From Earth To The Moon And A Trip Around It Pt. VI

This, after a long pause caused by idleness, is the concluding part of Jules Verne's story of daring-do or, three men and a dog get into a bit of a pickle in outer-space.
Now read on...

Two minutes after the sudden appearance of the meteor (to them two centuries of anguish) the projectile seemed almost about to strike it, when the globe of fire burst like a bomb, but without making any noise in that void where sound, which is but the agitation of the layers of air, could not be generated.

Nicholl uttered a cry, and he and his companions rushed to the scuttle.  What a sight !  What pen can describe it ?  What palette is rich enough in colours to reproduce so magnificent a spectacle ?

It was like the opening of a crater, like the scattering of an immense conflagration.  Thousands of luminous fragments lit up and irradiated space with their fires.  Every size, every colour, was there intermingled.  There were rays of yellow and pale yellow, red, green, grey-a crown of fireworks of all colours.  Of the enormous and much-dreaded globe there remained nothing but fragments carried in all directions, now become asteroids in their turn, some flashing like a sword, some surrounded by a whitish cloud, and others leaving them behind them trains of brilliant cosmical dust.  

These incandescent blocks crossed and struck each other, scattering still smaller fragments, some of which struck the projectile.  Its left  scuttle was even cracked by a violent shock.  It seemed to be floating amidst a howitzer shells, the smallest of which might destroy it instantly.

The light which saturated the ether was so wonderfully intense that Michel, drawing Barbicane and Nicholl to his window, exclaimed, "The invisible moon, visible at last!"

And through a luminous emanation, which lasted some seconds, the whole three caught a glimpse of that mysterious disc which the eye of man now saw for the first time.

But the lightnings in space subsided by degrees; its accidental brilliancy died away; the asteroids dispersed in different directions and were extinguished in the distance.  The ether returned to its accustomed darkness; the stars, eclipsed for a moment, again twinkled in the firmament, and a the disc, so hastily discerned, was again buried in impenetrable night.

The Columbiad completed its circuit  of the moon.  It emerged into sunlight.  Barbicane believed that its course had again been altered by near contact with the meteor.  At any rate, it was now describing a closed curve around the moon, whose satellite it was now likely to become.

"Moon of the moon!" cried Michel Ardan.

"Only, I would have you observe, my worthy friend," replied Barbicane  "that we are none the none the less lost for that."

With eyes glued to the windows of their space-ship, the astronauts studied the moon, once again lighted by the rays of the sun.  Sheets of frozen snow were observed on the ridges of the lunar mountains, proving the presence of water and air.  The world they looked upon, however, was desolate.

There was no trace of vegetation, on appearance of cities; nothing but stratification, beds of lava, overflowings polished like immense mirrors, reflecting the sun's rays with overpowering brilliancy.  Nothing belonging to a living world-everthing to a dead world, where avalanches, rolling from the summits of the mountains, would disperse noiselessly a the bottom of the abyss, retaining the motion, but wanting for sound.  In any case it was the image of death, without its being possible even to say that life ever existed there.

The question of the habitability of the moon was discussed seriously by the three.

Michel Ardan persuaded his two friends to form an opinion, and asked them directly if they thought that men and animal were represented in the lunar world.

"I think that we can answer," said Barbicane; "but according to my idea the question ought not to be put in that form.  I ask it to be put differently."

"Put it your own way," replied Michel.

"Here it is," continued Barbicane,  "The problem is a double one, and requires a double solution. Is the moon habitable?  Has the moon ever been inhabited?"

"Good!" replied Nicholl.  "First let us see whether the moon is habitable?"

"To tell the truth, I know nothing about it," answered Michel.

"And I answer in the negative," continued Barbicane.  " In her actual state, with her surrounding atmosphere certainly very much reduced, her seas for the most part dried up, her day and nights of 354 hours: the moon does not seem habitable to me, nor does she seem propitious to animal development, nor sufficient for the wants of existence as we understand it."

"Agreed," replied Nicholl.  "But is not the moon habitable for creatures differently organised from ourselves?"

"Without a doubt!" answered Nicholl.

