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An Introduction to the
Solar System THIRD EDITION
Edited by David A. Rothery, Neil McBride and Iain Gilmour

An Introduction to the Solar System
Compiled by a team of experts from The Open University and substantially revised
for this edition, this textbook has been designed for introductory university courses
in planetary science. It starts with a tour of the Solar System and an overview of its
formation. The composition, internal structure, surface morphology and atmospheres
of the terrestrial planets are then described. This leads naturally to a discussion
of the giant planets and why they are compositionally different. Minor bodies are
reviewed and the book concludes with a discussion of the origin of the Solar System
and the evidence from meteorites. Written in an accessible style that avoids complex
mathematics, and illustrated in colour throughout, this book is suitable for self-study
and will appeal to amateur enthusiasts as well as undergraduate students. It contains
numerous helpful learning features such as boxed summaries, student exercises
with full solutions, and a glossary of terms. The book is also supported by a website
hosting further teaching materials: http://www.cambridge.org/solarsystem3
About the editors:

DAVID A. ROTHERY is Professor of Planetary Geosciences at The Open University,
with a background in geological remote sensing and a special fascination for the
moons of the outer planets. He has been involved in several space missions, and
leads the Surface and Composition Working Group for the European Space Agency’s
BepiColombo mission to Mercury.
NEIL McBRIDE joined the Planetary and Space Sciences Research Institute, at
The Open University, in 2000 as Lecturer in Planetary and Space Science, his major
teaching interests being in planetary science, physics and astronomy, and space
science. He now works in acoustics supporting sustainable building design.
IAIN GILMOUR is Professor of Isotope Geochemistry at The Open University,

where he undertakes research on the geochemistry of past climate change and
large-scale planetary impacts. He has taught on a wide range of Open University
science modules in the geosciences and planetary sciences as well as delivering
courses at other institutions.
Background image: A false-colour image of Io, a satellite of Jupiter, taken by the
Galileo spacecraft. This false-colour image uses near-infrared, green and violet filters
to enhance the subtle colour variations of Io’s surface. (NASA)
Thumbnail images: (from left to right) Pluto and Charon seen by New Horizons
(NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI); exaggerated colour view of a probable pyroclastic vent on
Mercury seen by MESSENGER (NASA/JHU APL/CIW); Comet 67P/Churyumov-
Gerasimenko as imaged by Rosetta in November 2015 (ESA/Rosetta/NAVCAM);
Uranus and its rings as seen in the near infrared by the Keck telescope 11 and 12
July 2004 (Lawrence Sromovsky, University of Wisconsin-Madison/W.W. Keck
Observatory)
An Introduction to
the Solar System
Edited by David A. Rothery,
Neil McBride and Iain Gilmour
Authors:
Mahesh Anand
Philip A. Bland
Neil McBride
Elaine A. Moore
David A. Rothery
Susanne P. Schwenzer
Mike Widdowson
Ian Wright
University Printing House, Cambridge CB2 8BS, United Kingdom
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Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge.

It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of
education, learning and research at the highest international levels of excellence.
www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781108430845
In association with THE OPEN UNIVERSITY
The Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes MK7 6AA, United Kingdom
Copyright © 2003, 2004, 2011, 2018 The Open University.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
transmitted or utilised in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher or a licence from the
Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd. Details of such licences (for reprographic reproduction)
may be obtained from the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd, Barnard’s Inn, 86 Fetter Lane,
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First published 2003. Revised 2004, 2011, 2018.
Edited and designed by The Open University.

Typeset by The Open University.
Printed in the United Kingdom by Bell & Bain Ltd, Glasgow.
This publication forms part of The Open University module Planetary science and the
search for life (S283). Details of this and other Open University modules can be obtained
from the Student Recruitment, The Open University, PO Box 197, Milton Keynes MK7 6BJ,
United Kingdom (tel. +44 (0) 300 303 5303; email general-enquiries@open.ac.uk).
www.open.ac.uk
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data available on request.
Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data available on request.
Additional resources for this publication at www.cambridge.org/solarsystem3
Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for
external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee
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ISBN 978 1 108 43084 5 paperback
4.1
IV
Contents
INTRODUCTION 1
CHAPTER 1 A TOUR OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM 3
Neil McBride and David A. Rothery
1.1 A grand tour 3
1.2 The formation of the Solar System 24
1.3 The layout of the Solar System 25
1.4 Physical properties of Solar System bodies 28
1.5 Summary of Chapter 1 31
CHAPTER 2 THE INTERNAL STRUCTURE OF THE
TERRESTRIAL PLANETS 33
Mike Widdowson
2.1 Introduction 33
2.2 Investigating Earth’s internal structure 34
2.3 Origins of planets and of planetary layering 52
2.4 Turning up the heat – how to ‘cook’ a planet 63
2.5 Dead or alive? Plate tectonics and resurfacing 74
CHAPTER 3 PLANETARY VOLCANISM – ULTIMA THULE ? 85
Mike Widdowson
3.1 Introduction 85
3.2 Styles of volcanism on Earth 96
3.3 Factors affecting extraterrestrial volcanic eruptions 111
3.4 Volcanism on the terrestrial planets and planet-like bodies 116
CHAPTER 4 PLANETARY SURFACE PROCESSES 129
Philip A. Bland and Susanne P. Schwenzer
4.1 Introduction 129
4.2 Historical background 132
4.3 The impact process 136
4.4 Identifying impacts 142
4.5 Impactors and targets 149
4.6 Craters as chronometers 151
4.7 Fluvial and aeolian processes 155
CHAPTER 5 ATMOSPHERES OF TERRESTRIAL PLANETS 163
Elaine A. Moore
5.2 Exploration 167
V
5.3 Composition of the atmospheres 176
5.4 Atmospheric structure 179
5.5 Cloud formation 191
5.6 Atmospheric motion 195
5.7 Ionospheres and magnetospheres 200
CHAPTER 6 THE GIANT PLANETS 207
Elaine A. Moore
6.2 The structures of the giant planets 208
6.3 Jupiter and Saturn 215
6.4 Uranus and Neptune 239
CHAPTER 7 MINOR BODIES OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM 251
Neil McBride and David A. Rothery
7.2 Orbits and Kepler’s laws 251
7.3 Asteroids 257
7.4 Centaurs and the Kuiper Belt 269
7.5 Comets 274
7.6 Interplanetary dust 282
CHAPTER 8 THE ORIGIN OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM 289
Ian Wright, Mahesh Anand and David A. Rothery
8.2 Physical formation processes 291
CHAPTER 9 METEORITES: A RECORD OF FORMATION 325
Ian Wright and Mahesh Anand
9.2 The forensic record 333
ANSWERS AND COMMENTS 359
APPENDICES 389
GLOSSARY 401
FURTHER READING 417
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 418
FIGURE REFERENCES 421
INDEX 423
VI
1 A TOUR OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM
INTRODUCTION
In astronomical terms, the Solar System is our backyard. Set against the vast number
of stars in our Galaxy, the colossal number of other galaxies in the observable
universe and the incredible distances involved, our Solar System is an extremely
tiny part of the Universe. However, this is where we live. It is where life on Earth
developed, and it gives us our only vantage point from which to view the rest of the
Universe.
Unlike other planetary systems, the objects in our Solar System are close enough
to visit with space probes and to study long-term and (in some cases) in reasonable
detail using telescopes. As well as revealing the splendour and diversity of the worlds
that make up the Solar System, these studies allow us to try and understand ‘what
makes the Solar System tick’. By doing this, we not only attempt to understand the
system in which life evolved, but also gain an insight into the likely diversity of
individual planetary bodies and their possible histories all over the Universe.
One of the more fundamental questions often asked is, ‘why is the Solar System the
way it is?’ In answering this question, we have to address more detailed questions
such as, how were the planets made? What were the planets made from? Were all
the planets made from the same material? Why do they look so different? Do all the
planets have the same internal structure? Does their surface appearance change with
time? The answers to these questions lie in the physical and chemical processes that
act on the bodies within the Solar System. Understanding these processes allows us
to appreciate how the planets and the other Solar System bodies have formed and
have been changed over time, and hence why they look the way they do today. In this
book, you will be looking at these processes in detail.
1
2
CHAPTER 1
A TOUR OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM
A great way to start your study of the Solar System is to get an overview of what Some major missions are listed in
our planetary system looks like by taking a tour of the planets and their moons. In Appendix A, Table A7.
this introductory chapter, you will see the incredible diversity that the Solar System
offers, made accessible by the use of spacecraft sent into space to gather scientific
data (an important part of that is in the form of high-resolution images). The tour
will set the scene and highlight the planetary features that can be explained by the
processes considered in detail later on. So let us begin our tour of the Solar System.
Neptune
1.1 A grand tour

