Chapter XI.
IN WHICH THE SCIENTIFIC WORLD
OF GALLIA VENTURES FORTH, IN THE IMAGINATION, INTO THE MIDST OF THE INFINITY OF
SPACE.
One month passed. Gallia continued to revolve, carrying
its small world with it. Small world, indeed, but not very accessible hitherto
to the influences of human passions! Cupidity and selfishness were represented
there only by [Hakhabut] {that jew}, this sad sample of the human race,
and he was the only example which one could point to in this separate microcosm
of humanity.
After all, these Galliens
were to be regarded only as passengers, going on a journey of circumnavigation
in the solar world. Thus, they thought to settle themselves on board as
comfortably as possible, but only temporarily. The tour of world completed,
after two years of absence, their ship would encounter the ancient spheroid,
and if the calculations of the professor were of an absolute accuracy [-- but
was there any reason they should not be --] they would leave the comet to
return by foot onto the terrestrial continents.
It is true that the arrival
of the Gallian ship on earth, [“its home port”,] would undoubtedly take
place only with the cost of extreme difficulties, of really terrible dangers.
But it was a question to treat later on and which would come in its due time.
Count Timascheff, Captain
Servadac, and lieutenant Procope thus believed themselves almost assured to see
again their fellow beings within a relatively short time. They did not have
thus to be concerned with accumulating reserves for the future, with using the fertile portions of the Gourbi island for
the hot season, and preserving the various species of animals, quadrupeds and
birds, with which they intended in principle to reconstitute the animal kingdom
on Gallia.
Nevertheless, sometimes they
spoke about what they would have done to make
their asteroid livable, if it had been impossible for them to leave it
one day! What projects to be carried out, what work to achieve to ensure the
existence of this small group of beings, which a winter of more than twenty
months made so precarious!.
It was at the January 15 following
that the comet was to reach the extremity of its major axis, i.e. its aphelion.
This extreme point passed, its trajectory would bring it back towards the sun
with an increasing speed. [Nine to ten] {Ten} months would still have to
elapse before the solar heat made the sea ice free and the earth fertile. Then, it would have been the
time at which the "Dobryna" and "Hansa" would have
transported men and animals to the Gourbi island. The soils would have been
quickly put in state for this so short, but hot season of the Gallien summer.
Sown at an opportune time, this earth
would have produced in a few months fodder and cereals necessary for the food
of all. The haymaking, the harvest would have been made before the return of
winter. One would have lived on this island the life, free and healthy, of
hunters and farmers. Then, with the
return of winter, one would have resumed
the existence of troglodytes in the cells of the fiery mountain. The bees would have swarmed
towards Nina-Hive to pass there the hard and long cold season.
Yes, the colonists would have
thus returned to their hot dwellings! However, wouldn't they have tried some
remote exploration to discover fuel, a mine, or an easily exploitable coal
layer? Wouldn't they have sought to build,
on this Gourbi island even, a habitation more comfortable, more appropriate for
the needs for the colony and the climactic conditions of Gallia?
They would have done so,
certainly. They would have tried so, at least, in order to escape from this
long sequestration in the caves of the "Hot-Land", - - a
sequestration more regrettable still from the moral point of view than from the
physical. It was necessary to be a
Palmyrin Rosette, an original absorbed in his figures, not to sense the serious
disadvantages, to want to remain on Gallia under these conditions "ad
infinitum!".
Moreover, a terrible
possibility kept threatening the
inhabitants of the "Hot-Land". Could one affirm that it would not come up in the future? Could one
even ensure that it would not appear before
the sun had restored the comet the heat which its habitability required? The
question was serious, and was treated often
for the present, and not for a future from which Galliens hoped to escape by
their return to the earth.
Indeed, could it not happen that this volcano
which heated all the “Hot-Land” might suddenly die out? Were the interior fires
of Gallia inextinguishable? The eruption finished, what would become of the
inhabitants of Nina-Hive? Should they then be buried deeper into the entrails
of the comet to find there a bearable temperature? And there, would it even be
possible for them to face cold of space?
Obviously, in a future as
remote as one will want to suppose it, the fate of Gallia was to be that which
seems reserved for all the worlds of the universe. Its internal fires would die
out. It would become a dead star, like the moon is now, like the earth will be.
