by Percy Greg
CHAPTER II - OUTWARD BOUND.
... For obvious reasons, those who possessed the secret of theApergy [1] had never dreamed of applying it in the manner I proposed.It had seemed to them little more than a curious secret of nature,perhaps hardly so much, since the existence of a repulsive force inthe atomic sphere had been long suspected and of late certainlyascertained, and its preponderance is held to be the characteristic ofthe gaseous as distinguished from the liquid or solid state of matter.Till lately, no means of generating or collecting this force in largequantity had been found. The progress of electrical science had solvedthis difficulty; and when the secret was communicated to me, itpossessed a value which had never before belonged to it.
Ever since, in childhood, I learnt that the planets were worlds, avisit to one or more of the nearest of them had been my favouriteday-dream. Treasuring every hint afforded by science or fancy thatbore upon the subject, I felt confident that such a voyage would beone day achieved. Helped by one or two really ingenious romances onthis theme, I had dreamed out my dream, realised every difficulty,ascertained every factor in the problem. I had satisfied myself thatonly one thing needful was as yet wholly beyond the reach and even theproximate hopes of science. Human invention could furnish as yet nomotive power that could fulfil the main requirement of theproblem--uniform or constantly increasing motion _in vacuo_--motionthrough a region affording no resisting medium. This must be a_repulsive_ energy capable of acting through an utter void. Man,animals, birds, fishes move by repulsion applied at every moment. Inair or water, paddles, oars, sails, fins, wings act by repulsionexerted on the fluid element in which they work. But in space there isno such resisting element on which repulsion can operate. I needed arepulsion which would act like gravitation through an indefinitedistance and in a void--act upon a remote fulcrum, such as might bethe Earth in a voyage to the Moon, or the Sun in a more distantjourney. As soon, then, as the character of the apergic force was madeknown to me, its application to this purpose seized on my mind.Experiment had proved it possible, by the method described at thecommencement of this record, to generate and collect it in amountspractically unlimited. The other hindrances to a voyage through spacewere trivial in comparison with that thus overcome; there weredifficulties to be surmounted, not absent or deficient powers innature to be discovered. The chief of these, of course, concerned theconveyance of air sufficient for the needs of the traveller during theperiod of his journey. The construction of an air-tight vessel waseasy enough; but however large the body of air conveyed, even thoughits oxygen should not be exhausted, the carbonic acid given out bybreathing would very soon so contaminate the whole that life would beimpossible. To eliminate this element it would only be necessary tocarry a certain quantity of lime-water, easily calculated, and bymeans of a fan or similar instrument to drive the whole of the airperiodically through the vessel containing it. The lime in solutioncombining with the noxious gas would show by the turbid whiteness ofthe water the absorption of the carbonic acid and formation ofcarbonate of lime. But if the carbonic acid gas were merely to beremoved, it is obvious that the oxygen of the air, which forms a partof that gas, would be constantly diminished and ultimately exhausted;and the effect of highly oxygenated air upon the circulation isnotoriously too great to allow of any considerable increase at theoutset in the proportion of this element. I might carry a fresh supplyof oxygen, available at need, in some solid combination like chlorateof potash; but the electricity employed for the generation of theapergy might be also applied to the decomposition of carbonic acid andthe restoration of its oxygen to the atmosphere.
But the vessel had to be steered as well as propelled; and in order toaccomplish this it would be necessary to command the direction of theapergy at pleasure. My means of doing this depended on two of thebest-established peculiarities of this strange force: its rectilineardirection and its conductibility. We found that it acts through air orin a vacuum in a single straight line, without deflection, andseemingly without diminution. Most solids, and especially metals,according to their electric condition, are more or less impervious toit--antapergic. Its power of penetration diminishes under a veryobscure law, but so rapidly that no conceivable strength of currentwould affect an object protected by an intervening sheet half an inchin thickness. On the other hand, it prefers to all other lines theaxis of a conductive bar, such as may be formed of [undecipherable] inan antapergic sheath. However such bar may be curved, bent, ordivided, the current will fill and follow it, and pursue indefinitely,without divergence, diffusion, or loss, the direction in which itemerges. Therefore, by collecting the current from the generator in avessel cased with antapergic material, and leaving no other aperture,its entire volume might be sent into a conductor. By cutting acrossthis conductor, and causing the further part to rotate upon thenearer, I could divert the current through any required angle. Thus Icould turn the repulsion upon the resistant body (sun or planet), andso propel the vessel in any direction I pleased.