"Then, my worthy companion, I would answer that we have observed the lunar continent at a distance of five hundred yards at most, and that nothing seemed to us to move on the moon's surface.  The presence of any kind of life would have been betrayed by its attendant marks, such as divers buildings, and even by ruins. And what have we seen?  Everywhere and always the geological works of nature, never the work of man.  If, then, there exist representatives of the animal kingdom on the moon, they must have fled to those unfathomable cavities which the eye cannot reach; which I cannot admit, for they must have left traces of their passage on those plains which the atmosphere must cover, however slightly raised it may be.  These traces are nowhere visible.  There remains but one hypothesis, that of a living race to which motion, which is life, is foreign." 

"One might as well say, living creatures which do not live," replied Michel.

"Just so," said Barbicane, "which for us has no meaning."

Having agreed that the moon was not habitable, the three proceeded to discuss whether it had ever been inhabited.

"My friends," said Barbicane, "I did not undertake this journey in order to form an opinion on the past habitability of our satellite; but I will add that our personal observations only confirm me in this opinion.  I believe, indeed I affirm, that the moon has been inhabited by a human race organised like our own; that she has produced animals anatomically formed like the terrestrial animals; but I add that these races, human or animal, have have had their day, and are now for ever extinct!"

The Columbiad, following its long ellipse, was now leaving the moon.  It was likely to reach the neutral line again, as it had done on its outward journey, where the opposing attractions of the earth and the moon cancelled each other out.

"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 for ever 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 for ever around the orb of night."

Approaching the farthest point of its ellipse about the moon, the Columbiad's speed steadily lessened.  The it was that Michel Ardan had his brightest idea.  The rockets that they were originally going to use to create a recoil that would check their descent upon the moon could be used at the neutral line to project them on to the moon!

Patiently, yet with growing eagerness and excitement, they waited for the moment of the great experiment to arrive--twenty-two hours distant.

The day seemed long.  However bold the travellers might be, they were greatly impressed by the approach of that moment which would decide all--either precipitate their fall on the moon, or for ever chain them in immutable orbit.  They counted the hours as they passed too slow for their wish;  Barbicane and Nicholl were obstinately plunged in their calculations, Michel going and coming between the narrow walls, and watching that impassive moon with a longing eye.

The terrestrial midnight arrived.  The 8th of December was beginning.  One hour more, and the point of equal attraction would be reached.  What speed would the animate the projectile?  They could not estimate it.  But no error could vitiate Barbicane's calculations.  At one in the morning, this speed ought to be, and would be nil.

Besides, another phenomenon would mark the projectile's stopping-point on the neutral line.  At that spot the two attractions, lunar and terrestrial, would be annulled.  Objects would "weigh" no more.  This singular fact, which had surprised Barbicane and his companions so much in going, would be repeated on their return under the very same conditions.  At this precise moment they must act.

Already the projectile's conical top was sensibly turned towards the lunar disc, presented in such a way as to utilise the whole of the recoil produced by the pressure of the rocket apparatus.  The chances were in favour of the travellers.  If its speed was utterly annulled on this dead point, a decided movement toward the moon would suffice, however slight, to determine its fall.

"Five minutes to one," said Nicholl.

"All is ready," replied Michel Arden, directing a lighted match to the flame of gas.

"Wait!" said Barbicane, holding his chronometer in his hand.

At that moment weight had no effect.  The travellers felt in themselves the entire disappearance of it.  They were very near the neutral point, if they did not touch it.

"One o'clock," said Barbicane.

Michel Ardan applied the lighted match to a train in communication with the rockets.  No detonation was heard in the inside, for there was no air.  But, through the scuttles, Barbicane saw a prolonged smoke, the flames of which were immediately extinguished.

The projectile sustained a certain shock, which was sensibly felt in the interior.

The three friends looked and listened without speaking and scarcely breathing.  One might have heard the beating of their hearts amidst this perfect silence.

"Are we falling?" asked Michel Ardan, at length.

"No," said Nicholl, "since the bottom of the projectile in not turning to the lunar disc!"

At this moment, Barbicane, quitting the scuttle, turned to his two companions.  He was frightfully pale, his forehead wrinkled, and his lips contracted.

