“Are we far from Earth?” asked Farenheit, waking up in his turn.
Fricoulet consulted his watch. “6 a.m.,” he said. “It’s probable that in ten hours we’ve covered a far number of kilometers.”
“But how many?” Gontran persisted.
“To answer you exactly, I’d have to measure the arc subtended by the Earth and make a fairly simple calculation…but there’s no point…you wouldn’t understand.”
“That might well be true, for my part,” replied the young Comte, “for my head’s as heavy as lead.” With a hint of anxiety, he murmured: “Am I falling ill?” Then, jokingly, he added: “It must be the change of air.”
Fricoulet clapped his hands. “Me too,” he said. “I’ve got buzzing in my ears—but you’ve just opened my eyes to the cause of the disturbance. Of course! It’s not the change of air that’s making you ill, but the exact opposite; it’s necessary to purify the air polluted by our respiration and get rid of the surplus carbon dioxide it contains.”
“But how?”
“In a very simple manner.”
From a cupboard, Alcide Fricoulet took a bottle containing translucent white crystals, which he poured into several saucers deposited on the floor; then he closed the tap that emitted pure oxygen.
Five minutes later, the crystals—which were noting but caustic potash—had entirely absorbed the carbon dioxide from the room and had transformed it into potassium carbonate. Then the engineer lifted up the saucers, which he put back in place, and opened the oxygen tap again.
“Well,” he asked, “is that better?”
“It’s like breathing sea air,” Gontran replied.
“One might think one were in the plains of the Far West,” said Jonathan Farenheit, in his turn.
With a single movement, they leapt down from their hammocks and were finishing off by rolling them up in order to put them in the place that they occupied by day when the door to the upper floor opened and Ossipoff appeared at the top of the little stairway, his face all smiles. “Messieurs,” he said, cheerfully. “Breakfast is ready—a simple cup of arrowroot. There’s nothing better in the morning.”
Indeed, Selena came down the stairs behind him, carrying five fuming cups on a tray. With Gontran’s, help the table was soon set.
“Hurray for Miss Selena!” cried Jonathan Farenheit. “Here’s an arrowroot so good that no housekeeper in the United States could make a better one.”
After swallowing the contents of his cup in a few rapid draughts and hastily chewing the slice of toast posed on his plate, Ossipoff got up and went back up to his observatory. Scarcely had he departed when Gontran, concealing a formidable yawn, murmured: “That’s that! What are we going to do to occupy our time? It seems to me that we’ll get bored stiff.”
“You’ll not lack for occupation if you care to give me a hand.”
“Gladly—to do what?”
“Simply help me make notes on the incidents of our journey: the speed of our vehicle, the indications of the instruments, the sidereal phenomena—in a word, to keep a ship’s log.”
The young Comte nodded his head energetically. “If you’ve nothing better to offer, I’m your man.” Then, turning to Selena, he said: “And you, Mademoiselle? Can’t I be some use to you?”
“I don’t think so,” she replied, “for my own task is completely foreign to you.” So saying, she took a book out of a cupboard, and went to sit down on the divan with it.
“What’s that?” asked Gontran. “If it’s not indiscreet to ask…”
“Oh, not at all,” she replied, smiling. “It’s the Cuisinière bourgeoise;52 I’m going to study it seriously, in order to provide sufficiently varied menus with the limited resources on board…you can’t help me, at all, you see.”
Mortified, Flammermont bowed, with a slight mocking smile, and turned to the American. “Dare I,” he asked, “for want of dominoes, propose a game of Wet Finger or Flying Pigeon?”53
Jonathan Farenheit burst out laughing. “Ah, by Heaven!” he said. “That’s a good idea…and we’ll settle up later—which is to say, that if you care to lend me a small sum…”
The young man’s lips creased in a significant grimace. “Thanks for he offer,” he said. And he went to lie on the divan, to await impatiently the moment when the mid-day meal would reunite the passengers around the table.
Once they had taken coffee and everyone had returned to their occupations, the unfortunate Comte went to a porthole and stayed there all day, his eyes fixed on the sidereal immensity, interested in spite of himself by the diversity of the spectacles that were offered to him. Sometimes, there were bolides streaking through space on their way from one planet to another, sometimes a comet, reminiscent of a flaming salamander, ran across the sky, whipping the stars with its sparkling tail.
