Round the Moon by Jules Verne (read aloud txt) 📕

the marvellous suspensions effected by Robert-Houdin and Maskelyne and Cook.

The three adventurous companions, surprised and stupefied in spite of their scientific reasoning, carried into the domain of the marvellous, felt weight go out of their bodies. When they stretched out their arms they felt no inclination to drop them. Their heads vacillated on their shoulders. Their feet no longer kept at the bottom of the projectile. They were like staggering drunkards. Imagination has created men deprived of their reflection, others deprived of their shadows! But here reality, by the neutrality of active forces, made men in whom nothing had any weight, and who weighed nothing themselves.

Suddenly Michel, making a slight spring, left the floor and remained suspended in the air like the good monk in Murillo’s Cuisine des Anges. His two friends joined him in an instant, and all three, in the centre of the projectile, figured a miraculous ascension.

“Is it believable? Is it likely? Is it possible?” cried Michel. “No. And yet it exists! Ah! if Raphael could have seen us like this what an Assumption he could have put upon canvas!”

“The Assumption cannot last,” answered Barbicane. “If the projectile passes the neutral point, the lunar attraction will draw us to the moon.”

“Then our feet will rest upon the roof of the projectile,” answered Michel.

“No,” said Barbicane, “because the centre of gravity in the projectile is very low, and it will turn over gradually.”

“Then all our things will be turned upside down for certain!”

“Do not alarm yourself, Michel,” answered Nicholl. “There is nothing of the kind to be feared. Not an object will move; the projectile will turn insensibly.”

“In fact,” resumed Barbicane, “when it has cleared the point of equal attraction, its bottom, relatively heavier, will drag it perpendicularly down to the moon. But in order that such a phenomenon should take place we must pass the neutral line.”

“Passing the neutral line!” cried Michel. “Then let us do like the sailors who pass the equator⁠—let us water our passage!”

A slight side movement took Michel to the padded wall. Thence he took a bottle and glasses, placed them “in space” before his companions, and merrily touching glasses, they saluted the line with a triple hurrah.

This influence of the attractions lasted scarcely an hour. The travellers saw themselves insensibly lowered towards the bottom, and Barbicane thought he remarked that the conical end of the projectile deviated slightly from the normal direction towards the moon. By an inverse movement the bottom side approached it. Lunar attraction was therefore gaining over terrestrial attraction. The fall towards the moon began, insensibly as yet; it could only be that of a millimetre (0.03937 inch), and a third in the first second. But the attractive force would gradually increase, the fall would be more accentuated, the projectile, dragged down by its bottom side, would present its cone to the earth, and would fall with increasing velocity until it reached the Selenite surface. Now nothing could prevent the success of the enterprise, and Nicholl and Michel Ardan shared Barbicane’s joy.

Then they chatted about all the phenomena that had astounded them one after another, especially about the neutralisation of the laws of weight. Michel Ardan, always full of enthusiasm, wished to deduce consequences which were only pure imagination.

“Ah! my worthy friends,” he cried, “what progress we should make could we but get rid upon earth of this weight, this chain that rivets us to her! It would be the prisoner restored to liberty! There would be no more weariness either in arms or legs. And if it is true that, in order to fly upon the surface of the earth, to sustain yourself in the air by a simple action of the muscles, it would take a force 150 times superior to that we possess, a simple act of will, a caprice, would transport us into space, and attraction would not exist.”

“In fact,” said Nicholl, laughing, “if they succeeded in suppressing gravitation, like pain is suppressed by anaesthesia, it would change the face of modern society!”

“Yes,” cried Michel, full of his subject, “let us destroy weight and have no more burdens! No more cranes, screw-jacks, windlasses, cranks, or other machines will be wanted.”

“Well said,” replied Barbicane; “but if nothing had any weight nothing would keep in its place, not even the hat on your head, worthy Michel; nor your house, the stones of which only adhere by their weight! Not even ships, whose stability upon the water is only a consequence of weight. Not even the ocean, whose waves would no longer be held in equilibrium by terrestrial attraction. Lastly, not even the atmosphere, the molecules of which, being no longer held together, would disperse into space!”

“That is a pity,” replied Michel. “There is nothing like positive people for recalling you brutally to reality!”

“Nevertheless, console yourself, Michel,” resumed Barbicane, “for if no star could exist from which the laws of weight were banished, you are at least going to pay a visit where gravity is much less than upon earth.”

“The moon?”

“Yes, the moon, on the surface of which objects weigh six times less than upon the surface of the earth, a phenomenon very easy to demonstrate.”

“And shall we perceive it?” asked Michel. “Evidently, for 400 lbs. only weigh 60 lbs. on the surface of the moon.”

“Will not our muscular strength be diminished?”

“Not at all. Instead of jumping one yard you will be able to rise six.”

“Then we shall be Hercules in the moon,” cried Michel.

“Yes,” replied Nicholl, “and the more so because if the height of the Selenites is in proportion to the bulk of their globe they will be hardly a foot high.”

“Liliputians!” replied Michel. “Then I am going to play the role of Gulliver! We shall realise the fable of the giants! That is the advantage of leaving one’s own planet to visit the solar world!”

“But if you want to play Gulliver,” answered Barbicane, “only visit the inferior planets, such as Mercury, Venus, or Mars, whose bulk is rather less than that of the earth. But