"We are falling!" said he.

"Ah!" cried Michel Ardan, "on to the moon?"

"On to the earth!"

Yes, they were falling, falling back to Earth from a height of 160,000 miles. The speed at which the Columbiad had been travelling had carried it over the dead line, just as it had done on the journey outward, and the firing of the rockets had not sufficed to retard it.  In obedience to physical laws,  the projectile had passed "through every point which it had already gone through."

Barbicane, Nicholl, and Michel Ardan were now hurtling earthward at a velocity that at the moment of impact would reach over 115,000 miles per hour!

It was on the morning of December 12th, more than ten days after the launching of the Columbiad on its pioneer journey to the moon, that the waiting world received its first news of the intrepid astronauts.  At seventeen minutes past one in the morning, Lieutenant Bronsfield, of the United States Navy corvette, Susquehanna, about to leave his watch, heard a curious loud hissing noise high above him.  Before he had even time to consult with others concerning the cause of the unusual commotion, there rushed into view what appeared to be "an enormous meteor, ignited by the rapidity of its course and its friction through the atmospheric strata.  This fiery mass grew larger to their eyes, and fell, with the noise of thunder, upon the bowsprit, which it smashed close to the stem, and buried itself in the waves with a deafening roar."

In an instant the true character of the flaming body was recognised.  The whole world had awaited news of the moon-ship almost hourly since its departure.  There could be no doubt that the dramatic visitation in the dark hours of earliest morning meant the return of the Columbiad to earth!

Captain Blomsbury, commanding the corvette, acted sensibly and promptly.  Lacking equipment with which to grope for, grapple, and hoist up the space-ship from the depths, he steered at full-steam for San Francisco, where the news of the Columbiad's reappearance was flashed by telegraph to the Naval Secretary at Washington, to J.T. Maston, the enthusiastic secretary of the Gun Club, and to other individuals most closely concerned.

The news created a sensation.  The Susquehanna was at once fitted up with diving chambers, grapplers, and haulage chains, divers were sent aboard, and with J.T. Maston and other members of the Gun Club as passengers it set out to search for and salvage the Columbiad.

The exact position of the corvette when the projectile plunged into the sea had been marked; but days of searching proved fruitless.  Day after day the bed of the ocean was systematically combed, but no trace of the space-ship could be found.  At last all hope failed.  Despite the entreaties of J.T. Maston, the search was abandoned, and the Susquehanna set sail again for San Francisco. 

Suddenly a sailor in the lookout cried: "A buoy on the lee bow!"

Hope sprang to life again when it was observed that from the cone of the shining metal buoy floated a flag.

All looked with feverish anxiety, but in silence.  Non dared to give expression to the thoughts which came to the minds of all.

The corvette approached to within two cable lengths of the object.

A shudder ran through the whole crew.  That flag was an American flag!

It was J.T. Maston who saw the truth first.

"Simpletons!" he cried.  "It is that the projectile weighs only 19,250 lbs!" 

"Well?"

"And that it displaces twenty-eight tons, or in other words 56,000 lbw, and that consequently it floats!"

Ah, what stress the worthy man laid on the verb "floats"!  And it was true!  All, yes! all these savants had forgotten this fundamental law, namely, that on account of its specific lightness, the projectile, after having been drawn by its fall to the greatest depths of the ocean, must naturally return to the surface.  And now it was floating quietly at the mercy of the waves.

The boats were put to sea. J.T. Maston and his friends had rushed into them!  Excitement was at its height!  Every heart beat loudly whilst they advanced to the projectile.  What did it contain?  Living of dead?  Living, yes! living at least unless death had struck Barbicane and his two friends since they had hoisted the flag.  Profound silence reigned on the boats.  All were breathless. Eyes no longer saw.  One of the scuttles of the projectile was open.  Some pieces of glass remained in the frame, showing that it had been broken.  This scuttle was actually five feet above the water.

A boat came longside, that of J.T. Maston, and J.T. Maston rushed to the broken window.

At that moment they heard a clear and merry voice, the voice of Michel Arden, exclaiming in an accent of triumph:

"White all, Barbicane, white all!"