Uranus
There are eight planets in our Solar System. Each planet travels on an approximately
circular orbit around the Sun, which lies at the heart of the Solar System. In order of
increasing distance from the Sun, the eight planets are Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars,
Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. The sizes of the planets vary greatly, but all are
dwarfed by the Sun. Figure 1.1 shows the relative sizes of the planets and the Sun.
In the figure, the planets are aligned in the correct order with increasing distance Saturn
from the Sun, although the relative distance from the Sun is not shown (you will
consider this later). You can see that there appears to be a broad division between the
four small inner planets and the much larger outer planets. Beyond that lie many icy
bodies, of which the ‘dwarf planet’ Pluto is one of the largest.
Jupiter
The four inner bodies (Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars) are called the
terrestrial planets, whereas Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune are usually Mars
referred to as the giant planets.
Earth
Many of the planets have moons (also called satellites) that orbit the planet in the
Venus
same way as the Moon orbits the Earth. Some of the moons that you will meet
on our tour are similar to the terrestrial planets in terms of their composition or
structure, and are sometimes called terrestrial-like bodies. Mercury
We start our tour by taking a closer look at each member of the Solar System. As
the Sun lies at the centre of the Solar System, it seems a sensible place to start.
This book focuses on planetary bodies (a term that refers not only to the planets, Sun
but also to their moons and other small bodies such as asteroids) and you should
appreciate that the Sun is not a planet, but a star. It is a huge ball of gas, consisting 105 km
mainly of hydrogen and helium (although other elements are also present in smaller
amounts). At the centre, nuclear reactions release energy. This is why the Sun is hot
– about 5770 K at its surface and an amazing 15 000 000 K at its centre. (Note the SI Figure 1.1 The relative sizes of the
unit of absolute temperature is the kelvin, K. 0 K = −273 °C, and 0 °C = 273 K.) planets and the Sun. The planets
are shown in the correct order (with
Figure 1.2 shows an impressive image of the Sun. Material, seen above the surface, increasing distance from the Sun),
can be lost to space. Ejection of material from the Sun can have consequences here although the relative distance from
on Earth (you will meet this in Chapter 5). the Sun is not shown to scale.
3
AN INTRODUCTION TO THE SOLAR SYSTEM
Figure 1.2 Part of the Sun

(radius 695 500 km), with the planet
Mercury (in silhouette) starting to
pass in front of it. The image, taken
in ultraviolet light using the SOHO
spacecraft, shows that the Sun is rather
complex and ‘active’, and also how
much bigger the Sun is than
this planet. (NASA/SDO and AIA
science team)
1.1.1 Mercury
The first planetary body on our tour is Mercury (Figure 1.3). Mercury, being the
closest planet to the Sun, can get very hot. In sunlight, parts of the surface can
reach about 740 K (approximately 470 °C), whereas in darkness the temperature can
drop to about 80 K (−190 °C). Clearly, the surface of Mercury is not a very hospitable
place. Looking at Figure 1.3, perhaps the most striking features are the round
‘scars’ on the surface. These are impact craters. A more detailed view of some
impact craters on Mercury is shown in Figure 1.4 and you will consider impacts in
detail in Chapter 4. These impact craters have been made by the ‘leftovers’ of the
planetary formation process, namely asteroids and comets (both of which you will
be looking at in detail in Chapter 7). Asteroids are predominantly rocky and metallic
bodies, whereas comets have a large fraction of icy material in them. However, both
have broadly similar effects when they slam into the surface of a planet at great
speed – they leave impact craters. Any undisturbed surface of a planetary body will
accumulate impact craters over time. Thus a very cratered surface implies that the
surface is relatively old, whereas a lack of craters might indicate that the surface
has been renewed in some way, wiping out the craters from the surface. The most
prevalent mechanism for resurfacing is volcanism, whereby lava (the melted rock
we are familiar with on Earth) flows and covers pre-existing terrain. These concepts
will be dealt with in more detail in Chapters 2 and 3.
Returning to Mercury, the cratering over the surface is dense (so we know it must
be old) but it is not uniform. Some areas within Figure 1.3 are smoother, which in
this case means that they were volcanically resurfaced more recently than the more
densely-cratered areas. There are also some scarps crossing the surface indicative
of tectonic faults. You can see from the clarity of the images in Figures 1.3 and 1.4
that Mercury does not have an obscuring atmosphere. In fact, Mercury does have
some extremely tenuous atmosphere, but it is 1015 (a thousand million million) times
less dense than the atmosphere on Earth, which is actually a better vacuum than any
vacuum we can create in a laboratory.
Before you leave Mercury, there is another property of interest to be considered, which
is mean density (see Box 1.1). Mercury’s mean density is about 5.4 × 103 kg m−3,
which is almost as high as that of Earth. You will consider densities of the planetary
bodies at the end of this chapter, and you will see that this is quite a surprising result
considering that Mercury is the smallest of the terrestrial planets. It indicates that
Mercury must include a relatively large proportion of dense material.
4
Figure 1.4 A close-up of a

160 km-wide region of Mercury.
Impact craters are clearly visible.
Sunlight is from the right.
(NASA/JHU APL/CIW)
Figure 1.3 A 830 km-wide view of Mercury based on images from MESSENGER,
which orbited Mercury 2011–2015. Sunlight is from the right. The surface is a mixture of
impact craters and smooth plains. The curved, shadowed feature near the lower left is a
step or scarp in the surface interpreted as a thrust fault. (NASA/JHU APL/CIW)
BOX 1.1 DENSITY

Density (sometimes called bulk density) is a measure of the mass per unit
volume of a substance:
mass/kg
density = (1.1)
volume/m3
The SI units of density are thus kilograms per cubic metre (kg m−3). Density
values of common materials can cover quite a wide range. Water has a density
of 1.0 × 103 kg m−3, whereas a rock such as granite is around 2.7 × 103 kg m−3,
and iron is 7.9 × 103 kg m−3. In other words, a cubic metre of granite would
weigh 2700 kg, or 2.7 tonnes! Since one cubic metre is somewhat larger than,
for instance, the average pebble or rock you might pick up on a beach, these
large numerical values for density are often difficult to grasp. Instead, it is often
convenient to think of densities in smaller units, so you may come across, or
prefer to think of, density values expressed as grams per cubic centimetre (i.e.
g cm−3). Thus a density of 2.7 × 103 kg m−3 could be expressed as 2.7 g cm−3.
However, when making calculations involving density, always ensure you use
the SI units for density.
It is important to appreciate that a planetary body might be made of layers
of material that have quite different densities, for example it may have high-
density material (such as iron) at its core and somewhat lower-density material
(such as rock) nearer the surface. The calculation of mass/volume gives rise to a
value of mean density for the body.
5
1.1.2 Venus
The next planet on our tour is Venus. The chances are that you have seen Venus
with the naked eye, even if you didn’t realize it at the time. Venus is often seen as
an extremely bright ‘star’ an hour or two before sunrise or after sunset, depending
on the relative positions of Venus and the Earth in their orbits. A small telescope
can resolve Venus as a disc. The planet may also look like a crescent or a gibbous
object, depending on the Earth–Venus–Sun geometry at the time. Even powerful
telescopes tend to show Venus as a featureless planet due to the presence of a
thick atmosphere. In terms of its size and mean density, and the fact that it has a
significant atmosphere, Venus could be considered as the ‘twin’ of Earth. In fact,
there are very important differences, particularly regarding the composition of the
atmosphere and the resulting surface environment. Figure 1.5 shows an image of
Venus, which picks out some cloud structure that is not normally apparent. The
clouds are made from tiny droplets of sulfuric acid, hinting that Venus might not be
Figure 1.5 The planet Venus the most welcoming environment for us to visit!
(radius 6052 km), seen from a A view of the surface terrain can be obtained using cloud-penetrating radar. One
vantage point 35 000 km above such image is shown in Figure 1.6. The surface of Venus is very complex, with far
its south pole. This image, taken fewer impact craters than on Mercury, but with many volcanoes and lava plains
by the Venus Express spacecraft, suggesting significant resurfacing. The only images obtained from the surface of
is falsely coloured and recorded Venus were taken from a series of Soviet Union spacecraft, called Venera. Taking
in ultraviolet light to highlight
the subtle structure of the clouds
which are not usually seen (in
visible light, Venus looks more of
a uniform white in appearance).
(ESA © 2007 MPS/DLR-PF/IDA)
Figure 1.6 Details of the surface

of the planet Venus, which is
usually totally obscured by clouds,
taken by the Magellan spacecraft
using cloud-penetrating radar.
(NASA)
6
images on Venus was an impressive technical feat considering the hostility of the
surface environment. The surface atmospheric pressure was almost a hundred
times that on Earth, and the temperature was around 670 K (400 °C). A high-
pressure oven is not a good place for sensitive scientific instruments! However
before the equipment expired, the Venera spacecraft returned their precious images.
Figure 1.7 shows one of the few colour images obtained by the Venera 13
spacecraft. The surface shows evidence of old lava flows, with a cracked and
rugged appearance. The action of the atmosphere has also given rise to surface
erosion. The atmosphere of Venus is mostly (97% by volume) carbon dioxide
(unlike Earth which is mostly nitrogen and oxygen). The carbon dioxide gives
rise to a strong ‘greenhouse effect’ that traps heat below the lower layers of the
atmosphere – hence the very high surface temperature. Venus, while an Earth-twin
in some respects, would definitely not be a hospitable place to visit.
Figure 1.7 The surface of
Venus obtained by the Venera 13
spacecraft in 1982. Part of the
spacecraft is seen at the bottom of
the image. (Courtesy of the Russian
Academy of Sciences/RNII KP/
IPPI/TsDKS)
1.1.3 Earth and the Moon

