Whereabouts would you like to land?
At present we're heading straight for Saturn's north pole." "I think I'd rather see what the rings are like first," said Zaidie; "couldn't we go across them ?" "Certainly we can," he replied, "only we'll have to be a bit careful." "Careful, what of--collisions?
Are you thinking of Proctor's hypothesis that the rings are formed of multitudes of tiny satellites ?" "Yes, but I should go a little farther than that, I should say that his rings and his eight satellites are to Saturn what the planets generally and the ring of the Asteroides are to the Sun, and if that is the case--I mean if we find the rings made up of myriads of tiny bodies flying round with Saturn--it might get a bit risky.
"You see the outside ring is a bit over 160,000 miles across, and it revolves in less than eleven hours.

In other words we might find the ring a sort of celestial maelstrom, and if we once got into the whirl, and Saturn exerted his full pull on us, we might become a satellite, too, and go on swinging round with the rest for a good bit of eternity." "Very well then," she said, "of course we don't want to do anything of that sort, but there's something else I think we could do," she went on, taking up a copy of Proctor's "Saturn and its System," which she had been reading just after breakfast.

"You see those rings are, all together, about 10,000 miles broad; there's a gap of about 1,700 miles between the big dark one and the middle bright one, and it's nearly 10,000 miles from the edge of the bright ring to the surface of Saturn.
Now why shouldn't we get in between the inner ring and the planet?
If Proctor was right and the rings are made of tiny satellites and there are myriads of them, of course they'll pull up while Saturn pulls down.
In fact Flammarion says somewhere that along Saturn's equator there is no weight at all." "Quite possible," replied Redgrave, "and, if you like, we'll go and prove it.

Of course, if the _Astronef_ weighs absolutely nothing between Saturn and the rings, we can easily get away.

The only thing that I object to is getting into this 170,000-mile vortex, being whizzed round with Saturn every ten and a half hours, and sauntering round the Sun at 21,000 miles an hour." "Don't!" she said.