We were launched into space!
IV
EXPANSION!
Then the vehicle cooled rapidly. Soon we had the heaters going. The coldness of space enveloped us penetrating the vehicle’s walls. But with the heaters we managed to be comfortable.
Dr. Weatherby sat at the instrument table. His chronometer there showed 5 a.m. We had started at 4 a.m. On one of the distant dials the miles were registering in units of a thousand. The dial-pointer was nearing XX6. Six thousand miles:
Dr. Weatherby glanced up as I appeared. Alice and Dolores, and Jim with them, had gone astern to prepare a broth. We were all of us still feeling a bit shaky, though the sense of lightness had worn off.
Dr. Weatherby had a chart on the table. It showed our solar system. The sun was at its center, and the planetary orbits in concentric circles around it. The planets and our own moon and a few of the larger comets and asteroids were all shown, their positions given progressively for each hour beginning at our starting time.
“I’m heading this way, Leonard. Holding the general plane in which the planets lie.” His finger traced a line from the earth, past the moon, past Mars. Jupiter and Saturn lay over to one side, and Neptune to the other. Uranus was far on the opposite side, beyond the sun.
Dr. Weatherby added, “The moon is drawing us now. But I shall shortly turn a neutral side toward it, and Mars will draw us. We are more than a freely falling body. We are being pulled downward.”
I sat beside him. “What is our velocity now?”
He gestured toward a dial, an ingenious affair. He had already explained its workings, the lessening rate of the earth’s gravitational pull shown by a hair-spring balance as a figure on the dial.