Barbicane, Michel Arden, and Nicholl were playing at dominoes!

From Earth To The Moon And A Trip Around It. Pt.V

At that moment, at six o'clock, the lunar pole appeared.  The disc only presented to the travellers' gaze one half brilliantly lit up, whilst the other disappeared in the darkness.  Suddenly the projectile passed the line of demarcation between intense light and absolute darkness, and was plunged in profound night !

For three hundred and fifty-four hours and a half, nearly fifteen days, the three adventurers were doomed to ride through the wilderness of interplanetary space in pitch darkness, although, fortunately, they were able to light up their cabin artificially.  The face of the moon above which they were now floating was never visible from the earth.

Why hadn't the Columbiad been drawn by the gravitational pull of the moon down on to it's surface?  That was the puzzle that teased Barbicane's scientific mind.  No more than twenty-five miles had separated it from the lunar disc, so it must have come strongly within the moon's influence.

It its speed had been enormous, he could have understood that the fall would not have taken place; but, with a relatively moderate speed, that resistance to the moon's attraction could not be explained.  Was the projectile under some foreign influence ?  Did some kind of body retain it in the ether ?  It was quite evident that it could never reach any point of the moon.  Whither was it going?  Was it going farther from, or nearing the disc ?  Was it being borne in that profound darkness through the infinity of space ?  How could they learn, how calculate, in the midst of this night ?  All these questions made Barbicane uneasy, but he could not solve them.

Certainly, the invisible orb was there, perhaps only some few miles off; but neither he nor his companions could not see it.  If there was any noise on its surface, they could not hear it.  Air, that medium of sound, was wanting to transmit the groanings of that moon which the Arabic legends call "a man already half granite, and still breathing."

One must allow that that was enough to aggravate the most patient observers.  It was just that unknown hemisphere which was stealing from their sight.  That face which fifteen days sooner, or fifteen days later, had been, or would be, splendidly illuminated by the solar rays, was being lost in utter darkness. In fifteen days where would the projectile be ?  Who could say ?  Where would the chances of conflicting attractions have drawn it to ?  The disappointment of the travellers in the midst of this utter darkness may be imagined.  All observation of the lunar disc was impossible.  The splendour of the starry world drew them to the windows of their moving ship.

Long did the travellers stand mute, watching the constellated firmament, upon which the moon, like a vast screen, made an enormous black hole.  But at length a painful sensation drew them from their watchings.  This was intense cold, which soon covered the inside of the glass of the scuttles with a thick coating of ice.  The sun was no longer warming the projectile with its direct rays,  and thus it was losing the heat stored up in its walls by degrees.  This heat was rapidly evaporating into space by radiation, and a considerably lower temperature was the result.  The humidity of the interior was changed into ice upon contact with the glass, preventing all observations.

"Well !" observed Michel, "we cannot reasonably complain of the monotony of our journey !  What variety we have had, at least in temperature.  Now we are blinded with light and saturated with heat, like the Indians of the Pampas !  now plunged into profound darkness, amidst the cold like the Esquimaux of the north pole.  No, indeed !  we have no right to complain;  nature does wonders in our honour."

Experimenting  and note-taking with all the calmness of men who foresaw a future safe landing on their parent Earth, Barbicane, Nicholl and Ardan sailed on round the moon without power to guide or alter the course of their spaceship, which was at the mercy of elements they could not account for, let alone control.

The vast disc of the moon hung below them at an unknown distance "like an enormous black screen upon the firmament."  Barbicane and Nicholl both agreed that whether the Columbiad was following a parabola or a hyperbola, it was certainly following an "open curve" into infinite space, and that it  "would never again meet either the earth of the moon."

What it did meet very soon, however, was a meteor, and this gave them some of the most terrible moments of suspense that they had experienced since being launched on their hazardous journey into unknown space.

Suddenly, in the midst of the ether, in the profound darkness an enormous mass appeared.  It was like a moon, but an incandescent moon, whose brilliancy was all the more intolerable as it cut sharply on the frightful darkness of space.  This mass, of a circular form, threw a light that filled the projectile.  The forms of Barbicane, Nicholl, and Michel Arden, bathed in its white sheets, assumed that livid spectral appearance which physicians produce with the fictitious light of alcohol impregnated with salt.

