Excerpt from Across the Zodiac: A Story of Adventure

Celestial bodies are, in fact, always spherical. The rotating movement to which they are subjected assures obedience to this natural law. Slight differences of diameter between the poles and the equator, occasioned by centrifugal force, are all that can be counted upon. Decidedly, the theory of a new and undiscovered celestial body was untenable.

What was it then A freak of optics? A trail of vapour? The debris of a vanished aerolite?

This last hypothesis seemed the most reasonable of the lot. Vagrant comets traversing space are as liable to accidents of this kind as express trains. A thousand inﬂuences may be at work to produce a breaking up of their constituent parts. Heat, cold, an explosion of mephitic gases, the counter attraction of two wandering stars, the shock occasioned by the chance rencontre with a Sister aerolite. All these things may tend to the dis memberment of the solid Shell.

To calculate the elements, the density, atomic weight and specific gravity of this body would be a lengthy and delicate operation. The eye-piece Of the great equatorial was for an hour monopolised by a crowd of excited, gesticulating savants, pro pounding questions, offering theories, contradicting each other and being in their turn contradicted.

Here the ruling head of the observatory stepped in. A lynx-eyed Old mathematician in a frieze coat, a battered felt hat and voluminous neck-tie.

At his suggestion the place was cleared and some Observations were taken.

The body was evidently a large one. Seen through the twenty-six inch equatorial, its length equalled, or seemed to equal, the diameter of the crater of Tycho. This, if it were travelling actually across the surface of the moon, would give it a length of eighty-seven kilometres or so.

On the other hand, it might be merely ﬂoating in the terrestrial atmosphere - a disenchanting fact which might bring its length down to a paltry hundred feet, or even less.

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Across the Zodiac

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