"Jules Verne. Off on a Comet. WORKS" - читать интересную книгу автора

"Yes; as far as I can tell, plenty," replied Servadac.

"Then why shouldn't we go and visit Venus?"

Servadac did his best to explain that as the two planets were
of about equal volume, and were traveling with great velocity
in opposite directions, any collision between them must be attended
with the most disastrous consequences to one or both of them.
But Ben Zoof failed to see that, even at the worst, the catastrophe
could be much more serious than the collision of two railway trains.

The captain became exasperated. "You idiot!" he angrily exclaimed;
"cannot you understand that the planets are traveling a thousand
times faster than the fastest express, and that if they meet,
either one or the other must be destroyed? What would become
of your darling Montmartre then?"

The captain had touched a tender chord. For a moment Ben Zoof stood with
clenched teeth and contracted muscles; then, in a voice of real concern,
he inquired whether anything could be done to avert the calamity.

"Nothing whatever; so you may go about your own business,"
was the captain's brusque rejoinder.

All discomfited and bewildered, Ben Zoof retired without a word.

During the ensuing days the distance between the two planets continued
to decrease, and it became more and more obvious that the earth,
on her new orbit, was about to cross the orbit of Venus. Throughout this
time the earth had been making a perceptible approach towards Mercury,
and that planet--which is rarely visible to the naked eye,
and then only at what are termed the periods of its greatest
eastern and western elongations--now appeared in all its splendor.
It amply justified the epithet of "sparkling" which the ancients
were accustomed to confer upon it, and could scarcely fail
to awaken a new interest. The periodic recurrence of its phases;
its reflection of the sun's rays, shedding upon it a light
and a heat seven times greater than that received by the earth;
its glacial and its torrid zones, which, on account of the great
inclination of the axis, are scarcely separable; its equatorial bands;
its mountains eleven miles high;--were all subjects of observation
worthy of the most studious regard.

But no danger was to be apprehended from Mercury; with Venus
only did collision appear imminent. By the l8th of January
the distance between that planet and the earth had become reduced
to between two and three millions of miles, and the intensity
of its light cast heavy shadows from all terrestrial objects.
It might be observed to turn upon its own axis in twenty-three
hours twenty-one minutes--an evidence, from the unaltered duration