Chapter 11
At present everybody was familiar with the bolide. In thought, at least, they had gone all round it. Its orbit, velocity, volume, mass, nature, and value were each determined. It had ceased to cause anxiety since, moving with uniform speed along its trajectory, it was destined never to fall upon the earth’s surface. Nothing was, therefore, more inevitable than that the public should lose their interest in this inaccessible meteor, which was henceforth commonplace.
True, in the various observatories, some astronomers from time to time glanced at the golden sphere that circled above their heads; but they quickly turned away from it to attend to other problems. The earth possessed a second satellite. That was all. To savants who regard the world mostly as a mathematical abstracti