The next planet on our itinerary is Earth. The familiar blue planet is shown
splendidly in Figure 1.8. Although Earth may seem rather familiar, and even rather
boring in the context of exploring exciting new worlds in the Solar System, sixty
years ago this was an iconic image for showing us our home planet and its place in
the Solar System. Before the space age, we could only imagine seeing our planet
from afar. But now we have an appreciation of the Earth as a finite, isolated and even
rather fragile planet in space. Today we have spacecraft stationed 1.5 million km
sunward from the Earth that routinely capture the Moon crossing the face of our
plane (Figure 1.9).
The Earth also allows us to study at close quarters many of the mechanisms that
influence and characterize the other bodies in the Solar System. Our understanding
of the internal structure of large terrestrial-like bodies, volcanism and atmospheres,
is greatly enhanced by looking at what happens on (or in) the Earth, and using this
knowledge to consider what must happen elsewhere. For this reason much of the
material considered in the following chapters looks closely at the Earth to enhance
our understanding of the other planets.
The atmosphere of the Earth (which you will look at in more detail in Chapter 5)
is crucial for the survival of life on the planet. Our atmosphere causes a significant
rise in surface temperature because of a ‘greenhouse effect’, which is mainly due to
carbon dioxide and water vapour (modest compared to Venus, but still accounting for
a 33 K higher temperature than an atmosphereless Earth would have). This means
that the mean temperature at the surface is 288 K (15 °C), allowing liquid water
to exist over much of the planet. The atmosphere also carries heat away from the
Equator, so that the Equator is not as hot as it might be and the polar regions are not Figure 1.8 The Earth seen from
as cold as they might be. This allows life to thrive at a greater range of latitudes than lunar orbit by Apollo 8 in 1968.
would be the case if we didn’t have atmospheric circulation. The Earth’s atmosphere (NASA)
7
comprises (by volume) 78% nitrogen and 21% oxygen, with other gases (including
carbon dioxide) being just a small part. It is perhaps a sobering thought to bear in
mind that Venus is an example of what could happen if greenhouse gases such as
carbon dioxide became a really significant proportion of the Earth’s atmosphere.
The other familiar planetary body on our tour is the Earth’s only natural satellite,
the Moon. Often ignored due to over familiarity, the Moon actually has some pretty
spectacular terrain. Viewed with the naked eye or, better still, through binoculars
or a small telescope (best viewed when not at full Moon to obtain the best visual
contrast), the relatively bright ‘highland’ regions peppered with impact craters, and
the darker and less cratered mare (pronounced mar-ray) regions, are clearly seen.
Figure 1.9 The Moon (radius 1738 km) Figure 1.10 The Moon (radius 1738 km).
passing in front of the Earth (radius A false colour view of the Moon’s near
6371 km) as seen 5 July 2016 by the side recorded by the Galileo spacecraft.
DSCOVR spacecraft, 1.5 million km from The various colours of the image highlight
Earth. The image shows the oceans (blue), the dissimilar mineralogy of the regions.
land (brown) and cloud (white). Note that (NASA)
the Moon is darker than (reflects less light
than) the Earth’s land areas.
(NASA/NOAA)
The Moon orbits the Earth about thirteen times each year, and presents the
same face to us all the time. This is because its rotation period (the time it
takes to turn once on its axis) exactly matches its orbital period (the time it
takes to travel once around the Earth). This is called synchronous rotation,
and is common among moons throughout the Solar System. Figure 1.10
shows an image of the Moon. False colours have been used in this figure to
differentiate predominant surface minerals. Figure 1.11 shows a photograph
that reveals some of the far side of the Moon. Fewer mare regions are seen and
more impact craters are obvious in this image. The mare regions are younger
formations formed by the flooding of lava that buried many ancient impact
craters. You will consider the formation and composition of the Moon in
Chapter 2, and the historical impact record of the Moon in Chapter 4.
Figure 1.11 An image of the Moon, taken from Apollo 16, showing some of its
heavily cratered far side (right-hand part of the image). (NASA)
8
1.1.4 Mars
Continuing our tour outwards from the Sun, we next encounter Mars (Figure 1.12).
It is not hard to understand why it is often referred to as ‘the red planet’ (although
in fact, most people would probably describe it as orange). Mars can often be seen
with the naked eye as a ‘star’ that has a very obvious orange hue to it. Figure 1.12
shows some striking features. The image shows a huge canyon system (called Valles
Marineris), which represents a fracture in the planet’s surface that extends about
4000 km across the planet. This canyon dwarfs the Earth’s Grand Canyon, having
regions that are 11 km deep and 200 km wide. Also very obvious are the dark, circular
features near the left-hand side of the image. These are enormous, old volcanoes. The
largest volcano on Mars, Olympus Mons (not visible in Figure 1.12), which is also
the largest volcano in the Solar System, is 24 km high and has a volume a hundred
times greater than Mauna Loa in Hawaii – the largest equivalent feature on Earth.
Figure 1.12 The planet Mars (radius 3390 km). This is a composite image produced
from images obtained by the Viking Orbiter spacecraft. (US Geological Survey)
9
Figure 1.13 The surface of the

