Chapter 3: Heavenly Bodies

The following day, while in their observatory, they saw something not many miles ahead. They watched it for hours, and in fact all day, but notwithstanding their tremendous speed they came but little nearer.

“They say a stern chase is a long one,” said Bearwarden; but that beats anything I have ever seen.”

After a while, however, they found they WERE nearer, the time taken having been in part due to the deceptive distance, which was greater than they supposed.

“A comet!” exclaimed Cortlandt excitedly. “We shall really be able to examine it near.”

“It’s going in our direction,” said Ayrault, “and at almost exactly our speed.”

While the sun shone full upon it they brought their camera into play, and again succeeded in photographing a heavenly body at close range. The nucleus or head was of course turned towards the sun; while the tail, which they could see faintly, preceded it, as the comet was receding towards the cold and dark depths of space. The head was only a few miles in diameter, for it was a small comet, and was composed of grains and masses of stone and meteoric iron. Many of the grains were no larger than peas or mustard-seeds; no mass was more than four feet in diameter, and all of them had very irregular shapes. The space between the particles was never less than one hundred times their masses.

“We can move about within it,” said Ayrault, as the Callisto entered the aggregation of particles, and moved slowly forward among them.

The windows in the dome, being made of toughened glass, set somewhat slantingly so as to deflect anything touching them, and having, moreover, the pressure of the inside air to sustain them, were fairly safe, while the windows in the sides and base were but little exposed. Whenever a large mass seemed dangerously near the glass, they applied an apergetic shock to it and sent it kiting among its fellows. At these times the Callisto recoiled slightly also, the resulting motion in either being in inverse ratio to its weight. There was constant and incessant movement among the individual fragments, but it was not rotary. Nothing seemed to be revolving about anything else; all were moving, apparently swinging back and forth, but no collisions took place. When the separate particles got more than a certain distance apart they reapproached one another, but when seemingly within about one hundred diameters of each other they swung off in some other direction. The motion was like that of innumerable harp-strings, which may approach but never strike one another. After a time the Callisto seemed to become endowed with the same property that the fragments possessed; for it and they repelled one another, on a near approach, after which nothing came very near.

Much of the material was like slag from a furnace, having evidently been partly fused. Whether this heat was the result of collision or of its near approach to the sun at perihelion, they could not tell, though the latter explanation seemed most simple and probable. When at about the centre of the nucleus they were in semi-darkness--not twilight, for any ray that succeeded in penetrating was dazzlingly brilliant, and the shadows, their own included, were inky black. As they approached the farther side and the sunlight decreased, they found that a diffused luminosity pervaded everything. It was sufficiently bright to enable them to see the dark side of the meteoric masses, and, on emerging from the nucleus in total darkness, they found the shadow stretching thousands of miles before them into space.

“I now understand,” said Bearwarden, “why stars of the sixth and seventh magnitude can be seen through thousands of miles of a comet’s tail. It is simply because there is nothing in it. The reason ANY stars are obscured is because the light in the tail, however faint, is brighter than they, and that light is all that the caudal appendage consists of, though what produces it I confess I am unable to explain. I also see why the tail always stretches away from the sun, because near by it is overwhelmed by the more powerful light; in fact, I suspect it is principally in the comet’s shadow that the tail is visible. It is strange that no one ever thought of that before, or that any one feared the earth’s passing through the tail of a comet. It is obvious to me now that if there were any material substance, any gas, however rarefied, in this hairlike[1] accompaniment, it would immediately fall to the comparatively heavy head, and surround that as a centre.”

[1] Comet means literally a hair.

“How, then,” asked Cortlandt, “do you account for the spaces between those stones? However slight gravitation might be between some of the grains, if it existed at all, or was unopposed by some other force, with sufficient time--and they have eternity--every comet would come together like a planet into one solid mass. Perhaps some similar force maintains gases in the distended tail, though I know of no such, or even any analogous manifestation on earth. If the law on which we have been brought up, that ‘every atom in the universe attracts every other atom, ‘ were without exceptions or modifications, that comet could not continue to exist in its present form. Until we get some additional illustration, however, we shall be short of data with which to formulate any iconoclastic hypothesis. The source of the light, I must admit, also puzzles me greatly. There is certainly no heat to which we can attribute it.”

Having gone beyond the fragments, they applied a strong repulsion charge to the comet, creating thereby a perfect whirlpool among its particles, and quickly left it. Half an hour later they again shut off the current, as the Callisto’s speed was sufficient.

For some time they had been in the belt of asteroids, but as yet they had seen none near. The morning following their experience with the comet, however, they went to their observatory after breakfast as usual, and, on pointing their glasses forward, espied a comparatively large body before them, a little to their right.