Off on a Comet! a Journey through Planetary Space

  CHAPTER III. THE PROFESSOR'S EXPERIENCES

  "Yes, my comet!" repeated the professor, and from time to time heknitted his brows, and looked around him with a defiant air, as thoughhe could not get rid of the impression that someone was laying anunwarranted claim to its proprietorship, or that the individuals beforehim were intruders upon his own proper domain.

  But for a considerable while, Servadac, the count, and the lieutenantremained silent and sunk in thought. Here then, at last, was theunriddling of the enigma they had been so long endeavoring to solve;both the hypotheses they had formed in succession had now to give waybefore the announcement of the real truth. The first supposition, thatthe rotatory axis of the earth had been subject to some accidentalmodification, and the conjecture that replaced it, namely, that acertain portion of the terrestrial sphere had been splintered off andcarried into space, had both now to yield to the representation thatthe earth had been grazed by an unknown comet, which had caught up somescattered fragments from its surface, and was bearing them far away intosidereal regions. Unfolded lay the past and the present before them; butthis only served to awaken a keener interest about the future. Could theprofessor throw any light upon that? they longed to inquire, but did notyet venture to ask him.

  Meanwhile Rosette assumed a pompous professional air, and appeared tobe waiting for the entire party to be ceremoniously introduced to him.Nothing unwilling to humor the vanity of the eccentric little man,Servadac proceeded to go through the expected formalities.

  "Allow me to present to you my excellent friend, the Count Timascheff,"he said.

  "You are very welcome," said Rosette, bowing to the count with a smileof condescension.

  "Although I am not precisely a voluntary resident on your comet, Mr.Professor, I beg to acknowledge your courteous reception," gravelyresponded Timascheff.

  Servadac could not quite conceal his amusement at the count's irony, butcontinued, "This is Lieutenant Procope, the officer in command of the_Dobryna_."

  The professor bowed again in frigid dignity.

  "His yacht has conveyed us right round Gallia," added the captain.

  "Round Gallia?" eagerly exclaimed the professor.

  "Yes, entirely round it," answered Servadac, and without allowing timefor reply, proceeded, "And this is my orderly, Ben Zoof."

  "Aide-de-camp to his Excellency the Governor of Gallia," interposed BenZoof himself, anxious to maintain his master's honor as well as his own.

  Rosette scarcely bent his head.

  The rest of the population of the Hive were all presented in succession:the Russian sailors, the Spaniards, young Pablo, and little Nina, onwhom the professor, evidently no lover of children, glared fiercelythrough his formidable spectacles. Isaac Hakkabut, after hisintroduction, begged to be allowed to ask one question.

  "How soon may we hope to get back?" he inquired.

  "Get back!" rejoined Rosette, sharply; "who talks of getting back? Wehave hardly started yet."

  Seeing that the professor was inclined to get angry, Captain Servadacadroitly gave a new turn to the conversation by asking him whetherhe would gratify them by relating his own recent experiences. Theastronomer seemed pleased with the proposal, and at once commenced averbose and somewhat circumlocutory address, of which the followingsummary presents the main features.

  The French Government, being desirous of verifying the measurementalready made of the arc of the meridian of Paris, appointed a scientificcommission for that purpose. From that commission the name of PalmyrinRosette was omitted, apparently for no other reason than his personalunpopularity. Furious at the slight, the professor resolved to set towork independently on his own account, and declaring that there wereinaccuracies in the previous geodesic operations, he determined tore-examine the results of the last triangulation which had unitedFormentera to the Spanish coast by a triangle, one of the sides of whichmeasured over a hundred miles, the very operation which had already beenso successfully accomplished by Arago and Biot.