planet Mars, as imaged by the Mars
Pathfinder lander mission in 1997.
(NASA)
Figure 1.13 shows an image from the surface of Mars. Large boulders embedded in
dust and ‘soil’ can be seen in the rather barren landscape. Lava flows have altered
the terrain in other regions of the planet, and even evidence of ancient running water
has now been identified. The atmosphere of Mars is mainly carbon dioxide (95%
by volume) and in this respect it is similar to the atmosphere of Venus. However,
on Mars, the atmospheric pressure at the surface is much reduced, being only about
0.006 times that on Earth. This rather tenuous atmosphere means that the greenhouse
effect you might expect from the high carbon dioxide content is very modest, adding
only about 6 K to the mean temperature of the planet (which is 223 K). The surface is
desert-like – it is very dry and can get reasonably warm during the day and extremely
cold at night. Although the atmosphere is thin, winds on the planet can be formidable,
giving rise to large dust storms that can last for weeks or months.
Mars has two relatively tiny moons, Phobos (Figure 1.14) and Deimos
(Figure 1.15), which are thought to be asteroids that have been captured by the
gravitational influence of Mars. The bodies are irregularly shaped: Phobos is
approximately 26 km × 18 km in size, Deimos is approximately 16 km × 10 km in
size. Phobos is shown in Figure 1.14, and you can see a large (relative to the size
of the body) impact crater on the right-hand side, as well as other smaller impact
craters. Phobos orbits only 6000 km above the surface of Mars, and will probably
collide with Mars within the next 50 million years. Deimos is shown in Figure 1.15.
There are few craters seen, and the surface may be covered in fine dust, or regolith.
Figure 1.14 Phobos (26 km × 18 km), Figure 1.15 Deimos (16 km × 10 km),
a moon of Mars. This body is thought to a moon of Mars. Like Phobos, this is
be a captured asteroid. (NASA) thought to be a captured asteroid. (NASA)
10
Phobos and Deimos are tiny compared to the Moon, and to many other moons you
will encounter in the outer Solar System part of our tour. However they lead nicely
into the next objects on our tour, asteroids.
1.1.5 Asteroids
Between Mars and Jupiter is the asteroid belt, which is a ‘swarm’ of rocky and
metallic bodies. The asteroid belt extends all the way round the Sun and each
asteroid orbits the Sun. It is from this reservoir of bodies that Phobos and Deimos
may have originated. Figure 1.16 shows an image of the asteroid Gaspra. You can
see that impact craters pepper the surface, just like on Mercury and the Moon.
Even small bodies like Gaspra cannot avoid getting hit by other objects. You will
look at asteroids, and their orbits, in much more detail in Chapter 7.
Our grand tour now takes you from the terrestrial planets to the outer Solar System
and into the domain of the giant planets. You will explore the giant planets and their
many moons. In comparison to the terrestrial planets, some of these moons are
quite significant in size. Figure 1.17 shows the relative sizes of the major moons
of the giant planets (only bodies with a radius larger than about 200 km have been
included) compared to the terrestrial planets. You can see that moons such as Io,
Ganymede, Callisto and Titan are really like small planets, being comparable in size Figure 1.16 Gaspra (19 km × 11 km),
a main-belt asteroid, i.e. an asteroid
to Mercury and not too far from the size of Mars. The figure also indicates the
in the asteroid belt. This image was
timescale of the most recent surface-altering ‘activity’, such as volcanism, on each
taken by the Galileo spacecraft while
planet and moon shown.
en route to Jupiter. (NASA)
Terrestrial planets
Moon 3
Mercury 3
Mars 3
Venus2 Earth1
Jupiter satellites
Neptune satellites
Proteus4 Nereid 4
Triton1
Io1 Europa1
Ganymede 3 Callisto4 Pluto system
Figure 1.17 The terrestrial planets
Saturn satellites and the moons of the giant planets
Tethys 3 Rhea4
Mimas4 Charon 3
(with radii greater than about 200
Pluto1 km). Pluto and its largest moon,
Enceladus1 Dione3 Iapetus4 Charon, are also shown. The
definitely active today colour and number coding shows
Uranus satellites Titan1 1
Oberon4 2 active in past 50 million years how recently the surfaces have
Miranda 3 Umbriel4
3 active in past 3500 million years been affected by surface- altering
4 not active since 3500 million years ago ‘activity’ such as volcanism,
Ariel3 Titania3 2000 km fracturing or buckling.
11
1.1.6 Jupiter
Sometimes the term ‘gas giant’ Continuing our tour, Jupiter is the next stop (Figure 1.18). This planet is massively
is reserved just for Jupiter and different from what we have seen so far. Jupiter is the largest planet (see Figure 1.1).
Saturn, in which the proportion of Its radius is over ten times that of Earth and its mass about three hundred times that
gas is considerably greater than in of Earth. Its density therefore is about a quarter of that of Earth; the reason for this
Uranus and Neptune.
is that Jupiter consists mostly of hydrogen and helium. The other giant planets also
share this property, hence they are sometimes referred to as gas giants.
Figure 1.18 The planet Jupiter

(radius 69 910 km). The image was
taken by the Cassini spacecraft in
2000, while en route to Saturn. The
Great Red Spot is by far the largest
feature of the planet. The black dot
is the shadow of one of Jupiter’s
moons. (NASA)
Figure 1.19 Jupiter’s Great Red

Spot. The spot is about 20 000 km
across. (NASA)
The most striking features of Jupiter are the colourful bands and the swirling clouds.
What you are seeing in Figure 1.18 is the top of a dynamic gaseous atmosphere that
extends deep into the planet. The whole planet rotates in just 9.9 hours, although
the atmosphere at the poles and the equator rotates at slightly different rates, giving
rise to ‘winds’ of 150 m s−1 at the equator. The largest feature is the Great Red
Spot (clearly shown in Figure 1.18, with a close-up shown in Figure 1.19), which
is around 20 000 km across. It is a huge storm that has been observed for the last
few hundred years, continuously rotating in an anti-clockwise direction with wind
speeds of around 100 m s−1 at the edges. The atmosphere itself is 90% hydrogen
and 10% helium, with traces of methane, ammonia and water vapour. The cloud-top
temperature is around 120 K (−150 °C), although beneath there the temperature and
pressure must rise rapidly due to gravitational compression. At a depth of
10 000 km, the pressure is likely to be a million times that on Earth, with a
temperature of 6000 K (approximately the temperature of the surface of the Sun). At
Jupiter’s core, the pressure is likely to be an amazing 40 million times that on Earth,
and the temperature 16 000 K. You will discover much more about Jupiter (and the
other giant planets) in Chapter 6.
Jupiter has 69 known moons, most of which are well below 100 km in diameter.
However, there are four much larger ones. The innermost of these is Io (Figure 1.20).
Figure 1.20 Io (radius 1821 km), Its incredible surface (sometimes described as pizza-like in appearance) shows
a moon of Jupiter. This image was evidence of a vast amount of volcanic activity. An example of a volcanic region is
taken by the Galileo spacecraft. shown in Figure 1.21. Indeed, Io is the most volcanically active body in the Solar
(NASA) System. To be this active, Io must have an input of energy to heat the body. But how?
12
The answer lies in its orbit. Io is the innermost major moon of Jupiter, and as such
undergoes major tidal heating. You will return to this concept in Chapters 2, 3 and 7.
Io is mainly ‘rocky’ in composition, making it a terrestrial-like body. Temperatures in
the region of 1000 K and more are required to melt these rocky materials. This is in
stark contrast to the cold cloud tops of Jupiter!
The next moon we consider could hardly be more of a contrast to Io. Europa
(Figure 1.22) has an icy surface that is covered in cracks, with hardly any impact
craters, indicating a very young surface. Europa is a predominantly rocky body.
However, it has a layer of ice, about 100 km deep, on the surface. Europa would
also be expected to undergo significant tidal heating (to a lesser extent than Io as it is
farther from Jupiter). It is now clear that between Europa’s icy ‘crust’ and its rocky
interior there is a global ocean of melted ice (i.e. water). This leads to speculation
that, where there is liquid water, there might be primitive life! Figure 1.21 A close-up of the
surface of Io, a moon of Jupiter,
The presence of an icy crust on top of a sub-surface ocean is consistent with the taken by the Galileo spacecraft.
surface features on Europa, which has regions remarkably like broken ice packs This image shows a volcanic region
and fractured ice plains (see Figure 1.23). The surface of Europa also leads us about 250 km across. The bright
to a new concept – that of cryovolcanism. This is the name given to the effect red–orange feature at the left-hand
where cold slurries of ice and liquid erupt and flow across the surface like ‘cool side of the image indicates a recent
volcanoes’, just as hot molten rock erupts and flows as lava. It appears that flow of hot lava. (NASA)
cryovolcanism is commonplace amongst the icy moons of the giant planets, and the
surface of Europa is one such case. The relatively recent activity has wiped clean
the impact craters that would otherwise have been visible on Europa’s surface.
Figure 1.22 Europa (radius 1565 km), a Figure 1.23 A close-up of Europa, showing the fractured icy surface.
moon of Jupiter. (NASA) The region shown is approximately 35 km × 50 km. (NASA)
Jupiter has two even larger moons than Io and Europa. These are Ganymede and
Callisto (Figures 1.24 and 1.25). Ganymede is the largest moon in the Solar System
and is actually bigger than the planet Mercury. However, it contains much less mass
than Mercury because, like Callisto, it is a predominantly icy body. Both these large
moons are heavily cratered, showing that their surfaces are much more ancient than
those of Io and Europa.
13
Figure 1.25 Callisto (radius

2403 km), the outermost large
moon of Jupiter. The whole surface
is heavily cratered. (NASA)
Figure 1.24 Ganymede (radius 1.1.7 Saturn

2634 km), the largest moon of
Jupiter. The belts of paler terrain We leave the Jupiter system and move on to Saturn and its moons. Figure 1.26 shows
are younger than the darker terrain the planet, instantly recognizable because of the prominent system of rings around
and have been resurfaced by a it. Saturn itself is not quite as massive as Jupiter, being ‘only’ 95 Earth masses and
combination of cryovolcanism and about 15% smaller than Jupiter in radius. The clouds seen in Figure 1.26, with only
tectonic processes. (NASA) slightly enhanced colours, form bands across the disc that are parallel to its equator.
They are rather like the bands and clouds of Jupiter, although obvious storms and
swirling structures are not apparent. The planet rotates in just 10.7 hours. This gives
rise to the atmosphere bulging at the equator. You may have noticed in
Figure 1.26 that the planetary disc does not appear to be perfectly circular, but is
somewhat flattened. This is a real effect and not just a distortion in the image. Winds
on the equator reach speeds of around 500 m s−1, and storms and even ‘spots’ can
evolve (although not to the extent seen on Jupiter).
The rings of Saturn are remarkable, and beautiful. They are not solid, but are made of
icy particles and boulders, the majority of which are between about a centimetre and
Figure 1.26 The planet Saturn

