Jules Verne - All Around the Moon

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"I can't say the same of you," replied Ardan; "you had at least one
sensible moment in all your lives, and that was about an hour ago!"

Their incessant chattering did not prevent the friends from at once
repairing the disorder of the interior of the Projectile. Cocks and hens
were put back in their cages. But while doing so, the friends were
astonished to find that the birds, though good sized creatures, and now
pretty fat and plump, hardly felt heavier in their hands than if they
had been so many sparrows. This drew their interested attention to a new
phenomenon.

From the moment they had left the Earth, their own weight, and that of
the Projectile and the objects therein contained, had been undergoing a
progressive diminution. They might never be able to ascertain this fact
with regard to the Projectile, but the moment was now rapidly
approaching when the loss of weight would become perfectly sensible,
both regarding themselves and the tools and instruments surrounding
them. Of course, it is quite clear, that this decrease could not be
indicated by an ordinary scales, as the weight to balance the object
would have lost precisely as much as the object itself. But a spring
balance, for instance, in which the tension of the coil is independent
of attraction, would have readily given the exact equivalent of the
loss.

Attraction or weight, according to Newton's well known law, acting in
direct proportion to the mass of the attracting body and in inverse
proportion to the square of the distance, this consequence clearly
follows: Had the Earth been alone in space, or had the other heavenly
bodies been suddenly annihilated, the further from the Earth the
Projectile would be, the less weight it would have. However, it would
never _entirely_ lose its weight, as the terrestrial attraction would
have always made itself felt at no matter what distance. But as the
Earth is not the only celestial body possessing attraction, it is
evident that there may be a point in space where the respective
attractions may be entirely annihilated by mutual counteraction. Of this
phenomenon the present instance was a case in point. In a short time,
the Projectile and its contents would for a few moments be absolutely
and completely deprived of all weight whatsoever.

The path described by the Projectile was evidently a line from the Earth
to the Moon averaging somewhat less than 240,000 miles in length.
According as the distance between the Projectile and the Earth was
increasing, the terrestrial attraction was diminishing in the ratio of
the square of the distance, and the lunar attraction was augmenting in
the same proportion.

As before observed, the point was not now far off where, the two
attractions counteracting each other, the bullet would actually weigh
nothing at all. If the masses of the Earth and the Moon had been equal,
this should evidently be found half way between the two bodies. But by
making allowance for the difference of the respective masses, it was
easy to calculate that this point would be situated at the 9/10 of the
total distance, or, in round numbers, at something less than 216,000
miles from the Earth.

At this point, a body that possessed no energy or principle of movement
within itself, would remain forever, relatively motionless, suspended
like Mahomet's coffin, being equally attracted by the two orbs and
nothing impelling it in one direction rather than in the other.

Now the Projectile at this moment was nearing this point; if it reached
it, what would be the consequence?

To this question three answers presented themselves, all possible under
the circumstances, but very different in their results.

1. Suppose the Projectile to possess velocity enough to pass the neutral
point. In such case, it would undoubtedly proceed onward to the Moon,
being drawn thither by Lunar attraction.

2. Suppose it lacked the requisite velocity for reaching the neutral
point. In such a case it would just as certainly fall back to the Earth,
in obedience to the law of Terrestrial attraction.

3. Suppose it to be animated by just sufficient velocity to reach the
neutral point, but not to pass it. In that case, the Projectile would
remain forever in the same spot, perfectly motionless as far as regards
the Earth and the Moon, though of course following them both in their
annual orbits round the Sun.

Such was now the state of things, which Barbican tried to explain to his
friends, who, it need hardly be said, listened to his remarks with the
most intense interest. How were they to know, they asked him, the
precise instant at which the Projectile would reach the neutral point?
That would be an easy matter, he assured them. It would be at the very
moment when both themselves and all the other objects contained in the
Projectile would be completely free from every operation of the law of
gravity; in other words, when everything would cease to have weight.

This gradual diminution of the action of gravity, the travellers had
been for some time noticing, but they had not yet witnessed its total
cessation. But that very morning, about an hour before noon, as the
Captain was making some little experiment in Chemistry, he happened by
accident to overturn a glass full of water. What was his surprise at
seeing that neither the glass nor the water fell to the floor! Both
remained suspended in the air almost completely motionless.

