Off on a Comet! a Journey through Planetary Space

CHAPTER VIII

VENUS IN PER­ILOUS PROX­IM­ITY

The light of the re­turn­ing sun soon ex­tin­guished the glo­ry of the stars, and ren­dered it nec­es­sary for the cap­tain to post­pone his ob­ser­va­tions. He had sought in vain for fur­ther trace of the huge disc that had so ex­cit­ed his won­der on the 1st, and it seemed most prob­able that, in its ir­reg­ular or­bit, it had been car­ried be­yond the range of vi­sion.

The weath­er was still su­perb. The wind, af­ter veer­ing to the west, had sunk to a per­fect calm. Pur­su­ing its in­vert­ed course, the sun rose and set with un­de­vi­at­ing reg­ular­ity; and the days and nights were still di­vid­ed in­to pe­ri­ods of pre­cise­ly six hours each– a sure proof that the sun re­mained close to the new equa­tor which man­ifest­ly passed through Gour­bi Is­land.

Mean­while the tem­per­ature was steadi­ly in­creas­ing. The cap­tain kept his ther­mome­ter close at hand where he could re­peat­ed­ly con­sult it, and on the 15th he found that it reg­is­tered 50 de­grees centi­grade in the shade.

No at­tempt had been made to re­build the gour­bi, but the cap­tain and Ben Zoof man­aged to make up quar­ters suf­fi­cient­ly com­fort­able in the prin­ci­pal apart­ment of the ad­join­ing struc­ture, where the stone walls, that at first af­ford­ed a refuge from the tor­rents of rain, now formed an equal­ly ac­cept­able shel­ter from the burn­ing sun. The heat was be­com­ing in­suf­fer­able, sur­pass­ing the heat of Sene­gal and oth­er equa­to­ri­al re­gions; not a cloud ev­er tem­pered the in­ten­si­ty of the so­lar rays; and un­less some mod­ifi­ca­tion en­sued, it seemed in­evitable that all veg­eta­tion should be­come scorched and burnt off from the face of the is­land.

In spite, how­ev­er, of the pro­fuse per­spi­ra­tions from which he suf­fered, Ben Zoof, con­stant to his prin­ci­ples, ex­pressed no sur­prise at the un­wont­ed heat. No re­mon­strances from his mas­ter could in­duce him to aban­don his watch from the cliff. To with­stand the ver­ti­cal beams of that noon­tide sun would seem to re­quire a skin of brass and a brain of adamant; but yet, hour af­ter hour, he would re­main con­sci­en­tious­ly scan­ning the sur­face of the Mediter­ranean, which, calm and de­sert­ed, lay out­stretched be­fore him. On one oc­ca­sion, Ser­vadac, in ref­er­ence to his or­der­ly’s in­domitable per­se­ver­ance, hap­pened to re­mark that he thought he must have been born in the heart of equa­to­ri­al Africa; to which Ben Zoof replied, with the ut­most dig­ni­ty, that he was born at Mont­martre, which was all the same. The wor­thy fel­low was un­will­ing to own that, even in the mat­ter of heat, the trop­ics could in any way sur­pass his own much-​loved home.

This un­prece­dent­ed tem­per­ature very soon be­gan to take ef­fect up­on the prod­ucts of the soil. The sap rose rapid­ly in the trees, so that in the course of a few days buds, leaves, flow­ers, and fruit had come to full ma­tu­ri­ty. It was the same with the ce­re­als; wheat and maize sprout­ed and ripened as if by mag­ic, and for a while a rank and lux­uri­ant pas­turage clothed the mead­ows. Sum­mer and au­tumn seemed blend­ed in­to one. If Cap­tain Ser­vadac had been more deeply versed in as­tron­omy, he would per­haps have been able to bring to bear his knowl­edge that if the ax­is of the earth, as ev­ery­thing seemed to in­di­cate, now formed a right an­gle with the plane of the eclip­tic, her var­ious sea­sons, like those of the plan­et Jupiter, would be­come lim­it­ed to cer­tain zones, in which they would re­main in­vari­able. But even if he had un­der­stood the _ra­tio­nale_ of the change, the con­vul­sion that had brought it about would have been as much a mys­tery as ev­er.