(radius 58 230 km). This Voyager
image has had the colours enhanced
slightly to make the banding in the
clouds more obvious. The apparent
break in the rings just to the right of
the planetary disc is simply where
the rings are in shadow.
(Dr Bradford A. Smith, National
Space Science Data Center)
14
a few metres in size. These particles most probably originate from the catastrophic
break-up of a moon due to impact or tidal disruption. The ring particles all orbit the
planet in the same plane (Saturn’s equatorial plane), creating an amazingly thin disc
– the inner rings are only about 100 m thick. The ring particles, being icy, are highly
reflective. This makes them easy to see in reflected sunlight. If you could gather up
all the particles in the entire ring system, and put them together into one object, this
object would be about 600 km in diameter. Figure 1.27 shows a close-up image of
the rings. Notice that there are distinct ‘gaps’ in the rings. These arise partly because
of the gravitational influence of Saturn’s moons ‘shepherding’ the ring particles. You
will consider the mechanism for this in Chapter 7. You may be surprised to learn that
the other giant planets also have ring systems, albeit not on the same scale as Saturn,
making them much harder to see.
Saturn has at least 62 moons. On this tour, we will consider the seven major moons
Figure 1.27 The rings of Saturn
(those with radii greater than about 200 km). Figure 1.28 shows the innermost major
imaged by the Cassini orbiter in
moon, Mimas. Although the image is not particularly sharp, you can see that the icy
2009. (NASA/JPL/SSI)
surface appears heavily cratered and that one relatively massive crater is a quarter
of the diameter of the entire body. This crater, 130 km in diameter, will have been
produced by the impact of a body about 10 km across. If it had been slightly larger it
would have broken Mimas apart. Titan is the sixth major moon of
Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, is also one of the largest moons in the Solar System, Saturn. It lies between the orbits of
being a little under half the size of Earth. It has a thick, predominantly nitrogen Rhea and Iapetus.
atmosphere, a description that fits Earth both today and in the distant past. However,
the second most abundant gas in Titan’s atmosphere is methane, with the remainder Figure 1.29 Titan (radius 2575 km),
(<1%) being made up of more complex hydrocarbons that make the atmosphere a moon of Saturn as seen by Cassini.
opaque at most wavelengths (Figure 1.29 left). Little was known about the surface Left: True colour image, showing
blue haze layer above orange smoggy
until 2005 when NASA’s Saturn orbiter Cassini began to study it using radar and
atmosphere. Right: Mosaic
parachuted a European Space Agency (ESA) probe named Huygens down to the
of radar images (colour added) near
ground. One of the most important discoveries was that near the poles Titan’s icy
the North Pole, revealing methane
surface has lakes and seas of liquid hydrocarbons, thought to be mostly methane
lakes and seas, fed by rivers.
(Figure 1.29 right). Titan’s surface temperature is about 94 K (−179 ºC) and the Superimposed lines are latitude and
atmospheric pressure at ground-level is about 1.5 times that on Earth. Methane longitude at 10 degree intervals.
(NASA/JPL/USGS/SSI)
Figure 1.28 Enhanced colour view

of Mimas (radius 199 km), a moon
of Saturn. The large crater Herschel,
130 km in diameter, is evidence of an
impact that came close to breaking
Mimas apart. (NASA/JPL/SSI/LPI)
15
and ethane can condense in the atmosphere and fall to the ground as rain. River
channels have been imaged in many parts of the globe, but were dry except possibly
for some near the poles during the Cassini study. Huygens landed about 10 degrees
south of the equator, on a surface strewn with pebbles made of water-ice, which had
presumably been eroded and transported by flood of liquid methane. Elsewhere on
Titan there are vast fields of wind-blown dunes (whose ‘sand’ is made of fragments
of ice crystals) and a few unproven candidates for cryovolcanoes (where ice rather
than silicate magma is erupted).
Saturn’s other truly remarkable moon is Enceladus. This is a small icy body whose
icy surface has been over-printed by a myriad of cracks (Figure 1.30) that have
destroyed many of the more ancient impact craters. Some areas may have been
flooded by cryovolcanic lavas, but indisputable evidence of explosive cryovolcanism
is provided by jets of water-ice crystals mixed with methane, carbon dioxide, carbon
monoxide and various organic molecules that are vented to space (Figure 1.31).
Their source is from several of the youngest surface cracks near the south pole,
where temperatures of 170 K (about 100 K higher than the local average) have been
recorded. Tidal heating is the likely cause of all these various characteristics, and it is
likely that there is a global ocean of liquid water, which reaches to within about 5 km
of the surface near the south pole.
Figure 1.30 Cassini view of the
southern hemisphere of Enceladus
(radius 249 km), a moon of Saturn.
The icy surface is cut by multiple
generations of fractures that have
obliterated all but the most recent
craters. Plumes of ice crystals
(invisible in this view) are jetted
to space from the young parallel
ridges and grooves near the lower
right. (NASA/JPL/SSI)
Figure 1.31 Thin crescent view
of Enceladus, revealing jets of ice
crystals vented to space.
(NASA/JPL/SSI)
Figure 1.32 Dione (radius

560 km), a moon of Saturn. This
Cassini image shows a cratered
surface cut by fractures.
(NASA/JPL/SSI)
16
Figure 1.34 Iapetus (radius 718 km), a moon

of Saturn. This Cassini image shows the edge of
dark leading hemisphere on the right.
(NASA/JPL/SSI)
Figure 1.33 Rhea (radius 764 km),

a heavily cratered moon of Saturn.
(NASA/JPL/SSI)
Saturn’s other large satellites have rugged icy surfaces, with prominent impact
craters. Several show occasional evidence for ancient episodes of cryovolcanic
flooding, and some such as Dione are additionally notable for long fracture systems
(Figure 1.32).
The moons Rhea and Iapetus are a similar size, but are quite different in appearance
(Figures 1.33 and 1.34). Rhea shows quite a uniformly cratered surface indicating The extent of the contrast in
reflectivity among Saturn’s moons
that this moon has been relatively inactive, with many small craters being
is not fully apparent in the figures
maintained. However, Iapetus has one hemisphere that is very bright and highly in this book, each of which has
reflective (consistent with the icy surfaces you have seen in other moons), and one been processed to show the target
hemisphere that is very dark, as if covered by an obscuring ‘sooty’ deposit. to best advantage.
1.1.8 Uranus
Our tour now leaves the Saturnian system and continues outwards towards the next
giant planet, Uranus. Uranus and Neptune are smaller than Jupiter and Saturn. Uranus
has a mass of almost fifteen times that of Earth and is about four times larger in size
than Earth. The planet was discovered by Sir William Herschel in 1781. Images tend
to show a rather featureless blue–green planet (Figure 1.35). One oddity of Uranus
is that its spin axis is tilted over, 98 degrees from the ‘vertical’. This is most likely
due to a huge impact event early in the planet’s history that literally knocked Uranus
over on its side. It means that one pole of the planet can point towards the Sun for
long periods of time. The resulting polar heating drives the atmospheric flow on
the planet, with winds flowing from the (south) pole to the equatorial regions. The
prominent banding and storms seen on Jupiter and Saturn are not seen on Uranus,
although some subtle structure is exposed in some false-colour images.
Figure 1.35 The planet Uranus
The rings of Uranus (discovered in 1977) are the next most obvious after those of (radius 25 360 km). This image is
Saturn. Figure 1.36 shows images obtained using an ‘adaptive optics’ technique (a from Voyager 2, taken in 1986. The
way of correcting for image blurring) on the Keck telescope. The particles in the planet has a rather featureless blue–
rings of Uranus are extremely dark (unlike Saturn’s rings). There is evidence of small green atmosphere. (NASA)
dust particles and metre-sized boulders. As in the Saturnian system, the rings are
separated by gaps, and will be gravitationally influenced by moons.
17
Uranus, like Saturn, has a multitude of moons (at least 27 and probably more),
although only five are considered major bodies (radii greater than 200 km). The first
of these to consider is Miranda (Figure 1.37). This body has an extremely rugged and
exotic terrain. There are areas that are relatively craterless, and are distinctly different
from the rest of the body. It is likely that these regions have been formed by some
cryovolcanism processes. The other regions on the moon have more impact craters
and therefore a somewhat older surface. The craters (except for a few sharply defined
relatively recent craters) appear to be blanketed with dust or ‘snow’, presumably as a
result of some explosive cryovolcanic eruptions.
Figure 1.36 The planet Uranus, Ariel and Umbriel (Figures 1.38 and 1.39) are each more than double the size of
showing its rings, as seen in Miranda. Ariel shows impressive trough-like fractures that break up the impact-
the near infrared by the Keck scarred surface. Many of the troughs have been subsequently filled by icy lavas,
Telescope on 11 and 12 July 2004. although it is unlikely that Ariel has suffered any major cryovolcanism in the recent
(Lawrence. Sromovsky, University past. The surface of Umbriel appears quite different, being much darker than Ariel
of Wisconsin-Madison/W.W. Keck and the surface appears to be heavily cratered. The most notable feature is the bright
Observatory) structure at the top of the image. This is an impact crater that is about 100 km in
diameter. It is lighter in colour because the impact has penetrated, and excavated
material from, the subsurface layers, which appear to be of a somewhat different
composition from the surface material.
The moons Titania and Oberon (Figures 1.40 and 1.41) are larger than Ariel and
Umbriel. Titania is similar in appearance to Ariel, although it is more heavily
cratered. There are fault regions on the surface that are 1500 km long and 2–5 km
high. There are no signs of lava flooding in the faults although Titania has certainly
had some cryovolcanic activity in the past. Oberon is more like Umbriel (although
not quite as dark). Bright patches are seen on the surface that are most likely to be
regions of ejecta from relatively recent impact craters (similar to the one obvious
bright crater on Umbriel).
Figure 1.37 Miranda (radius

