“That looks as natural as a map, doesn’t it? You have seen globes with those divisions pictured on them, but there is the globe itself. If our summer tourists could take in this experience also, it would make a vacation worth having. Isn’t it grand? I see you are thinking about our personal peril, but I think I know men who would take the risk and put themselves in our place for the sake of this magnificent view.”
“If you know of any way to send for one of those friends, I wish you would do so,” I replied. “I would willingly give him my place.”
It may be believed that we were all this time anxiously watching the earth, and it did not lessen our anxiety to realize that we were traveling very rapidly away from it. I had reached a point now where I did not place much dependence upon the doctor’s science, but to get some expression of his thoughts I said to him:
“Well, have you any opinion about our fate? Are we doomed to pass the remainder of our lives circling around our dear old earth, looking upon her face day by day but never to approach her again?”
“I think you have stated the case about as it is,” said he, “if, indeed, this rate of speed does not carry us entirely beyond the earth’s attraction, out into illimitable space.”
The thought of such an additional catastrophe silenced me, especially as I could not deny its possibility. Life on the moon, if we could only keep the earth in sight even, seemed almost endurable now, beside the idea that we might be cast out to shift for ourselves, without a tie save such as the universal law of gravitation might find for us somewhere.
It must not be imagined that our conversation was carried on with ease or that we were half enjoying our novel situation. We were simply trying to make the best of a very bad matter. Not long after we had started the wind had taken away the balloon part of our air ship, and now threatened every moment to tear the car from its moorings and end our unhappy career at once. Besides this impending catastrophe, it was with the greatest difficulty that we could get air enough to fill our lungs, but the cold was so intense whenever our side of the moon was turned away from the sun that we needed the severe labor on our condensers to keep us from freezing.
Meantime, our speed increasing every hour, the planet that had once been our home was growing smaller before our eyes. At length we were flying through space at such a rate that we could not suppress our fears that the terrible suggestion of the doctor’s would be realized. We had both made a mental calculation as to how large the earth ought to look from the moon at its normal distance, and as it approached that size we could not hide our anxiety from each other. Without a word from the doctor I could see by his face that hope was fast leaving him, and as we were now going more rapidly than ever I felt that we had nothing to do but accept our fate.
In regard to such intensity of feeling at this stage of our experience, it maybe objected that our condition was hopeless anyway, and it could make no difference whether we remained within the earth’s influence or not. But in spite of our desperate situation we had some sentiment remaining. The earth was the only home we had ever known, and I am not ashamed to say that we did not like to lose sight of it; especially as there was not the slightest possibility that we should ever see it again, unless, indeed, our moon should turn into a comet with eccentric orbit, and so bring us back at some future day—a very unlikely occurrence, as all will admit who know anything about moons and comets.
Our speed did not lessen but rather increased as we gradually broke away from the earth’s attraction, and the dear old earth was fast becoming a less significant object in our sky. If our situation was lonesome before, it was now desolation itself.