But this future was not now worrying the Galliens [-- at least they believed
it --], and they hoped to have left Gallia well before it had become
uninhabitable.
However, the eruption could
cease from one moment to another, as occurs with the terrestrial volcanoes,
even before the comet had sufficiently approached the sun. And, in this case,
where to obtain this lava which so usefully distributed heat into the depths of
the solid mass? What fuel would provide
enough heating to return to this residence the average temperature which was to
make it possible to support there with impunity the cold of sixty degrees below
zero?.
[Such was this serious
question .] Fortunately, no modification had hitherto
appeared in the effusion of the eruptive matters. The volcano functioned with a
regularity and, it was said, calm of a good omen. Therefore, in this regard,
there was nothing to worry about neither
in the future, nor even the present. This was the opinion of captain Servadac,
always confident besides.
On December 15, Gallia was
two hundred and sixteen million leagues from the sun, almost at the end of the
major axis of its orbit. It did not revolve with any more than a monthly speed
from eleven to twelve million leagues.
A new world was now offered
to the view of the Galliens, and more particularly to that of Palmyrin Rosette.
After having observed Jupiter
more closely than humans had ever done before him, the professor concentrated
now in the contemplation of Saturn.
However, the circumstances of
proximity were not the same. Thirteen million leagues only had separated the
comet from the Jovian world , a hundred seventy-three million leagues would
separate it from this curious planet. Therefore, no delays were to be feared in this matter,
other that those which had been calculated, and, consequently, nothing grave was
to be feared.
At all events, Palmyrin
Rosette was going to be able to observe Saturn as if, being on the earth, the
planet had approached him within the semi-diameter of its orbit.
It was useless to ask him any
details of Saturn. The ex-professor did not show any longer the need to
profess. One could not easily make him leave his observatory, and it seemed
that the eyepiece of its glasses was, night and day, screwed to his eyes.
Very fortunately, the library
of the “Dobryna” counted some books of elementary cosmography, and, thanks to
lieutenant Procope, those of the Galliens to whom these astronomical questions
were of interest were able to learn what there was of the Saturnian world.
First of all, Ben-Zouf had reasons to be satisfied , when it was told
to him that if Gallia were located at the distance from the sun where Saturn revolved, he would not have been
able to see the earth with the naked eye any more. However, it is known that
the orderly particularly worried about his
terrestrial sphere that was always visible to his eyes.
“As long as the earth is
seen, nothing is lost”, he repeated.
And in fact, at the distance
which separates Saturn from the sun, the earth would have been invisible, even
with the best eyes.
Saturn, at that time, floated
in space a hundred and seventy-five million leagues from Gallia and,
consequently, three hundred sixty-four million three hundred and fifty thousand
leagues from the sun. At this distance, it did not receive any more than the
hundredth part of the light and the heat which the radiant star sent to the
earth.
Book in hand, they learned
that Saturn makes his revolution around the sun in twenty-nine years and
hundred sixty-seven days, traversing, with a speed of eight thousand eight
hundred fifty-eight leagues per hour, an orbit of two billion two hundred and
eighty seven million five hundred thousand leagues, “always by neglecting the
hundredths”, as Ben-Zouf said. The circumference of this planet measures at the
equator ninety thousand three hundred and eighty leagues. Its surface is forty
billion square kilometres, its volume of six hundred sixty-six billion cubic
kilometers. All in all, Saturn is seven hundred thirty-five times larger than
the earth, consequently smaller than Jupiter. As for the mass of planet, it is
only hundred times larger than that of the terrestrial sphere, which assigns a
lesser density to it than that of water.
It turns on its axis in ten hours twenty-nine minutes, which composes its
twenty-four thousand six hundred and thirty days' year, and its seasons,
considering the considerable inclination of the axis to the plane of the orbit,
last seven terrestrial years each.
But we must allow to the Saturnians
-- if there are any -- such splendid nights; in fact eight moons escort their
planet. They have very mythological names, Midas, Encelade, Téthys, Dione,
Rhéa, Titan, Hyperion, Japet. If the revolution of Midas lasts only twenty-two
hours and half, that of Japet is seventy-nine days. If Japet revolves with nine
hundred and ten thousand leagues of the Saturnian surface, Midas only
circulates with thirty-four thousand leagues, almost three times closer than
the moon turns around the earth. They must be splendid, these nights, although
the intensity of the emanated light of the sun is relatively low.
