Across the Zodiac (5 page)

At this point I had to cut off the greater part of the apergy and
check my speed, for reasons that will be presently apparent. I had
started in daylight in order that during the first hundred miles of my
ascent I might have a clear view of the Earth's surface. Not only did
I wish to enjoy the spectacle, but as I had to direct my course by
terrestrial landmarks, it was necessary that I should be able to see
these so as to determine the rate and direction of the Astronaut's
motion, and discern the first symptoms of any possible danger. But
obviously, since my course lay generally in the plane of the ecliptic,
and for the present at least nearly in the line joining the centres of
the Earth and Sun, it was desirable that my real journey into space
should commence in the plane of the midnight meridian; that is, from
above the part of the Earth's surface immediately opposite the Sun. I
had to reach this line, and having reached it, to remain for some time
above it. To do both, I must attain it, if possible, at the same
moment at which I secured a westward impulse just sufficient to
counterbalance the eastward impulse derived from the rotation of the
Earth;—that is, in the latitude from which I started, a thousand
miles an hour. I had calculated that while directing through the main
bar a current of apergy sufficient to keep the Astronaut at a fixed
elevation, I could easily spare for the eastward conductor sufficient
force to create in the space of one hour the impulse required, but
that in the course of that hour the gradually increasing apergic force
would drive me 500 miles westward. Now in six hours the Earth's
rotation would carry an object close to its surface through an angle
of 90°; that is, from the sunset to the midnight meridian. But the
greater the elevation of the object the wider its orbit round the
Earth's centre, and the longer each degree; so that moving eastward
only a thousand miles an hour, I should constantly lag behind a point
on the Earth's surface, and should not reach the midnight meridian
till somewhat later. I had, moreover, to lose 500 miles of the
eastward drift during the last hour in which I should be subject to
it, through the action of the apergic force above-mentioned. Now, an
elevation of 330 miles would give the Astronaut an orbit on which 90°
would represent 6500 miles. In seven hours I should be carried along
that orbit 7000 miles eastward by the impulse my Astronaut had
received from the Earth, and driven back 500 miles by the apergy; so
that at 1 A.M. by my chronometer I should be exactly in the plane of
the midnight meridian, or 6500 miles east of my starting-point in
space, provided that I put the eastward apergic current in action
exactly at 12 P.M. by the chronometer. At 1 A.M. also I should have
generated a westward impulse of 1000 miles an hour. This, once
created, would continue to exist though the force that created it were
cut off, and would exactly counterbalance the opposite rotation
impulse derived from the Earth; so that thenceforward I should be
entirely free from the influence of the latter, though still sharing
that motion of the Earth through space at the rate of nearly nineteen
miles per second, which would carry me towards the line joining at the
moment of opposition her centre with that of Mars.

All went as I had calculated. I contrived to arrest the Astronaut's
motion at the required elevation just about the moment of sunset on
the region of the Earth immediately underneath. At 12 P.M., or 24h by
the chronometer, I directed a current of the requisite strength into
the eastward conductor, which I had previously pointed to the Earth's
surface, but a little short of the extreme terrestrial horizon, as I
calculated it. At 1 A.M. I found myself, judging by the stars, exactly
where I wished to be, and nearly stationary as regarded the Earth. I
instantly arrested the eastward current, detaching that conductor from
the apergion; and, directing the whole force of the current into the
downward conductor, I had the pleasure of seeing that, after a very
little adjustment of the helm, the stars remained stationary in the
mirror of the metacompass, showing that I had escaped from the
influence of the Earth's rotation. It was of course impossible to
measure the distance traversed during the invisibility of the Earth,
but I reckoned that I had made above 500 miles between 1h. and 2h.
A.M., and that at 4h. I was not less than 4800 miles from the surface.
With this inference the indication of my barycrite substantially
agreed. The latter instrument consisted of a spring whose deflection
by a given weight upon the equator had been very carefully tested.
Gravity diminishing as the square of the distance from the centre, it
was obvious that at about 8000 miles—or 4000 above the Earth's
surface—this spring would be deflected only one quarter as much by a
given weight as on Earth: at 16,000 miles from the surface, or 20,000
from the centre, one-twenty-fifth as much, and so on. I had graduated
the scale accordingly, and it indicated at present a distance somewhat
less than 9000 miles from the centre. Having adjusted the helm and set
the alarum to wake me in six hours, I lay down upon my bed.

