Across the Zodiac (6 page)

Looking through the upper window on the left, I was struck by the
rapid enlargement of a star which, when I first noticed it, might be
of the third magnitude, but which in less than a minute attained the
first, and in a minute more was as large as the planet Jupiter when
seen with a magnifying power of one hundred diameters.

Its disc, however, had no continuous outline; and as it approached I
perceived that it was an irregular mass of whose size I could form not
even a conjectural estimate, since its distance must be absolutely
uncertain. Its brilliancy grew fainter in proportion to the
enlargement as it approached, proving that its light was reflected;
and as it passed me, apparently in the direction of the earth, I had a
sufficiently distinct view of it to know that it was a mainly metallic
mass, certainly of some size, perhaps four, perhaps twenty feet in
diameter, and apparently composed chiefly of iron; showing a more or
less blistered surface, but with angles sharper and faces more
regularly defined than most of those which have been found upon the
earth's surface—as if the shape of the latter might be due in part to
the conflagration they undergo in passing at such tremendous speed
through the atmosphere, or, in an opposite sense, to the fractures
caused by the shock of their falling. Though I made no attempt to
count the innumerable stars in the midst of which I appeared to float,
I was convinced that their number was infinitely greater than that
visible to the naked eye on the brightest night. I remembered how
greatly the inexperienced eye exaggerates the number of stars visible
from the Earth, since poets, and even olden observers, liken their
number to that of the sands on the seashore; whereas the patient work
of map and catalogue makers has shown that there are but a few
thousands visible in the whole heavens to the keenest unaided sight. I
suppose that I saw a hundred times that number. In one word, the
sphere of darkness in which I floated seemed to be filled with points
of light, while the absolute blackness that surrounded them, the
absence of the slightest radiation, or illumination of space at large,
was strange beyond expression to an eye accustomed to that diffusion
of light which is produced by the atmosphere. I may mention here that
the recognition of the constellations was at first exceedingly
difficult. On Earth we see so few stars in any given portion of the
heavens, that one recognises without an effort the figure marked out
by a small number of the brightest amongst them; while in my position
the multitude was so great that only patient and repeated effort
enabled me to separate from the rest those peculiarly brilliant
luminaries by which we are accustomed to define such constellations as
Orion or the Bear, to say nothing of those minor or more arbitrarily
drawn figures which contain few stars of the second magnitude. The eye
had no instinctive sense of distance; any star might have been within
a stone's throw. I need hardly observe that, while on one hand the
motion of the vessel was absolutely imperceptible, there was, on the
other, no change of position among the stars which could enable me to
verify the fact that I was moving, much less suggest it to the senses.
The direction of every recognisable star was the same as on Earth, as
it appears the same from the two extremities of the Earth's orbit, 19
millions of miles apart. Looking from any one window, I could see no
greater space of the heavens than in looking through a similar
aperture on Earth. What was novel and interesting in my stellar
prospect was, not merely that I could see those stars north and south
which are never visible from the same point on Earth, except in the
immediate neighbourhood of the Equator; but that, save on the small
space concealed by the Earth's disc, I could, by moving from window to
window, survey the entire heavens, looking at one minute upon the
stars surrounding the vernal, and at another, by changing my position,
upon those in the neighbourhood of the autumnal equinox. By little
more than a turn of my head I could see in one direction Polaris
(
alpha
Ursæ Minoris) with the Great Bear, and in another the
Southern Cross, the Ship, and the Centaur.