Meanwhile, the journey continued in excellent conditions of security and speed; after 48 hours they had covered some 168,700 kilometers and Ossipoff expected to reach the zone of equal attraction, situated 78,500 leagues from the Earth, in a further 40 hours.
Gontran had finally found a distraction that absorbed all his attention; it was the progressive disappearance of the terrestrial crescent, drowned in the fires of the Sun and the continuous increase in size of the Moon, which appeared at the zenith, similar—as he had said in his first rush of amazement—to an immense silver-plated reflector suspended in the sky. With the aid of a telescope that Ossipoff had lent him, he examined every detail of the planet, veiled by a weak ash-colored light, scattered across which he could distinguish the dark patches of seas and a few brilliant points that he did not hesitate to identify as erupting volcanoes.
They were in the fourth day of the voyage, having already traveled more than 60,000,000 leagues, when a more serious event occurred. It was morning. After having drunk his cup of arrowroot, Gontran, moved by curiosity, had gone up to Monsieur Ossipoff’s observatory in order to examine the Moon with the scientist’s large telescope. Suddenly, he uttered an exclamation so loud that Fricoulet, thinking there had been an accident, ran to the ladder and climbed anxiously up to his side.
“What happened?” the young engineer asked, breathlessly.
“I’ve just discovered a satellite of the Moon, my dear chap.”
Fricoulet burst into spontaneous laughter.
“What’s got into you?” grumbled Gontran, offended by this inappropriate hilarity. “Are you going mad?”
“I think it’s more probably you that’s mad.”
“Why?”
“Because the Moon has no satellite.”
“Oh, you think so…”
“I suggest you speak in a lower voice—Monsieur Ossipoff might hear you!”
Flammermont stood up and abandoned the telescope, inviting Fricoulet to take it and saying in an irritated tone: “Here, take my place. If you’re not blind, or I’m not seeing things…”
The engineer shrugged his shoulders and took his friend’s place. Scarcely had he applied his eye to the objective lens than an exclamation of surprise escaped his lips. “It’s really true,” he murmured. Then, quitting the instrument, he leaned over the stairway and shouted: “Monsieur Ossipoff! Come up here a minute!”
The old man raced up the steps. “What do you want?” he asked.
“Gontran’s just discovered a body—for I hesitate to call it a world—which appears to be motionless in the vicinity of the Moon.”
Ossipoff did not need to hear any more. In his turn, he crouched over the telescope and looked through it. He looked for a long time, mute and tremulous. Then, finally, he turned round and seized the young Comte by the arm.
“My dear Gontran—my boy—you’re a great man!” Tears were running down the old man’s cheeks. Kissing Gontran on both cheeks he said: “You have the honor of having discovered a new minor planet. I now baptize this world Planet Flammermont!”
Fricoulet performed an entrechat and, hurtling down the stairway, ran to Selena. “Mademoiselle,” he stammered. �
�Gontran has just discovered a planet!”
Mademoiselle Ossipoff opened her eyes wide. “How did he do that?” she asked.
“I was looking through the telescope,” Gontran replied. “It was no more difficult than that.” He shrugged his shoulders, and muttered, aside: “That’s how astronomical glory is born, though!”
“I propose a toast to Monsieur de Flammermont,” cried Jonathan Farenheit, enthusiastically.
Fricoulet took the glasses out of the cupboard and filled them with Bordeaux. Everyone drank to the young Comte’s glory, except Mikhail Ossipoff, who refused to come down, not wanting to take his eyes off the new planet. He remained there alone, absorbed in contemplation, until the evening, not leaving his post even to eat. Suddenly, Fricoulet and Gontran heard him call out.
“Come up here, quickly!” cried the old man.
When they got up there, Ossipoff stood aside, indicating that Gontran should take the telescope. “Go on, my dear friend,” he said. “Look!”
The young Comte glued his eye to the ocular lens, and could not help crying out.
“What do you see?” asked the old man.