I had determined that my first attempt should be a visit to Mars. TheMoon is a far less interesting body, since, on the hemisphere turnedtowards the Earth, the absence of an atmosphere and of water ensuresthe absence of any such life as is known to us--probably of any lifethat could be discerned by our senses--and would prevent landing;while nearly all the soundest astronomers agree in believing, onapparently sufficient grounds, that even the opposite hemisphere [ofwhich small portions are from time to time rendered visible by thelibration, though greatly foreshortened and consequently somewhatimperfectly seen] is equally devoid of the two primary necessaries ofanimal and vegetable life. That Mars has seas, clouds, and anatmosphere was generally admitted, and I held it to be beyondquestion. Of Venus, owing to her extraordinary brilliancy, to the factthat when nearest to the Earth a very small portion of her lightedsurface is visible to us, and above all to her dense cloud-envelope,very little was known; and though I cherished the intention to visither even more earnestly than my resolve to reach the probably lessattractive planet Mars, I determined to begin with that voyage ofwhich the conditions and the probable result were most obvious andcertain. I preferred, moreover, in the first instance, to employ theapergy as a propelling rather than as a resisting force. Now, afterpassing beyond the immediate sphere of the Earth's attraction, it isplain that in going towards Mars I should be departing from the Sun,relying upon the apergy to overcome his attraction; whereas in seekingto attain Venus I should be approaching the Sun, relying for my mainmotive power upon that tremendous attraction, and employing the apergyonly to moderate the rate of movement and control its direction. Thelatter appeared to me the more delicate, difficult, and perhapsdangerous task of the two; and I resolved to defer it until after Ihad acquired some practical experience and dexterity in the control ofmy machinery.
It was expedient, of course, to make my vessel as light as possible,and, at the same time, as large as considerations of weight wouldadmit. But it was of paramount importance to have walls of greatthickness, in order to prevent the penetration of the outer cold ofspace, or rather the outward passage into that intense cold of theheat generated within the vessel itself, as well as to resist thetremendous outward pressure of the air inside. Partly for thesereasons, and partly because its electric character makes it especiallycapable of being rendered at will pervious or impervious to theapergic current, I resolved to make the outer and inner walls of analloy of ..., while the space between should be filled up with a massof concrete or cement, in its nature less penetrable to heat than anyother substance which Nature has furnished or the wit of manconstructed from her materials. The materials of this cement and theirproportions were as follows. [2]
* * * * *
Briefly, having determined to take advantage of the approachingopposition of Mars in MDCCCXX ... [3], I had my vessel constructed withwalls three feet thick, of which the outer six and the inner threeinches were formed of the metalloid. In shape my Astronaut somewhatresembled the form of an antique Dutch East
-Indiaman, being widest andlongest in a plane equidistant from floor and ceiling, the sides andends sloping outwards from the floor and again inwards towards theroof. The deck and keel, however, were absolutely flat, and each onehundred feet in length and fifty in breadth, the height of the vesselbeing about twenty feet. In the centre of the floor and in that of theroof respectively I placed a large lens of crystal, intended to act asa window in the first instance, the lower to admit the rays of theSun, while through the upper I should discern the star towards which Iwas steering. The floor, being much heavier than the rest of thevessel, would naturally be turned downwards; that is, during thegreater part of the voyage towards the Sun. I placed a similar lens inthe centre of each of the four sides, with two plane windows of thesame material, one in the upper, the other in the lower half of thewall, to enable me to discern any object in whatever direction. Thecrystal in question consisted of ..., which, as those who manufacturedit for me are aware, admits of being cast with a perfection andequality of structure throughout unattainable with ordinary glass, andwrought to a certainty and accuracy of curvature which the mostpatient and laborious polishing can hardly give to the lenses even ofmoderate-sized telescopes, whether made of glass or metal, and issingularly impervious to heat. I had so calculated the curvature thatseveral eye-pieces of different magnifying powers which I carried withme might be adapted equally to any of the window lenses, and throw aperfect image, magnified by 100, 1000, or 5000, upon mirrors properlyplaced.
