Chapter 3 The first half hour of chapter two

What happened in the projectile?What was the aftermath of this terrible impact?Has the projectile builder's elaborate masterpiece achieved a welcome result?Would those springs, bumpers, and drains with brittle material partitions soften the impact?Can they withstand the terrible recoil at an initial velocity of 10,000 kilometers per second?At this speed, it takes only a second to cross Paris or New York.And, of course, that's the question that the thousands of people who witnessed this exciting spectacle asked themselves.They forgot the purpose of the trip and only thought about these three travelers!If one of them could look into the projectile, as Maston thought, what could he see?

Can't see anything.It was pitch black in the cannonball.But its cylindrical and conical walls hold up well.No cracks, no bends, and no warping.Under the furious burning of the gunpowder, this remarkable projectile was not damaged at all, and it did not turn into a rain of aluminum, as everyone obviously feared. All in all, there was little confusion inside either.Only a few things were flung abruptly up the vault, but everything important seemed to survive the impact.All ropes are intact. After the water cushion partitions ruptured and the clear water escaped, the movable metal circular floor sank all the way to the bottom of the projectile.On the floor lay three motionless bodies.Barbican, Nicholl and Michel.Is Adam still breathing?Did the projectile turn into a metal coffin, carrying three corpses in the space?

A few seconds after the shell was fired, one of the three bodies moved: its arms swiveled, its head raised, and finally it got up and knelt on the floor.It was Michelle.Adam.He touched himself and called out: Hi! Then say: Michelle.Adam, safe and sound.Come see others now! The brave Frenchman tried to get up, but he couldn't stand.His head was spinning, blood suddenly rushed to his head, and his eyes were blinded.He seemed like a drunk man. Hey!He said.It's like I drank two bottles of Cordon.But this wine is not tasteful! Then he raised his hand, rubbed his forehead, massaged his temples for a while, and finally exclaimed in a firm voice:

Nicholl!Barbicane! He waited a moment anxiously.no answer.There was not even a single sigh to show that the hearts of his companions were still beating.He called again.The same silence. hell!He said.They seemed to have fallen from the sixth floor!Then he said, with an unwavering confidence under any circumstances, that if only one Frenchman could kneel, two Americans could stand up without difficulty.However, let's find out the situation first. Ah Dang felt that life was coming back to him like a wave, and his blood had calmed down and returned to normal circulation.He pulled himself together and regained his balance.At last he stood up, took a match from his pocket, rubbed the phosphated end, and lit the match.He immediately approached the lamp and lit the gas lamp.The gas cylinder suffered no damage.No leaks.Besides, if there is a leak, it can be smelled, and in this case, Michelle.Nor would Ardan walk around this hydrogen-filled field with a lighted match and get away with it.The mixture of hydrogen and air becomes an explosive gas, and the explosion may complete the destruction that the vibration of the shell did not complete.

Immediately after lighting the gas lamp, Adam leaned over to look at the bodies of his companions.Two people stacked on top of each other, like two inanimate objects.Nicholl on top, Barbicane on the bottom. Adang helped the captain, let him lean on a sofa, and rubbed hard on him.His ingenious massage finally brought Nicholl back to consciousness. He opened his eyes, regained his composure for a moment, grabbed Adam's hand, and then looked around again. What about Barbicane?he asks. Everyone has their turn, Michelle.Adam said nonchalantly.I start with you, Nicholl, because you're up there.Now it was Barbicane's turn.

Having said this, Ardan and Nicholl lifted the chairman of the Cannon Club and placed him on a couch.Barbicane seemed to suffer more than his two companions.There was blood on him, but Nicholl was relieved when he confirmed that the blood was coming from a slight wound on his shoulder.It was just a skin scrape, and he bandaged it carefully at once. However, it took some time before Barbicane regained consciousness. Before that, his two companions, panicked and frightened, massaged him vigorously. He was still breathing though, Nicholl said, putting his ear to the injured man's chest. Yes, Adam replied, he was breathing like a man who goes to massage therapy every day.Come on, massage, Nicholl, massage hard.

The two cameo masseuses massaged so long and so well that Barbicane finally regained consciousness.He opened his eyes, sat up, seized the hands of his two friends, and asked in the first sentence: Nicholl, are we moving? Nicholl and Adam glanced at each other.They have not yet thought of their projectiles.Their first concern is the passengers, not the carriages. honestly!Are we moving forward?Michelle.Adam then repeated. Maybe we're still sitting quietly on Florida soil?Nicholl asked. Maybe at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico?Michelle.Adam added. Where are the words!cried Chairman Barbicane.

