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Updated: May 9, 2025
"That the existence at the present time " answered M'Nicholl. "Of either animal or vegetable life " interrupted Ardan. "In the Moon is hardly possible!" cried both in one voice. "Besides?" asked Barbican: "even if there is any life ?" "That to live on the dark side would be much more inconvenient than on the light side!" cried M'Nicholl promptly.
"Exactly so," chimed in M'Nicholl; "it must describe and keep on describing either a parabola or a hyperbola." "Precisely," said Barbican; "at a certain velocity it would take a parabolic curve; with a velocity considerably greater it should describe a hyperbolic curve."
"I don't attach the slightest importance to his, or to any man's words, unless they are sustained by reliable evidence," exclaimed M'Nicholl. "Besides, if I'm not very much mistaken, Pouillet another countryman of yours, Ardan, and an Academician as well as Fourrier esteems the temperature of interplanetary spaces to be at least 256° Fahr. below zero.
"What do you mean by your cultivated fields?" asked M'Nicholl sourly, wiping his glasses and shrugging his shoulders. "Certainly cultivated fields!" replied Ardan. "Don't you see the furrows? They're certainly plain enough. They are white too from glistening in the sun, but they are quite different from the radiating streaks of Copernicus. Why, their sides are perfectly parallel!"
Here M'Nicholl laughed so loud that Ardan was seriously irritated. However, before he could say anything cutting enough to make the Captain mind his manners, Barbican had quickly resumed: "Dear friend, let the comets alone, I beg of you; the old astronomers fled to them on all occasions and made them explain every difficulty " "The comets were all used up long ago " interrupted M'Nicholl.
"The eccentricity is less than unity!" screamed M'Nicholl. "Talking of eccentricity " put in Ardan. "Therefore it's a parabola, and must be!" cried Barbican, triumphantly. "Therefore it's hyperbola and nothing shorter!" was the Captain's quite as confident reply. "For gracious sake! " resumed Ardan. "Then produce your asymptote!" exclaimed Barbican, with an angry sneer.
It took him a few moments to calculate the quantity of mercury that had escaped into the little diaphragm attached to the lower part of the instrument; then he said: "A hundred and forty degrees, centigrade, below zero!" "Two hundred and twenty degrees, Fahrenheit, below zero!" cried M'Nicholl; "no wonder that we should feel a little chilly!"
"That's Plato;" said M'Nicholl; "I know it well; it's the darkest spot on the Moon: many a night I gazed at it from my little observatory in Broad Street, Philadelphia." "Right, Captain," said Barbican; "the crater Plato, is, indeed, generally considered the blackest spot on the Moon, but I am inclined to consider the spots Grimaldi and Riccioli on the extreme eastern edge to be somewhat darker.
The deeper he had reflected, the more inclined he had become to accept the conclusion that the less he knew. Hence he had decided that if M'Nicholl wanted an argument it should not be with him.
"You want a receipt, don't you, Captain?" asked Barbican, counting the money. "Yes, I should prefer one, if it is not too much trouble," answered M'Nicholl; "it saves dispute."
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