The anxiety and peril of my position had disturbed me very little
whilst I was actively engaged either in steering and manipulating my
machinery, or in looking upon the marvellous and novel spectacles
presented to my eyes; but it now oppressed me in my sleep, and caused
me frequently to wake from dreams of a hideous character. Two or three
times, on such awaking, I went to examine the metacompass, and on one
occasion found it necessary slightly to readjust the helm; the stars
by which I steered having moved some second or two to the right of
their proper position.

On rising, I completed the circuit which filled my vessel with
brilliant light emitted from an electric lamp at the upper part of the
stern, and reflected by the polished metallic walls. I then proceeded
to get my breakfast, for which, as I had tasted nothing since some
hours before the start, I had a hearty appetite. I had anticipated
some trouble from the diminished action of gravity, doubting whether
the boiling-point at this immense height above the Earth might not be
affected; but I found that this depends upon the pressure of the
atmosphere alone, and that this pressure was in nowise affected by the
absence of gravity. My atmosphere being somewhat denser than that of
the Earth, the boiling-point was not 100°, but 101° Cent. The
temperature of the interior of the vessel, taken at a point
equidistant from the stove and from the walls, was about 5° C.;
unpleasantly cool, but still, with the help of a greatcoat, not
inconveniently so. I found it absolutely impossible to measure by
means of the thermometers I had placed outside the windows the cold of
space; but that it falls far short of the extreme supposed by some
writers, I confidently believe. It is, however, cold enough to freeze
mercury, and to reduce every other substance employed as a test of
atmospheric or laboratory temperatures to a solidity which admits of
no further contraction. I had filled one outside thermometer with
spirit, but this was broken before I looked at it; and in another,
whose bulb unfortunately was blackened, and which was filled with
carbonic acid gas, an apparent vacuum had been created. Was it that
the gas had been frozen, and had sunk into the lower part of the bulb,
where it would, of course, be invisible? When I had completed my meal
and smoked the very small cigar which alone a prudent consideration
for the state of the atmosphere would allow me, the chronometer showed
10 A.M. It was not surprising that by this time weight had become
almost non-existent. My twelve stone had dwindled to the weight of a
small fowl, and hooking my little finger into the loop of a string
hung from a peg fixed near the top of the stern wall, I found myself
able thus to support my weight without any sense of fatigue for a
quarter of an hour or more; in fact, I felt during that time
absolutely no sense of muscular weariness. This state of things
entailed only one inconvenience. Nothing had any stability; so that
the slightest push or jerk would upset everything that was not fixed.
However, I had so far anticipated this that nothing of any material
consequence was unfixed, and except that a touch with my spoon upset
the egg-cup and egg on which I was about to breakfast, and that this,
falling against a breakfast cup full of coffee, overturned that, I was
not incommoded. I managed to save the greater part of the beverage,
since, the atmospheric pressure being the same though the weight was
so changed, lead, and still more china or liquid, fell in the
Astronaut as slowly as feathers in the immediate vicinity of the
Earth. Still it was a novel experience to find myself able to lean in
any direction, and rest in almost any posture, with but the slightest
support for the body's centre of gravity; and further to find on
experiment that it was possible to remain for a couple of hours with
my heels above my head, in the favourite position of a Yankee's lower
limbs, without any perceptible congestion of blood or confusion of
brain.