Two hypotheses put forward by his two companions brought him back to his senses at once. In any case, they were unable to comment on the condition of the shells.Since the interior is quiet and there is no contact with the outside, they cannot solve this problem.Perhaps the projectile has escaped its orbit in space?Or after rising, it fell to the earth, or even in the Gulf of Mexico? Because Florida has a long and narrow terrain, like a peninsula, this is also possible. The situation is serious.This issue is critical and must be resolved quickly.Barbicane was so excited that his mental strength suddenly overcame his physical weakness and he rose to his feet.He is listening.It was silent outside.However, the thick wall pads are enough to block out all sounds on Earth.One incident, however, suddenly attracted Barbicane's attention.The temperature inside the projectile is particularly high.The club president pulled a thermometer out of the shield and looked at it.The thermometer rose to forty-five degrees Celsius.

right!right!He said loudly, we are on our way!The suffocating heat came in through the outer wall of the projectile!The heat is produced by friction between the projectile and the atmosphere.But the temperature is about to drop, because we have entered a vacuum, and after the almost suffocating heat, we are going to experience severe cold. What?Michelle.Adam asked, according to you, have we passed the edge of the atmosphere? Without a doubt, Michelle.Please listen to me.It's ten fifty-five.If our muzzle velocity had not been reduced by air friction, we would have passed through the seventeen leagues of atmosphere surrounding the earth in six seconds.

Exactly, Nicholl agreed, how much do you think our speed will be reduced by air friction? A third lower, Nicholl, answered Barbicane.The speed varies widely, but according to my calculations, it must be.Therefore, if the initial speed is 10,000 meters, after leaving the atmosphere, the speed will decrease to 7332 meters.Anyway, we've covered the distance, and So, Michelle.Ardan said that our friend Nicholl lost both bets: $4,000 because the cannon failed to explode; $5,000 because the projectile had risen above six miles.Well, Nicholl, do your duty. We have to get the facts right first, replied the captain, before we can pay.Barbicane may be right, and I lose nine thousand dollars.But I thought of a new hypothesis, maybe this hypothesis can overturn the bet.