  Accordingly, leaving Paris for the Balearic Isles, he placed hisobservatory on the highest point of Formentera, and accompanied as hewas only by his servant, Joseph, led the life of a recluse. He securedthe services of a former assistant, and dispatched him to a high peak onthe coast of Spain, where he had to superintend a reverberator, which,with the aid of a glass, could be seen from Formentera. A few books andinstruments, and two months' victuals, was all the baggage he took withhim, except an excellent astronomical telescope, which was, indeed,almost part and parcel of himself, and with which he assiduously scannedthe heavens, in the sanguine anticipation of making some discovery whichwould immortalize his name.

  The task he had undertaken demanded the utmost patience. Night afternight, in order to fix the apex of his triangle, he had to linger on thewatch for the assistant's signal-light, but he did not forget thathis predecessors, Arago and Biot, had had to wait sixty-one days for asimilar purpose. What retarded the work was the dense fog which, it hasbeen already mentioned, at that time enveloped not only that part ofEurope, but almost the entire world.

  Never failing to turn to the best advantage the few intervals when themist lifted a little, the astronomer would at the same time cast aninquiring glance at the firmament, as he was greatly interested in therevision of the chart of the heavens, in the region contiguous to theconstellation Gemini.

  To the naked eye this constellation consists of only six stars, butthrough a telescope ten inches in diameter, as many as six thousandare visible. Rosette, however, did not possess a reflector of thismagnitude, and was obliged to content himself with the good butcomparatively small instrument he had.

  On one of these occasions, whilst carefully gauging the recesses ofGemini, he espied a bright speck which was unregistered in the chart,and which at first he took for a small star that had escaped beingentered in the catalogue. But the observation of a few separate nightssoon made it manifest that the star was rapidly changing its positionwith regard to the adjacent stars, and the astronomer's heart began toleap at the thought that the renown of the discovery of a new planetwould be associated with his name.

  Redoubling his attention, he soon satisfied himself that what he saw wasnot a planet; the rapidity of its displacement rather forced him tothe conjecture that it must be a comet, and this opinion was soonstrengthened by the appearance of a coma, and subsequently confirmed, asthe body approached the sun, by the development of a tail.

  A comet! The discovery was fatal to all further progress in thetriangulation. However conscientiously the assistant on the Spanishcoast might look to the kindling of the beacon, Rosette had no glancesto spare for that direction; he had no eyes except for the one object ofhis notice, no thoughts apart from that one quarter of the firmament.

  A comet! No time must be lost in calculating its elements.

  Now, in order to calculate the elements of a comet, it is always deemedthe safest mode of procedure to assume the orbit to be a parabola.Ordinarily, comets are conspicuous at their perihelia, as being theirshortest distances from the sun, which is the focus of their orbit,and inasmuch as a parabola is but an ellipse with its axis indefinitelyproduced, for some short portion of its pathway the orbit may beindifferently considered either one or the other; but in this particularcase the professor was right in adopting the supposition of its beingparabolic.

  Just as in a circle, it is necessary to know three points to determinethe circumference; so in ascertaining the elements of a comet, threedifferent positions must be observed before what astronomers call its"ephemeris" can be established.

  But Professor Rosette did not content himself with three positions;taking advantage of every rift in the fog he made ten, twenty, thirtyobservations both in right ascension and in declination, and succeededin working out with the most minute accuracy the five elements of thecomet which was evidently advancing with astounding rapidity towards theearth.

  These elements were:

  1. The inclination of the plane of the cometary orbit to t
he plane ofthe ecliptic, an angle which is generally considerable, but in this casethe planes were proved to coincide.

  2. The position of the ascending node, or the point where the cometcrossed the terrestrial orbit.

  These two elements being obtained, the position in space of the comet'sorbit was determined.

  3. The direction of the axis major of the orbit, which was found bycalculating the longitude of the comet's perihelion.

  4. The perihelion distance from the sun, which settled the precise formof the parabola.

  5. The motion of the comet, as being retrograde, or, unlike the planets,from east to west.

  Rosette thus found himself able to calculate the date at which the cometwould reach its perihelion, and, overjoyed at his discovery, withoutthinking of calling it Palmyra or Rosette, after his own name, heresolved that it should be known as Gallia.