"The prettiest experiment I ever saw!" cried Ardan; "let us have more of
it!"

And seizing the bottles, the arms, and the other objects in the
Projectile, he arranged them around each other in the air with some
regard to symmetry and proportion. The different articles, keeping
strictly each in its own place, formed a very attractive group wonderful
to behold. Diana, placed in the apex of the pyramid, would remind you of
those marvellous suspensions in the air performed by Houdin, Herman, and
a few other first class wizards. Only being kept in her place without
being hampered by invisible strings, the animal rather seemed to enjoy
the exhibition, though in all probability she was hardly conscious of
any thing unusual in her appearance.

Our travellers had been fully prepared for such a phenomenon, yet it
struck them with as much surprise as if they had never uttered a
scientific reason to account for it. They saw that, no longer subject to
the ordinary laws of nature, they were now entering the realms of the
marvellous. They felt that their bodies were absolutely without weight.
Their arms, fully extended, no longer sought their sides. Their heads
oscillated unsteadily on their shoulders. Their feet no longer rested on
the floor. In their efforts to hold themselves straight, they looked
like drunken men trying to maintain the perpendicular. We have all read
stories of some men deprived of the power of reflecting light and of
others who could not cast a shadow. But here reality, no fantastic
story, showed you men who, through the counteraction of attractive
forces, could tell no difference between light substances and heavy
substances, and who absolutely had no weight whatever themselves!

"Let us take graceful attitudes!" cried Ardan, "and imagine we are
playing _tableaux_! Let us, for instance, form a grand historical group
of the three great goddesses of the nineteenth century. Barbican will
represent Minerva or _Science_; the Captain, Bellona or _War_; while I,
as Madre Natura, the newly born goddess of _Progress_, floating
gracefully over you both, extend my hands so, fondly patronizing the
one, but grandly ordering off the other, to the regions of eternal
night! More on your toe, Captain! Your right foot a little higher! Look
at Barbican's admirable pose! Now then, prepare to receive orders for a
new tableau! Form group _a la Jardin Mabille!_ Presto! Change!"

In an instant, our travellers, changing attitudes, formed the new group
with tolerable success. Even Barbican, who had been to Paris in his
youth, yielding for a moment to the humor of the thing, acted the _naif
Anglais_ to the life. The Captain was frisky enough to remind you of a
middle-aged Frenchman from the provinces, on a hasty visit to the
capital for a few days' fun. Ardan was in raptures.

"Oh! if Raphael could only see us!" he exclaimed in a kind of ecstasy.
"He would paint such a picture as would throw all his other masterpieces
in the shade!"

"Knock spots out of the best of them by fifty per cent!" cried the
Captain, gesticulating well enough _a l'etudiant_, but rather mixing his
metaphors.

[Illustration: A GROUP _A LA JARDIN MABILLE_.]

"He should be pretty quick in getting through the job," observed
Barbican, the first as usual to recover tranquillity. "As soon as the
Projectile will have passed the neutral point--in half an hour at
longest--lunar attraction will draw us to the Moon."

"We shall have to crawl on the ceiling then like flies," said Ardan.

"Not at all," said the Captain; "the Projectile, having its centre of
gravity very low, will turn upside down by degrees."

"Upside down!" cried Ardan. "That will be a nice mess! everything
higgledy-piggledy!"

"No danger, friend Michael," said M'Nicholl; "there shall be no disorder
whatever; nothing will quit its place; the movement of the Projectile
will be effected by such slow degrees as to be imperceptible."

"Yes," added Barbican, "as soon as we shall have passed the neutral
point, the base of the Projectile, its heaviest part, will swing around
gradually until it faces the Moon. Before this phenomenon, however, can
take place, we must of course cross the line."

"Cross the line!" cried the Frenchman; "then let us imitate the sailors
when they do the same thing in the Atlantic Ocean! Splice the main
brace!"

A slight effort carried him sailing over to the side of the Projectile.
Opening a cupboard and taking out a bottle and a few glasses, he placed
them on a tray. Then setting the tray itself in the air as on a table in
front of his companions, he filled the glasses, passed them around, and,
in a lively speech interrupted with many a joyous hurrah, congratulated
his companions on their glorious achievement in being the first that
ever crossed the lunar line.