236 km), a moon of Uranus. This
Voyager image shows the cratered
surface covered with a layer of
dust or ‘snow’ and distinct regions
(left- and right- hand sides of the
image) related to some icy volcanic
activity. (Dr Bradford A. Smith,
National Space Science Data
Center)
Figure 1.38 Ariel (radius 579 km), Figure 1.39 Umbriel (radius
a moon of Uranus. This Voyager 585 km), a moon of Uranus.
image shows large trough-like Although this Voyager image is of
fractures in the surface of the body, quite low resolution, the heavily
some of which have been flooded cratered surface is clearly visible.
by smooth cryovolcanic lava. The bright patch (top) is an impact
(Dr Bradford A. Smith, National crater that is 100 km in diameter.
Space Science Data Center) (NASA)
18
Figure 1.40 Titania (radius 789 km), Figure 1.41 Oberon (radius 761 km), a moon
a moon of Uranus. This satellite has of Uranus. This Voyager image shows an 11 km
an appearance quite similar to Ariel. high mountain range, silhouetted against space,
(NASA) in the lower-left region. (NASA)
1.1.9 Neptune
Figure 1.42 The planet Neptune

(radius 24 620 km). This
Voyager 2 image, showing white
and blue banding and a ‘Great
Dark Spot’, was obtained in 1986.
(NASA)
19
Our tour now arrives at the last of the giant planets, Neptune (Figure 1.42).
Neptune has a mass of about seventeen times that of the Earth and is only slightly
smaller than Uranus (being about four times larger than Earth). The existence of
Neptune was suspected for some time, after detailed observations of the motion of
Uranus suggested that there must be another large planet in the outer Solar System
gravitationally influencing the orbit of Uranus. Neptune was discovered in 1846 by
astronomers Johann Galle and Heinrich D’Arrest. Its atmosphere has a glorious
‘electric blue’ colour with some banding and pale clouds being evident. When
Voyager 2 flew past in 1989 Neptune had its own version of Jupiter’s Great Red
Spot. Neptune’s ‘Great Dark Spot’ was an oval-shaped storm system, although
it was much less long-lived than Jupiter’s spot (Hubble Space Telescope images
revealed that the Great Dark Spot had already dispersed by 1994).
Figure 1.43 Proteus (radius
209 km), a moon of Neptune. This Neptune has at least 14 moons, although only three are of any great size. Proteus,
image shows a heavily cratered shown in Figure 1.43, is a non-spherical body, and although the image is of quite low
surface with one huge (relative to
the size of the body) impact crater.
(NASA)
Figure 1.44 Triton (radius

1353 km), Neptune’s only large
moon. (US Geological Survey)
20
resolution, the surface appears to be heavily cratered. In addition, and reminiscent of