"By Jove !" cried Michel Arden.  "We are hideous. What is that ill-conditioned moon ?"
"A meteor," replied Barbicane.
"A meteor burning in space?"
"Yes."
This shooting globe, suddenly appearing in shadow at a distance of at most 200 miles, ought, according to Barbicane, to have a diameter of 2,000 yards.  It advanced at a speed of about one mile and a half per second.  It cut the projectile's path, and must reach it in some minutes.  As it approached it grew to enormous proportions.

Imagine, if possible, the situation of the travellers !  It is impossible to describe it.  In spite of their courage, their sang-froid, their carelessness of danger, they were mute, motionless with stiffened limbs, a prey to frightful terror.  Their projectile, the course of which they could not alter, was rushing straight on this ignited mass, more intense than the open mouth of an oven.  It seemed as though they were being precipitated towards an abyss of fire.

Barbicane had seized the hands of his two companions, and all three looked through their half-open eyelids upon that asteroid heated to a white heat.  If thought was not destroyed within them, if their brains still worked amidst all this awe, they must have given themselves up for lost.

From Earth To The Moon And A Trip Around It. Pt.IV

At midnight the moon was full.
At that precise moment the travellers should have alighted upon it, it the mischievous meteor had not diverted their course.  The orb was exactly in the position determined by the Cambridge Observatory.  It was mathematically at its perigee, and at the zenith of the twenty-eighth parallel.  An observer placed at the bottom of the enormous Columbiad, pointed perpendicularly to the horizon, would have framed the moon in the mouth of the gun.  A straight line drawn through the axis of the piece would have passed through the centre of the orb of night. it is needless to say that during the night of the 5th-6th of December, the travellers took not an instant's rest.  Could they close their eyes when so near this new world?  No!  All their feelings were concentrated in one single thought:- See!  Representatives of the earth, of humanity, past and present, all centred in them!  It is through their eyes that the human race look at these lunar regions, and penetrate the secrets of their satellite!  A strange emotion filled their hearts as they went from one window to the other.

Their observations, reproduced by Barbicane, were rigidly determined.  To take them, they had glasses; to correct them, maps.

As regards the optical instruments at their disposal, they had excellent marine glasses specially constructed for this journey.  They possessed magnifying powers of 100.  They would thus have brought the moon to within a distance (apparent) of less than 2,000 leagues from the earth.  But then, at a distance which for three hours in the morning did not exceed sixty-five miles, and in a medium free from all atmospheric disturbances, these instruments could reduce the lunar surface to within less than 1,500 yards!

Among the equipment in the Columbiad were maps of the moon, drawn by astronomers from observations made through giant telescopes.  These the travellers had before them as they circled the moon and studied its mountains, craters and plains.  No clear sign of life did they observe among the lunar landscapes, but suddenly Michel Ardan exclaimed:  "Look there!  cultivated fields!"  "Cultivated fields!" replied Nicholl, shrugging his shoulders.  "Ploughed, at all events," retorted Michel Ardan;  "but what labourers those Selenites must be, and what giant oxen they must harness to their plough to cut such furrows!"
"They are not furrows," said Barbicane; "they are rifts."

The Frenchman was always fanciful, whereas Barbicane and Nicholl were never anything but strictly, seriously scientific.  Barbicane insisted that the lunar rifts were natural, although anyone more imaginative might have believed them to be fortifications thrown up by the inhabitants of the moon.  He would not even accept Michel Ardan's suggestion that the reason for the disappearance of the rifts from earthly view at certain seasons was that the dark lines were rows of trees, which lost their leaves with the coming of winter and consequently became invisible.
"There are no seasons on the moon's surface," was Barbicane's conclusive argument.

Floating in the void, with no atmosphere to obscure their view, the three space-travellers were beholding the surface of the moon as not even the most powerful telescope on earth had been able to present it to the human eye.  They were four hundred miles distant from it, but their glasses brought its physical features to within four miles.  Eagerly they searched the lunar landscape for signs of man's handiwork, but "not a work betrayed the hand of man; not a ruin marked his course; not a group of animals was to be seen indicating life, even in an inferior degree.  In no part was there life, in no part was there an appearance of vegetation."