This counteracting influence of the attractions lasted nearly an hour.
By that time the travellers could keep themselves on the floor without
much effort. Barbican also made his companions remark that the conical
point of the Projectile diverged a little from the direct line to the
Moon, while by an inverse movement, as they could notice through the
window of the floor, the base was gradually turning away from the Earth.
The Lunar attraction was evidently getting the better of the
Terrestrial. The fall towards the Moon, though still almost insensible,
was certainly beginning.

It could not be more than the eightieth part of an inch in the first
second. But by degrees, as the attractive force would increase, the fall
would be more decided, and the Projectile, overbalanced by its base, and
presenting its cone to the Earth, would descend with accelerated
velocity to the Lunar surface. The object of their daring attempt would
then be successfully attained. No further obstacle, therefore, being
likely to stand in the way of the complete success of the enterprise,
the Captain and the Frenchman cordially shook hands with Barbican, all
kept congratulating each other on their good fortune as long as the
bottle lasted.

They could not talk enough about the wonderful phenomenon lately
witnessed; the chief point, the neutralization of the law of gravity,
particularly, supplied them with an inexhaustible subject. The
Frenchman, as usual, as enthusiastic in his fancy, as he was fanciful in
his enthusiasm, got off some characteristic remarks.

"What a fine thing it would be, my boys," he exclaimed, "if on Earth we
could be so fortunate as we have been here, and get rid of that weight
that keeps us down like lead, that rivets us to it like an adamantine
chain! Then should we prisoners become free! Adieu forever to all
weariness of arms or feet! At present, in order to fly over the surface
of the Earth by the simple exertion of our muscles or even to sustain
ourselves in the air, we require a muscular force fifty times greater
than we possess; but if attraction did not exist, the simplest act of
the will, our slightest whim even, would be sufficient to transport us
to whatever part of space we wished to visit."

"Ardan, you had better invent something to kill attraction," observed
M'Nicholl drily; "you can do it if you try. Jackson and Morton have
killed pain by sulphuric ether. Suppose you try your hand on
attraction!"

"It would be worth a trial!" cried Ardan, so full of his subject as not
to notice the Captain's jeering tone; "attraction once destroyed, there
is an end forever to all loads, packs and burdens! How the poor omnibus
horses would rejoice! Adieu forever to all cranes, derricks, capstans,
jack-screws, and even hotel-elevators! We could dispense with all
ladders, door steps, and even stair-cases!"

"And with all houses too," interrupted Barbican; "or, at least, we
_should_ dispense with them because we could not have them. If there was
no weight, you could neither make a wall of bricks nor cover your house
with a roof. Even your hat would not stay on your head. The cars would
not stay on the railway nor the boats on the water. What do I say? We
could not have any water. Even the Ocean would leave its bed and float
away into space. Nay, the atmosphere itself would leave us, being
detained in its place by terrestrial attraction and by nothing else."

"Too true, Mr. President," replied Ardan after a pause. "It's a fact. I
acknowledge the corn, as Marston says. But how you positive fellows do
knock holes into our pretty little creations of fancy!"

"Don't feel so bad about it, Ardan;" observed M'Nicholl; "though there
may be no orb from which gravity is excluded altogether, we shall soon
land in one, where it is much less powerful than on the Earth."

"You mean the Moon!"

"Yes, the Moon. Her mass being 1/89 of the Earth's, her attractive power
should be in the same proportion; that is, a boy 10 years old, whose
weight on Earth is about 90 lbs., would weigh on the Moon only about 1
pound, if nothing else were to be taken into consideration. But when
standing on the surface of the Moon, he is relatively 4 times nearer to
the centre than when he is standing on the surface of the Earth. His
weight, therefore, having to be increased by the square of the distance,
must be sixteen times greater. Now 16 times 1/89 being less than 1/5, it
is clear that my weight of 150 pounds will be cut down to nearly 30 as
soon as we reach the Moon's surface."

"And mine?" asked Ardan.

"Yours will hardly reach 25 pounds, I should think," was the reply.

"Shall my muscular strength diminish in the same proportion?" was the
next question.

"On the contrary, it will be relatively so much the more increased that
you can take a stride 15 feet in width as easily as you can now take one
of ordinary length."

"We shall be all Samsons, then, in the Moon!" cried Ardan.

"Especially," replied M'Nicholl, "if the stature of the Selenites is in
proportion to the mass of their globe."

"If so, what should be their height?"