Saturn’s moon Mimas, Proteus has one very large impact crater. As with Mimas, the
impact must have come close to breaking up the entire body.
Triton (Figure 1.44) is Neptune’s only large moon. The surface is an icy mixture of
nitrogen, carbon monoxide, methane and carbon dioxide. It has a temperature of just
40 K (−233 °C). One of the unusual things about Triton is that it orbits Neptune in the
opposite direction to the planet’s rotation. This is evidence that Triton was captured
rather than forming near Neptune from ‘leftover’ material. This capture process will
probably have involved violent impacts with other existing moons, and will have
left Triton in an orbit that gave rise to significant tidal heating. This all means that
the surface of Triton has undoubtedly had a complex geological history, and that the
surface is probably cryovolcanically modified from its original appearance.
Figure 1.45 Nereid (radius
The terrain on Triton (Figure 1.44) appears divided. The area on the left is Triton’s 170 km), a moon of Neptune.
southern polar cap. Some dark streaks are apparent in this region. These are due This Voyager 2 image is of very
to cryogenic geyser-like eruptions that send plumes of dust about 10 km above the low resolution, but hints at a
surface, and then leave dark stains across the surface. These geyser plumes were significantly non-spherical body.
actually seen by Voyager 2, showing that activity is ongoing. This sort of activity This irregular shape, combined
gives rise to a very tenuous nitrogen atmosphere. The right-hand part of the image with the fact that its orbit around
(Figure 1.44) shows a different texture, which has been likened to the skin of a Neptune is very elliptical, suggests
cantaloupe melon. Cryovolcanic lavas have probably flooded much of this region. that Nereid is probably a collisional
fragment. (NASA)
The third Neptunian moon we will consider is Nereid (Figure 1.45). It is somewhat
smaller than other moons that our tour has included but is noteworthy as its orbit
around Neptune traces out a path that is a very elongated ellipse. This suggests that
Nereid might be a collisional fragment, thrown onto an unusual orbit. Whether it is
related to the capture of Triton is unclear, but it does hint at the violent history that
the moons of Neptune had to endure.
1.1.10 Pluto and the Kuiper Belt The Kuiper Belt is sometimes also
referred to as the ‘Edgeworth–
Our grand tour now moves on to a region near Neptune and beyond known as the
Kuiper Belt’. Gerard Kuiper
Kuiper Belt. Pluto was discovered there in 1930 after a photographic search by predicted its existence in 1951, but
astronomer Clyde Tombaugh. It was the only object known there until a flood of Kenneth Edgeworth had suggested
discoveries began in the 1990s, and it was regarded as a ninth planet until officially something similar in 1943.
reclassified (by the International Astronomical Union) in 2006 as a dwarf planet
along with those other Kuiper Belt objects big enough for their own gravity to pull
them into near-spherical shape.
Figure 1.46 Pluto (radius 1187 km) on the right and Charon
(radius 608 km) on the left as imaged (separately) by the New
Horizons probe as it flew past on 14 July 2015.
(NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI)
21
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A long pause seemed to intensify the sinister significance of their
previous remarks.
“Look here,” cried Catherine, breaking in raucously upon the
silence, “why don’t you tell me straight out I can’t play?”
After she had said it she regretted her hastiness. She perceived it
was a foolish thing to say. She blushed fiercely.
Verreker raised his eyebrows ever so slightly. Razounov beamed
beatifically.
“My dear lady,” he began caressingly, “I will be perfectly fhrank
with you. Eet is best to be fhrank, is eet not? ... You will neffer be a
first-class player. Perrhaps a second, ohr a third, pairhaps you may
eahrn plenhty of money at eet, but you will never be a—you know
what I mean—a ghreat—a suphreme pianiste.” (He meant obviously:
“You will never be what I am.”) ... “Why? ... Ah, I cannot tell. Why is
zhe ghreat gift given to sohm and not to othairs? ... Eet is that you
haf not it in you, that zohmsing, that spark that is cault ghenius ...
you understand?”
Catherine understood. But she could not disguise her humiliation,
her mortification, her disappointment.
“Do you agree with me, Verreker?” asked Razounov, as if
desiring confirmation of his verdict.
Verreker said curtly: “I don’t profess to prophesy these things.
Still, in this case, I believe you’re right.”
That was worse! There was something contemptuous in those
words, “in this case.” Catherine hated him.
“Still,” purred Razounov, “you would improve with a course of
instruction. You will make a good player if you are careful. I cannot
give you lessons myself, as I am engaged all my time, but I will
supervise. And Mr. Verreker will gif you a lesson once a week. Efery
month I will supervise. Is zhat plain?”
Catherine could not answer. She was struggling with tears. The
second time that day that tears had troubled her. Yet what a different
variety of tears! These were tears of rage and disappointment, of
blinding disillusionment, of sullen mortification. She dare not trust
herself to reply. If she had attempted a word she would have been
caught in a maelstrom of burning indignation.
“I will drop you a card when I can give you a first lesson,” said
Verreker, quietly.... “Well ... er ... thank you for coming ...”
Catherine took the hint and put on her hat. She did not say a
word as she left the room. But her eyes were furiously blazing: there
was in them that danger glint of which Verreker, if he had seen it,
would have done well to beware.
Out in the Ridgeway, Catherine decided one thing. She would
never take lessons off Verreker; she would never go near that house
again....
§2
The fierceness of her indignation brought Catherine face to face
with one other thing that she had never hitherto realized. And that
was the absurd grandiloquence of her ambition. There was nothing
that Razounov has said of which she could legitimately complain. He
had even complimented her to the extent of saying that she would
make a good player if she were careful, and that she might earn
plenty of money as a pianist. Surely that was encouraging! ... No, it
was not. For he had also told her that she was not a genius, and
would never be supreme in her art. Well, what of that? Had she ever
had the conceited effrontery to think she was a genius? Catherine
decided no, not exactly that, but ... The fact was, Catherine, without
knowing it, had inclined to give herself the benefit of the doubt. At
any rate, she had always been serenely confident of the doubt. Quite
unconsciously she had developed an opinion of herself to which
there were no adequate frontiers. She was a supreme egoist, and
her life had come to be worth living only on false understandings.
Every book she read, every speech or sermon she listened to,
occasioned in her the feeling: “How does that fit in with me?” At a
school prize-giving once the speaker—a local vicar—had given an
address to the scholars in which he mentioned the three things
which a human being might legitimately desire—fine physique,
genius, and strength of character. When he came to the
consideration of the second, he said: “Of course, we’re none of us
geniuses, but——” Catherine (she was only fourteen then) had been
rather contemptuous of this modesty, “Of course, I suppose he has
to say that, and yet how does he know whether ...” she had thought.
To her his sweeping declaration savoured of the rash. It had been
the same on many occasions. Somewhere at the back of Catherine’s
mind had always been the supposition, so patent as to be almost
axiomatic, that she was different from other people. That difference
was, on the whole, the difference of superiority. She had done things
that no other girl of her age and acquaintance had done. She had left
home with five and sevenpence half-penny, obtained lodgings on her
own, and kept herself by work. She had played at concerts (one
concert to be precise). A young man who, whatever his drawbacks,
was undeniably clever, had fallen desperately in love with her. Her
own father, pining of remorse, had cut his throat to prove to her his
undying affection. And the invitation to meet Razounov had at first
seemed merely a further rung on the ladder of fame. There was no
doubt about it: she was marvellous, extraordinary, a constant
surprise both to herself and to other people. Her very faults became
demi-virtues. Passionate she felt herself to be. After reading Tess of
the d’Urbervilles her instinctive thought had been: “Am I like Tess?”
And she had frequently asked herself the question: “Am I a genius?”
and had shirked a plain answer. The crudity of the question, the
awful conceit of replying in the affirmative, drove her to subterfuge.
“Not exactly that, perhaps,” she told herself. “At least, how can I tell?
I shall have to wait and see. I can’t give a direct answer.” Yet if she
had been forced to give a direct answer, there is no doubt what it
would have been.
And now, disillusioned, humiliated, self-scornful, the preposterous
nature of her ambitions forced itself upon her. For the space of half
an hour she was perfectly frank with herself. She did not spare that
pitiable self-conceit of hers. She was ruthless. It was as if she
thought that if she could wound that self-conceit so that it died of its
injuries, so much the better. She employed first of all the cold steel of
logic. The facts were these. She had been told frankly that she was
not a genius. She was hurt and humiliated. Ergo, she must have
been cherishing the notion that she was a genius. Absurd creature!
Preposterous egoist! Conceited upstart! And all because she had
played at a third-rate concert!
She wound up with a bitter piece of advice. You aren’t a genius,
she insisted, you’re just an ordinary girl with as much
extraordinariness in her as falls to the lot of most people. And the
sooner you finish with your absurd dreams and ambitions and wake
up to the facts the better.
It was good advice. She tried conscientiously to take it. She did
take it—for about five and twenty minutes.
But those five and twenty minutes were among the most difficult
and miserable she had ever spent.
She flung herself down on the bed in the attic at No. 14, Gifford
Road, and was so wretched that she could not cry. Besides, she was
convinced that there was nothing she had a right to cry about. Yet it
was the utter horror, the unbelievable loneliness of existence that
appalled her. She was quite alone in her struggle with the world,
parentless, almost friendless. She knew now why it was that she had
not mourned the loss of her parents, why it was that her solitary
struggle had been up to then so exhilarating, so pleasant. It was that
absurd faith in herself, that fearful egoism, that terrible conceit, that
had enabled her to fight on alone. And now her succour, her comfort,
her support had suddenly cracked and given way, and she was left
clinging to wreckage. The future was simply blank, a dull, drab
hereafter of self-effacement. Life was not worth living. For the first
time in all her life she felt alone—alone with the wreckage of dead
dreams and shattered hopes....
“O God!” she cried, “if I’m only ordinary after all! ...”
Horror upon horror! To think of Gifford Road, of the Victoria
Theatre, without the conviction that these were but a means to
something infinitely higher! Her ultimate triumph provided the only
terms on which life amongst these things was worth living! To think of
herself as a mere unit in the society that lived in Kitchener Road,
Bockley, in Gifford Road, Upton Rising! To deny herself the privilege
of thinking what a good joke it was that she should have been born
in Kitchener Road! To realize suddenly that it was no joke at all, but
an ordinary, not inappropriate circumstance in which she had no right
to discover any irony at all. To regard herself as she knew Mrs.
Carbass regarded her, viz. as “the little girl wot plys the pienner at
the theayter.”
That was where her ruthless self-mutilation overreached itself.
She knew she was not as Mrs. Carbass regarded her. Even if she
were ordinary, she was not as ordinary as that. With feverish joy she
clutched at this undeniable admission.... Slowly her spirits rose out of
utter dejection. Cautiously at first, then with extravagant
recklessness, she flung together the wreckage that had fallen. At the