The pre­coc­ity of veg­eta­tion caused some em­bar­rass­ment. The time for the corn and fruit har­vest had fall­en si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly with that of the hay­mak­ing; and as the ex­treme heat pre­clud­ed any pro­longed ex­er­tions, it was ev­ident “the pop­ula­tion” of the is­land would find it dif­fi­cult to pro­vide the nec­es­sary amount of la­bor. Not that the prospect gave them much con­cern: the pro­vi­sions of the gour­bi were still far from ex­haust­ed, and now that the rough­ness of the weath­er had so hap­pi­ly sub­sid­ed, they had ev­ery en­cour­age­ment to hope that a ship of some sort would soon ap­pear. Not on­ly was that part of the Mediter­ranean sys­tem­at­ical­ly fre­quent­ed by the gov­ern­ment steam­ers that watched the coast, but ves­sels of all na­tions were con­stant­ly cruis­ing off the shore.

In spite, how­ev­er, of all their san­guine spec­ula­tions, no ship ap­peared. Ben Zoof ad­mit­ted the ne­ces­si­ty of ex­tem­po­riz­ing a kind of para­sol for him­self, oth­er­wise he must lit­er­al­ly have been roast­ed to death up­on the ex­posed sum­mit of the cliff.

Mean­while, Ser­vadac was do­ing his ut­most–it must be ac­knowl­edged, with in­dif­fer­ent suc­cess–to re­call the lessons of his school-​days. He would plunge in­to the wildest spec­ula­tions in his en­deav­ors to un­rav­el the dif­fi­cul­ties of the new sit­ua­tion, and strug­gled in­to a kind of con­vic­tion that if there had been a change of man­ner in the earth’s ro­ta­tion on her ax­is, there would be a cor­re­spond­ing change in her rev­olu­tion round the sun, which would in­volve the con­se­quence of the length of the year be­ing ei­ther di­min­ished or in­creased.

In­de­pen­dent­ly of the in­creased and in­creas­ing heat, there was an­oth­er very con­clu­sive demon­stra­tion that the earth had thus sud­den­ly ap­prox­imat­ed to­wards the sun. The di­am­eter of the so­lar disc was now ex­act­ly twice what it or­di­nar­ily looks to the naked eye; in fact, it was pre­cise­ly such as it would ap­pear to an ob­serv­er on the sur­face of the plan­et Venus. The most ob­vi­ous in­fer­ence would there­fore be that the earth’s dis­tance from the sun had been di­min­ished from 91,000,000 to 66,000,000 miles. If the just equi­lib­ri­um of the earth had thus been de­stroyed, and should this diminu­tion of dis­tance still con­tin­ue, would there not be rea­son to fear that the ter­res­tri­al world would be car­ried on­wards to ac­tu­al con­tact with the sun, which must re­sult in its to­tal an­ni­hi­la­tion?

The con­tin­uance of the splen­did weath­er af­ford­ed Ser­vadac ev­ery fa­cil­ity for ob­serv­ing the heav­ens. Night af­ter night, con­stel­la­tions in their beau­ty lay stretched be­fore his eyes– an al­pha­bet which, to his mor­ti­fi­ca­tion, not to say his rage, he was un­able to de­ci­pher. In the ap­par­ent di­men­sions of the fixed stars, in their dis­tance, in their rel­ative po­si­tion with re­gard to each oth­er, he could ob­serve no change. Al­though it is es­tab­lished that our sun is ap­proach­ing the con­stel­la­tion of Her­cules at the rate of more than 126,000,000 miles a year, and al­though Arc­turus is trav­el­ing through space at the rate of fifty-​four miles a sec­ond–three times faster than the earth goes round the sun,–yet such is the re­mote­ness of those stars that no ap­pre­cia­ble change is ev­ident to the sens­es. The fixed stars taught him noth­ing.

Far oth­er­wise was it with the plan­ets. The or­bits of Venus and Mer­cury are with­in the or­bit of the earth, Venus ro­tat­ing at an av­er­age dis­tance of 66,130,000 miles from the sun, and Mer­cury at that of 35,393,000. Af­ter pon­der­ing long, and as pro­found­ly as he could, up­on these fig­ures, Cap­tain Ser­vadac came to the con­clu­sion that, as the earth was now re­ceiv­ing about dou­ble the amount of light and heat that it had been re­ceiv­ing be­fore the catas­tro­phe, it was re­ceiv­ing about the same as the plan­et Venus; he was driv­en, there­fore, to the es­ti­mate of the mea­sure in which the earth must have ap­prox­imat­ed to the sun, a de­duc­tion in which he was con­firmed when the op­por­tu­ni­ty came for him to ob­serve Venus her­self in the splen­did pro­por­tions that she now as­sumed.