I carpeted the floor with several alternate layers of cork and cloth.At one end I placed my couch, table, bookshelves, and other necessaryfurniture, with all the stores needed for my voyage, and with afurther weight sufficient to preserve equilibrium. At the other I madea garden with soil three feet deep and five feet in width, dividedinto two parts so as to permit access to the windows. I filled eachgarden closely with shrubs and flowering plants of the greatestpossible variety, partly to absorb animal waste, partly in the hope ofnaturalising them elsewhere. Covering both with wire netting extendingfrom the roof to the floor, I filled the cages thus formed with avariety of birds. In the centre of the vessel was the machinery,occupying altogether a space of about thirty feet by twenty. Thelarger portion of this area was, of course, taken up by the generator,above which was the receptacle of the apergy. From this descendedright through the floor a conducting bar in an antapergic sheath, sodivided that without separating it from the upper portion the lowermight revolve in any direction through an angle of twenty minutes(20'). This, of course, was intended to direct the stream of therepulsive force against the Sun. The angle might have been extended tothirty minutes, but that I deemed it inexpedient to rely upon a force,directed against the outer portions of the Sun's disc, believing thatthese are occupied by matter of density so small that it might affordno sufficient base, so to speak, for the repulsive action. It wasobviously necessary also to repel or counteract the attraction of anybody which might come near me during the voyage. Again, in gettingfree from the Earth's influence, I must be able to steer in anydirection and at any angle to the surface. For this purpose I placedfive smaller bars, passing through the roof and four sides, connected,like the main conductor, with the receptacle or apergion, but so thatthey could revolve through a much larger angle, and could at anymoment be detached and insulated. My steering apparatus consisted of atable in which were three large circles. The midmost and left hand ofthese were occupied by accurately polished plane mirrors. The centralcircle, or metacompass, was divided by three hundred and sixty finelines, radiating from the centre to the circumference, marking as manydifferent directions, each deviating by one degree of arc from thenext. This mirror was to receive through the lens in the roof theimage of the star towards which I was steering. While this remainedstationary in the centre all was well. When it moved along any one ofthe lines, the vessel was obviously deviating from her course in theopposite direction; and, to recover the right course, the repellentforce must be caused to drive her in the direction in which the imagehad moved. To accomplish this, a helm was attached to the lowerdivision of the main conductor, by which the latter could be made tomove at will in any direction within the limit of its rotation.Controlling this helm was, in the open or steering circle on the righthand, a small knob to be moved exactly parallel to the deviation ofthe star in the mirror of the metacompass. The left-hand circle, ordiscometer, was divided by nineteen hundred and twenty concentriccircles, equidistant from each other. The outermost, about twice asfar from the centre as from the external edge of the mirror, wasexactly equal to the Sun's circumference when presenting the largestdisc he ever shows to an observer on Earth. Each inner circlecorresponded to a diameter reduced by one second. By means of avernier or eye-piece, the diameter of the Sun could be read off thediscometer, and from his diameter my distance could be accuratelycalculated. On the further side of the machinery was a chamber for thedecomposition of the carbonic acid, through which the air was drivenby a fan. This fan itself was worked by a horizontal wheel with twoprojecting squares of antapergic metal, against each of which, as itreached a certain point, a very small stream of repulsive force wasdirected from the apergion, keeping the wheel in constant and rapidmotion. I had, of course, supplied myself with an ample store ofcompressed vegetables, preserved meats, milk, tea, coffee, &c., and asupply of water sufficient to last for double the period which thevoyage was expected to occupy; also a well-furnished tool-chest (withwires, tubes, &c.). One of the lower windows was made just largeenough to admit my person, and after entering I had to close it andfix it in its place firmly with cement, which, when I wished to quitthe vessel, would have again to be removed.
Of course some months were occupied in the manufacture of thedifferent portions of the vessel and her machinery, and sometime morein their combination; so that when, at the end of July, I was ready tostart, the opposition was rapidly approaching. In the course of somefifty days the Earth, moving in her orbit at a rate of about elevenhundred miles [4] per minute, would overtake Mars; that is to say,would pass between him and the Sun. In starting from the Earth Ishould share this motion; I too should go eleven hundred miles aminute in the same direction; but as I should travel along an orbitconstantly widening, the Earth would leave me behind. The apergy hadto make up for this, as well as to carry me some forty millions ofmiles in a direction at right angles to the former--right outwardtowards the orbit of Mars. Again, I should share the motion of thatparticular spot of the Earth's surface from which I rose around heraxis, a motion varying with the latitude, greatest at the equator,nothing at the pole. This would whirl me round and round the Earth atthe rate of a thousand miles an hour; of this I must, of course, getrid as soon as possible. And when I should be rid of it, I meant tostart at first right upward; that is, straight away from the Sun andin the plane of the ecliptic, which is not very different from that inwhich Mars also moves. Therefore I should begin my effective ascentfrom a point of the Earth as far as possible from the Sun; that is, onthe midnight meridian.
