Across the Zodiac: The Story of a Wrecked Record — John Shaqi
Across the Zodiac: The Story of a Wrecked RecordGreg, Percy
Science
Across the Zodiac: The Story of a Wrecked Record
Greg, Percy
Science fiction
terrestrial crescent in question. I watched long and with intense
interest the gradual change, but I was called away from it by a
consideration of no little practical moment. I must now be moving
at a rate of nearly, if not quite, 40,000 miles an hour, or about a
million miles per diem. It was not my intention, for reasons I shall
presently explain, ever greatly to exceed this rate; and if I meant
to limit myself to a fixed rate of speed, it was time to diminish the
force of the apergic current, as otherwise before its reduction could
take effect I should have attained an impulse greater than I desired,
and which could not be conveniently or easily diminished when once
reached. Quitting, therefore, though reluctantly, my observation of
the phenomena below me, I turned to the apergion, and was occupied for
some two or three hours in gradually reducing the force as measured by
the cratometer attached to the downward conductor, and measuring with
extreme care the very minute effect produced upon the barycrite and the
discometer. Even the difference between 200 and 201 radii of elevation
or apogaic distance was not easily perceptible on either. It took, of
course, much more minute observation and a much longer time to test
the effect produced by the regulation of the movement, since whether I
travelled forty, forty-five, or forty-two thousand miles in the course
of one hour made scarcely any difference in the diameter of the Earth's
disc, still less, for reasons above given, in the gravity. By midnight,
however, I was satisfied that I had not attained quite 1,000,000 miles,
or 275 terrestrial radii; also that my speed was not greater than
45,000 miles (11¼ radii) per hour, and was not, I thought, increasing.
Of this last point, however, I could better satisfy myself at the end
of my four hours' rest, to which I now betook myself.
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