That mag­nif­icent plan­et which–as Phos­pho­rus or Lu­cifer, Hes­pe­rus or Ves­per, the evening star, the morn­ing star, or the shep­herd’s star–has nev­er failed to at­tract the rap­tur­ous ad­mi­ra­tion of the most in­dif­fer­ent ob­servers, here re­vealed her­self with un­prece­dent­ed glo­ry, ex­hibit­ing all the phas­es of a lus­trous moon in minia­ture. Var­ious in­den­ta­tions in the out­line of its cres­cent showed that the so­lar beams were re­fract­ed in­to re­gions of its sur­face where the sun had al­ready set, and proved, be­yond a doubt, that the plan­et had an at­mo­sphere of her own; and cer­tain lu­mi­nous points pro­ject­ing from the cres­cent as plain­ly marked the ex­is­tence of moun­tains. As the re­sult of Ser­vadac’s com­pu­ta­tions, he formed the opin­ion that Venus could hard­ly be at a greater dis­tance than 6,000,000 miles from the earth.

“And a very safe dis­tance, too,” said Ben Zoof, when his mas­ter told him the con­clu­sion at which he had ar­rived.

“All very well for two armies, but for a cou­ple of plan­ets not quite so safe, per­haps, as you may imag­ine. It is my im­pres­sion that it is more than like­ly we may run foul of Venus,” said the cap­tain.

“Plen­ty of air and wa­ter there, sir?” in­quired the or­der­ly.

“Yes; as far as I can tell, plen­ty,” replied Ser­vadac.

“Then why shouldn’t we go and vis­it Venus?”

Ser­vadac did his best to ex­plain that as the two plan­ets were of about equal vol­ume, and were trav­el­ing with great ve­loc­ity in op­po­site di­rec­tions, any col­li­sion be­tween them must be at­tend­ed with the most dis­as­trous con­se­quences to one or both of them. But Ben Zoof failed to see that, even at the worst, the catas­tro­phe could be much more se­ri­ous than the col­li­sion of two rail­way trains.

The cap­tain be­came ex­as­per­at­ed. “You id­iot!” he an­gri­ly ex­claimed; “can­not you un­der­stand that the plan­ets are trav­el­ing a thou­sand times faster than the fastest ex­press, and that if they meet, ei­ther one or the oth­er must be de­stroyed? What would be­come of your dar­ling Mont­martre then?”

The cap­tain had touched a ten­der chord. For a mo­ment Ben Zoof stood with clenched teeth and con­tract­ed mus­cles; then, in a voice of re­al con­cern, he in­quired whether any­thing could be done to avert the calami­ty.

“Noth­ing what­ev­er; so you may go about your own busi­ness,” was the cap­tain’s brusque re­join­der.

All dis­com­fit­ed and be­wil­dered, Ben Zoof re­tired with­out a word.

Dur­ing the en­su­ing days the dis­tance be­tween the two plan­ets con­tin­ued to de­crease, and it be­came more and more ob­vi­ous that the earth, on her new or­bit, was about to cross the or­bit of Venus. Through­out this time the earth had been mak­ing a per­cep­ti­ble ap­proach to­wards Mer­cury, and that plan­et–which is rarely vis­ible to the naked eye, and then on­ly at what are termed the pe­ri­ods of its great­est east­ern and west­ern elon­ga­tions–now ap­peared in all its splen­dor. It am­ply jus­ti­fied the ep­ithet of “sparkling” which the an­cients were ac­cus­tomed to con­fer up­on it, and could scarce­ly fail to awak­en a new in­ter­est. The pe­ri­od­ic re­cur­rence of its phas­es; its re­flec­tion of the sun’s rays, shed­ding up­on it a light and a heat sev­en times greater than that re­ceived by the earth; its glacial and its tor­rid zones, which, on ac­count of the great in­cli­na­tion of the ax­is, are scarce­ly sep­ara­ble; its equa­to­ri­al bands; its moun­tains eleven miles high;–were all sub­jects of ob­ser­va­tion wor­thy of the most stu­dious re­gard.

