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.