"Ah, indeed!" said Michel Ardan, a little out of countenance; "then you see no one?"
"No," answered Nicholl; "up to this time not a man, not an animal, not a tree!  After all, whether the atmosphere has taken refuge at the bottom of cavities, in the midst of the circles, or even on the opposite face of the moon, we cannot decide."
"Besides," added Barbicane, "even to the most piercing eye a man cannot be distinguished farther than three mile and a half off; so that, if there are any Selenites, they can see our projectile, but we cannot see them."
The absence of atmosphere on the moon brought strange and novel experiences to the men from earth.  There was no gradual fading of daylight into dusk and dusk into night.  The change from light to darkness came with the suddenness of and electric light switched off.  Nor did the heat give place to cold in stages.  The temperature fell "in an instant from boiling point to the cold of space."

Another consequence of this want of air is that absolute darkness reigns where the sun's rays do no penetrate.  That which on earth is called diffusion of light, that luminous matter which the air holds in suspension, which creates the twilight and the daybreak. . . does not exist on the moon.  Hence the harshness of contrasts, which only admit of two colours, black and white.  If a Selenite were to shade his eyes from the sun's rays, the sky would seem absolutely black, and the stars would shine as on the darkest night.  Judge of the impression produced on Barbicane and his two friends by this strange scene!
At five o'clock in the morning, the explorers passed only twenty-five miles from the top of the mountains of the moon.

It seemed as if the moon might be touched by the hand!  It seemed impossible that before long the projectile would strike her, if only at the north pole, the brilliant arch of which was so distinctly visible on the black sky.

Michel Ardan wanted to open one of the scuttles and throw himself on to the moon's surface!  A very useless attempt; for if the projectile could not attain any point whatever of the satellite, Michel, carried along by it's motion, could not attain it either.

From Earth To The Moon And A Trip Around It. Pt.III

As the Columbiad flew farther and farther from the earth, it's weight diminished, due to the lessening of the earth's attraction.  The time was coming when it would possess no weight at all.  This would be at the point where the gravitational pull of the earth and the gravitational pull of  the moon neutralized each other.  There was a danger, awful to think about, that at this point the projectile would stop and remain there, immovable, for ever.  Preferable to that would be that, losing speed, it might fail to reach the point of equal attraction and plunge back to Earth.  The likelihood, however, was that the Columbiad would still retain some of the motion given to it by its original discharge and would therefore cross the neutral line into the field of lunar attraction and fall upon the moon.

As they drew nearer and nearer to the dead line, extraordinary things began to happen within the space-ship. Captain Nicholl dropped a glass, which, instead of falling to the floor and breaking, remained suspended in mid-air!  Other objects were "hung up" in space, and the dog, Diana, floated about between floor and ceiling.  Devoid of weight by the cancelling out of the terrestrial law of gravity, the three men could lean at all angles without falling, and climb into the air without steps!  It was a startling and novel experience.

Barbicane explained that on the moon they would weigh six times less than their weight on the earth.
"And we shall feel it?" asked Michel Ardan.
"Evidently, as 200 lbs. will only weigh 30lbs. on the surface of the moon."
"And out muscular strength will not diminish?"
"Not at all; instead of jumping one yard high, you will rise eighteen feet high."
"But we shall be regular Herculeses in the moon!" exclaimed Michel.
"Yes," replied Nicholl; "for if the height of the Selenites is in proportion to the density of the globe, they will be scarcely a foot high."
"Lilliputians!" ejaculated Michel; "I shall play the part of Gulliver.  We are going to realize the fable of the giants. This is the advantage of the leaving one's own planet and overrunning the solar world."
"One moment, Michel," answered Barbicane; if you wish to play the part of Gulliver, only visit the inferior planets, such as Mercury, Venus, or Mars, whose density is a little less than that of earth; but do not venture into the great planets, Jupiter, Saturn,  Uranus, Neptune; for there the order will be changed, and you will become Lilliputian."
"And in the sun?"
"In the sun, if its density is thirteen hundred and twenty-four thousands times greater, and the attraction is twenty-seven times greater than on the surface of our globe, keeping everything in proportion, the inhabitants ought to be at least two hundred feet high."