I was occupied all day with abstract calculations; and knowing that
for some time I could see nothing of the Earth—her dark side being
opposite me and wholly obscuring the Sun, while I was as yet far from
having entered within the sphere where any novel celestial phenomena
might be expected—I only gave an occasional glance at the discometer
and metacompass, suppressing of course the electric glare within my
vessel, till I awoke from a short siesta about 19h. (7 P.M.) The Earth
at this time occupied on the sphere of view a space—defined at first
only by the absence of stars—about thirty times greater than the disc
of the Moon as seen through a tube; but, being dark, scarcely seemed
larger to the eye than the full Moon when on the horizon. But a new
method of defining its disc was presently afforded me. I was, in fact,
when looking through the lower window, in the same position as regards
the Earth as would be an inhabitant of the lunar hemisphere turned
towards her, having no external atmosphere interposed between us, but
being at about two-thirds of the lunar distance. And as, during an
eclipse, the Lunarian would see round the Earth a halo created by the
refraction of the Sun's rays in the terrestrial atmosphere—a halo
bright enough on most occasions so to illuminate the Moon as to render
her visible to us—so to my eyes the Earth was surrounded by a halo
somewhat resembling the solar corona as seen in eclipses, if not
nearly so brilliant, but, unlike the solar corona, coloured, with a
preponderance of red so decided as fully to account for the peculiar
hue of the eclipsed Moon. To paint this, unless means of painting
light—the one great deficiency which is still the opprobrium of human
art—were discovered, would task to the uttermost the powers of the
ablest artist, and at best he could give but a very imperfect notion
of it. To describe it so that its beauty, brilliancy, and wondrous
nature shall be in the slightest degree appreciated by my readers
would require a command of words such as no poet since Homer—nay, not
Homer himself—possessed. What was strange, and can perhaps be
rendered intelligible, was the variation, or, to use a phrase more
suggestive and more natural, if not more accurate, the extreme
mobility of the hues of this earthly corona. There were none of the
efflorescences, if one may so term them, which are so generally
visible at four cardinal points of its solar prototype. The outer
portion of the band faded very rapidly into the darkness of space; but
the edge, though absolutely undefined, was perfectly even. But on the
generally rainbow-tinted ground suffused with red—which perhaps might
best be described by calling it a rainbow seen on a background of
brilliant crimson—there were here and there blotches of black or of
lighter or darker grey, caused apparently by vast expanses of cloud,
more or less dense. Round the edges of each of these were little
irregular rainbow-coloured halos of their own interrupting and
variegating the continuous bands of the corona; while throughout all
was discernible a perpetual variability, like the flashing or shooting
of colour in the opal, the mother-of-pearl, or similarly tinted
translucent substances when exposed to the irregular play of bright
light—only that in this case the tints were incomparably more
brilliant, the change more striking, if not more rapid. I could not
say that at any particular moment any point or part of the surface
presented this or that definite hue; and yet the general character of
the rainbow, suffused with or backed by crimson, was constant and
unmistakable. The light sent through the window was too dim and too
imperfectly diffused within my vessel to be serviceable, but for some
time I put out the electric lamp in order that its diffused light
should not impair my view of this exquisite spectacle. As thrown,
after several reflections, upon the mirror destined afterwards to
measure the image of the solar disc, the apparition of the halo was of
course much less bright, and its outer boundary ill defined for
accurate measurement. The inner edge, where the light was bounded by
the black disc of the Earth, shaded off much more quickly from dark
reddish purple into absolute blackness.

And now a surprise, the first I had encountered, awaited me. I
registered the gravity as shown by the barycrite; and, extinguishing
the electric lamp, measured repeatedly the semi-diameter of the Earth
and of the halo around her upon the discometer, the inner edge of the
latter affording the measurement of the black disc, which of itself,
of course, cast no reflection. I saw at once that there was a signal
difference in the two indications, and proceeded carefully to revise
the earth-measurements. On the average of thirteen measures the halo
was about 87", or nearly 1-1/2' in breadth, the disc, allowing for the
twilight round its edge or limb, about 2° 50'. If the refracting
atmosphere were some 65 miles in depth, these proportions were
correct. Relighting the lamp, I worked out severally on paper the
results indicated by the two instruments. The discometer gave a
distance, roughly speaking, of 40 terrestrial radii, or 160,000 miles.
The barycrite should have shown a gravity, due to the Earth's
attraction, not 40 but 1600 times less than that prevailing on the
Earth's surface; or, to put it in a less accurate form, a weight of
100 lbs. should have weighed an ounce. It did weigh two ounces, the
gravity being not one 1600th but one 800th of terrestrial gravity, or
just double what, I expected. I puzzled myself over this matter
longer, probably, than the intelligent reader will do: the explanation
being obvious, like that of many puzzles that bewilder our minds
intensely, only to humiliate us proportionately when the solution is
found—a solution as simple as that of Columbus's egg-riddle. At
length, finding that the lunar angle—the apparent position of the
Moon—confirmed the reading of the discometer, giving the same apogaic
distance or elevation, I supposed that the barycrite must be out of
order or subject to some unsuspected law of which future observations
might afford evidence and explanation, and turned to other subjects of
interest.