Midnight arrived, December the seventh was dead.

As Ardan said: "_Le Sept Decembre est mort; vive le Huit!_" In one hour more, the neutral point would be reached.

At what velocity was the Projectile now moving?
Barbican could not exactly tell, but he felt quite certain that no serious error had slipped into his calculations.
At one o'clock that night, _nil_ the velocity was to be, and _nil_ it would be! Another phenomenon, in any case, was to mark the arrival of the exact moment.

At the dead point, the two attractions, terrestrial and lunar, would again exactly counterbalance each other.

For a few seconds, objects would no longer possess the slightest weight.