About 23h. 30m., near the close of the first day, I again inspected
the barycrite. It showed 1/1100 of terrestrial gravity, an incredibly
small change from the 1/800 recorded at 19h., since it implied a
progress proportionate only to the square root of the difference. The
observation indicated, if the instrument could be trusted, an advance
of only 18,000 miles. It was impossible that the Astronaut had not by
this time attained a very much greater speed than 4000 miles an hour,
and a greater distance from the Earth than 33 terrestrial radii, or
132,000 miles. Moreover, the barycrite itself had given at 19h. a
distance of 28-1/2 radii, and a speed far greater than that which upon
its showing had since been maintained. Extinguishing the lamp, I found
that the Earth's diameter on the discometer measured 2° 3' 52" (?).
This represented a gain of some 90,000 miles; much more approximate to
that which, judging by calculation, I ought to have accomplished
during the last four hours and a half, if my speed approached to that
I had estimated. I inspected the cratometer, which indicated a force
as great as that with which I had started,—a force which should by
this time have given me a speed of at least 22,000 miles an hour. At
last the solution of the problem flashed upon me, suggested by the
very extravagance of the contradictions. Not only did the barycrite
contradict the discometer and the reckoning but it contradicted
itself; since it was impossible that under one continuous impulsation
I should have traversed 28-1/2 radii of the Earth in the first
eighteen hours and no more than 4-1/2 in the next four and a half
hours. In truth, the barycrite was effected by two separate
attractions,—that of the Earth and that of the Sun, as yet operating
almost exactly in the same direction. At first the attraction of the
former was so great that that of the Sun was no more perceived than
upon the Earth's surface. But as I rose, and the Earth's attraction
diminished in proportion to the square of the distance from her
centre—which was doubled at 8000 miles, quadrupled at 16,000, and so
on—the Sun's attraction, which was not perceptibly affected by
differences so small in proportion to his vast distance of 95,000,000
miles, became a more and more important element in the total gravity.
If, as I calculated, I had by 19h. attained a distance from the earth
of 160,000 miles, the attractions of Earth and Sun were by that time
pretty nearly equal; and hence the phenomenon which had so puzzled me,
that the gravitation, as indicated by the barycrite, was exactly
double that which, bearing in mind the Earth's attraction alone, I had
calculated. From this point forward the Sun's attraction was the
factor which mainly caused such weight as still existed; a change of
position which, doubling my distance from the Earth, reduced her
influence to one-fourth, not perceptibly affecting that of a body four
hundred times more remote. A short calculation showed that, this fact
borne in mind, the indication of the barycrite substantially agreed
with that of the discometer, and that I was in fact very nearly where
I supposed, that is, a little farther than the Moon's farthest
distance from the Earth. It did not follow that I had crossed the
orbit of the Moon; and if I had, she was at that time too far off to
exercise a serious influence on my course. I adjusted the helm and
betook myself to rest, the second day of my journey having already
commenced.

Rising at 5h., I observed a drooping in the leaves of my garden, and
especially of the larger shrubs and plants, for which I was not wholly
unprepared, but which might entail some inconvenience if, failing
altogether, they should cease to absorb the gases generated from
buried waste, to consume which they had been planted. Besides this, I
should, of course, lose the opportunity of transplanting them to Mars,
though I had more hope of acclimatising seedlings raised from the seed
I carried with me than plants which had actually begun their life on
the surface of the Earth. The failure I ascribed naturally to the
known connection between the action of gravity and the circulation of
the sap; though, as I had experienced no analogous inconvenience in my
own person, I had hoped that this would not seriously affect
vegetation. I was afraid to try the effect of more liberal watering,
the more so that already the congelation of moisture upon the glasses
from the internal air, dry as the latter had been kept, was a sensible
annoyance—an annoyance which would have become an insuperable trouble
had I not taken so much pains, by directing the thermic currents upon
the walls, to keep the internal temperature, in so far as comfort
would permit—it had now fallen to 4° C.—as near as possible to that
of the inner surface of the walls and windows. A careful use of the
thermometer indicated that the metallic surface of the former was now
nearly zero C., or 32° F. The inner surface of the windows was somewhat
colder, showing that the crystal was more pervious to heat than the
walls, with their greater thickness, their outer and inner lining of
metal, and massive interior of concrete. I directed a current from the
thermogene upon either division of the garden, hoping thus to protect
the plants from whatever injury they might receive from the cold.
Somewhat later, perceiving that the drooping still continued, I
resolved upon another experiment, and arranging an apparatus of copper
wire beneath the soil, so as to bring the extremities in immediate
contact with their roots, I directed through these wires a prolonged
feeble current of electricity; by which, as I had hoped rather than
expected, the plants were after a time materially benefited, and to
which I believe I owed it that they had not all perished long before
the termination of my voyage.

It would be mere waste of space and time were I to attempt anything
like a journal of the weeks I spent in the solitude of this artificial
planet. As matter of course, the monotony of a voyage through space is
in general greater than that of a voyage across an ocean like the
Atlantic, where no islands and few ships are to be encountered. It was
necessary to be very frequently, if not constantly, on the look-out
for possible incidents of interest in a journey so utterly novel
through regions which the telescope can but imperfectly explore. It
was difficult, therefore, to sit down to a book, or even to pursue any
necessary occupation unconnected with the actual conduct of the
vessel, with uninterrupted attention. My eyes, the only sense organs I
could employ, were constantly on the alert; but, of course, by far the
greater portion of my time passed without a single new object or
occasion of remark. That a journey so utterly without precedent or
parallel, in which so little could be anticipated or provided for,
through regions absolutely untraversed and very nearly unknown, should
be monotonous, may seem strange. But in truth the novelties of the
situation, such as they were, though intensely striking and
interesting, were each in turn speedily examined, realised, and, so to
speak, exhausted; and this once done, there was no greater occupation
to the mind in the continuance of strange than in that of familiar
scenery. The infinitude of surrounding blackness, filled as it were
with points of light more or less brilliant, when once its effects had
been scrutinised, and when nothing more remained to be noted, afforded
certainly a more agreeable, but scarcely a more interesting or
absorbing, outlook than the dead grey circle of sea, the dead grey
hemisphere of cloud, which form the prospect from the deck of a packet
in mid-Atlantic; while of change without or incident in the vessel
herself there was, of course, infinitely less than is afforded in an
ocean voyage by the variations of weather, not to mention the solace
of human society. Everything around me, except in the one direction in
which the Earth's disc still obscured the Sun, remained unchanged for
hours and days; and the management of my machinery required no more
than an occasional observation of my instruments and a change in the
position of the helm, which occupied but a few minutes some half-dozen
times in the twenty-four hours. There was not even the change of night
and day, of sun and stars, of cloud or clear sky. Were I to describe
the manner in which each day's leisure was spent, I should bore my
readers even more than—they will perhaps be surprised by the
confession—I was bored myself.

