What had become of the resolutions they had discussed so ably and passed so decidedly a few hours before?
_Was the Moon inhabited?
No! Was the Moon habitable?
No!_ Yet in the face of all this--or rather as coolly as if such subjects had never been alluded to--here were the reckless scientists actually thinking of nothing but how to work heaven and earth in order to get there! One question more remained to be answered before they played their last trump, namely: "At what precise moment would the Projectile reach the neutral point ?" To this Barbican had very little trouble in finding an answer.

The time spent in proceeding from the south pole to the dead point being evidently equal to the time previously spent in proceeding from the dead point to the north pole--to ascertain the former, he had only to calculate the latter.

This was easily done.

To refer to his notes, to check off the different rates of velocity at which they had readied the different parallels, and to turn these rates into time, required only a very few minutes careful calculation.

The Projectile then was to reach the point of neutral attraction at one o'clock in the morning of December 8th.