Three hypotheses presented themselves.

Either the projectile would have kept some velocity, and passing the
point of equal attraction, would fall on the moon by virtue of the
excess of lunar attraction over terrestrial attraction.

Or velocity sufficient to reach the neutral point being wanting, it
would fall back on the earth by virtue of the excess of terrestrial
attraction over lunar attraction.

Or lastly, endowed with sufficient velocity to reach the neutral point,
but insufficient to pass it, it would remain eternally suspended in the
same place, like the pretended coffin of Mahomet, between the zenith and
nadir.

Such was the situation, and Barbicane clearly explained the consequences
to his travelling companions. They were interested to the highest
degree. How were they to know when they had reached this neutral point,
situated at 78,114 leagues from the earth, at the precise moment when
neither they nor the objects contained in the projectile should be in
any way subject to the laws of weight?

Until now the travellers, though they had remarked that this action
diminished little by little, had not yet perceived its total absence.
But that day, about 11 a.m., Nicholl having let a tumbler escape from
his hand, instead of falling, it remained suspended in the air.

"Ah!" cried Michel Ardan, "this is a little amusing chemistry!"

And immediately different objects, weapons, bottles, &c, left to
themselves, hung suspended as if by miracle. Diana, too, lifted up by
Michel into space, reproduced, but without trickery, the marvellous
suspensions effected by Robert-Houdin and Maskelyne and Cook.

The three adventurous companions, surprised and stupefied in spite of
their scientific reasoning, carried into the domain of the marvellous,
felt weight go out of their bodies. When they stretched out their arms
they felt no inclination to drop them. Their heads vacillated on their
shoulders. Their feet no longer kept at the bottom of the projectile.
They were like staggering drunkards. Imagination has created men
deprived of their reflection, others deprived of their shadows! But here
reality, by the neutrality of active forces, made men in whom nothing
had any weight, and who weighed nothing themselves.

Suddenly Michel, making a slight spring, left the floor and remained
suspended in the air like the good monk in Murillo's _Cuisine des
Anges_. His two friends joined him in an instant, and all three, in the
centre o