  His next business was to draw up a formal report. Not only did he atonce recognize that a collision with the earth was possible, but he soonforesaw that it was inevitable, and that it must happen on the night ofthe 31st of December; moreover, as the bodies were moving in oppositedirections, the shock could hardly fail to be violent.

  To say that he was elated at the prospect was far below the truth; hisdelight amounted almost to delirium. Anyone else would have hurried fromthe solitude of Formentera in sheer fright; but, without communicatinga word of his startling discovery, he remained resolutely at his post.From occasional newspapers which he had received, he had learnt thatfogs, dense as ever, continued to envelop both hemispheres, so thathe was assured that the existence of the comet was utterly unknownelsewhere; and the ignorance of the world as to the peril thatthreatened it averted the panic that would have followed the publicationof the facts, and left the philosopher of Formentera in sole possessionof the great secret. He clung to his post with the greater persistency,because his calculations had led him to the conclusion that the cometwould strike the earth somewhere to the south of Algeria, and as it hada solid nucleus, he felt sure that, as he expressed it, the effect wouldbe "unique," and he was anxious to be in the vicinity.

  The shock came, and with it the results already recorded. PalmyrinRosette was suddenly separated from his servant Joseph, and when, aftera long period of unconsciousness, he came to himself, he found thathe was the solitary occupant of the only fragment that survived of theBalearic Archipelago.

  Such was the substance of the narrative which the professor gavewith sundry repetitions and digressions; while he was giving it, hefrequently paused and frowned as if irritated in a way that seemed byno means justified by the patient and good-humored demeanor of hisaudience.

  "But now, gentlemen," added the professor, "I must tell you somethingmore. Important changes have resulted from the collision; the cardinalpoints have been displaced; gravity has been diminished: not that I eversupposed for a minute, as you did, that I was still upon the earth. No!the earth, attended by her moon, continued to rotate along her properorbit. But we, gentlemen, have nothing to complain of; our destiny mighthave been far worse; we might all have been crushed to death, or thecomet might have remained in adhesion to the earth; and in neither ofthese cases should we have had the satisfaction of making this marvelousexcursion through untraversed solar regions. No, gentlemen, I repeat it,we have nothing to regret."

  And as the professor spoke, he seemed to kindle with the emotion of suchsupreme contentment that no one had the heart to gainsay his assertion.Ben Zoof alone ventured an unlucky remark to the effect that if thecomet had happened to strike against Montmartre, instead of a bit ofAfrica, it would have met with some resistance.

  "Pshaw!" said Rosette, disdainfully. "A mole-hill like Montmartre wouldhave been ground to powder in a moment."

  "Mole-hill!" exclaimed Ben Zoof, stung to the quick. "I can tell you itwould have caught up your bit of a comet and worn it like a feather in acap."

  The professor looked angry, and Servadac having imposed silence uponhis orderly, explained the worthy soldier's sensitiveness on all thatconcerned Montmartre. Always obedient to his master, Ben Zoof held histongue; but he felt that he could never forgive the slight that had beencast upon his beloved home.

  It was now all-important to learn whether the astronomer had been ableto continue his observations, and whether he had learned sufficient ofGallia's path through space to make him competent to determine, at leastapproximately, the period of its revolution round the sun. With as muchtact and caution as he could, Lieutenant Procope endeavored to intimatethe general desire for some information on this point.

  "Before the shock, sir," answered the professor, "I had conclusivelydemonstrated the path of the comet; but, in consequence of themodifications which that shock has entailed upon my comet's orbit, Ihave been compelled entirely to recommence my calculations."

  The lieutenant looked disappointed.

  "Although the orbit of the earth was unaltered," continued theprofessor, "the result of the collision was the projection of the cometinto a new orbit altogether."

  "And may I ask," said Procope, deferentially, "whether you have got theelements of the fresh orbit?"

  "Yes."

