From the Earth to the Moon; and, Round the Moon

by Jules Verne

  CHAPTER XIX

  A STRUGGLE AGAINST THE IMPOSSIBLE

  For a long time Barbicane and his companions looked silently andsadly upon that world which they had only seen from a distance,as Moses saw the land of Canaan, and which they were leavingwithout a possibility of ever returning to it. The projectile'sposition with regard to the moon had altered, and the base wasnow turned to the earth.

  This change, which Barbicane verified, did not fail to surprise them.If the projectile was to gravitate round the satellite in anelliptical orbit, why was not its heaviest part turned toward it,as the moon turns hers to the earth? That was a difficult point.

  In watching the course of the projectile they could see that onleaving the moon it followed a course analogous to that tracedin approaching her. It was describing a very long ellipse,which would most likely extend to the point of equal attraction,where the influences of the earth and its satellite are neutralized.

  Such was the conclusion which Barbicane very justly drew fromfacts already observed, a conviction which his two friendsshared with him.

  "And when arrived at this dead point, what will become of us?"asked Michel Ardan.

  "We don't know," replied Barbicane.

  "But one can draw some hypotheses, I suppose?"

  "Two," answered Barbicane; "either the projectile's speed willbe insufficient, and it will remain forever immovable on thisline of double attraction----"

  "I prefer the other hypothesis, whatever it may be," interrupted Michel.

  "Or," continued Barbicane, "its speed will be sufficient, and itwill continue its elliptical course, to gravitate forever aroundthe orb of night."

  "A revolution not at all consoling," said Michel, "to pass tothe state of humble servants to a moon whom we are accustomed tolook upon as our own handmaid. So that is the fate in store for us?"

  Neither Barbicane nor Nicholl answered.

  "You do not answer," continued Michel impatiently.

  "There is nothing to answer," said Nicholl.

  "Is there nothing to try?"

  "No," answered Barbicane. "Do you pretend to fight againstthe impossible?"

  "Why not? Do one Frenchman and two Americans shrink from sucha word?"

  "But what would you do?"

  "Subdue this motion which is bearing us away."

  "Subdue it?"

  "Yes," continued Michel, getting animated, "or else alter it,and employ it to the accomplishment of our own ends."

  "And how?"

  "That is your affair. If artillerymen are not masters of theirprojectile they are not artillerymen. If the projectile is tocommand the gunner, we had better ram the gunner into the gun.My faith! fine savants! who do not know what is to become of usafter inducing me----"

  "Inducing you!" cried Barbicane and Nicholl. "Inducing you!What do you mean by that?"

  "No recrimination," said Michel. "I do not complain, the triphas pleased me, and the projectile agrees with me; but let us doall that is humanly possible to do the fall somewhere, even ifonly on the moon."

  "We ask no better, my worthy Michel," replied Barbicane, "butmeans fail us."

  "We cannot alter the motion of the projectile?"

  "No."

  "Nor diminish its speed?"

  "No."

  "Not even by lightening it, as they lighten an overloaded vessel?"

  "What would you throw out?" said Nicholl. "We have no ballaston board; and indeed it seems to me that if lightened it wouldgo much quicker."

  "Slower."

  "Quicker."

  "Neither slower nor quicker," said Barbicane, wishing to makehis two friends agree; "for we float is space, and must nolonger consider specific weight."

  "Very well," cried Michel Ardan in a decided voice; "then theirremains but one thing to do."

  "What is it?" asked Nicholl.

  "Breakfast," answered the cool, audacious Frenchman, who alwaysbrought up this solution at the most difficult juncture.

  In any case, if this operation had no influence on theprojectile's course, it could at least be tried withoutinconvenience, and even with success from a stomachic pointof view. Certainly Michel had none but good ideas.

  They breakfasted then at two in the morning; the hour mattered little.Michel served his usual repast, crowned by a glorious bottle drawnfrom his private cellar. If ideas did not crowd on their brains,we must despair of the Chambertin of 1853. The repast finished,observation began again. Around the projectile, at an invariabledistance, were the objects which had been thrown out. Evidently, inits translatory motion round the moon, it had not passed throughany atmosphere, for the specific weight of these different objectswould have checked their relative speed.

  On the side of the terrestrial sphere nothing was to be seen.The earth was but a day old, having been new the night before attwelve; and two days must elapse before its crescent, freed fromthe solar rays, would serve as a clock to the Selenites, as inits rotary movement each of its points after twenty-four hoursrepasses the same lunar meridian.

  On the moon's side the sight was different; the orb shone in allher splendor amid innumerable constellations, whose purity couldnot be troubled by her rays. On the disc, the plains werealready returning to the dark tint which is seen from the earth.The other part of the nimbus remained brilliant, and in the midstof this general brilliancy Tycho shone prominently like a sun.

