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midnight with an express train approaching at full speed, its reflector
already dazzling you with its light, the roar of the cars rattling in
your ears, and you may conceive the feelings of the travellers. At last
it was so near that the travellers started back in affright, with eyes
shut, hair on end, and fully believing their last hour had come. Even
then Ardan had his _mot_.
"We can neither switch off, down brakes, nor clap on more steam! Hard
luck!"
In an instant all was over. The velocity of the Projectile was
fortunately great enough to carry it barely above the dangerous point;
and in a flash the terrible bolide disappeared rapidly several hundred
yards beneath the affrighted travellers.
"Good bye! And may you never come back!" cried Ardan, hardly able to
breathe. "It's perfectly outrageous! Not room enough in infinite space
to let an unpretending bullet like ours move about a little without
incurring the risk of being run over by such a monster as that! What is
it anyhow? Do you know, Barbican?"
"I do," was the reply.
"Of course, you do! What is it that he don't know? Eh, Captain?"
"It is a simple bolide, but one of such enormous dimensions that the
Earth's attraction has made it a satellite."
"What!" cried Ardan, "another satellite besides the Moon? I hope there
are no more of them!"
"They are pretty numerous," replied Barbican; "but they are so small and
they move with such enormous velocity that they are very seldom seen.
Petit, the Director of the Observatory of Toulouse, who these last years
has devoted much time and care to the observation of bolides, has
calculated that the very one we have just encountered moves with such
astonishing swiftness that it accomplishes its revolution around the
Earth in about 3 hours and 20 minutes!"
"Whew!" whistled Ardan, "where should we be now if it had struck us!"
"You don't mean to say, Barbican," observed M'Nicholl, "that Petit has
seen this very one?"
"So it appears," replied Barbican.
"And do all astronomers admit its existence?" asked the Captain.
"Well, some of them have their doubts," replied Barbican--
"If the unbelievers had been here a minute or two ago," interrupted
Ardan, "they would never express a doubt again."
"If Petit's calculation is right," continued Barbican, "I can even form
a very good idea as to our distance from the Earth."
"It seems to me Barbican can do what he pleases here or elsewhere,"
observed Ardan to the Captain.
"Let us see, Barbican," asked M'Nicholl; "where has Petit's calculation
placed us?"
"The bolide's distance being known," replied Barbican, "at the moment we
met it we were a little more than 5 thousand miles from the Earth's
surface."
"Five thousand miles already!" cried Ardan, "why we have only just
started!"
"Let us see about that," quietly observed the Captain, looking at his
chronometer, and calculating with his pencil. "It is now 10 minutes past
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