"A tall man would hardly be twelve inches in his boots!"

"They must be veritable Lilliputians then!" cried Ardan; "and we are all
to be Gullivers! The old myth of the Giants realized! Perhaps the Titans
that played such famous parts in the prehistoric period of our Earth,
were adventurers like ourselves, casually arrived from some great
planet!"

"Not from such planets as _Mercury_, _Venus_ or _Mars_ anyhow, friend
Michael," observed Barbican. "But the inhabitants of _Jupiter_,
_Saturn_, _Uranus,_ or _Neptune_, if they bear the same proportion to
their planet that we do ours, must certainly be regular Brobdignagians."

"Let us keep severely away from all planets of the latter class then,"
said Ardan. "I never liked to play the part of Lilliputian myself. But
how about the Sun, Barbican? I always had a hankering after the Sun!"

"The Sun's volume is about 1-1/3 million times greater than that of the
Earth, but his density being only about 1/4, the attraction on his
surface is hardly 30 times greater than that of our globe. Still, every
proportion observed, the inhabitants of the Sun can't be much less than
150 or 160 feet in height."

"_Mille tonnerres!_" cried Ardan, "I should be there like Ulysses among
the Cyclops! I'll tell you what it is, Barbican; if we ever decide on
going to the Sun, we must provide ourselves before hand with a few of
your Rodman's Columbiads to frighten off the Solarians!"

"Your Columbiads would not do great execution there," observed
M'Nicholl; "your bullet would be hardly out of the barrel when it would
drop to the surface like a heavy stone pushed off the wall of a house."

"Oh! I like that!" laughed the incredulous Ardan.

"A little calculation, however, shows the Captain's remark to be
perfectly just," said Barbican. "Rodman's ordinary 15 inch Columbiad
requires a charge of 100 pounds of mammoth powder to throw a ball of
500 pounds weight. What could such a charge do with a ball weighing 30
times as much or 15,000 pounds? Reflect on the enormous weight
everything must have on the surface of the Sun! Your hat, for instance,
would weigh 20 or 30 pounds. Your cigar nearly a pound. In short, your
own weight on the Sun's surface would be so great, more than two tons,
that if you ever fell you should never be able to pick yourself up
again!"

"Yes," added the Captain, "and whenever you wanted to eat or drink you
should rig up a set of powerful machinery to hoist the eatables and
drinkables into your mouth."

"Enough of the Sun to-day, boys!" cried Ardan, shrugging his shoulders;
"I don't contemplate going there at present. Let us be satisfied with
the Moon! There, at least, we shall be of some account!"

CHAPTER IX.

A LITTLE OFF THE TRACK.

Barbican's mind was now completely at rest at least on one subject. The
original force of the discharge had been great enough to send the
Projectile beyond the neutral line. Therefore, there was no longer any
danger of its falling back to the Earth. Therefore, there was no longer
any danger of its resting eternally motionless on the point of the
counteracting attractions. The next subject to engage his attention was
the question: would the Projectile, under the influence of lunar
attraction, succeed in reaching its destination?

The only way in which it _could_ succeed was by falling through a space
of nearly 24,000 miles and then striking the Moon's surface. A most
terrific fall! Even taking the lunar attraction to be only the one-sixth
of the Earth's, such a fall was simply bewildering to think of. The
greatest height to which a balloon ever ascended was seven miles
(Glaisher, 1862). Imagine a fall from even that distance! Then imagine a
fall from a height of four thousand miles!

Yet it was for a fall of this appalling kind on the surface of the Moon
that the travellers had now to prepare themselves. Instead of avoiding
it, however, they eagerly desired it and would be very much
disappointed if they missed it. They had taken the best precautions they
could devise to guard against the terrific shock. These were mainly of
two kinds: one was intended to counteract as much as possible the
fearful results to be expected the instant the Projectile touched the
lunar surface; the other, to retard the velocity of the fall itself, and
thereby to render it less violent.

The best arrangement of the first kind was certainly Barbican's
water-contrivance for counteracting the shock at starting, which has
been so fully described in our former volume. (See _Baltimore Gun Club_,
page 353.) But unfortunately it could be no longer employed. Even if the
partitions were in working order, the water--two thousand pounds in
weight had been required--was no longer to be had. The little still left
in the tanks was of no account for such a purpose. Besides, they had not
a single drop of the precious liquid to spare, for they were as yet
anything but sanguine regarding the facility of finding water on the
Moon's surface.

