"Jules Verne - In the Year 2889 (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Verne Jules)

30 scientific men are absorbed in transcendental calculations. Mr. Smith's
arrival is like the falling of a bomb among them.
"Well, gentlemen, what is this I hear? No answer from Jupiter? Is it always to
be thus? Come, Cooley, you have worked now 10 years on this problem, and yet--"
"True enough," replies the man addressed. "Our science of optics is still
defective, and though our mile-and-three-quarter telescopes--"
"Listen to that, Peer," breaks in Mr. Smith, turning to a second scientist.
"Optical science defective! Optical science is your specialty. But," he
continues, again addressing William Cooley, "failing with Jupiter, are we
getting any results from the moon?"
"The case is no better there."
"This time you cannot lay the blame on the science of optics. The moon is
immeasurably closer than Mars, yet with Mars our communication is fully
established. I presume you will not say you lack telescopes?"
"Telescopes? Oh no, the trouble here is about--inhabitants!"
"That's it," adds Peer.
"So, then, the moon is positively uninhabited?" asks Mr. Smith.
"At least," answers Cooley, "on the face which she presents to us. As for the
opposite side, who knows?"
"Ah, the opposite side! You think, then," remarks Mr. Smith, musingly, "that if
one could but--"
"Could what?"
"Why, turn the moon about-face."
"Ah, there's something in that," cry the two men at once. And indeed, so
confident is their air, they seem certain of the success of such an undertaking.

"Meanwhile," asks Mr. Smith, after a moment's silence, "have you no news of
interest today?"
"Indeed we have," answers Cooley. "The elements of Olympus are definitely
settled. That great planet gravitates beyond Neptune at a mean distance of
11,400,799,642 miles from the sun, and to traverse its vast orbit takes 1311
years, 294 days, 12 hours, 43 minutes, 9 seconds."
"Why didn't you tell me that sooner?" cries Mr. Smith. "Inform the reporters of
this straightway. You know how eager public curiosity is about these
astronomical questions. That news must go into today's issue."

Then, the two men bowing to him, Mr. Smith passes into the next hall, an
enormous gallery upward of 3200 feet long, devoted to atmospheric advertising.
Everyone has noticed those enormous advertisements reflected from the clouds, so
large they may be seen by the populations of whole cities or even entire
countries. This, too, is one of Mr. Fritz Napoleon Smith's ideas, and in the
Earth Chronicle building a thousand projectors are constantly engaged in
displaying on the clouds these mammoth advertisements.
When Mr. Smith today enters the sky-advertising department, he finds the
operators sitting with folded arms at their motionless projectors, and inquires
as to the cause of their inaction. In response, the man addressed simply points
to the sky, which is a pure blue. "Yes," mutters Mr. Smith, "a cloudless sky!
That's too bad, but what's to be done? Shall we produce rain? That we might do,
but is it of any use? What we need is clouds, not rain. Go," says he, addressing
the head engineer, "go see Mr. Samuel Mark, of the meteorological division in