ake a walk outside this? Why can't we go into space through
the port-light? What delight it would be to be thus suspended in ether,
more favoured even than birds that are forced to flap their wings to
sustain them!"

"Agreed," said Barbicane, "but how are we to breathe?"

"Confounded air to fail so inopportunely!"

"But if it did not fail, Michel, your density being inferior to that of
the projectile, you would soon remain behind."

"Then it is a vicious circle."

"All that is most vicious."

"And we must remain imprisoned in our vehicle."

"Yes, we must."

"Ah!" cried Michel in a formidable voice.

"What is the matter with you?" asked Nicholl.

"I know, I guess what this pretended asteroid is! It is not a broken
piece of planet!"

"What is it, then?" asked Nicholl.

"It is our unfortunate dog! It is Diana's husband!"

In fact, this deformed object, reduced to nothing, and quite
unrecognisable, was the body of Satellite flattened like a bagpipe
without wind, and mounting, for ever mounting!

CHAPTER VII.

A MOMENT OF INTOXICATION.

Thus a curious but logical, strange yet logical phenomenon took place
under these singular conditions. Every object thrown out of the
projectile would follow the same trajectory and only stop when it did.
That furnished a text for conversation which the whole evening could not
exhaust. The emotion of the three travellers increased as they
approached the end of their journey. They expected unforeseen incidents,
fresh phenomena, and nothing would have astonished them under present
circumstances. Their excited imagination outdistanced the projectile,
the speed of which diminished notably without their feeling it. But the
moon grew larger before their eyes, and they thought they had only to
stretch out their hands to touch it.

The next day, the 5th of December, they were all wide awake at 5 a.m.
That day was to be the last of their journey if the calculations were
exact. That same evening, at midnight, within eighteen hours, at the
precise moment of full moon, they would reach her brilliant disc. The
next midnight would bring them to the goal of their journey, the most
extraordinary one of ancient or modern times. At early dawn, through the
windows made silvery with her rays, they saluted the Queen of Night with
a confident and joyful hurrah.

The moon was sailing majestically across the starry firmament. A few
more degrees and she would reach that precise point i