As hoped and expected, the Columbiad's speed did carry it over the neutral line.  The next problem was how to land on the moon gently.  Even with weight reduced to a sixth of earth-weight, a fall from such a height without some checking of speed of descent might be disastrous.  Barbicane found the solution in a number of rockets, which, when fired off from the base, would produce a recoil and so check the projectile's speed.

The moon, now vast, seemed to be filling the universe, but it gradually became evident that the projectile was not going to hit it.  There became no longer room for doubt.  The Columbiad had been diverted from its course.  Why, none of the travellers could say.

"Might it not be an excess of speed?" asked Nichol; "for we know now that its initial velocity was greater than they supposed."
"No! a hundred times, No! replied Barbicane.  "An excess of speed, if the direction of the projectile had been right, would not have prevented us from reaching the moon.  No. there has been a deviation.  We have been turned from our course."
"By whom? by what?" asked Nicholl.
"I cannot say." replied Barbicane.  But at last he found the answer.  "Cursed be the meteor which crossed our path."
"What?" said Michel Ardan.
"What do you mean?" exclaimed Nicholl.
"I mean," said Barbicane in a decided tone, "I mean that our deviation is owing solely to our meeting with this erring body."
"But it did not even brush us as it passed," said Michel.
"What does that matter? Its mass, compared to that of our projectile, was enormous,  and its attraction was enough to influence our course."
"So little?" cried Nicholl.
"Yes, Nicoll; but however little it might be," replied Barbicane, "in a distance of 84,000 leagues, it wanted no more to make us miss the moon."
They were brave men, all three.  Bitter as was the blow, unpredictable as was their fate now that they were being borne past the moon into the unknown solitudes and perils of infinite space, they devoted their energies calmly to observing the vast heavenly body to which they had come closer than any human beings had ever been before.

From Earth To The Moon And A Trip Around It. Pt.II

After this shock, however, the plain fact emerged that they were already fifty thousand leagues from the earth, and that they were still going up.  Cambridge Observatory had certainly miscalculated, but by a lucky chance the starting speed, "under the power of the 400,000 lbs. of gun cotton," must have been much greater than that supposedly needed.

Michel Ardan had bought with him in the aerial car chess, draughts, cards and dominoes, not only for their own amusement but for the enjoyment of the inhabitants of the moon!

"My friend," said Barbicane, "it the moon is inhabited, its inhabitants must have appeared some thousands of years before those of earth, for we cannot doubt that their star is much older than ours. If then these Selenites have existed these hundreds of thousands of years, and if their brain is of the same organisation as the human brain, they have already invented all that we have invented, and even what we may invent in the future ages.  They have nothing to learn from us, and we have everything to learn from them."

"What!" said Michel; "you believe that they have artists like Phideas, Michael Angleo, or Raphael?"
"Yes."
"Poets like Homer, Virgil, Milton, Lamartine, and Hugo?"
"I am sure of it."
"Philosophers like Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Kant?"
"I have no doubt of it."
"Scientific men like Archimedes, Euclid, Pascal, Newton?"
"I could swear it."
"Comic writers like Arnal, and photographers like Nadar?"
"Certain."
"Then, friend Barbicane, if they are as strong as we are, and even stronger - these Selenites - why have they not tried to communicate with the earth?  Why have they not launched a lunar projectile to our terrestrial regions?"
"Who told you that they have never done so?" said Barbicane, seriously.
"Indeed," added Nicholl, "it would be easier for them than for us, for two reasons; first, because the attraction on the moon's surface is six times less than on that of the earth, which would allow a projectile to rise more easily; secondly, because it would be enough to send such a projectile only at 8,000 leagues instead of 80,000,  which would require the force of projection to be ten times less strong."
"Then," continued Michel, " I repeat it, why have they not done it?"
"And I repeat," said Barbicane; "who told you that they have not done it?"
"When?"
"Thousands of years before man appeared on earth."
"And the projectile - where is the projectile?  I demand to see the projectile."
"My friend," replied Barbicane, "the sea covers five-sixths of our globe.  From that we may draw five good reasons for supposing that the lunar projectile, if ever launched, is now at the bottom of the Atlantic or the Pacific, unless it sped into some crevasse at that period when the crust of the earth was not yet hardened."
"Old Barbicane," said Michel, " you have an answer for everything, and I bow before your better wisdom.  But there is one hypothesis that would suit me better than all the others, which is, that the Selenites, being older than we, are wiser, and have not invented gunpowder."