That which makes the nights of this planet more beautiful
still, is incontestably the triple ring
which is coiled around it. Saturn seems to be encased in a brilliant setting.
An observer, placed exactly under this ring, which passes then at its zenith at
five thousand one hundred sixty-five leagues above his head, sees only one
narrow band, of which Herschel evaluates the width to be only a hundred
leagues. It is thus as a luminous wire which would be suspended in space. But
as that observer displaces himself to one side or the other, he would see three
concentric rings then becoming detached little by little from each other, the
closest approaching, dark and diaphanous, with a breadth of three thousand one hundred
twenty-six leagues, the intermediate, broad ring seven thousand three hundred
and eighty eight leagues and shining still
more than the planet itself, finally the exterior ring , three thousand six
hundred seventy-eight leagues broad and having at the edges a grayish color.
Such is the general
appearance of this annular appendix, which grinds away in its own plane in ten
hours thirty-two minutes. Of what matter this appendix is made, or how it
resists disintegration? no one knows;
but, by allowing it to it remain, it seems that the Creator wanted to instruct
humans in the manner by which these celestial bodies were formed little by
little. Indeed, this appendix is the remainder of a nebula which, after having
condensed little by little, became Saturn. For an unknown reason, it probably
solidified itself, and, if it should suddenly fracture, it would fall in pieces on Saturn, or its
parts would form many new satellites of the planet.
At all events, for Saturnians
living on their spheroid between the forty-fifth degrees of latitude and the
equator, this triple ring must give rise to the most curious phenomena.
Sometimes, it appears on the horizon like an immense arch, broken at its
keystone by the shadow that Saturn projects in space; sometimes it appears in
its entirety as half-haloes. Very frequently, this appendix eclipses the sun,
which appears and reappears in mathematical regularity, to the great joy,
undoubtedly, of the Saturnian astronomers. And if one adds to this phenomenon
the rising and setting of the eight moons, some full, the others in quadrature,
here discs of silver, there acute crescents, the aspect of the Saturnian sky,
during the night, must offer an incomparable spectacle.
The Galliens were not able to
observe all the magnificence of this world. They were too distant from it. The
terrestrial astronomers, armed with their glasses, approach it a thousand times
more than they, and the books of the "Dobryna" showed captain
Servadac and his companions more than their own eyes could see. But they did
not complain any, -- the neighborhood of these large stars constituted too
serious a danger to their negligible comet!.
They could not penetrate
farther into the more remote world of Uranus; but, as was already mentioned,
the principal planet of this world, eighty-two times as large as the earth,
(from which it is visible only as a star of sixth magnitude) at its very short
distance, appeared then very distinctly to the naked eye. However, none of the
eight satellites could be seen that accompany
it on its elliptic orbit, that which requires eighty-four years to be described
and in which it moves on the average seven hundred twenty-nine million leagues
from the sun.
As for last planet of solar
system -- the last until the moment when the some Le Verrier [1] [Footnote 1:
Urbain Jean Joseph Le Verrier (March 11, 1811 – September 23, 1877, French
astronomer and mathematician who, along with Adam, predicted the location of
the new planet Neptune in 1846 --NMW.) of the future will discover another the
more distant still --, Galliens could not see it. Palmyrin Rosette saw it,
undoubtedly, in the field of his glasses; but he did not allow anybody the
honors of his observatory, and one had to be satisfied to observe Neptune----
in the books of cosmography.
The average distance from
this planet to the sun measures one billion one hundred and forty million
leagues, and the duration of its revolution is one hundred sixty-five years. Neptune
thus traverses its immense orbit of seven billion one hundred and seventy
million leagues with a speed of twenty thousand kilometers per hour. It is in the form of a spheroid, a hundred and five
times larger than that of the earth, around which a satellite circulates at a
distance of one hundred thousand leagues.
This distance of twelve
hundred million leagues approximately, with which Neptune gravitates, appears
to be the limit of the solar system. And however, as large as might be the
diameter of this world, it is insignificant, if one compares it with that of
the sidereal group to which one attaches the radiant stars.