Instead of answering, Gontran shook his head and yielded his place to Fricoulet. Just as his friend had done the young engineer also uttered an exclamation of surprise.
“Well,” said Ossipoff, “this planet…”
“Is not a planet at all,” Fricoulet continued. “It’s a bolide, a cometary fragment, or a rock projected by a volcano with insufficient velocity for it to attain the point of equal attraction situated between the Earth and the Moon.”
Gontran clicked his tongue impatiently. “It’s not that,” he murmured. “Your cometary fragment has a bizarre form, which is also quite regular and elongated. One might think…” He stopped, afraid of saying something stupid.
“One might think that it’s a shell?” Ossipoff prompted, nervously.
“That’s it exactly,” the young Comte replied, excitedly. “The resemblance struck me immediately, but I didn’t dare mention it because it’s so implausible…” Suddenly, he slapped his forehead, and added: “Unless it’s Sharp!”
Scarcely had he pronounced these words than he regretted them. Mikhail Ossipoff’s face took on a mortal pallor, and his legs quivered so much that he was obliged to sit down. “Yes, yes,” he stammered. “You’re right—it must be Sharp!”
“Eh?” cried Fricoulet. “That’s even more implausible! Sharp, at this moment, is on the Moon…unless he fell back to Earth in pieces.”
The old man did not reply, but he installed himself at the telescope again and looked through it. Around him, Gontran, Selena, Farenheit and Fricoulet stood motionless and silent, inspecting the aged scientist’s face for evidence of what he could see in space.
Dinner time arrived without anyone paying any heed to it; everyone’s thoughts were concentrated on the object that Gontran had discovered.
The vehicle was only advancing relatively slowly now; the velocity acquired thanks to the volcanic gases of Cotopaxi was beginning to diminish, increasing the passengers’ impatience.
Finally, at about midnight, the object became distinct even to the naked eye, and Ossipoff murmured between his teeth: “Yes, that’s definitely what it is. I recognize the shell I designed. It really that devil Sharp who’s inside it!”
“Ah!” cried Gontran. “Here’s a fine opportunity to avenge yourself; you have your thief, scarcely 400 leagues away.”
“So what?” asked the old man.
“Well,” Fricoulet replied, “according to Mr. Farenheit, Sharp left Earth on February 24. Today, after more than a month of traveling, he’s still in space, without having reached the Moon.”
“We understand that as well as you do,” Ossipoff said, “but what do you deduce from it?”
“That the projective force of the cannon, or the selenite, was insufficient to take the shell past the danger-point—the zone of equal attraction—and that it is suspended between the two worlds, maintained at the neutral point without the power to pass through it and fall, whether upon the Earth or the Moon.”54
“And will he remain there forever?” asked Gontran
“Yes—unless something happens to modify that state of affairs.”
“What sort of thing?”
“For example, the attraction of a body traveling through space, which would draw the motionless shell after it—until the moment when, obedient to a greater force, it was able to reach some other world.”
While Fricoulet was giving this explanation, Jonathan Farenheit, his face close to the porthole, was directing a piercing stare at the shell containing Fedor Sharp. “Ah, the bandit!” he muttered. “There he is, almost within range, without any possibility of getting him into a boxing match.” The American’s cheeks quivered in anger while he clenched his formidable fists.
Meanwhile, Ossipoff was still crouched over his telescope. “We’re heading straight towards him,” he murmured.
“So much the better!” cried Jonathan. “Let’s knock him down, crush him, smash him into smithereens!”
The scientist shrugged his shoulders.
“Knocking him down is all very well,” Gontran said, “and personally, there’s nothing I’d like better; while thinking about our vengeance, though, it’s also necessary to think about our own skins. What will happen?”
“That depends on our speed,” Ossipoff replied. “Assuming that we don’t collide with the shell—in which case we and Sharp would fall back to Earth—if we’re moving fast enough, we’ll uproot him…”
“And he’ll rotate around us like a satellite!” cried Gontran de Flammermont. “Shall we see our vehicle become a planet, with a satellite of its own?”
Ossipoff tore himself away from he ocular lens to look at the ex-diplomat in surprise. “You’re joking, aren’t you?” he said. “You know that the laws of celestial mechanics won’t permit that?”
