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.."
"How much?" asked Barbican, eagerly.
"Should be at least 11,972 yards the first second."
"What!" cried Barbican, jumping off his seat. "How much did you say?"
"11,972 yards the first second it quits the atmosphere."
"Oh, malediction!" cried Barbican, with a gesture of terrible despair.
"What's the matter?" asked Ardan, very much surprised.
"Enough is the matter!" answered Barbican excitedly. "This velocity
having been diminished by a third, our initial velocity should have been
at least ..."
"17,958 yards the first second!" cried M'Nicholl, rapidly flourishing
his pencil.
"But the Cambridge Observatory having declared that 12,000 yards the
first second were sufficient, our Projectile started with no greater
velocity!"
"Well?" asked M'Nicholl.
"Well, such a velocity will never do!"
"How??" }
"How!!" } cried the Captain and Ardan in one voice.
"We can never reach the neutral point!"
"Thunder and lightning"
"Fire and Fury!"
"We can't get even halfway!"
"Heaven and Earth!"
"_Mille noms d'un boulet!_" cried Ardan, wildly gesticulating.
"And we shall fall back to the Earth!"
"Oh!"
"Ah!"
They could say no more. This fearful revelation took them like a stroke
of apoplexy.
CHAPTER V.
THE COLDS OF SPACE.
How could they imagine that the Observatory men had committed such a
blunder? Barbican would not believe it possible. He made the Captain go
over his calculation again and again; but no flaw was to be found in it.
He himself carefully examined it, figure after figure, but he could find
nothing wrong. They both took up the formula and subjected it to the
strongest tests; but it was invulnerable. There was no denying the fact.
The Cambridge professors had undoubtedly blundered in saying that an
initial velocity of 12,000 yards a second would be enough to carry them
to the neutral point. A velocity of nearly 18,000 yards would be the
very lowest required for such a purpose. They had simply forgotten to
allow a third for friction.
The three friends kept profound silence for some time. Breakfast now was
the last thing thought of. Barbican, with teeth grating, fingers
clutching, and eye-brows closely contracting, gazed grimly through the
window. The Captain, as a last resource, once more examined his
calculations, earnestly hoping to find a figure wrong. Ardan could
neither sit, stand nor lie still for a second, though he tried all
three. His silence, of course, did not last long.
"Ha! ha! ha!" he laughed bitterly. "Precious scientific men! Villainous
old hombogues! The whole set not worth a straw! I hope to gracious,
since we must fall, that we shall drop down plumb on Cambridge
Observatory, and not leave a single one of the miserable old women,
called professors, alive in the premises!"
A certain expression in Ardan's angry exclamation had struck the Captain
like a shot, and set his temples throbbing violently.
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