For the same reason which led me to start so long before the date ofthe opposition, I resolved, having regard to the action of the Earth'srotation on her axis, to start some hours before midnight. Takingleave, then, of the two friends who had thus far assisted me, Ientered the Astronaut on the 1st August, about 4.30 P.M. After sealingup the entrance-window, and ascertaining carefully that everything wasin order--a task which occupied me about an hour--I set the generatorto work; and when I had ascertained that the apergion was full, andthat the force was supplied at the required rate, I directed the wholeat first into the main conductor. After doing this I turned towardsthe lower window on the west--or, as it was then, the right-handside--and was in time to catch sight of the trees on the hills, somehalf mile off and about two hundred feet above the level of mystarting-point. I should have said that I had considerably compressedmy atmosphere and increased the proportion of oxygen by about ten percent., and also carried with me the means of reproducing the wholeamount of the latter in case of need. Among my in
struments was apressure-gauge, so minutely divided that, with a movable vernier ofthe same power as the fixed ones employed to read the glass circles, Icould discover the slightest escape of air in a very few seconds. Thepressure-gauge, however, remained immovable. Going close to the windowand looking out, I saw the Earth falling from me so fast that, withinfive minutes after my departure, objects like trees and even houseshad become almost indistinguishable to the naked eye. I had halfexpected to hear the whistling of the air as the vessel rushed upward,but nothing of the kind was perceptible through her dense walls. Itwas strange to observe the rapid rise of the sun from the westward.Still more remarkable, on turning to the upper window, was the rapidlyblackening aspect of the sky. Suddenly everything disappeared except abrilliant rainbow at some little distance--or perhaps I should ratherhave said a halo of more than ordinary rainbow brilliancy, since itoccupied, not like the rainbows seen from below, something less thanhalf, but nearly two-thirds of a circle. I was, of course, aware thatI was passing through a cloud, and one of very unusual thickness. In afew seconds, however, I was looking down upon its upper surface,reflecting from a thousand broken masses of vapour at differentlevels, from cavities and hillocks of mist, the light of the sun;white beams mixed with innumerable rays of all colours in a confusion,of indescribable brilliancy. I presume that the total obscuration ofeverything outside the cloud during my passage through it was due toits extent and not to its density, since at that height it could nothave been otherwise than exceedingly light and diffuse. Looking upwardthrough the eastern window, I could now discern a number of brighterstars, and at nearly every moment fresh ones came into view on aconstantly darkening background. Looking downward to the west, wherealone the entire landscape lay in daylight, I presently discerned theoutline of shore and sea extending over a semicircle whose radius muchexceeded five hundred miles, implying that I was about thirty-fivemiles from the sea-level. Even at this height the extent of my surveywas so great in comparison to my elevation, that a line drawn from thevessel to the horizon was, though very roughly, almost parallel to thesurface; and the horizon therefore seemed to be not very far from myown level, while the point below me, of course, appeared at a vastdistance. The appearance of the surface, therefore, was as if thehorizon had been, say, some thirty miles higher than the centre of thesemicircle bounding my view, and the area included in my prospect hadthe form of a saucer or shallow bowl. But since the diameter of thevisible surface increases only as the square root of the height, thisappearance became less and less perceptible as I rose higher. It hadtaken me twenty minutes to attain the elevation of thirty-five miles;but my speed was, of course, constantly increasing, very much as thespeed of an object falling to the Earth from a great height increases;and before ten more minutes had elapsed, I found myself surrounded bya blackness nearly absolute, except in the direction of theSun,--which was still well above the sea--and immediately round theterrestrial horizon, on which rested a ring of sunlit azure sky,broken here and there by clouds. In every other direction I seemed tobe looking not merely upon a black or almost black sky, but into closesurrounding darkness. Amid this darkness, however, were visibleinnumerable points of light, more or less brilliant--the stars--whichno longer seemed to be spangled over the surface of a distant vault,but rather scattered immediately about me, nearer or farther to theinstinctive apprehension of the eye as they were brighter or fainter.Scintillation there was none, except in the immediate vicinity of theeastern horizon, where I still saw them through a dense atmosphere. Inshort, before thirty minutes had elapsed since the start, I wassatisfied that I had passed entirely out of the atmosphere, and hadentered into the vacancy of space--if such a thing as vacant spacethere be.
