Читать книгу To Mars via The Moon - Mark Wicks - Страница 12

When we had finished our supper John remarked, "Professor, I am a little mystified in regard to our present position. We have started on a voyage to Mars, but up to the present I have not seen even a glimpse of the planet to-night. How is that?"

"Hear, hear," chimed in M'Allister. "Mon, I've been bothering over the very same thing ever since we started, and wondering where yon little red star has gone to!"

"The question is very soon answered," I replied: "it is a case of 'the Spanish fleet you cannot see because it's not in sight.' Mars does not rise above our late horizon until about a quarter-past ten, and was therefore hidden by the earth whilst we were out on the platform; so we could not expect to see it then, but if we look out now no doubt we shall see it."

We went over to a window, and I pointed out the planet, remarking, "There it is; that little red star is the world which we hope to land upon in a few weeks' time. You will notice that it does not lie quite in the direction in which we are moving, for I must tell you that we are not on our course to Mars at present. I thought we should all be glad to have a look at the moon from a close point of view now we have the chance, and M'Allister will remember that I gave him instructions just before supper to direct our course so as to head off the moon in its journey."

"Quite right, Professor, so you did," said M'Allister; "but I did not fully understand the reason of your instructions."

"But," interrupted John, "are we not going rather out of our way?"

"Yes, that is so, John," I replied, "but a few thousand miles more or less will make very little difference to us at the rate we shall travel, especially if you allow for the fact that the earth and moon are both moving nearly in the direction we wish to go. Besides, I hope to approach sufficiently near the moon to enable us to add a little more power to our store, so it will not all be lost time; and we can also use the moon to give us a fresh start. But for the fact that it would be best for us to reach the moon before it has waned to any large extent we might have delayed our start for many days, and, whilst considerably shortening our journey, still arrived at Mars on the date we have fixed."

Our chronometer was housed in a substantial non-magnetic cubicle, with a very thick glass window, in order to protect it from the magnetism and electricity which pervaded our vessel. On looking at the chronometer I found the time was nearly eleven o'clock. We had, therefore, been nearly two hours on our journey and had travelled some three hundred miles, mostly in an upward direction from the earth; so if there were any of the earth's atmosphere around our vessel it must be of the most extreme tenuity, and we might safely increase our speed.

I accordingly gave M'Allister the order to switch on the power gradually, up to our full speed, and it was not long before we were rushing through space at the rate of over eighty-three thousand miles an hour. At this rate, as I told them, we might expect to reach the moon in a little over sixteen hours, allowing for loss in slackening down at the latter part of the journey.

"It so happens," I said, "that the moon's present distance from the earth is rather less than 226,000 miles, being its nearest approach to the earth during this month."

John at once asked, "How it happened that, if the moon were only this comparatively short distance away from us, I reckoned it would require over sixteen hours to reach it at the tremendous speed we were now moving"; and added, "I thought we should be there in about three hours."

"Ah, John," I replied, "you have forgotten that the earth is rushing along and carrying the moon with it nearly as fast as we are travelling, and you are reckoning as though they were standing still all the time. As a matter of fact we are only gaining on the moon by a little over fifteen thousand miles an hour, and we must allow for slackening speed long before we reach the moon, so we cannot expect to cover the distance in less than sixteen hours. You will see that if we did not travel faster than the moon is moving away from us we should never catch it up at all!"

"That explains it all, Professor," said John, "and I must confess I felt rather puzzled at the length of time required to reach the moon, so was altogether out in my calculations."

After we had been proceeding at this rate for nearly two hours, M'Allister came hurrying into our compartment in a state of great excitement.

"Professor," he exclaimed with a gasp, "something's gone wrong altogether, and I don't know what to do!"

"Gone wrong!" I repeated. "Why, what is the matter?"

"Mon," he answered, "everything is the matter! A while back we were rushing towards the moon, but just now when I looked ahead there wasn't any moon to be seen. I happened to go round to the other window and look back and, my word! if there wasn't the moon right behind us! We have been travelling so very fast that we must have run past it without knowing we had done so."

"Oh, we could not possibly have done that!" I exclaimed.

"But there's more to come, Professor," continued M'Allister. "When I last saw the moon it was nearly full and not so very much bigger than when we saw it at starting, but now this moon behind us is an enormous thing; yet it is only a new moon, or rather what folks call a new moon with the old moon in its arms!"

"Oh, now I understand," I replied. "It's all right, M'Allister, and you can make your mind quite easy. You were not able to see the moon when you first looked through the window because it was nearly in a direct line with your course, and therefore just hidden by the prow of the vessel. It's still ahead of us and still nearly full: if you had looked out of the conning tower or used the periscope you would have seen it."

"Heh, Professor," he interjected, "I know I couldn't see the moon if it was straight ahead of our course, but then what about that enormous new moon that's behind us? I saw that right enough."

"That enormous new moon, M'Allister, is only our own little world which we left a few hours ago," I replied.

He stared at me as though bewildered, and after pondering a while, exclaimed, "Losh, mon, you surely don't mean to say that our own little world changes about in the same way as the moon does—sometimes new and sometimes full?"

Here John interposed. "Yes, M'Allister, you can take it from me that it is just what our world does do. I think you are aware that, like the moon, our world simply reflects the light it receives from the sun, and does not shine by its own light. So one side is light and the other side is dark, according to its position in regard to the sun. From our present position we are only able to see a small portion of the lighted side, the remainder being dark except for the moonlight shining upon it, so it looks just like a large new moon. It really serves as a moon to our moon, but its phases follow each other in reverse order. Thus, when the moon is full, the earth's disc is all dark, and when the moon is in its first quarter the earth, as seen from there, would be in its third quarter, and so on through all its phases. Do you follow all that, M'Allister?"

"Well, mon," replied M'Allister, with a sly grin, "I've just heard you say it; but"—and here he turned to me—"is it all correct, Professor?"

"Yes, quite correct," I answered, greatly amused at his distrust of John's statements.

"M'Allister, you're like the Apostle Thomas," commented John, evidently a little nettled; "so you really doubted my word after all!"

"Heh, mon," he answered, "you're not the Professor, you know; and I thought maybe you were pulling my leg!"

"Well," laughed John, "perhaps you will get your leg pulled the next time I condescend to give you a lesson in astronomy!"

After this little spar between my two colleagues we proceeded to the machine-room, which John and I carefully inspected, to make sure that all was working properly; and having satisfied ourselves on this point, we gave M'Allister his instructions for the 'night'; though of course there was no night now.

Mounting the steps of the conning turret, we then had a look at the earth, from which we were so rapidly moving away. It appeared about fifteen degrees in angular diameter, showing that we had travelled some thirty thousand miles from it.

The full moon, as seen from the earth, appears just about half a degree in diameter—sometimes a little more, sometimes rather less; so the earth was apparently about thirty times the diameter the moon usually appears to us. It was only a thin crescent where lighted by the sun, but well might M'Allister describe it as "enormous," for it appeared still larger to him when he saw it some thirty minutes earlier and mistook it for the new moon.