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

the only hypothesis that remains is one of living beings without movement or life.”

“You might just as well say living creatures who are not alive.”

“Precisely,” answered Barbicane, “which for us has no meaning.”

“Then now we may formulate our opinion,” said Michel.

“Yes,” answered Nicholl.

“Very well,” resumed Michel Ardan; “the Scientific Commission, meeting in the projectile of the Gun Club, after having supported its arguments upon fresh facts lately observed, decides unanimously upon the question of the habitability of the moon⁠—‘No, the moon is not inhabited.’ ”

This decision was taken down by Barbicane in his notebook, where he had already written the procès-verbal of the sitting of December 6th.

“Now,” said Nicholl, “let us attack the second question, depending on the first. I therefore ask the honourable Commission if the moon is not habitable, has it been inhabited?”

“Answer, Citizen Barbicane,” said Michel Ardan.

“My friends,” answered Barbicane, “I did not undertake this journey to form an opinion upon the ancient habitability of our satellite. I may add that my personal observations only confirm me in this opinion. I believe, I even affirm, that the moon has been inhabited by a human race organised like ours, that it has produced animals anatomically formed like terrestrial animals; but I add that these races, human or animal, have had their day, and are forever extinct.”

“Then,” asked Michel, “the moon is an older world than the earth?”

“No,” answered Barbicane with conviction, “but a world that has grown old more quickly, whose formation and deformation have been more rapid. Relatively the organising forces of matter have been much more violent in the interior of the moon than in the interior of the celestial globe. The actual state of this disc, broken up, tormented, and swollen, proves this abundantly. In their origin the moon and the earth were only gases. These gases became liquids under different influences, and the solid mass was formed afterwards. But it is certain that our globe was gas or liquid still when the moon, already solidified by cooling, became habitable.”

“I believe that,” said Nicholl.

“Then,” resumed Barbicane, “it was surrounded by atmosphere. The water held in by the gassy element could not evaporate. Under the influence of air, water, light, and heat, solar and central, vegetation took possession of these continents prepared for its reception, and certainly life manifested itself about that epoch, for Nature does not spend itself in inutilities, and a world so marvellously habitable must have been inhabited.”

“Still,” answered Nicholl, “many phenomena inherent to the movements of our satellite must have prevented the expansion of the vegetable and animal kingdoms. The days and nights 354 hours long, for example.”

“At the terrestrial poles,” said Michel, “they last six months.”

“That is not a valuable argument, as the poles are not inhabited.”

“In the actual state of the moon,” resumed Barbicane, “the long nights and days create differences of temperature insupportable to the constitution, but it was not so at that epoch of historical times. The atmosphere enveloped the disc with a fluid mantle. Vapour deposited itself in the form of clouds. This natural screen tempered the ardour of the solar lays, and retained the nocturnal radiation. Both light and heat could diffuse themselves in the air. Hence there was equilibrium between the influences which no longer exists now that the atmosphere has almost entirely disappeared. Besides, I shall astonish you⁠—”

“Astonish us?” said Michel Ardan.

“But I believe that at the epoch when the moon was inhabited the nights and days did not last 354 hours!”

“Why so?” asked Nicholl quickly.

“Because it is very probable that then the moon’s movement of rotation on her axis was not equal to her movement of revolution, an equality which puts every point of the lunar disc under the action of the solar rays for fifteen days.”

“Agreed,” answered Nicholl; “but why should not these movements have been equal, since they are so actually?”

“Because that equality has only been determined by terrestrial attraction. Now, how do we know that this attraction was powerful enough to influence the movements of the moon at the epoch the earth was still fluid?”

“True,” replied Nicholl; “and who can say that the moon has always been the earth’s satellite?”

“And who can say,” exclaimed Michel Ardan, “that the moon did not exist before the earth?”

Imagination began to wander in the indefinite field of hypotheses. Barbicane wished to hold them in.

“Those,” said he, “are speculations too high, problems really insoluble. Do not let us enter into them. Let us only admit the insufficiency of primordial attraction, and then by the inequality of rotation and revolution days and nights could succeed each other upon the moon as they do upon the earth. Besides, even under those conditions life was possible.”

“Then,” asked Michel Ardan, “humanity has quite disappeared from the moon?”

“Yes,” answered Barbicane, “after having, doubtless, existed for thousands of centuries. Then gradually the atmosphere becoming rarefied, the disc will again be uninhabitable like the terrestrial globe will one day become by cooling.”

“By cooling?”

“Certainly,” answered Barbicane. “As the interior fires became extinguished the incandescent matter was concentrated and the lunar disc became cool. By degrees the consequences of this phenomenon came about⁠—the disappearance of organic beings and the disappearance of vegetation. Soon the atmosphere became rarefied, and was probably drawn away by terrestrial attraction; the breathable air disappeared, and so did water by evaporation. At that epoch the moon became uninhabitable, and was no longer inhabited. It was a dead world like it is today.”

“And you say that the like fate is reserved for the earth?”

“Very probably.”

“But when?”

“When the cooling of its crust will have made it uninhabitable.”

“Has the time it will take our unfortunate globe to melt been calculated?”

“Certainly.”

“And you know the reason?”

“Perfectly.”

“Then tell us, sulky savant⁠—you make me boil with impatience.”

“Well, my worthy Michel,” answered Barbicane tranquilly, “it is well known what diminution of temperature the earth suffers in the lapse of a century. Now, according to certain calculations, that average temperature will be brought down to zero after a period of 400,000 years!”

“Four hundred thousand years!” exclaimed Michel. “Ah! I breathe