The sun, indeed, seems to
belong to this great nebula of the Milky Way , in the midst of which it shines
only like one modest star of fourth magnitude. Where thus would be Gallia, if
it had escaped the solar attraction? To which new center would if been attached
coursing through sidereal space? Perhaps to the closest of stars in the Milky
Way.
However, this star is Alpha
of the constellation of the Centaur, and the light, which travels seventy-seven
thousand leagues in a second, employs three years and half to arrive from the
sun. What is thus this distance? It is such as, to quantify it, the astronomers
had to take the billion as the unit, and they say that Alpha is distant at
eight thousand “billions” of leagues.
Does one know a great number
of these stellar distances? Eight or more have been measured, and, among the
principal stars to which this measurement could be applied, one may cite Véga,
placed at fifty thousand billion leagues, Sirius, to fifty-two thousand two
hundred billion, the Pole star, at a hundred and seventeen thousand six hundred
billion, the Goat, at a hundred and seventy thousand four hundred billion
leagues. This last number is already composed of fifteen digits.
And to give an idea of these
distances, by taking for base the speed of the light, according to clever
scientists one can reason as follows:.
“Let us suppose a being gifted
{by God} with a power of infinite vision, and put it on the Goat. If it looks
towards the earth, it will witness the facts which were achieved seventy-two years ago. If one transfers onto a star ten times
more away, it will see there the events
which occurred seven hundred and twenty years ago. Further still, at a distance
which light employs eighteen hundred years to cross, it will attend the grand
scene of the death of Christ. Further still, if it six thousand years are
necessary for the luminous rays to
arrive at its eye, it will be able to contemplate the desolations of the
universal flood. Further finally, since space is infinite, it would see,
according to the biblical tradition, God creating the world. Indeed, all the
facts are so to speak stereotyped in space, and nothing can be erased which was
once achieved in the celestial universe.”
Perhaps Palmyrin Rosette was right in wanting to
traverse this sidereal world, where so many wonders had charmed his eyes. If
his comet had entered successively into the service of one star, then of
another, what a so different stellar systems he would have observed! Gallia
would have moved with these stars whose fixity is only apparent and which
nevertheless move,-- as does Arcturus, with a speed of twenty-two leagues a
second. The sun itself moves at a rate of sixty two million leagues annually,
while moving towards the constellation of Hercules. But such is the distance
from these stars, that their respective positions, in spite of this rapid
displacement, could not be noticed by
the terrestrial observers.
However, these secular
displacements must necessarily alter one
day the shape of the constellations, because each star goes or appears
to go with unequal speeds. The astronomers could indicate the new positions
that the stars will take one compared to the other in a great number of years.
The drawings of certain constellations, such as they will be in fifty thousand
years, were reproduced graphically. They offer to the eye, for example, instead
of the irregular quadrilateral of the Great Bear, a long cross projected on the
sky, and in the place of the pentagon of the constellation of Orion, a simple
quadrilateral.
But neither the current
inhabitants of Gallia, nor those of the terrestrial sphere, could have noted
with their own eyes these successive dislocations. It is not this phenomenon
which Palmyrin Rosette had been to seek in the sidereal world. If some
circumstance had torn off his comet from its gravitational center to the
control of other stars, then his views would have been ravished by the contemplation of wonders
of which the solar system cannot give any idea.
Far away, indeed, the
planetary groups are not always controlled by a single sun. The monarchical
system seems banished in certain points to duality. One sun, two suns, six
suns, depending one on the other,
revolve under their reciprocal influences. They are stars of diverse colors,
reds, yellows, greens, oranges, and indigos. How admirable must be these
contrasts of lights which they project on the surface of their planets! And who
knows if Gallia would not have seen the rising, above its horizon, of days made
successively of all the colors of the rainbow?
But it was not to be given to
him to revolve under the power of a new center, neither to mix with the
clusters of stars that the powerful telescopes could break up, nor to lose
himself in those stellar positions which are partially resolved, nor finally in
the midst of these compact nebulas which resist the most powerful reflectors,
-- nebulas, of which astronomers know more than five thousand, distributed in
space.
No! Gallia was never to leave the solar world, nor to lose
sight of the earth. And, after having described an orbit of approximately six
hundred and thirty million leagues, it would
have made, however, nothing but one unimportant voyage in this universe
whose immensity is without limits.