"This
thing has gone far enough! Come. Stop your talk, and answer me a few
questions. What do you want of this cord, Barbican?"
"To describe a parabolic curve!"
"And what are you going to do with the ruler, M'Nicholl!"
"To help draw a true hyperbola!"
"Promise me, Barbican, that you're not going to lasso the Captain!"
"Lasso the Captain! Ha! ha! ha!"
"You promise, M'Nicholl, that you're not going to brain the President!"
"I brain the President! Ho! ho! ho!"
"I want merely to convince him that it is a parabola!"
"I only want to make it clear as day that it is hyperbola!"
"Does it make any real difference whether it is one or the other?"
yelled Ardan.
"The greatest possible difference--in the Eye of Science."
"A radical and incontrovertible difference--in the Eye of Science!"
"Oh! Hang the Eye of Science--will either curve take us to the Moon?"
"No!"
"Will either take us back to the Earth?"
"No!"
"Will either take us anywhere that you know of?"
"No!"
"Why not?"
"Because they are both _open_ curves, and therefore can never end!"
"Is it of the slightest possible importance which of the two curves
controls the Projectile?"
"Not the slightest--except in the Eye of Science!"
"Then let the Eye of Science and her parabolas and hyperbolas, and
conjugates, and asymptotes, and the rest of the confounded nonsensical
farrago, all go to pot! What's the use of bothering your heads about
them here! Have you not enough to trouble you otherwise? A nice pair of
scientists you are? 'Stanislow' scientists, probably.
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