"Well," said the practical Barbican, "there's no help for that now; the next thing to be done is to get rid of the body. We can't keep it here with us forty-eight hours longer." "Of course not," replied the Captain, "nor need we; our lights, being provided with hinges, can be lifted back. What is to prevent us from opening one of them, and flinging the body out through it!" The President of the Gun Club reflected a few minutes; then he spoke: "Yes, it can be done; but we must take the most careful precautions." "Why so?" asked Ardan. "For two simple reasons;" replied Barbican; "the first refers to the air enclosed in the Projectile, and of which we must be very careful to lose only the least possible quantity." "But as we manufacture air ourselves!" objected Ardan. "We manufacture air only partly, friend Michael," replied Barbican. "We manufacture only oxygen; we can't supply nitrogen--By the bye, Ardan, won't you watch the apparatus carefully every now and then to see that the oxygen is not generated too freely. Very serious consequences 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.'"