In the flank of the Selenit adjacent to the suit-room was the exit cylinder. It communicated with the chamber by a heretically sealed hatch; it was just large enough to contain a suit. A system of double doors gave access to the exterior through the hull of the Selenit.
“The passage is presently under water,” Scherrebek explained, “so we can’t open it. But that’s the way we’ll normally come in and go out when we’re on the Moon, instead of passing through the screw-hatch. In fact, the latter couldn’t be unscrewed without losing the air contained in the Selenit and immediately causing the asphyxiation of the passengers.
“The exit cylinder functions in three circumstances. When a person in a suit wants to go out, the communicating door between the cylinder and the chamber is opened, the man in the suit climbs in, and the door is resealed. Then, from inside the chamber, a tap is turned that allows the air in the cylinder to escape outside. Once the vacuum is complete, it only remains to open the exterior doors to emerge on to the lunar surface. When the main in the suit wants to return, naturally, the maneuver is carried out in reverse order, Thus, one loses as little air as possible every time.”
It only remained to visit the engine room. Before going in there, Captain Scherrebek explained that the batteries of electric piles that provided lighting for the rooms and heating of the small culinary stove were installed under the floor.
The engine room resembled an artillery turret aboard a battleship. Like the others chambers of the Selenit it was constructed so as to serve in two different orientations, vertical and horizontal. Cylinders similar to the breeches of cannon were fitted into the wall, and the similarity was further enhanced by the presence of chains mounted on castors designed to take the explosive cartridges into the cylinders. The breeches were fitted with double seals, which avoided the loss of air.
In addition to the four large cannons designed for the propulsion of the Selenit there were several small ones that could not be seen from outside because they terminated level with the wall; they were arranged at right angles to the axis of the Selenit, some perpendicular to the walls and others oblique. Those small tubes would serve to correct errors in direction or cancel any effects of rotation that might be produced in the course of the voyage and inconvenience the passengers severely.
“The functioning of these items of apparatus,” Scherrebek concluded, as he finished his explanations, “is still based on the reaction principle. If you fire to the right, the recoil deflects the Selenit to the left; if you fire tangentially in one direction, you cause the machine to rotate on its axis in the other.”
The visit was concluded, and they went back aboard the Montgomery. Brifaut was enthused, Madeleine struck by admiration.
“But when you fall on the Moon,” Brifaut observed, “the Selenit will be forced to remain where it has landed, and it might be in a very poor situation.”
“Our machine will be capable of moving, because it’s necessary that we can travel on the Mon and reposition ourselves for the return to Earth. Thus, we’ve disposed wheels with caterpillar tracks beneath the hull, which you can’t see because they’re under water. They’re activated by an explosion motor, fueled by powder, naturally. The rear of the vessel will be sustained by struts. By those means, we can travel several hundred kilometers aboard the Selenit.”
“I really admire your diving-suits,” said Madeleine, “but they must be terribly heavy.”
“They weigh about two hundred kilos, fully equipped.”
“How will you be able to walk when you have such a weight on your back?”
“You’re forgetting, Madame, that the gravity is six times weaker on the Moon than on Earth, and that, in consequence, the suit weighs no more up there than thirty-three or thirty-five kilos. You’ll tell me that that’s still a lot when it’s a matter of moving on very uneven terrain, but a man only weighs a dozen kilos himself instead of seventy, for example. He’ll therefore only have to carry a total of twelve plus thirty-four, or forty-six, kilos in total. You can see that, in spite of the burden of the suit, he’ll feel considerably lighter than on Earth.”
“That’s true. You’ve thought of everything.”
The members of the expedition spent the afternoon taking all the Montgomery’s passengers to visit the Selenit by turns. In the evening, the screw-hatch was closed; it would not be reopened again before the embarkation of the explorers.
During dinner, everyone conceded that an expedition prepared with so much care could not fail. No one was incredulous any longer.
When night fell, the passengers sat in groups on the deck in order to meditate beneath the beautiful starry sky.
“It’s a pity,” said Madeleine, “that the Moon isn’t visible, when everyone’s thinking about it.”
“It’s already set,” Dessoye observed, “because it’s in its last quarter. We’re going to leave shortly after the new moon, in order to arrive on our satellite at sunrise.”
IV. Replacement
On the third day of the voyage there was a deplorable accident aboard the Montgomery. Dessoye, the French member of the mission, fell on one of the stairways so awkwardly that he broke his wrist.
He thought at first that he would get away with a simple sprain and would still be able to depart, but the ship’s doctor dispelled that illusion.
“It will be at least two months before you recover the use of your hand.”
In those conditions, Dessoye could only be a hindrance to his comrades if he was obstinate in going regardless. He understood that, but he was desolate. For one thing, he would lose the payment of a hundred thousand dollars that the voyage would have earned him; secondly, he would miss the opportunity for an exciting adventure; finally—and this affected him most deeply of all—he would leave vacant the place reserved in the mission for a representative of France.
