Round the Moon - Jules Verne (books to read in your 20s .TXT) 📗

establishment set up with oxygen-rooms, where people whose constitutions are weak might live a more active life during a few hours at least? Suppose we had meetings where the air could be saturated with this heroic fluid, theatres where the managers would send it out in strong doses, what passion there would be in the souls of actors and spectators, what fire and what enthusiasm! And if, instead of a simple assembly, a whole nation could be saturated with it, what activity, what a supplement of life it would receive! Of an exhausted nation it perhaps would make a great and strong nation, and I know more than one state in old Europe that ought to put itself under the oxygen regime in the interest of its health.”

Michel spoke with as much animation as if the tap were still full on. But with one sentence Barbicane damped his enthusiasm.

“All that is very well, friend Michel,” he said, “but now perhaps you will tell us where those fowls that joined in our concert came from.”

“Those fowls?”

“Yes.”

In fact, half-a-dozen hens and a superb cock were flying hither and thither.

“Ah, the stupids!” cried Michel. “It was the oxygen that put them in revolt.”

“But what are you going to do with those fowls?” asked Barbicane.

“Acclimatise them in the moon of course! For the sake of a joke, my worthy president; simply a joke that has unhappily come to nothing! I wanted to let them out on the lunar continent without telling you! How astounded you would have been to see these terrestrial poultry pecking the fields of the moon!”

“Ah, gamin, you eternal boy!” answered Barbicane, “you don’t want oxygen to make you out of your senses! You are always what we were under the influence of this gas! You are always insane!”

“Ah! how do we know we were not wiser then?” replied Michel Ardan.

After this philosophical reflection the three friends repaired the disorder in the projectile. Cock and hens were put back in their cage. But as they were doing this Barbicane and his two companions distinctly perceived a fresh phenomenon.

Since the moment they had left the earth their own weight, that of the bullet and the objects it contained, had suffered progressive diminution. Though they could not have any experience of this in the projectile, a moment must come when the effect upon themselves and the tools and instruments they used would be felt.

Of course scales would not have indicated this loss of weight, for the weights used would have lost precisely as much as the object itself; but a spring weighing-machine, the tension of which is independent of attraction, would have given the exact valuation of this diminution.

It is well known that attraction, or weight, is in proportion to the bulk, and in inverse proportion to the square of distances. Hence this consequence. If the earth had been alone in space, if the other heavenly bodies were to be suddenly annihilated, the projectile, according to Newton’s law, would have weighed less according to its distance from the earth, but without ever losing its weight entirely, for the terrestrial attraction would always have made itself felt, no matter at what distance.

But in the case with which we are dealing, a moment must come when the projectile would not be at all under the law of gravitation, after allowing for the other celestial bodies, whose effect could not be set down as zero.

In fact, the trajectory of the projectile was between the earth and the moon. As it went farther away from the earth terrestrial attraction would be diminished in inverse proportion to the square of distances, but the lunar attraction would be augmented in the same proportion. A point must, therefore, be reached where these two attractions would neutralise each other, and the bullet would have no weight at all. If the volumes of the moon and earth were equal, this point would have been reached at an equal distance between the two bodies. But by taking their difference of bulk into account it was easy to calculate that this point would be situated at ⁴⁷⁄₅₂ of the journey, or at 78,114 leagues from the earth.

At this point a body that had no principle of velocity or movement in itself would remain eternally motionless, being equally attracted by the two heavenly bodies, and nothing drawing it more towards one than the other.

Now if the force of impulsion had been exactly calculated the projectile ought to reach that point with no velocity, having lost all weight like the objects it contained.

What would happen then? Three hypotheses presented themselves.

Either the projectile would have kept some velocity, and passing the point of equal attraction, would fall on the moon by virtue of the excess of lunar attraction over terrestrial attraction.

Or velocity sufficient to reach the neutral point being wanting, it would fall back on the earth by virtue of the excess of terrestrial attraction over lunar attraction.

Or lastly, endowed with sufficient velocity to reach the neutral point, but insufficient to pass it, it would remain eternally suspended in the same place, like the pretended coffin of Muhammad, between the zenith and nadir.

Such was the situation, and Barbicane clearly explained the consequences to his travelling companions. They were interested to the highest degree. How were they to know when they had reached this neutral point, situated at 78,114 leagues from the earth, at the precise moment when neither they nor the objects contained in the projectile should be in any way subject to the laws of weight?

Until now the travellers, though they had remarked that this action diminished little by little, had not yet perceived its total absence. But that day, about 11 a.m., Nicholl having let a tumbler escape from his hand, instead of falling, it remained suspended in the air.

“Ah!” cried Michel Ardan, “this is a little amusing chemistry!”

And immediately different objects, weapons, bottles, etc., left to themselves, hung suspended as if by miracle. Diana, too, lifted up by Michel into space, reproduced, but without trickery,