What assumption?Barbicane asked him hastily. My hypothesis was that, for whatever reason, perhaps the gunpowder hadn't been lit at all, and our bet would have been off. By God, Captain, Michelle.Adam yelled, I can't think of such a hypothesis in my head; you're not serious!Weren't we shaken half to death just now?Didn't I wake you up?Isn't our chairman's shoulder injured and bleeding because of the recoil? Agreed, Michel, retorted Nicholl, but I have a question. Bring it on, Captain. Did you hear the explosion?The sound must have been terrible. Didn't hear it, Adam replied, he also felt very strange, indeed he didn't hear the explosion. Do you hear, Barbicane? I didn't hear either. What is going on?Nicholl said. This is true!Why didn't we hear the explosion, the club president muttered? The three friends looked at each other.This is really an unexplainable phenomenon.Since the cannonball is fired, it must make an explosion sound. First to find out where we are now, said Barbicane, come!Let's open the porthole. The job is simple and they do it quickly.Using a monkey wrench, they unscrewed the nuts of the shutter bolts on the outside of the starboard side window.Immediately after they had pushed the bolt out, they plugged the hole left by the bolt with a rubber piston.Then, no sooner had the shutters hung down on their hinges like a porthole than the lensed glass was exposed.A second similar porthole is on the left, a third is in the vault, and a fourth is in the base of the projectile.This enables observation of the sky from four different directions, through the lenses on the sides, and direct observation of the Earth and the Moon through the lenses below and above. Barbicane and his companions threw themselves upon the newly exposed porthole.There was no light outside.Despite the darkness surrounding the projectile, Barbicane exclaimed: Yes, my friends, we did not fall to the earth!It didn't sink to the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico either!Look at the shining stars, look at the unfathomable darkness that lies between the earth and us! Ulla!Ulla!Michelle.Adam and Nicholl shouted together. In fact, the darkness was just evidence that the projectile had left the Earth, since it was a moonlit night, and if they were still on Earth they would have been able to see the moonlight.The darkness also proved that they had passed through the atmosphere, because the light diffused in the air would leave a faint light on the metal outer wall of the projectile, and the porthole should also be slightly illuminated, but now even this kind of light cannot be seen .There is no need to doubt.The travelers have left Earth. I lost.Nicholl said. I should congratulate you!Adam said. This is nine thousand dollars, said the captain, drawing a wad of bills from his pocket. Do you want a receipt?Barbicane took the money and asked. If it is not too troublesome, Nicholl replied, it is more in line with normal procedures.Serious and calm, as if sitting in his own cashier's room, Barbicane took out a notebook, tore off a blank page, wrote a qualified receipt with a pencil, dated, signed, and marked, and handed it to the captain, the captain Carefully put the receipt in the wallet. Michelle.Ardan took off his peaked cap, bowed to his two companions, and was at a loss for words under such formal circumstances.He had never seen such an American American. After completing the formalities, Barbicane and Nicholl turned back to the window to observe the constellations in the sky.In the black sky, the stars are like bright ideas, which are particularly eye-catching.The celestial body of the night, which runs from east to west, will probably climb to the top of the zenith at this time, but it cannot be seen here.This caused Adam to think deeply. So, what about the moon?He said to himself, will it miss its appointment by chance? Don't worry, answered Barbicane.The celestial body we will inhabit in the future is still standing, but we cannot see it from here.Let's open the porthole on the other side. Just as Barbicane left this window and was about to open the opposite porthole, a shining object that was getting closer and closer caught his attention. It was a gigantic disk whose area could not be estimated at the moment.It can be said to be a small moon reflecting the light of the moon.It was advancing with incredible speed, as if its orbit around the earth was about to intersect with that of the projectile.As it advances, it rotates on its own axis, just like all celestial bodies thrown into space. oops!Michelle.Adam said loudly, what is this, is it another projectile? Barbicane ignored him.The appearance of this huge object made him both surprised and uneasy.If it collides with this object, the consequences will be unimaginable. Either the projectile is affected by it and escapes its orbit, or after the impact, the projectile falls on the earth again, and finally, it is either destroyed by the asteroid. The attraction of resistance sweeps away. Chairman Barbicane summed up the consequences of these three hypotheses in an instant, no matter which one of the assumptions became a reality, his experiment would fail.His companions looked at the sky in silence.The object was getting closer and larger, which was incredible, and at the same time, because of the visual relationship, it seemed that a projectile was speeding towards it. God bless!Michelle.Ah Dang exclaimed, the two trains are about to collide! Out of instinct, the three travelers suddenly took a few steps back.terrible.But it was only for a moment.Maybe only for a few seconds.The tiny planet passed a few hundred meters away from them and disappeared in a blink of an eye, not because of its speed, but because its side, facing away from the moon, suddenly sank into darkness and could no longer be seen. up. Bon Voyage!Michelle.Ardan breathed a sigh of relief and said loudly.How about it!The space is infinitely vast, enough for a poor little cannonball to travel in space carefree!oops!What kind of celestial body is this impudent sphere that nearly hit us? I know, answered Barbicane. of course!You know everything. It was an ordinary bolide, said Barbicane, but so large that it had become a satellite of the earth under the influence of the earth's gravity. Really?Michelle.Adam said loudly.Then, the earth also has two moons like Neptune. Yes, there are two moons, my friend, although generally speaking, the earth has only one moon.However, this second moon is so small and so fast that it is impossible for the inhabitants of the earth to see it.It was by noting certain disturbances in space that a French astronomer, M. Paty, was able to determine the existence of this second satellite and calculate its data.According to his observations, it took only three hours and twenty minutes for the bolide to circle the earth once.Its speed is of course astonishingly large. Do all astronomers admit the existence of this satellite?Nicholl asked. No, replied Barbicane, but for those of us who have seen it before, there is no longer any need for doubt.Now that I think about it, the fact that this bolide, which almost hit us and probably caused us a lot of trouble, made it possible to determine our position in space. How to be sure?Adam asked. Now that we know its distance from the earth, we are exactly 8,140 kilometers from the surface