My sleep was of necessity more or less broken. I wished to have eight
hours of rest, since, though seven of continuous sleep might well have
sufficed me, even if my brain had been less quiet and unexcited during
the rest of the twenty-four, it was impossible for me to enjoy that
term of unbroken slumber. I therefore decided to divide my sleep into
two portions of rather more than four hours each, to be taken as a
rule after noon and after midnight; or rather, since noon and midnight
had no meaning for me, from 12h. to 16h. and from 24h. to 4.h. But of
course sleep and everything else, except the necessary management of
the machine, must give way to the chances of observation; it would be
better to remain awake for forty-eight hours at a stretch than to miss
any important phenomenon the period of whose occurrence could be even
remotely calculated.

At 8h., I employed for the first time the apparatus which I may call
my window telescope, to observe, from a position free from the
difficulties inflicted on terrestrial astronomers by the atmosphere,
all the celestial objects within my survey. As I had anticipated, the
absence of atmospheric disturbance and diffusion of light was of
extreme advantage. In the first place, I ascertained by the barycrite
and the discometer my distance from the Earth, which appeared to be
about 120 terrestrial radii. The light of the halo was of course very
much narrower than when I first observed it, and its scintillations or
coruscations no longer distinctly visible. The Moon presented an
exquisitely fine thread of light, but no new object of interest on the
very small portion of her daylight hemisphere turned towards me. Mars
was somewhat difficult to observe, being too near what may be called
my zenith. But the markings were far more distinct than they appear,
with greater magnifying powers than I employed, upon the Earth. In
truth, I should say that the various disadvantages due to the
atmosphere deprive the astronomer of at least one-half of the
available light-collecting power of his telescope, and consequently of
the defining power of the eye-piece; that with a 200 glass he sees
less than a power of 100 reveals to an eye situated in space; though,
from the nature of the lens through which I looked, I cannot speak
with certainty upon this point. With a magnifying power of 300 the
polar spots of Mars were distinctly visible and perfectly defined.
They were, I thought, less white than they appeared from the Earth,
but their colour was notably different from that of the planet's
general surface, differing almost as widely from the orange hue of
what I supposed to be land as from the greyish blue of the water. The
orange was, I thought, deeper than it appears through a telescope of
similar power on Earth. The seas were distinctly grey rather than
blue, especially when, by covering the greater part of the field, I
contrived for a moment to observe a sea alone, thus eliminating the
effect of contrast. The bands of Jupiter in their turn were more
notably distinct; their variety of colour as well as the contrast of
light and shade much more definite, and their irregularities more
unmistakable. A satellite was approaching the disc, and this afforded
me an opportunity of realising with especial clearness the difference
between observation through seventy or a hundred miles of terrestrial
atmosphere outside the object glass and observation in space. The two
discs were perfectly rounded and separately discernible until they
touched. Moreover, I was able to distinguish upon one of the darker
bands the disc of the satellite itself, while upon a lighter band its
round black shadow was at the same time perfectly defined. This
wonderfully clear presentation of one of the most interesting of
astronomical phenomena so absorbed my attention that I watched the
satellite and shadow during their whole course, though the former,
passing after a time on to a light band, became comparatively
indistinct. The moment, however, that the outer edge passed off the
disc of Jupiter, its outline became perfectly visible against the
black background of sky. What was still more novel was the occultation
for some little time of a star, apparently of the tenth magnitude, not
by the planet but by the satellite, almost immediately after it passed
off the disc of the former. Whether the star actually disappeared at
once, as if instantaneously extinguished, or whether, as I thought at
the moment, it remained for some tenth of a second partially visible,
as if refracted by an atmosphere belonging to the satellite, I will
not venture to say. The bands and rings of Saturn, the division
between the two latter, and the seven satellites, were also perfectly
visible, with a distinctness that a much greater magnifying power
would hardly have attained under terrestrial conditions. I was
perplexed by two peculiarities, not, so far as I know, hitherto
[5]
mentioned by astronomers. The circumference did not appear to present
an even curvature.