At this point I had to cut off the greater part of the apergy andcheck my speed, for reasons that will be presently apparent. I hadstarted in daylight in order that during the first hundred miles of myascent I might have a clear view of the Earth's surface. Not only didI wish to enjoy the spectacle, but as I had to direct my course byterrestrial landmarks, it was necessary that I should be able to seethese so as to determine the rate and direction of the Astronaut'smotion, and discern the first symptoms of any possible danger. Butobviously, since my course lay generally in the plane of the ecliptic,and for the present at least nearly in the line joining the centres ofthe Earth and Sun, it was desirable that my real journey into spaceshould commence in the plane of the midnight meridian; that is, fromabove the part of the Earth's surface immediately opposite the Sun. Ihad to reach this line, and having reached it, to remain for some timeabove it. To do both, I must attain it, if possible, at the samemoment at which I secured a westward impulse just sufficient tocounterbalance the eastward impulse derived from the rotation of theEarth;--that is, in the latitude from which I started, a thousandmiles an hour. I had calculated that while directing through the mainbar a current of apergy sufficient to keep the Astronaut at a fixedelevation, I could easily spare for the eastward conductor sufficientforce to create in the space of one hour the impulse required, butthat in the course of that hour the gradually increasing apergic forcewould drive me 500 miles westward. Now in six hours the Earth'srotation would carry an object close to its surface through an angleof 90 deg.; that is, from the sunset to the midnight meridian. But thegreater the elevation of the object the wider its orbit round theEarth's centre, and the longer each degree; so that moving eastwardonly a thousand miles an hour, I should constantly lag behind a pointon the Earth's surface, and should not reach the midnight meridiantill somewhat later. I had, moreover, to lose 500 miles of theeastward drift during the last hour in which I should be subject toit, through the action of the apergic force above-mentioned. Now, anelevation of 330 miles would give the Astronaut an orbit on which 90 deg.would represent 6500 miles. In seven hours I should be carried alongthat orbit 7000 miles eastward by the impulse my Astronaut hadreceived from the Earth, and driven back 500 miles by the apergy; sothat at 1 A.M. by my chronometer I should be exactly in the plane ofthe midnight meridian, or 6500 miles east of my starting-point inspace, provided that I put the eastward apergic current in actionexactly at 12 P.M. by the chronometer. At 1 A.M. also I should havegenerated a westward impulse of 1000 miles an hour. This, oncecreated, would continue to exist though the force that created it werecut off, and would exactly counterbalance the opposite rotationimpulse derived from the Earth; so that thenceforward I should beentirely free from the influence of the latter, though still sharingthat motion of the Earth through space at the rate of nearly nineteenmiles per second, which would carry me towards the line joining at themoment of opposition her centre with that of Mars.
All went as I had calculated. I contrived to arrest the Astronaut'smotion at the required elevation just about the moment of sunset onthe region of the Earth immediately underneath. At 12 P.M., or 24h bythe chronometer, I directed a current of the requisite strength intothe eastward conductor, which I had previously pointed to the Earth'ssurface, but a little short of the extreme terrestrial horizon, as Icalculated it. At 1 A.M. I found myself, judging by the stars, exactlywhere I wished to be, and nearly stationary as regarded the Earth. Iinstantly arrested the eastward current, detaching that conductor fromthe apergion; and, directing the whole force of the current into thedownward conductor, I had the pleasure of seeing that, after a verylittle adjustment of the helm, the stars remained stationary in themirror of the metacompass, showing that I had escaped from theinfluence of the Earth's rotation. It was of course impossible tomeasure the distance traversed during the invisibility of the Earth,but I reckoned that I had made above 500 miles between 1h. and 2h.A.M., and that at 4h. I was not less than 4800 miles from the surface.With this inference the indication of my barycrite substantiallyagreed. The latter instrument consisted of a spring whose deflectionby a given weight upon the equator had been very carefully tested.Gravity diminishing as the square of the distance from the centre, itwas obvious that at about 8000 miles--or 4000 above the Earth'ssurface--this spring would be deflected only one quarter
as much by agiven weight as on Earth: at 16,000 miles from the surface, or 20,000from the centre, one-twenty-fifth as much, and so on. I had graduatedthe scale accordingly, and it indicated at present a distance somewhatless than 9000 miles from the centre. Having adjusted the helm and setthe alarum to wake me in six hours, I lay down upon my bed.
The anxiety and peril of my position had disturbed me very littlewhilst I was actively engaged either in steering and manipulating mymachinery, or in looking upon the marvellous and novel spectaclespresented to my eyes; but it now oppressed me in my sleep, and causedme frequently to wake from dreams of a hideous character. Two or threetimes, on such awaking, I went to examine the metacompass, and on oneoccasion found it necessary slightly to readjust the helm; the starsby which I steered having moved some second or two to the right oftheir proper position.