When Brifaut came to express his sympathy, he said to him: “Why can’t you replace me? You’re young and vigorous; you’ve undertaken several voyages of exploration and you speak English as if it were your mother tongue. Go to the Moon. It’s a beautiful opportunity to see the place and make yourself rich.”
“I’d like nothing better, if it only depended on me,” Brifaut replied, “but my wife would never consent to it.”
“Who can tell? Let’s go find her.”
The two men joined Madeleine in the lounge of the Montgomery. Dessoye, whose arm was in a sling, explained his proposition.
Madeleine uttered loud protests. “No, no! My husband won’t launch himself into this crazy adventure.”
“But you’ve recognized yourself,” René ventured, “that its success can’t be put in doubt, so many precautions having been taken.”
“That doesn’t alter the fact that something unexpected might happen that would spoil everything. What if the Selenit breaks down on the Moon, for instance, and that’s the end.”
“Everything has been calculated, Madame,” Dessoye observed. “There won’t be any breakdown. Remember that France is no longer represented in the mission. What will people say if your husband doesn’t step in? A Frenchman will have recoiled, where an Englishman, a German and an American have gone without fear.”
That argument had considerable weight with the young woman, who nevertheless argued for a long time and shed many tears.
In the end, she declared: “Well, I’ll consent to let René go, but only on one condition: that I go too.”
“But that’s not possible. A woman!”
“Ta ta ta! Give that there’s no danger—that’s what you said, isn’t it?—I don’t see why I can’t take part in the expedition. Anyway, a woman might render considerable services aboard the Selenit, for housework, cooking and medical care. I can also fill the role of secretary.”
“Yes, yes…I understand…but provision has only been made for ten passengers, and it would be necessary to reserve separate accommodation for you.”
“Bah! In war as in war—I’ll sleep in the food-store.”
“In truth…perhaps it’s not impossible. I’ll go talk to Scherrebek.”
“Point out to him,” said Madeleine, “that my company will add some gaiety to an austere circle of ten men.”
“Certainly,” said Dessoye laughing, “and that argument has all the more force when it’s a matter of a Frenchwoman.”
An hour later, the members of the expedition, including Dessoye, who had to renounce taking part in it, met in council in the commandant’s ward-room to consider the question. The replacement of Dessoye by Brifaut was admitted without difficulty; the admission of Madame Brifaut, by contrast, generated considerable argument. Some members, especially the American and the Japanese, raised objections. But Dessoye, supported by Scherrebek, pleaded Madeleine’s cause with so much ardor that they ended up winning the unanimous consent of their comrades.
When, at dinner that evening, Commandant Murray announced officially that Madeleine would be joining the expedition, the guests gave the valiant Frenchwoman an ovation.
Madeleine felt proud and glad; she was no longer afraid of anything. Such is the character of our race, which sometimes trembles at danger when it is far away, and confronts it with a smile at close range.
V. En Route
Installed in the pilot’s cabin, with his instruments before his eyes and the acoustic funnels that permitted him to communicate with the various compartments of the Selenit in front of him, Scherrebek leaned over the one to the crew’s quarters and announced:
“Depth two hundred meters. We’re no longer descending. In exactly three minutes, I’ll release the lead weights.”
Into the apparatus communicating with the engine-room, where the American Garrick and the Japanese Kito were in service, he said: “To your posts! We’re departing in three minutes.”
The Selenit was in a vertical position, and to circulate between the compartments, which were placed one beneath another like shelves, it was necessary to use ladders.
On the wall that was, for the moment, taking the place of the floor in the crew’s quarters, René and Madeleine were sitting side by side on folding chairs in the company of Lang, Bojardo, Espronceda, Uberaba and Goffoël. The Englishman Galston was climbing the ladder that led to the pilot’s cabin, going to install himself beside Scherrebek in order to assist him if necessary. The electric lights had been switched on because, at the depth at which the Selenit was immersed, no light could reach the portholes.
Madeleine scanned her companions with her gaze and saw them composed, but a trifle pale. Her heart was beating rapidly, and she leaned instinctively on René’s shoulder. Silence reigned; everyone was mentally bidding adieu to the Earth, thinking that they might not come back from the prodigious voyage to the Moon.
A slight shock was produced; Scherrebek had released the weights. The Selenit, lightened and drawn toward the surface by a girdle of buoys, which it would abandon on arrival in the open air, began rising with increasing speed. During the first few seconds the acceleration was scarcely perceptible, but it gradually increased. The passengers had the sensation of being in an elevator. A dull rumble announced that the engine had been activated. In truth, the noise was scarcely appreciable, for it as only transmitted through the metallic framework through the insulating triple hull of the Selenit.
After thirty seconds or so, the Spaniard Espronceda, who was looking through a porthole, announced in English: “We’re out!”
They could, indeed, see daylight through the windows, and could make out the blue of the sky. The Selenit was soaring through the atmosphere.
Striving to suppress the tremor that was agitating her and to appear perfectly calm, Madeleine asked: “At what speed are we traveling?”
“Between fifty and sixty meters a second,” Lang replied. “We ought to have reached the acceleration compatible with the resistance of the human body already.”