But no dan­ger was to be ap­pre­hend­ed from Mer­cury; with Venus on­ly did col­li­sion ap­pear im­mi­nent. By the l8th of Jan­uary the dis­tance be­tween that plan­et and the earth had be­come re­duced to be­tween two and three mil­lions of miles, and the in­ten­si­ty of its light cast heavy shad­ows from all ter­res­tri­al ob­jects. It might be ob­served to turn up­on its own ax­is in twen­ty-​three hours twen­ty-​one min­utes–an ev­idence, from the un­al­tered du­ra­tion of its days, that the plan­et had not shared in the dis­tur­bance. On its disc the clouds formed from its at­mo­spher­ic va­por were plain­ly per­cep­ti­ble, as al­so were the sev­en spots, which, ac­cord­ing to Bian­chi­ni, are a chain of seas. It was now vis­ible in broad day­light. Buon­aparte, when un­der the Di­rec­to­ry, once had his at­ten­tion called to Venus at noon, and im­me­di­ate­ly hailed it joy­ful­ly, rec­og­niz­ing it as his own pe­cu­liar star in the as­cen­dant. Cap­tain Ser­vadac, it may well be imag­ined, did not ex­pe­ri­ence the same grat­ify­ing emo­tion.

On the 20th, the dis­tance be­tween the two bod­ies had again sen­si­bly di­min­ished. The cap­tain had ceased to be sur­prised that no ves­sel had been sent to res­cue him­self and his com­pan­ion from their strange im­pris­on­ment; the gov­er­nor gen­er­al and the min­is­ter of war were doubt­less far dif­fer­ent­ly oc­cu­pied, and their in­ter­ests far oth­er­wise en­grossed. What sen­sa­tion­al ar­ti­cles, he thought, must now be teem­ing to the news­pa­pers! What crowds must be flock­ing to the church­es! The end of the world ap­proach­ing! the great cli­max close at hand! Two days more, and the earth, shiv­ered in­to a myr­iad atoms, would be lost in bound­less space!

These dire fore­bod­ings, how­ev­er, were not des­tined to be re­al­ized. Grad­ual­ly the dis­tance be­tween the two plan­ets be­gan to in­crease; the planes of their or­bits did not co­in­cide, and ac­cord­ing­ly the dread­ed catas­tro­phe did not en­sue. By the 25th, Venus was suf­fi­cient­ly re­mote to pre­clude any fur­ther fear of col­li­sion. Ben Zoof gave a sigh of re­lief when the cap­tain com­mu­ni­cat­ed the glad in­tel­li­gence.

Their prox­im­ity to Venus had been close enough to demon­strate that be­yond a doubt that plan­et has no moon or satel­lite such as Cassi­ni, Short, Mon­taigne of Limo­ges, Mont­bar­ron, and some oth­er as­tronomers have imag­ined to ex­ist. “Had there been such a satel­lite,” said Ser­vadac, “we might have cap­tured it in pass­ing. But what can be the mean­ing,” he added se­ri­ous­ly, “of all this dis­place­ment of the heav­en­ly bod­ies?”

“What is that great build­ing at Paris, cap­tain, with a top like a cap?” asked Ben Zoof.

“Do you mean the Ob­ser­va­to­ry?”

“Yes, the Ob­ser­va­to­ry. Are there not peo­ple liv­ing in the Ob­ser­va­to­ry who could ex­plain all this?”

“Very like­ly; but what of that?”

“Let us be philoso­phers, and wait pa­tient­ly un­til we can hear their ex­pla­na­tion.”

Ser­vadac smiled. “Do you know what it is to be a philoso­pher, Ben Zoof?” he asked.

“I am a sol­dier, sir,” was the ser­vant’s prompt re­join­der, “and I have learnt to know that ‘what can’t be cured must be en­dured.’”

The cap­tain made no re­ply, but for a time, at least, he de­sist­ed from puz­zling him­self over mat­ters which he felt he was ut­ter­ly in­com­pe­tent to ex­plain. But an event soon af­ter­wards oc­curred which awak­ened his keen­est in­ter­est.

About nine o’clock on the morn­ing of the 27th, Ben Zoof walked de­lib­er­ate­ly in­to his mas­ter’s apart­ment, and, in re­ply to a ques­tion as to what he want­ed, an­nounced with the ut­most com­po­sure that a ship was in sight.

“A ship!” ex­claimed Ser­vadac, start­ing to his feet. “A ship! Ben Zoof, you don­key! you speak as un­con­cerned­ly as though you were telling me that my din­ner was ready.”

“Are we not philoso­phers, cap­tain?” said the or­der­ly.

But the cap­tain was out of hear­ing.