Even then Ardan had his _mot_.
"We can neither switch off, down brakes, nor clap on more steam! Hard luck!" In an instant all was over.

The velocity of the Projectile was fortunately great enough to carry it barely above the dangerous point; and in a flash the terrible bolide disappeared rapidly several hundred yards beneath the affrighted travellers.
"Good bye! And may you never come back!" cried Ardan, hardly able to breathe.

"It's perfectly outrageous! Not room enough in infinite space to let an unpretending bullet like ours move about a little without incurring the risk of being run over by such a monster as that! What is it anyhow?
Do you know, Barbican ?" "I do," was the reply.
"Of course, you do! What is it that he don't know?
Eh, Captain ?" "It is a simple bolide, but one of such enormous dimensions that the Earth's attraction has made it a satellite." "What!" cried Ardan, "another satellite besides the Moon?
I hope there are no more of them!" "They are pretty numerous," replied Barbican; "but they are so small and they move with such enormous velocity that they are very seldom seen.
Petit, the Director of the Observatory of Toulouse, who these last years has devoted much time and care to the observation of bolides, has calculated that the very one we have just encountered moves with such astonishing swiftness that it accomplishes its revolution around the Earth in about 3 hours and 20 minutes!" "Whew!" whistled Ardan, "where should we be now if it had struck us!" "You don't mean to say, Barbican," observed M'Nicholl, "that Petit has seen this very one ?" "So it appears," replied Barbican.
"And do all astronomers admit its existence ?" asked the Captain.
"Well, some of them have their doubts," replied Barbican-- "If the unbelievers had been here a minute or two ago," interrupted Ardan, "they would never express a doubt again." "If Petit's calculation is right," continued Barbican, "I can even form a very good idea as to our distance from the Earth." "It seems to me Barbican can do what he pleases here or elsewhere," observed Ardan to the Captain.
"Let us see, Barbican," asked M'Nicholl; "where has Petit's calculation placed us ?" "The bolide's distance being known," replied Barbican, "at the moment we met it we were a little more than 5 thousand miles from the Earth's surface." "Five thousand miles already!" cried Ardan, "why we have only just started!" "Let us see about that," quietly observed the Captain, looking at his chronometer, and calculating with his pencil.

"It is now 10 minutes past eleven; we have therefore been 23 minutes on the road.

Supposing our initial velocity of 10,000 yards or nearly seven miles a second, to have been kept up, we should by this time be about 9,000 miles from the Earth; but by allowing for friction and gravity, we can hardly be more than 5,500 miles.