Fortunately, however, as the gentle reader may remember, Barbican,
besides using water to break the concussion, had provided the movable
disc with stout pillars containing a strong buffing apparatus, intended
to protect it from striking the bottom too violently after the
destruction of the different partitions. These buffers were still good,
and, gravity being as yet almost imperceptible, to put them once more in
order and adjust them to the disc was not a difficult task.

The travellers set to work at once and soon accomplished it. The
different pieces were put together readily--a mere matter of bolts and
screws, with plenty of tools to manage them. In a short time the
repaired disc rested on its steel buffers, like a table on its legs, or
rather like a sofa seat on its springs. The new arrangement was attended
with at least one disadvantage. The bottom light being covered up, a
convenient view of the Moon's surface could not be had as soon as they
should begin to fall in a perpendicular descent. This, however, was only
a slight matter, as the side lights would permit the adventurers to
enjoy quite as favorable a view of the vast regions of the Moon as is
afforded to balloon travellers when looking down on the Earth over the
sides of their car.

The disc arrangement was completed in about an hour, but it was not till
past twelve o'clock before things were restored to their usual order.
Barbican then tried to make fresh observations regarding the inclination
of the Projectile; but to his very decided chagrin he found that it had
not yet turned over sufficiently to commence the perpendicular fall: on
the contrary, it even seemed to be following a curve rather parallel
with that of the lunar disc. The Queen of the Stars now glittered with a
light more dazzling than ever, whilst from an opposite part of the sky
the glorious King of Day flooded her with his fires.

The situation began to look a little serious.

"Shall we ever get there!" asked the Captain.

"Let us be prepared for getting there, any how," was Barbican's dubious
reply.

"You're a pretty pair of suspenders," said Ardan cheerily (he meant of
course doubting hesitators, but his fluent command of English sometimes
led him into such solecisms). "Certainly we shall get there--and perhaps
a little sooner than will be good for us."

This reply sharply recalled Barbican to the task he had undertaken, and
he now went to work seriously, trying to combine arrangements to break
the fall. The reader may perhaps remember Ardan's reply to the Captain
on the day of the famous meeting in Tampa.

"Your fall would be violent enough," the Captain had urged, "to splinter
you like glass into a thousand fragments."

"And what shall prevent me," had been Ardan's ready reply, "from
breaking my fall by means of counteracting rockets suitably disposed,
and let off at the proper time?"

The practical utility of this idea had at once impressed Barbican. It
could hardly be doubted that powerful rockets, fastened on the outside
to the bottom of the Projectile, could, when discharged, considerably
retard the velocity of the fall by their sturdy recoil. They could burn
in a vacuum by means of oxygen furnished by themselves, as powder burns
in the chamber of a gun, or as the volcanoes of the Moon continue their
action regardless of the absence of a lunar atmosphere.

Barbican had therefore provided himself with rockets enclosed in strong
steel gun barrels, grooved on the outside so that they could be screwed
into corresponding holes already made with much care in the bottom of
the Projectile. They were just long enough, when flush with the floor
inside, to project outside by about six inches. They were twenty in
number, and formed two concentric circles around the dead light. Small
holes in the disc gave admission to the wires by which each of the
rockets was to be discharged externally by electricity. The whole effect
was therefore to be confined to the outside. The mixtures having been
already carefully deposited in each barrel, nothing further need be done
than to take away the metallic plugs which had been screwed into the
bottom of the Projectile, and replace them by the rockets, every one of
which was found to fit its grooved chamber with rigid exactness.

This evidently should have been all done before the disc had been
finally laid on its springs. But as this had to be lifted up again in
order to reach the bottom of the Projectile, more work was to be done
than was strictly necessary. Though the labor was not very hard,
considering that gravity had as yet scarcely made itself felt, M'Nicholl
and Ardan were not sorry to have their little joke at Barbican's
expense. The Frenchman began humming

"_Aliquandoque bonus dormitat Homerus,_"

to a tune from _Orphee aux Enfers_, and the Captain said something
about the Philadelphia Highway Commissioners who pave a street one day,
and tear it up the next to lay the gas pipes. But his friends' humor was
all lost on Barbican, who was so wrapped up in his work that he probably
never heard a word they said.

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