  Barbicane had no means of estimating the projectile's speed, butreasoning showed that it must uniformly decrease, according tothe laws of mechanical reasoning. Having admitted that theprojectile was describing an orbit around the moon, this orbitmust necessarily be elliptical; science proves that it must be so.No motive body circulating round an attracting body fails inthis law. Every orbit described in space is elliptical. And whyshould the projectile of the Gun Club escape this natural arrangement?In elliptical orbits, the attracting body always occupies one ofthe foci; so that at one moment the satellite is nearer, and atanother farther from the orb around which it gravitates. When theearth is nearest the sun she is in her perihelion; and in heraphelion at the farthest point. Speaking of the moon, she isnearest to the earth in her perigee, and farthest from it inher apogee. To use analogous expressions, with which theastronomers' language is enriched, if the projectile remainsas a satellite of the moon, we must say that it is in its"aposelene" at its farthest point, and in its "periselene" atits nearest. In the latter case, the projectile would attainits maximum of speed; and in the former its minimum. It wasevidently moving toward its aposelenitical point; and Barbicanehad reason to think that its speed would decrease up to thispoint, and then increase by degrees as it neared the moon.This speed would even become _nil_, if this point joined that ofequal attraction. Barbicane studied the consequences of thesedifferent situations, and thinking what inference he could drawfrom them, when he was roughly disturbed by a cry from Michel Ardan.

  "By Jove!" he exclaimed, "I must admit we are down-right simpletons!"

  "I do not say we are not," replied Barbicane; "but why?"

  "Because we have a very simple means of checking this speedwhich is bearing us from the moon, and we do not use it!"

  "And what is the means?"

  "To use the recoil contained in our rockets."

  "Done!" said Nicholl.

  "We have not used this force yet," said Barbicane, "it is true,but we will do so."

  "When?" asked Michel.

  "When the time comes. Observe, my friends, that in the positionoccupied by the projectile, an oblique position with regard tothe lunar disc, our rockets, in slightly altering its direction,might turn it from the moon instead of drawing it nearer?"

  "Just so," replied Michel.

  "Let us wait, then. By some inexplicable influence, theprojectile is turning its base toward the earth. It is probablethat at the point of equal attraction, its conical cap will bedirected rigidly toward the moon; at that moment we may hopethat its speed will be _nil_; then will be the moment to act,and with the inf
luence of our rockets we may perhapsprovoke a fall directly on the surface of the lunar disc."

  "Bravo!" said Michel. "What we did not do, what we could not doon our first passage at the dead point, because the projectilewas then endowed with too great a speed."

  "Very well reasoned," said Nicholl.

  "Let us wait patiently," continued Barbicane. "Putting everychance on our side, and after having so much despaired, I maysay I think we shall gain our end."

  This conclusion was a signal for Michel Ardan's hips and hurrahs.And none of the audacious boobies remembered the question thatthey themselves had solved in the negative. No! the moon is notinhabited; no! the moon is probably not habitable. And yet theywere going to try everything to reach her.

  One single question remained to be solved. At what precisemoment the projectile would reach the point of equal attraction,on which the travelers must play their last card. In order tocalculate this to within a few seconds, Barbicane had only torefer to his notes, and to reckon the different heights taken onthe lunar parallels. Thus the time necessary to travel over thedistance between the dead point and the south pole would be equalto the distance separating the north pole from the dead point.The hours representing the time traveled over were carefullynoted, and the calculation was easy. Barbicane found that thispoint would be reached at one in the morning on the night of the7th-8th of December. So that, if nothing interfered with itscourse, it would reach the given point in twenty-two hours.

  The rockets had primarily been placed to check the fall of theprojectile upon the moon, and now they were going to employ themfor a directly contrary purpose. In any case they were ready,and they had only to wait for the moment to set fire to them.

  "Since there is nothing else to be done," said Nicholl, "I makea proposition."

  "What is it?" asked Barbicane.

  "I propose to go to sleep."

  "What a motion!" exclaimed Michel Ardan.

  "It is forty hours since we closed our eyes," said Nicholl."Some hours of sleep will restore our strength."

  "Never," interrupted Michel.

  "Well," continued Nicholl, "every one to his taste; I shall goto sleep." And stretching himself on the divan, he soon snoredlike a forty-eight pounder.

  "That Nicholl has a good deal of sense," said Barbicane;"presently I shall follow his example." Some moments after hiscontinued bass supported the captain's baritone.

  "Certainly," said Michel Ardan, finding himself alone, "thesepractical people have sometimes most opportune ideas."

  And with his long legs stretched out, and his great arms foldedunder his head, Michel slept in his turn.

  But this sleep could be neither peaceful nor lasting, the mindsof these three men were too much occupied, and some hours after,about seven in the morning, all three were on foot at the same instant.

