Chapter 19: A Struggle Against The Impossible

For a long time Barbicane and his companions looked silently and sadly upon that world which they had only seen from a distance, as Moses saw the land of Canaan, and which they were leaving without a possibility of ever returning to it. The projectile’s position with regard to the moon had altered, and the base was now 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 an elliptical 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 on leaving the moon it followed a course analogous to that traced in 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 from facts already observed, a conviction which his two friends shared 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 will be insufficient, and it will remain forever immovable on this line of double attraction----”

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

“Or,” continued Barbicane, “its speed will be sufficient, and it will continue its elliptical course, to gravitate forever around the orb of night.”

“A revolution not at all consoling,” said Michel, “to pass to the state of humble servants to a moon whom we are accustomed to look 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 against the impossible?”

“Why not? Do one Frenchman and two Americans shrink from such a 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 their projectile they are not artillerymen. If the projectile is to command the gunner, we had better ram the gunner into the gun. My faith! fine savants! who do not know what is to become of us after 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 trip has pleased me, and the projectile agrees with me; but let us do all that is humanly possible to do the fall somewhere, even if only on the moon.”

“We ask no better, my worthy Michel,” replied Barbicane, “but means 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 ballast on board; and indeed it seems to me that if lightened it would go much quicker.”

“Slower.”

“Quicker.”

“Neither slower nor quicker,” said Barbicane, wishing to make his two friends agree; “for we float is space, and must no longer consider specific weight.”

“Very well,” cried Michel Ardan in a decided voice; “then their remains but one thing to do.”

“What is it?” asked Nicholl.

“Breakfast,” answered the cool, audacious Frenchman, who always brought up this solution at the most difficult juncture.

In any case, if this operation had no influence on the projectile’s course, it could at least be tried without inconvenience, and even with success from a stomachic point of 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 drawn from 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 invariable distance, were the objects which had been thrown out. Evidently, in its translatory motion round the moon, it had not passed through any atmosphere, for the specific weight of these different objects would 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 at twelve; and two days must elapse before its crescent, freed from the solar rays, would serve as a clock to the Selenites, as in its rotary movement each of its points after twenty-four hours repasses the same lunar meridian.

On the moon’s side the sight was different; the orb shone in all her splendor amid innumerable constellations, whose purity could not be troubled by her rays. On the disc, the plains were already returning to the dark tint which is seen from the earth. The other part of the nimbus remained brilliant, and in the midst of this general brilliancy Tycho shone prominently like a sun.

Barbicane had no means of estimating the projectile’s speed, but reasoning showed that it must uniformly decrease, according to the laws of mechanical reasoning. Having admitted that the projectile was describing an orbit around the moon, this orbit must necessarily be elliptical; science proves that it must be so. No motive body circulating round an attracting body fails in this law. Every orbit described in space is elliptical. And why should the projectile of the Gun Club escape this natural arrangement? In elliptical orbits, the attracting body always occupies one of the foci; so that at one moment the satellite is nearer, and at another farther from the orb around which it gravitates. When the earth is nearest the sun she is in her perihelion; and in her aphelion at the farthest point. Speaking of the moon, she is nearest to the earth in her perigee, and farthest from it in her apogee. To use analogous expressions, with which the astronomers’ language is enriched, if the projectile remains as a satellite of the moon, we must say that it is in its “aposelene” at its farthest point, and in its “periselene” at its nearest. In the latter case, the projectile would attain its maximum of speed; and in the former its minimum. It was evidently moving toward its aposelenitical point; and Barbicane had reason to think that its speed would decrease up to this point, and then increase by degrees as it neared the moon. This speed would even become nil, if this point joined that of equal attraction. Barbicane studied the consequences of these different situations, and thinking what inference he could draw from 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 speed which 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 position occupied by the projectile, an oblique position with regard to the 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, the projectile is turning its base toward the earth. It is probable that at the point of equal attraction, its conical cap will be directed rigidly toward the moon; at that moment we may hope that its speed will be nil; then will be the moment to act, and with the influence of our rockets we may perhaps provoke a fall directly on the surface of the lunar disc.”

“Bravo!” said Michel. “What we did not do, what we could not do on our first passage at the dead point, because the projectile was then endowed with too great a speed.”