On rising, I completed the circuit which filled my vessel withbrilliant light emitted from an electric lamp at the upper part of thestern, and reflected by the polished metallic walls. I then proceededto get my breakfast, for which, as I had tasted nothing since somehours before the start, I had a hearty appetite. I had anticipatedsome trouble from the diminished action of gravity, doubting whetherthe boiling-point at this immense height above the Earth might not beaffected; but I found that this depends upon the pressure of theatmosphere alone, and that this pressure was in nowise affected by theabsence of gravity. My atmosphere being somewhat denser than that ofthe Earth, the boiling-point was not 100 deg., but 101 deg. Cent. Thetemperature of the interior of the vessel, taken at a pointequidistant from the stove and from the walls, was about 5 deg. C.;unpleasantly cool, but still, with the help of a greatcoat, notinconveniently so. I found it absolutely impossible to measure bymeans of the thermometers I had placed outside the windows the cold ofspace; but that it falls far short of the extreme supposed by somewriters, I confidently believe. It is, however, cold enough to freezemercury, and to reduce every other substance employed as a test ofatmospheric or laboratory temperatures to a solidity which admits ofno further contraction. I had filled one outside thermometer withspirit, but this was broken before I looked at it; and in another,whose bulb unfortunately was blackened, and which was filled withcarbonic acid gas, an apparent vacuum had been created. Was it thatthe gas had been frozen, and had sunk into the lower part of the bulb,where it would, of course, be invisible? When I had completed my mealand smoked the very small cigar which alone a prudent considerationfor the state of the atmosphere would allow me, the chronometer showed10 A.M. It was not surprising that by this time weight had becomealmost non-existent. My twelve stone had dwindled to the weight of asmall fowl, and hooking my little finger into the loop of a stringhung from a peg fixed near the top of the stern wall, I found myselfable thus to support my weight without any sense of fatigue for aquarter of an hour or more; in fact, I felt during that timeabsolutely no sense of muscular weariness. This state of thingsentailed only one inconvenience. Nothing had any stability; so thatthe slightest push or jerk would upset everything that was not fixed.However, I had so far anticipated this that nothing of any materialconsequence was unfixed, and except that a touch with my spoon upsetthe egg-cup and egg on which I was about to breakfast, and that this,falling against a breakfast cup full of coffee, overturned that, I wasnot incommoded. I managed to save the greater part of the beverage,since, the atmospheric pressure being the same though the weight wasso changed, lead, and still more china or liquid, fell in theAstronaut as slowly as feathers in the immediate vicinity of theEarth. Still it was a novel experience to find myself able to lean inany direction, and rest in almost any posture, with but the slightestsupport for the body's centre of gravity; and further to find onexperiment that it was possible to remain for a couple of hours withmy heels above my head, in the favourite position of a Yankee's lowerlimbs, without any perceptible congestion of blood or confusion ofbrain.
I was occupied all day with abstract calculations; and knowing thatfor some time I could see nothing of the Earth--her dark side beingopposite me and wholly obscuring the Sun, while I was as yet far fromhaving entered within the sphere where any novel celestial phenomenamight be expected--I only gave an occasional glance at the discometerand metacompass, suppressing of course the electric glare within myvessel, till I awoke from a short siesta about 19h. (7 P.M.) The Earthat this time occupied on the sphere of view a space--defined at firstonly by the absence of stars--about thirty times greater than the discof the Moon as seen through a tube; but, being dark, scarcely seemedlarger to the eye than the full Moon when on the horizon. But a newmethod of defining its disc was presently afforded me. I was, in fact,when looking through the lower window, in the same position as regardsthe Earth as would be an inhabitant of the lunar hemisphere turnedtowards her, having no external atmosphere interposed between us, butbeing at about two-thirds of the lunar distance. And as, during aneclipse, the Lunarian would see round the Earth a halo created by therefraction of the Sun's rays in the terrestrial atmosphere--a halobright enough on most occasions so to illuminate the Moon as to renderher visible to us--so to my eyes the Earth was surrounded by a halosomewhat resembling the solar corona as seen in eclipses, if notnearly so brilliant, but, unlike the solar corona, coloured, with apreponderance of red so decided as fully to account for the peculiarhue of the eclipsed Moon. To paint this, unless means of paintinglight--the one great deficiency which is still the opprobrium of humanart--were discovered, would task to the uttermost the powers of theablest artist, and at best he could give but a very imperfect notionof it. To describe it so that its beauty, brilliancy, and wondrousnature shall be in the slightest degree appreciated by my readerswould require a command of words such as no poet since Homer--nay, notHomer himself--possessed. What was strange, and can perhaps berendered intelligible, was the variation, or, to use a phrase moresuggestive and more natural, if not more accurate, the extrememobility of the hues of this earthly corona. There were none of theefflorescences, if one may so term them, which are so generallyvisible at four cardinal points of its solar prototype. The outerportion of the band faded very rapidly into the darkness of space; butthe edge, though absolutely undefined, was perfectly even. But on thegenerally rainbow-tinted ground suffused with red--which perhaps mightbest be described by calling it a rainbow seen on a background ofbrilliant crimson--there were here and there blotches of black or oflighter or darker grey, caused apparently by vast expanses of cloud,more or less dense. Round the edges of each of these were littleirregular rainbow-coloured halos of their own interrupting andvariegating the continuous bands of the corona; while throughout allwas discernible a perpetual variability, like the flashing or shootingof colour in the opal, the mother-of-pearl, or similarly tintedtranslucent substances when exposed to the irregular play of brightlight--only that in this case the tints were incomparably morebrilliant, the change more striking, if not more rapid. I could notsay that at any particular moment any point or part of the surfacepresented this or that definite hue; and yet the general character ofthe rainbow, suffused with or backed by crimson, was constant andunmistakable. The light sent through the window was too dim and tooimperfectly diffused within my vessel to be serviceable, but for sometime I put out the electric lamp in order that its diffused lightshould not impair my view of this exquisite spectacle. As thrown,after several reflections, upon the mirror destined afterwards tomeasure the image of the solar disc, the apparition of the halo was ofcourse much less bright, and its outer boundary ill defined foraccurate measurement. The inner edge, where the light was bounded bythe black disc of the Earth, shaded off much more quickly from darkreddish purple into absolute blackness.