  "Then perhaps you know--"

  "I know this, sir, that at 47 minutes 35.6 seconds after two o'clock onthe morning of the 1st of January last, Gallia, in passing its ascendingnode, came in contact with the earth; that on the 10th of January itcrossed the orbit of Venus; that it reached its perihelion on the 15th;that it re-crossed the orbit of Venus; that on the 1st of Februaryit passed its descending node; on the 13th crossed the orbit of Mars;entered the zone of the telescopic planets on the 10th of March, and,attracting Nerina, carried it off as a satellite."

  Servadac interposed:

  "We are already acquainted with well-nigh all these extraordinary facts;many of them, moreover, we have learned from documents which we havepicked up, and which, although unsigned, we cannot entertain a doubthave originated with you."

  Professor Rosette drew himself up proudly and said: "Of course, theyoriginated with me. I sent them off by hundreds. From whom else couldthey come?"

  "From no one but yourself, certainly," rejoined the count, with gravepoliteness.

  Hitherto the conversation had thrown no light upon the future movementsof Gallia, and Rosette was disposed apparently to evade, or at least topostpone, the subject. When, therefore, Lieutenant Procope was about topress his inquiries in a more categorical form, Servadac, thinkingit advisable not prematurely to press the little _savant_ too far,interrupted him by asking the professor how he accounted for the earthhaving suffered so little from such a formidable concussion.

  "I account for it in this way," answered Rosette: "the earth wastraveling at the rate of 28,000 leagues an hour, and Gallia at the rateof 57,000 leagues an hour, therefore the result was the same as thougha train rushing along at a speed of about 86,000 leagues an hour hadsuddenly encountered some obstacle. The nucleus of the comet, beingexcessively hard, has done exactly what a ball would do fired with thatvelocity close to a pane of glass. It has crossed the earth withoutcracking it."

  "It is possible you may be right," said Servadac, thoughtfully.

  "Right! of course I am right!" replied the snappish professor. Soon,however, recovering his equanimity, he continued: "It is fortunatethat the earth was only touched obliquely; if the comet had impingedperpendicularly, it must have plowed its way deep below the surface, andthe disasters it might have caused are beyond reckoning. Perhaps,"he added, with a smile, "even Montmartre might not have survived thecalamity."

  "Sir!" shouted Ben Zoof, quite unable to bear the unprovoked attack.

  "Quiet, Ben Zoof!" said Servadac sternly.

  Fortunately for the sake of peace, Isaac Hakkabut, who at length wasbeginning to realize something of the true condition of things, cameforward at this moment, and in a voice trembling with eagerness,implored the professor to tell him when they would all be back againupon the earth.

  "Are you in a great hurry?" asked the professor
coolly.

  The Jew was about to speak again, when Captain Servadac interposed:"Allow me to say that, in somewhat more scientific terms, I was about toask you the same question. Did I not understand you to say that, as theconsequence of the collision, the character of the comet's orbit hasbeen changed?"

  "You did, sir."

  "Did you imply that the orbit has ceased to be a parabola?"

  "Just so."

  "Is it then an hyperbola? and are we to be carried on far and away intoremote distance, and never, never to return?"

  "I did not say an hyperbola."

  "And is it not?"

  "It is not."

  "Then it must be an ellipse?"

  "Yes."

  "And does its plane coincide with the plane of the earth?"

  "Yes."

  "Then it must be a periodic comet?"

  "It is."

  Servadac involuntarily raised a ringing shout of joy that echoed againalong the gallery.

  "Yes," continued the professor, "Gallia is a periodic comet, andallowing for the perturbations to which it is liable from the attractionof Mars and Jupiter and Saturn, it will return to the earth again in twoyears precisely."

  "You mean that in two years after the first shock, Gallia will meet theearth at the same point as they met before?" said Lieutenant Procope.

  "I am afraid so," said Rosette.

  "Why afraid?"

  "Because we are doing exceedingly well as we are." The professor stampedhis foot upon the ground, by way of emphasis, and added, "If I had mywill, Gallia should never return to the earth again!"