es would
attend an immoderate supply of oxygen--No, we can't manufacture
nitrogen, which is so absolutely necessary for our air and which might
escape readily through the open windows."

"What! the few seconds we should require for flinging out poor
Satellite?"

"A very few seconds indeed they should be," said Barbican, very gravely.

"Your second reason?" asked Ardan.

"The second reason is, that we must not allow the external cold, which
must be exceedingly great, to penetrate into our Projectile and freeze
us alive."

"But the Sun, you know--"

"Yes, the Sun heats our Projectile, but it does not heat the vacuum
through which we are now floating. Where there is no air there can
neither be heat nor light; just as wherever the rays of the Sun do not
arrive directly, it must be both cold and dark. The temperature around
us, if there be anything that can be called temperature, is produced
solely by stellar radiation. I need not say how low that is in the
scale, or that it would be the temperature to which our Earth should
fall, if the Sun were suddenly extinguished."

"Little fear of that for a few more million years," said M'Nicholl.

"Who can tell?" asked Ardan. "Besides, even admitting that the Sun will
not soon be extinguished, what is to prevent the Earth from shooting
away from him?"

"Let friend Michael speak," said Barbican, with a smile, to the Captain;
"we may learn something."

"Certainly you may," continued the Frenchman, "if you have room for
anything new. Were we not struck by a comet's tail in 1861?"

"So it was said, anyhow," observed the Captain. "I well remember what
nonsense there was in the papers about the 'phosphorescent auroral
glare.'"

"Well," continued the Frenchman, "suppose the comet of 1861 influenced
the Earth by an attraction superior to the Sun's. What would be the
consequence? Would not the Earth follow the attracting body, become its
satellite, and thus at last be dragged off to such a distance that the
Sun's rays could no longer excite heat on her surface?"

"Well, that might possibly occur," said Barbican slowly, "but even then
I question if the consequences would be so terrible as you seem to
apprehend."

"Why not?"

"Because the cold and the heat might still manage to be nearly equalized
on our globe. It has been calculated that, had the Earth been carried
off by the comet of '61, when arrived at her greatest distance, she
would have experienced a temperature hard