And now a surprise, the first I had encountered, awaited me. Iregistered the gravity as shown by the barycrite; and, extinguishingthe electric lamp, measured repeatedly the semi-diameter of the Earthand of the halo around her upon the discometer, the inner edge of thelatter affording the measurement of the black disc, which of itself,of course, cast no reflection. I saw at once that there was a signaldiffer
ence in the two indications, and proceeded carefully to revisethe earth-measurements. On the average of thirteen measures the halowas about 87", or nearly 1-1/2' in breadth, the disc, allowing for thetwilight round its edge or limb, about 2 deg. 50'. If the refractingatmosphere were some 65 miles in depth, these proportions werecorrect. Relighting the lamp, I worked out severally on paper theresults indicated by the two instruments. The discometer gave adistance, roughly speaking, of 40 terrestrial radii, or 160,000 miles.The barycrite should have shown a gravity, due to the Earth'sattraction, not 40 but 1600 times less than that prevailing on theEarth's surface; or, to put it in a less accurate form, a weight of100 lbs. should have weighed an ounce. It did weigh two ounces, thegravity being not one 1600th but one 800th of terrestrial gravity, orjust double what, I expected. I puzzled myself over this matterlonger, probably, than the intelligent reader will do: the explanationbeing obvious, like that of many puzzles that bewilder our mindsintensely, only to humiliate us proportionately when the solution isfound--a solution as simple as that of Columbus's egg-riddle. Atlength, finding that the lunar angle--the apparent position of theMoon--confirmed the reading of the discometer, giving the same apogaicdistance or elevation, I supposed that the barycrite must be out oforder or subject to some unsuspected law of which future observationsmight afford evidence and explanation, and turned to other subjects ofinterest.
Looking through the upper window on the left, I was struck by therapid enlargement of a star which, when I first noticed it, might beof the third magnitude, but which in less than a minute attained thefirst, and in a minute more was as large as the planet Jupiter whenseen with a magnifying power of one hundred diameters.
Its disc, however, had no continuous outline; and as it approached Iperceived that it was an irregular mass of whose size I could form noteven a conjectural estimate, since its distance must be absolutelyuncertain. Its brilliancy grew fainter in proportion to theenlargement as it approached, proving that its light was reflected;and as it passed me, apparently in the direction of the earth, I had asufficiently distinct view of it to know that it was a mainly metallicmass, certainly of some size, perhaps four, perhaps twenty feet indiameter, and apparently composed chiefly of iron; showing a more orless blistered surface, but with angles sharper and faces moreregularly defined than most of those which have been found upon theearth's surface--as if the shape of the latter might be due in part tothe conflagration they undergo in passing at such tremendous speedthrough the atmosphere, or, in an opposite sense, to the fracturescaused by the shock of their falling. Though I made no attempt tocount the innumerable stars in the midst of which I appeared to float,I was convinced that their number was infinitely greater than thatvisible to the naked eye on the brightest night. I remembered howgreatly the inexperienced eye exaggerates the number of stars visiblefrom the Earth, since poets, and even olden observers, liken theirnumber to that of the sands on the seashore; whereas the patient workof map and catalogue makers has shown that there are but a fewthousands visible in the whole heavens to the keenest unaided sight. Isuppose that I saw a hundred times that number. In one word, thesphere of darkness in which I floated seemed to be filled with pointsof light, while the absolute blackness that surrounded them, theabsence of the slightest radiation, or illumination of space at large,was strange beyond expression to an eye accustomed to that diffusionof light which is produced by the atmosphere. I may mention here thatthe recognition of the constellations was at first exceedinglydifficult. On Earth we see so few stars in any given portion of theheavens, that one recognises without an effort the figure marked outby a small number of the brightest amongst them; while in my positionthe multitude was so great that only patient and repeated effortenabled me to separate from the rest those peculiarly brilliantluminaries by which we are accustomed to define such constellations asOrion or the Bear, to say nothing of those minor or more arbitrarilydrawn figures which contain few stars