saw Canaan, and from which they were going away forever. The position of the projectile relatively to the moon was modified, and now its lower end was turned towards the earth.
This change, verified by Barbicane, surprised him greatly. If the bullet was going to gravitate round the satellite in an elliptical orbit, why was not its heaviest part turned towards it like the moon to the earth? There again was an obscure point.
By watching the progress of the projectile they could see that it was following away from the moon an analogous curve to that by which it approached her. It was, therefore, describing a very long ellipsis which would probably extend to the point of equal attraction, where the influences of the earth and her satellite are neutralised.
Such was the conclusion which Barbicane correctly drew from the facts observed, a conviction which his two friends shared with him.
Questions immediately began to shower upon him.
“What will become of us after we have reached the neutral point?” asked
Michel Ardan.
“That is unknown!” answered Barbicane.
“But we can make suppositions, I suppose?”
“We can make two,” answered Barbicane. “Either the velocity of the projectile will then be insufficient, and it will remain entirely motionless on that line of double attraction—”
“I would rather have the other supposition, whatever it is,” replied Michel.
“Or the velocity will be sufficient,” resumed Barbicane, “and it will continue its elliptical orbit, and gravitate eternally round the orb of night.”
“Not very consoling that revolution,” said Michel, “to become the humble servants of a moon whom we are in the habit of considering our servant. And is that the future that awaits us?”
Neither Barbicane nor Nicholl answered.
“Why do you not answer?” asked the impatient Michel.
“There is nothing to answer,” said Nicholl.
“Can nothing be done?”
“No,” answered Barbicane. “Do you pretend to struggle with the impossible?”
“Why not? Ought a Frenchman and two Americans to recoil at such a word?”
“But what do you want to do?”
“Command the motion that is carrying us along!”
“Command it?”
“Yes,” resumed Michel, getting animated, “stop it or modify it; use it for the accomplishment of our plans.”
“And how, pray?”
“That is your business! If artillerymen are not masters of their bullets they are no longer artillerymen. If the projectile commands the gunner, the gunner ought to be rammed instead into the cannon! Fine savants, truly! who don’t know now what to do after having induced me—”
“Induced!” cried Barbicane and Nicholl. “Induced! What do you mean by that?”
“No recriminations!” said Michel. “I do not complain. The journey pleases me. The bullet suits me. But let us do all that is humanly possible to fall somewhere, if only upon the moon.”
“We should only be too glad, my worthy Michel,” answered Barbicane, “but we have no means of doing it.”
“Can we not modify the motion of the projectile?”
“No.”
“Nor diminish its speed?”
“No.”
“Not even by lightening it like they lighten an overloaded ship?”
“What can we throw out?” answered Nicholl. “We have no ballast on board. And besides, it seems to me that a lightened projectile would go on more quickly.”
“Less quickly,” said Michel.
“More quickly,” replied Nicholl.
“Neither more nor less quickly,” answered Barbicane, wishing to make his two friends agree, “for we are moving in the void where we cannot take specific weight into account.”
“Very well,” exclaimed Michel Ardan in a determined tone; “there is only one thing to do.”
“What is that?” asked Nicholl.
“Have breakfast,” imperturbably answered the audacious Frenchman, who always brought that solution to the greatest difficulties.
In fact, though that operation would have no influence on the direction of the projectile, it might be attempted without risk, and even successfully from the point of view of the stomach. Decidedly the amiable Michel had only good ideas.
They breakfasted, therefore, at 2 a.m., but the hour was not of much consequence. Michel served up his habitual menu, crowned by an amiable bottle out of his secret cellar. If ideas did not come into their heads the Chambertin of 1863 must be despaired of.
The meal over, observations began again.
The objects they had thrown out of the projectile still followed it at the same invariable distance. It was evident that the bullet in its movement of translation round the moon had not passed through any atmosphere, for the specific weight of these objects would have modified their respective distances.
There was nothing to see on the side of the terrestrial globe. The earth was only a day old, having been new at midnight the day before, and two days having to go by before her crescent, disengaged from the solar rays, could serve as a