Among the livestock Michel Ardan was taking to the moon were two dogs, one of which died and was thrown out into space.  This burial accomplished without mishap, the astronauts did not fear to dispose of rubbish and waste in the same way, but to their astonishment nothing dropped away;  everything they jettisoned into the airless void followed in their train to the moon, including the dead dog!

This was only one of the many curious phenomena that came into their experience as they tore through space on the strangest journey ever undertaken by men.  The moon became an enormous disc, which, it seemed, they could grasp it they stretched out their hands.  They had expected to land on the northern hemisphere, but it became clear to Barbicane as they drew nearer to the moon that in some unaccountable way the course of the projectile had altered slightly.  He could not understand why, and he did not convey his fears to his companions.
If they should miss the moon it would mean that they would be carried on into an even greater unknown  - into interplanetary space.

From Earth To Moon And A Trip Round It. Pt, I

I posted about a book from 1948 called Flights Into The Future I'd found at a car-boot sale.
The book contains an abridged version of Jules Verne's From Earth To Moon And A Trip Around It.
Over the next few days I intend serialising the story here.

 Jules Verne, famous French pioneer of science-fiction, visualised a voyage to the Moon by means of a projectile shot from an enormous cannon.  the "mechanics" of this amazing venture into space may not bear the light of modern scientific knowledge, but the account, given here, in "potted" form, makes fascinating reading and is a remarkable "flight into the future", taken three- quarters of a century ago.

On the first day of December at forty-six minutes and forty seconds after ten p.m., three bold pioneers were shot from the earth to the moon in an aluminium projectile.  The three space-travellers were President Barbicane, of the American Gun Club, Captain Nicholl, another American, and Michel Ardan, a Frenchman. Months had been spent in preparation for this amazing adventure, and millions of people were present at the dramatic launching of the Columbaid, which was fired from a gigantic gun sited on Stones Hill, Florida. It was timed to reach the moon at precisely  midnight on the fifth day of December, when the moon would be at the zenith, and at it's nearest point to the earth, namely, 238,833 miles.

In something like six seconds the space-shell passed through the deep belt of atmosphere lying above the earth,  Barbicane, gazing out through a window into the starlit night, suddenly saw a brilliant disc rushing towards them.  It proved to be a meteorite of enormous size, which might easily have ended their experiment there and then by colliding with them.  This danger escaped, however, they were able to gaze out in wonder at the heavenly landscape beheld unveiled for the first time by human eye.

The lunar disc shone with wonderful purity.  Her rays, no longer filtered through the vapoury atmosphere of the terrestrial globe, shone through the glass, filling the air in the interior of the projectile with silvery reflections.  Her mountains, her plains, every projection was as clearly discernible to their eyes as if they were observing it from some spot upon the earth; but it's light was developed through space with wonderful intensity,  The disc shone like a platinum mirror.  Of the earth flying from under their feet, the travellers had lost all recollection.

The travellers, however, were sharply reminded of the earth, for they discovered that the scientists of Cambridge Observatory, who had calculated that a starting speed of twelve thousand yards was necessary for the projectile to reach the moon, had made a mistake.  The impulsion required for the Columbiad to shoot free of the earth's gravitational pull was seventeen thousand yards in the first second.
"We shall not be able to reach the neutral point."  said Barbicane.
"The deuce!"
"We shall not even get half way."
"In the name of the projectile!" exclaimed Michel Ardan, jumping as if it was already on the point of striking the terrestrial globe.
"And we shall fall back to earth!"

Continued in tomorrow's thrilling installment!