of the second magnitude. The eyehad no instinctive sense of distance; any star might have been withina stone's throw. I need hardly observe that, while on one hand themotion of the vessel was absolutely imperceptible, there was, on theother, no change of position among the stars which could enable me toverify the fact that I was moving, much less suggest it to the senses.The direction of every recognisable star was the same as on Earth, asit appears the same from the two extremities of the Earth's orbit, 19millions of miles apart. Looking from any one window, I could see nogreater space of the heavens than in looking through a similaraperture on Earth. What was novel and interesting in my stellarprospect was, not merely that I could see those stars north and southwhich are never visible from the same point on Earth, except in theimmediate neighbourhood of the Equator; but that, save on the smallspace concealed by the Earth's disc, I could, by moving from window towindow, survey the entire heavens, looking at one minute upon thestars surrounding the vernal, and at another, by changing my position,upon those in the neighbourhood of the autumnal equinox. By littlemore than a turn of my head I could see in one direction Polaris(_alpha_ Ursae Minoris) with the Great Bear, and in another theSouthern Cross, the Ship, and the Centaur.
About 23h. 30m., near the close of the first day, I again inspectedthe barycrite. It showed 1/1100 of terrestrial gravity, an incrediblysmall change from the 1/800 recorded at 19h., since it implied aprogress proportionate only to the square root of the difference. Theobservation indicated, if the instrument could be trusted, an advanceof only 18,000 miles. It was impossible that the Astronaut had not bythis time attained a very much greater speed than 4000 miles an hour,and a greater distance from the Earth than 33 terrestrial radii, or132,000 miles. Moreover, the barycrite itself had given at 19h. adistance of 28-1/2 radii, and a speed far greater than that which uponits showing had since been maintained. Extinguishing the lamp, I foundthat the Earth's diameter on the discometer measured 2 deg. 3' 52" (?).This represented a gain of some 90,000 miles; much more approximate tothat which, judging by calculation, I ought to have accomplishedduring the last four hours and a half, if my speed approached to thatI had estimated. I inspected the cratometer, which indicated a forceas great as that with which I had started,--a force which should bythis time have given me a speed of at least 22,000 miles an hour. Atlast the solution of the problem flashed upon me, suggested by thevery extravagance of the contradictions. Not only did the barycritecontradict the discometer and the reckoning but it contradicteditself; since it was impossible that under one continuous impulsationI should have traversed 28-1/2 radii of the Earth in the firsteighteen hours and no more than 4-1/2 in the next four and a halfhours. In truth, the barycrite was effected by two separateattractions,--that of the Earth and that of the Sun, as yet operatingalmost exactly in the same direction. At first the attraction of theformer was so great that that of the Sun was no more perceived thanupon the Earth's surface. But as I rose, and the Earth's attractiondiminished in proportion to the square of the distance from hercentre--which was doubled at 8000 miles, quadrupled at 16,000, and soon--the Sun's attraction, which was not perceptibly affected bydifferences so small in proportion to his vast distance of 95,000,000miles, became a more and more important element in the total gravity.If, as I calculated, I had by 19h. attained a distance from the earthof 160,000 miles, the attractions of Earth and Sun were by that timepretty nearly equal; and hence the phenomenon which had so puzzled me,that the gravitation, as indicated by the barycrite, was exactlydouble that which, bearing in mind the Earth's attraction alone, I hadcalculated. From this point forward the Sun's attraction was thefactor which mainly caused such weight as still existed; a change ofposition which, doubling my distance from the Earth, reduced herinfluence to one-fourth, not perceptibly affecting that of a body fourhundred times more remote. A short calculation showed that, this factborne in mind, the indication of the barycrite substantially agreedwith that of the discometer, and that I was in fact very nearly whereI supposed, that is, a little farther than the Moon's farthestdistance from the Earth. It did not follow that I had crossed theorb
it of the Moon; and if I had, she was at that time too far off toexercise a serious influence on my course. I adjusted the helm andbetook myself to rest, the second day of my journey having alreadycommenced.