“It would have been charming, though,” Gontran murmured, aside. “Sharp’s cannonball would have been turning around us, us around the Moon, the Moon around the Earth, the Earth around the Sun, and the Sun…” The young man could not think of anything around which the Sun might be turning, and shut up.
“Obviously,” Fricoulet said, “Sharp won’t rotate around us—but he will follow us.”
“And thanks to us,” Ossipoff said, in a tone of inexpressible rage, “he’ll reach the Moon.”
“What!” howled Farenheit. “Isn’t there any means of sending a torpedo loaded with dynamite to blow him up! Oh, if we were in America…”
“The sad thing is that we’re rather a long way from America,” said Fricoulet, ironically.
As one might imagine, there was no question of going to sleep. The shell had increased considerably in apparent size, and Ossipoff now estimated its distance at scarcely 100 kilometers. They could see it through the lateral wall of the large room. The night passed in anguish-filled anticipation. For the voyagers, it was a matter of life or death.
At 5 a.m, the two vehicles were no more than ten leagues apart and Ossipoff’s telescope reduced that distance to a little less than 100 meters. He was therefore able to make out two thin and emaciated faces glue to the shell’s portholes, whose ardent eyes were fixed on the vehicle containing our friends.
The old scientist recognized Fedor Sharp; as for his companion, Jonathan Farenheit declared that it was Voriguin Sanburoff, the assistant and stooge of the former permanent secretary of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences—the man with whose complicity Sharp had played him false.
Suddenly, a strange incident occurred; Sharp’s shell seemed to quit the point in the sky where it appeared to be mounted, in order to hurtle towards Mikhail Ossipoff’s vehicle.
“We’re doomed!” cried Flammermont. “It’ll hit us!”
The old scientist, who was aiming a sextant at the shell, wiped away the sweat that was inundating his forehead. Fricoulet, for his part, seemed no less anxious, even though he was making every effo
rt to hide his emotion. Only Jonathan Farenheit, oblivious to the danger, uttered cries of joy on seeing the distance that separated him from his enemy diminishing with his own eyes, so to speak.
“Scoundrel!” he groaned. “Blackguard!” And his Herculean fingers opened and closed, as if about the throat of Fedor Sharp.
“Well?” Gontran asked Fricoulet.
“Well, as you see, that animal’s shell is following us, and will fall on to the Moon at the same time as ours.”
“May he break his bones in the fall!” growled the American, a cruel smile distorting his lips.
Suddenly, the young engineer uttered a cry of rage.
“What is it?” everyone asked.
“That accursed projectile, by its attraction, is pulling us off course!”
“Which means?” cried Selena, anxiously.
“Which means,” replied Fricoulet, with great self-possession, “that we won’t fall on to the Moon—we’ll simply curve around its disk, and be lost in space.”
Chapter XII
A Drama in a Cannonball
It is now time to elaborate on the brief explanation furnished by Jonathan Farenheit regarding Sharp’s departure.
Strangely enough, since the citizens of the New World are endowed with a practical sense that generally makes them wary of crooks, Jonathan Farenheit had not taken any inference from the very clear declarations made by Mikhail Ossipoff at the Nice Observatory regarding his former colleague from the St. Petersburg Institute of Sciences. He ought to have been on the alert, keeping a close watch on the man to whom he had too lightly entrusted the expenditure of several million dollars. He who has drunk will drink again, says the wisdom of nations, and there is a 93% chance that the man who has stolen on Monday will do the same on Tuesday.
As well as having made the grave error of not taking the revelations of the Russian scientist—whom he initially considered to be mentally unbalanced—more seriously, Jonathan Farenheit had also been so obsessed by the idea that he would go to the Moon himself that, even if someone had shown him Fedor Sharp with his hand in a till, he would still have doubted. Imagine that—to go to the Moon! What an extraordinary thing! And how far such a prodigious voyage would elevated him—a former pig-farmer who had grown rich trading in animal fat—above the level of his fellow citizens!
The Extraordinary Adventures of a Russian Scientist Across the Solar System (Vol. 1) Page 25