of the earth where we meet it. More than two thousand fares!Michelle.Adam said loudly.Faster than a fast car on the poor celestial body of the earth! I believe it, replied Nicholl, looking at his watch.At eleven o'clock, thirteen minutes had passed since we left the American continent. Only thirteen minutes?asked Barbicane. Yes, said Nicholl, if we kept the muzzle velocity of eleven kilometers per second, we could advance ten thousand leagues in an hour! All is well, my friends, said the club president, and now all that remains is this unsolvable problem.Why didn't we hear the cannon of the Colombian guns? As there was no answer, the conversation broke off abruptly, and Barbicane, meditating, opened the shutter of the porthole on the other side.When the shutters were opened, bright moonlight suddenly poured through the windows into the interior of the projectile.Nicholl, being a thrifty man, extinguished the useless gas lamps, which, besides, hindered their observation of interstellar space. The round moon is extremely bright.The moonlight no longer needed to pass through the misty atmosphere of the earth. It penetrated directly into the porthole and filled the air inside the projectile with silvery light.The black curtain of the sky set off the brightness of the moon more and more. In the etheric space where light cannot diffuse, the moon can no longer cover the stars around it.The sky seen from here is a spectacle that the human eye can never see. We can imagine with what joy these three brave souls contemplated the sphere of the night, the final destination of their voyage.The Earth's satellites, in their orbits, were insensibly approaching the zenith, that is to say, where they should arrive, according to mathematical calculations, in about ninety-six hours, although in their eyes the moon's mountains, plains, and The whole outline was no more clearly seen than from anywhere on the earth, but its light was so strong through the vacuum that the round disk of the moon shone like a platinum mirror.As for the earth flying in opposite directions under the feet of the three travelers, they had long since forgotten it.It was Captain Nicholl who first mentioned a lost Earth. yes!Michelle.Adam replied that we should not be ungrateful.Now that we have left our homeland, we shall have one last look at it, and I shall see it before the earth is gone! In order to fulfill his companion's wish, Barbicane set about dismantling the obstruction on the porthole at the bottom of the projectile, from which the earth could be observed directly.The metal disc at the bottom of the projectile was pushed by the recoil when fired, and was removed without difficulty.Each part is carefully stacked at the foot of the wall and can be reused when necessary.A circular window hole with a diameter of 50 centimeters was exposed at the bottom. A piece of round glass with a thickness of 15 centimeters was inlaid in the window hole. There was a brass guard on the outside and an aluminum plate fixed by bolts underneath.Unscrew the nuts, loosen the bolts, lower the shutters, and the visual connection between the interior and exterior is established. Michelle.Adam knelt on the window.The window was pitch black, as if it were a piece of opaque glass. Hello!where is the earthhe asked aloud. promise!This is the earth, said Barbicane. What!Adam said, is it this crescent-shaped white thing as thin as a line? Don't doubt it, Michelle.The moon will be full in four days, which means by the time we reach the moon, the earth will be completely invisible.It now looks like a long thin crescent, but it will soon disappear completely, and for days it will hide in unfathomable darkness. ah!This is the earth!Michelle.A Dang stared helplessly at the crescent moon of his hometown, the earth, and kept talking. Chairman Barbicane's interpretation is correct.From the perspective of the projectile, the earth has entered the bottom chord.What can be seen now is only an eighth of an arc, which looks like a long and narrow crescent moon against the black background of the sky.Its light, filtered through the thick atmosphere, was blue, paler than the light of a first quarter moon.But Earth's new moon is gigantic.It can almost be said to be a huge arched back hanging from the sky.A few particularly bright spots on the concave surface illustrate the presence of mountains, which are often hidden by a dark shadow not seen on the Moon.This is the cloud cover that surrounds the Earth. However, due to a natural phenomenon, just as when one-eighth of the arc of the moon is illuminated, the outline of the entire earth can be distinguished.The earth is like a gray plate, even darker than the moon.It's easy to understand.The gray light on the moon is the reflection of sunlight on the earth to the moon.Here it's just the opposite, the gray light on Earth is reflected from the Moon.Due to the different sizes of the two celestial bodies, the Earth's light is twelve times brighter than that of the Moon.Therefore, it is also natural that the outline of the earth is fainter than that of the moon.We should also add that the curved surface of the earth seems to be longer than the spherical surface, which is purely due to the effect of light penetration (Note: white (or light-colored) shapes have a strong contrast against a black or dark background. Reflecting light, showing dilated exudation, this phenomenon is called light exudation; that is, it looks larger than it actually is.). As the three travelers struggled to observe through the darkness of space, a shower of meteors burst into light like bouquets of flowers blooming before them.Hundreds of meteors ignited as soon as they hit the atmosphere, turned into fire brooms, and seemed to sprinkle a series of sparks on the gray earth.Now is the time when the earth is approaching the perihelion, and there are a lot of meteors in December. According to the calculations of astronomers, there are even 80,000 meteors per hour.But Michelle.Adam doesn't like scientific theories, he would rather believe that the earth is sending off its three children with its brightest fireworks. All in all, that was all they could see of the obscuring object.The earth is a small celestial body in the solar system. To the large planets, it is just an ordinary morning or evening star rising on one side and setting on the other.Although it was only a small star almost invisible in space, a faintly discernible crescent-shaped star, all their feelings were pinned there! In the same mood, the three friends watched for a long time in silence, while the projectile was speeding forward with a decreasing average velocity.After a while, they suddenly felt an overwhelming drowsiness.Is this physical fatigue, or spiritual malaise?No doubt this was the inevitable response after the overstimulation of the last hours on Earth. Very good, Michelle.Adam said, since we should sleep, let's sleep. Then the three of them lay down on their mattresses and soon fell asleep. But they had hardly slept for a quarter of an hour when Barbicane rose suddenly and roused his companions with a terrible sound. I found it!he shouted. What did you find?Michelle.Ah Dang jumped off the mattress and asked. The answer to why we didn't hear the Colombian cannon! Why?Nicholl said. Because the velocity of the projectile is greater than the speed of sound!