Part 32 (1/2)
”No,” answered Michel, ”he is dead! There,” added he, in a piteous tone, ”that is embarra.s.sing. I much fear, my poor Diana, that you will leave no progeny in the lunar regions!”
Indeed the unfortunate Satellite had not survived its wound.
It was quite dead. Michel Ardan looked at his friends with a rueful countenance.
”One question presents itself,” said Barbicane. ”We cannot keep the dead body of this dog with us for the next forty-eight hours.”
”No! certainly not,” replied Nicholl; ”but our scuttles are fixed on hinges; they can be let down. We will open one, and throw the body out into s.p.a.ce.”
The president thought for some moments, and then said:
”Yes, we must do so, but at the same time taking very great precautions.”
”Why?” asked Michel.
”For two reasons which you will understand,” answered Barbicane.
”The first relates to the air shut up in the projectile, and of which we must lose as little as possible.”
”But we manufacture the air?”
”Only in part. We make only the oxygen, my worthy Michel; and with regard to that, we must watch that the apparatus does not furnish the oxygen in too great a quant.i.ty; for an excess would bring us very serious physiological troubles. But if we make the oxygen, we do not make the azote, that medium which the lungs do not absorb, and which ought to remain intact; and that azote will escape rapidly through the open scuttles.”
”Oh! the time for throwing out poor Satellite?” said Michel.
”Agreed; but we must act quickly.”
”And the second reason?” asked Michel.
”The second reason is that we must not let the outer cold, which is excessive, penetrate the projectile or we shall be frozen to death.”
”But the sun?”
”The sun warms our projectile, which absorbs its rays; but it does not warm the vacuum in which we are floating at this moment.
Where there is no air, there is no more heat than diffused light; and the same with darkness; it is cold where the sun's rays do not strike direct. This temperature is only the temperature produced by the radiation of the stars; that is to say, what the terrestrial globe would undergo if the sun disappeared one day.”
”Which is not to be feared,” replied Nicholl.
”Who knows?” said Michel Ardan. ”But, in admitting that the sun does not go out, might it not happen that the earth might move away from it?”
”There!” said Barbicane, ”there is Michel with his ideas.”
”And,” continued Michel, ”do we not know that in 1861 the earth pa.s.sed through the tail of a comet? Or let us suppose a comet whose power of attraction is greater than that of the sun.
The terrestrial orbit will bend toward the wandering star, and the earth, becoming its satellite, will be drawn such a distance that the rays of the sun will have no action on its surface.”
”That _might_ happen, indeed,” replied Barbicane, ”but the consequences of such a displacement need not be so formidable as you suppose.”
”And why not?”
”Because the heat and cold would be equalized on our globe.