In fact, Madeleine could still feel in the hollow of her stomach the painful sensation that passengers in an elevator feel at the moment when it moves off.
“It’s making my heart hurt,” she murmured. “Is it going to last long?”
“Thirty or forty minutes, Madame,” said Lang. “I advise you to lie down on that couch—you’ll suffer less motion-sickness.”
The advice was good. Madeleine took advantage of it, installed herself on a folding bunk and closed her eyes.
“I thought,” said René Brifaut, “that a projectile can’t escape the Earth’s gravitation unless it’s traveling at twelve thousand meters a second. How will we succeed in reaching such a velocity in only fifty minutes?”
“Naturally, if we weren’t being driven upwards by our engines, we’d fall back to Earth, whose attraction tends to slow us down by nine meters eighty-one centimeters a second. But it’s sufficient for the propulsion of our machines to compensate for that retardation for us to continue rising. In fact, we’re so far in excess of it that our speed is accelerating at about ten meters a second.”
“You’ll notice,” said Bojardo, the Italian, “that we have an interest in not moving too rapidly at the outset, so long as we’re not out of the dense layer of the atmosphere, whose resistance would be considerable if we exceeded a velocity of two or three hundred meters a second. We’d risk being subjected to a dangerous heating.”
“And how thick is that layer?” asked Brifaut, who was the least knowledgeable of the team.
“Between thirty and forty kilometers. We’ll be through it in about two minutes. After that, we’ll be in an atmosphere sufficiently rarefied for its resistance to become negligible. Scherrebek will be able to increase velocity, and seven or eight minutes later we’ll reach the interplanetary void at the extreme limits of the atmosphere, at an altitude of five hundred kilometers.
At the Lycée Fénelon, where she had been educated, Madeleine had been taught what the Moon was and what its movements were, but she had forgotten some of the astronomical details and was not sorry to have them repeated by Goffoël, the giant Belgian.
Goffoël reminded her that the diameter of the Moon is 3,480 kilometers, whereas that of the Earth is 12,732 kilometers. In consequence, the volume of the Moon is about forty-nine times less than that of the Earth, and, as the density of our satellite scarcely surpasses six tenths of the mean density of the terrestrial globe, its mass is only equivalent to one eighty-oneth of that of the Earth. In sum, the Moon, as a whole, is composed of lighter substances. The mass being smaller, the action of gravity on the lunar surface is also reduced; the smallness of its radius, however, concentrates the force, so to speak, so that weight on the moon is not one eighty-oneth but a sixth of weight on the Earth.
The Moon rotates around the Earth, and if one considers the time between two identical phases—two full moons, for example—one finds that the revolution takes twenty-nine days, twelve hours, forty-four minutes, two seconds and six hundred and eighty-four thousandths of a second. But as the Earth is itself rotating around the sun, that revolution, known as synodic, is longer than the time elapsed between two passages of the Moon over the same point in the sky—before the same star, for example. The latter is only twenty-seven days seven hours, forty-three minutes, eleven seconds and five hundred and forty-five thousandths of a second, which is the duration of the sidereal revolution.
The curve that the Moon describes around the Earth, the former being deemed motionless, is not an exact circle but an ellipse, of which our globe occupies one of the focal points. It follows that the distance between the two heavenly bodies is not invariable. The point at which the Moon passes closest to the Earth is known as the perigee, the one at which it is most distant the apogee. The interval that elapses between two passage of the Moon through its perigee, which known as the anomalistic period, is twenty-seven days, thirteen hours, eighteen minutes, thirty-seven seconds and forty-four thousands of a second. The minimum distance, at perigee, in 356,577 kilometers; the maximum distance, at apogee, is 407,000 kilometers; the mean distance in 384,300 kilometers.
“So you can
see,” Goffoël observed, “that we’re very close to our satellite. One could almost say that it’s within arm’s reach, when one compares it to the distance of the Sun, and above all that of the nearest stars. Light takes scarcely more than a second to reach us from the Moon, while it takes eight and a half minutes to reach us from the Sun, and about three years from the nearest star.”
Madeleine also learned once again that the Moon always presents the same face to us, which proves that its center of gravity is closer to us than its symmetrical center. It rotates on its axis in exactly the same time as it accomplishes a revolution around the Earth. Nevertheless, as its orbit is not exactly circular, and its velocity is, in consequence, not absolutely constant, and the Earth is moving through space itself, so that the Moon is sometimes above the plane of the Earth’s orbit and sometimes below it, our satellite is subject to a kind of apparent oscillation from north to south and east to west, which alternately conceals and reveals the regions close to its edge. That oscillation is known as libration.
There is, in consequence, a part of the Moon that we never see, which represents forty-one hundredths of its surface, a part that is visible only at times, and finally, one that is always visible. The latter parts form collectively fifty-nine hundredths of the surface.
The apparent diameter of the Moon—which is to say, at the angle from which it is seen from the Earth—measures a little more than half a degree. That is approximately how one sees a length of a centimeter at a distance of a meter.
An International Mission to the Moon Page 4