  The projectile was still leaving the moon, and turning itsconical part more and more toward her.

  An explicable phenomenon, but one which happily servedBarbicane's ends.

  Seventeen hours more, and the moment for action would have arrived.

  The day seemed long. However bold the travelers might be, theywere greatly impressed by the approach of that moment whichwould decide all-- either precipitate their fall on to the moon,or forever chain them in an immutable orbit. They counted thehours as they passed too slow for their wish; Barbicane andNicholl were obstinately plunged in their calculations, Michelgoing and coming between the narrow walls, and watching thatimpassive moon with a longing eye.

  At times recollections of the earth crossed their minds. They sawonce more their friends of the Gun Club, and the dearest of all,J. T. Maston. At that moment, the honorable secretary must befilling his post on the Rocky Mountains. If he could see theprojectile through the glass of his gigantic telescope, whatwould he think? After seeing it disappear behind the moon'ssouth pole, he would see them reappear by the north pole!They must therefore be a satellite of a satellite! Had J. T.Maston given this unexpected news to the world? Was this the_denouement_ of this great enterprise?

  But the day passed without incident. The terrestrialmidnight arrived. The 8th of December was beginning.One hour more, and the point of equal attraction wouldbe reached. What speed would then animate the projectile?They could not estimate it. But no error could vitiateBarbicane's calculations. At one in the morning this speedought to be and would be _nil_.

  Besides, another phenomenon would mark the projectile'sstopping-point on the neutral line. At that spot the twoattractions, lunar and terrestrial, would be annulled.Objects would "weigh" no more. This singular fact, which hadsurprised Barbicane and his companions so much in going, wouldbe repeated on their return under the very same conditions.At this precise moment they must act.

  Already the projectile's conical top was sensibly turned towardthe lunar disc, presented in such a way as to utilize the wholeof the recoil produced by the pressure of the rocket apparatus.The chances were in favor of the travelers. If its speed wasutterly annulled on this dead point, a decided movement towardthe moon would suffice, however slight, to determine its fall.

  "Five minutes to one," said Nicholl.

  "All is ready," replied Michel Ardan, directing a lighted matchto the flame of the gas.

  "Wait!" said Barbicane, holding his chronometer in his hand.

  At that moment weight had no effect. The travelers felt inthemselves the entire disappearance of it. They were very nearthe neutral point, if they did not touch it.

  "One o'clock," said Barbicane.

  Michel Ardan applied the lighted match to a train incommunication with the rockets. No detonation was heard inthe inside, for there was no air. But, through the scuttles,Barbicane saw a prolonged smoke, the flames of which wereimmediately extinguished.

  The projectile sustained a certain shock, which was sensiblyfelt in the interior.

  The three friends looked and listened without speaking, andscarcely breathing. One might have heard the beating of theirhearts amid this perfect silence.

  "Are we falling?" asked Michel Ardan, at length.

  "No," said Nicholl, "since the bottom of the projectile is notturning to the lunar disc!"

  At this moment, Barbicane, quitting his scuttle, turned to histwo companions. He was frightfully pale, his forehead wrinkled,and his lips contracted.

  "We are falling!" said he.

  "Ah!" cried Michel Ardan, "on to the moon?"

  "On to the earth!"

  "The devil!" exclaimed Michel Ardan, adding philosophically,"well, when we came into this projectile we were very doubtfulas to the ease with which we should get out of it!"

  And now this fearful fall had begun. The speed retained hadborne the projectile beyond the dead point. The explosion ofthe rockets could not divert its course. This speed in goinghad carried it over the neutral line, and in returning had donethe same thing. The laws of physics condemned it _to passthrough every point which it had already gone through_. It wasa terrible fall, from a height of 160,000 miles, and no springsto break it. According to the laws of gunnery, the projectilemust strike the earth with a speed equal to that with which itleft the mouth of the Columbiad, a speed of 16,000 yards in thelast second.

  But to give some figures of comparison, it has been reckonedthat an object thrown from the top of the towers of Notre Dame,the height of which is only 200 feet, will arrive on thepavement at a speed of 240 miles per hour. Here the projectilemust strike the earth with a speed of 115,200 miles per hour.

  "We are lost!" said Michel coolly.

  "Very well! if we die," answered Barbicane, with a sort ofreligious enthusiasm, "the results of our travels will bemagnificently spread. It is His own secret that God willtell us! In the other life the soul will want to know nothing,either of machines or engines! It will be identified witheternal wisdom!"

  "In fact," interrupted Michel Ardan, "the whole of the otherworld may well console us for the loss of that inferior orbcalled the moon!"

&n
bsp; Barbicane crossed his arms on his breast, with a motion ofsublime resignation, saying at the same time:

  "The will of heaven be done!"