end of five minutes a phantom thought flashed by her—a swift,
entrancing, wayward, delicious, undisciplined, seductive idea. It was
like a breath of heaven upon her darkened soul. It whispered:
“Supposing Razounov is wrong? ... After all, why the dickens should
he be right? ...”
§3
One effect the sudden (but only temporary) shattering of her
ambitions had upon her. It redoubled afterwards her efforts to
achieve them. She increased the number of hours devoted to
practice. She even made some attempt to get through an elementary
book on harmony and counterpoint.
And strangely enough, of all the composers whose works she
attempted none nerved her to such a fever of determination as
Chopin. For she had been told she oughtn’t to play Chopin....
On the Wednesday following a card reached her, addressed to
the Victoria Theatre. It simply said:
Come at two o’clock on Saturday.
r. verreker.
The writing was sharply angular, rivalling the phrasing in
curtness. Nevertheless, Catherine had expected curtness. Of course
she was not going to go. She had long ago decided that. As if to
symbolize her contempt, she tore up the card and threw it into the
gutter as she left the theatre. After all, what was the use of keeping
it, since she was not going to go?
All through the remainder of the week she kept fortifying her
determination not to go. And yet dimly, in some strange intuitive
fashion, at the back of her mind she felt that it was quite possible she
would go. I won’t go, she told herself one moment. Bet you you do
go, after all.... She was surprised, almost fascinated by this charming
waywardness of hers. Anyway, she decided, it’s quite a simple
matter to settle: I won’t go. I wonder, she said to herself, smiling.
As a matter of fact she did not go. But it was from an absurdly
accidental reason. She was strolling along the Ridgeway soon after
lunch on Saturday when she suddenly reflected that she did not
know what time he wished to see her. Was it two o’clock or three?
She failed to remember, and of course the postcard had been thrown
away. At two o’clock she felt she would not run the risk of being an
hour too early. Something in her suggested half-past two as a
compromise; but when the half-hour chimed she decided that since
that would be wrong in any case she had better wait till three. And at
three she felt sure that his card had said two, so she went back to
Gifford Road. In a way she was pleased with herself. She had kept
her word. She had not gone. The narrowness of her victory seemed
to emphasize its magnitude.
At the theatre that evening an introductory film was shown. It
dealt with the Napoleonic invasion of Russia. Something in
Catherine impelled her to play “Poland is Lost.” ...
§4
On Monday a letter arrived at the theatre for her. The angular
script on the envelope told her who had written it. It ran:
I presume you forgot on Saturday. If so, come on Wednesday at
seven p.m.
r. verreker.
Catherine was conscious that the struggle was not yet over. On
the contrary, it was beginning again. The issue was not, Did she
want to go or not? It was, Should she keep the vow she had made to
herself? She made a great fuss over weighing both sides of this
crucial problem, yet she knew it was a foregone conclusion what the
result would be. Then she decided she was giving the matter a place
out of all proportion to its importance. After all, it was of little
consequence whether she went or not. She would wait till
Wednesday, and do just what she felt like at the time.
Then she pondered over the precise significance of his phrase “if
so.” Did he suspect that her absence on Saturday was not due to
forgetfulness?
§5
At the inquest on Mr. Weston the usual verdict was brought in:
“Suicide during temporary insanity.”
Catherine found herself in possession of a houseful of cheap
furniture and a sum of twenty odd pounds in the Post Office Savings
Bank. She retained a small quantity of clothing and a few kitchen
utensils; the rest of the stuff at 24, Kitchener Road was sold by
auction. It fetched fifty-five pounds when all expenses had been
deducted. She had a horror of hoarding vast quantities of lumber in
the form of keepsakes and mementoes, so she destroyed everything
that had no intrinsic value except the diaries Those she transported
to Gifford Road and kept.
After everything had been settled she found herself the richer by
a sum of sixty-eight pounds odd. She kept the eight odd and put the
sixty in a bank. It struck her as rather ironical that she should benefit
by her father’s death. Yet somebody had to have the money, so it
might as well be she. With the eight pounds she bought herself some
pretty dresses. For the first time in her life she could afford to put the
question, “Will it look nice?” before “Will it wear well?” She
experienced the keen joy of dressing from the artistic rather than
from the strictly utilitarian point of view. She did not believe in
“mourning”: her first dresses were reddish brown to match her hair,
and white to throw her hair into vivid contrast. Always it was her hair
that had to be considered....
When you saw her dressed up you would certainly not call her
pretty, but you might confess to a sort of attractiveness....
CHAPTER X
ACCELERANDO
§1
SHE waited fully ten minutes in the drawing-room at “Claremont.”
“Mr. Verreker will be here directly,” the maid had said, and Catherine
had time to look about her. It was a lovely May evening: the windows
were wide open at the bottom, and from the garden came the rich
cloying scent of wallflowers. Somebody was working a lawn-mower.
He came in two minutes after the sound of the lawn-mower had
ceased. There were scraps of grass about the fringes of his trousers.
“Sorry to keep you waiting,” he announced briskly.
“Don’t mention it,” she murmured, with perhaps a trace of
sarcasm.
“I oughtn’t to, really, ought I?” he then said, “since you kept me
waiting an hour last Saturday.”
She said nothing, but the atmosphere was definitely hostile.
He asked her what pieces she played. She told him. He took a
sheet of paper, and scribbled them down as she recited them. He
made no comment till she had said, “and a few others.”
“Ambitious!” he muttered, pondering over the list.
“Oh yes, I am, very.” She thought she would seize this
opportunity of letting him know.
“Well, play the Debussy,” he said.
She did so.
“H’m!” he said, when she had finished.
§2
After he had told her her faults (which took some time) and given
her something definite to practise, the hour was nearly up, and he
gave sundry indications that the lesson was finished.
“By the way,” he said, as she was on the way to the door, “did
you forget last Saturday?”
She might easily have said yes. Or she might have told the strict
truth, viz. that she had forgotten the hour he had fixed. But she did
neither.
“No,” she said, “I just didn’t come.”
He looked at her very much as Miss Forsdyke had looked at her
when she had been impudent.
“Oh!” he replied, with a gesture that might have meant anything.
“Well, the next time you intend to ’cut’ one of my lessons, drop me a
card beforehand, then I shan’t be kept waiting for you. My time’s
valuable.”
Curt!
And as she passed the table in the hall he suddenly gathered up
a heap of some dozen letters, and said: “By the way, you might
shove these in the pillar-box down the road as you go by.”
Before she realized the situation the letters were in her hands.
“Thanks!” he replied, opening the front door. “Good evening!”
If she had had the presence of mind she would have flung them
all back at him. “I’m not your office-boy,” she might have said.
But presence of mind did not come to her till she was half-way
down the Ridgeway.
She occupied her time as far as the pillar-box by reading the
addresses on all the envelopes....
§3
Slowly the perspectives of her life were changing. The old
childish ideas and prejudices ceased to apply. In the matter of
George Trant, for instance....
It is curious, but the more she realized that she was not in love
with him, the more she realized also his essential good nature. At
one time he had been a villain of undepictable blackness, and now,
in the reaction from this melodramatic ideal, he appeared perhaps
more favourably than he deserved. At any rate, he was to all intents
a perfectly honest, well-intentioned young fellow, slightly clever and
of prepossessing manner. Whether he had changed, or whether she
herself had changed, Catherine could not with certainty decide. But
their attitude was fundamentally different from what it had been when
Catherine had met him at Bockley Station after her domestic squall.
Then he had appeared to her malignant, cruel, desirous of
entrapping all innocent girls that came his way. He had been the real
villain of the piece. Now it seemed incredible that she could ever
have taken him so seriously. For he was a very ordinary young man.
The glamour had fallen away from him—that glamour which might
have made him a hero, but which, by irony of circumstances, had
made him a villain instead. Catherine perceived that it was only her
crude idealism that had invested him with Satanic characteristics.
She had not a shred of evidence to convict him of ill-treatment of her.
The famous note which he had sent her from Manchester, and which
she had read on the top of a crowded tram-car, had unfortunately
been sacrificed to the dramatic requirements of the situation, but
Catherine, only half remembering its contents, had a feeling that if
she were to read them in the perspective of several years they would
seem wholly inadequate to justify the profound significance she had
given them.
It was apparent now to her that George was hopeless as a villain.
He said cynical things occasionally, but that was only an affectation.
In reality he was a typical example of the rather superior season-
ticket holder. His utmost criminality would not transcend the riding of
a bicycle without a rear light....
Of course his position was immensely complicated by the fact
that he had fallen in love with her....
§4
One day (they had met upon the platform at Upton Rising
Station) she tackled him directly.
“Look here,” she said, “you remember that letter you wrote me
from Manchester? You enclosed it in Helen’s letter. Do you
remember it?”
“Yes,” he said.
“What did you mean by it?”
He seemed puzzled.
“Well, it’s a long time ago, and I scarcely remember what it was
like.... I dare say it was rather fatuously clever: I used to think myself
a dab hand at letter-writing in those days.”
That was as reasonable an explanation as she could have
expected. She switched on to another line of questioning.
“You remember that time we were on the balcony at the Forest
Hotel—just before the others came up?”
“Yes.”
“You—I believe—you were trying to apologize to me—for
something. Now, what was it?”
He seemed embarrassed as well as puzzled.
“Well,” he began hesitatingly, “of course I may have been wrong
—probably I was—but I always understood—I mean I had gathered
that—that there had been a sort of—er, misunderstanding between
us.”
“Why should you apologize for that?”
“Well, if there had been one it might have been my own fault. So I
thought I’d apologize——”
“From whom did you gather there had been a
misunderstanding?”
“I believe it was Helen who——”
“Oh, I see.”
He emboldened himself to start a cross-examination of her.
“May I ask if there ever was a misunderstanding?” he said.
Catherine lied, splendidly, regally, with magnificent disdain. It was
clearly an opportunity to demonstrate (to herself chiefly) how
completely the tables had been turned.
“I’m sure I don’t know what the misunderstanding you’ve been
talking about is or was supposed to be. But so far as I am aware
there never was such a thing.”
He tried to grasp all the significations of this. Then he resumed
the enquiry.
“Why have you been asking me about these things?”
“Merely curiosity,” she replied, with an undercurrent of implication
which said: “Do you suppose for one moment that my reasons could
have been any other than those of mere curiosity?”
Yet he wilfully ignored the implication. All day in the stuffy
accountant’s office in Leadenhall Street he kept pausing in his work
and treating himself to the riotous luxury of the thought: “I don’t
believe it was curiosity. Why should she have asked about that
letter? And besides, Helen sticks to it she was in love with me in
those days! After all, it’s extremely unlikely it was only curiosity.... Of
course, she had to say it was. She couldn’t easily have said anything
else. At least ...”
So that the position was really complicated instead of being
cleared up. And Catherine’s lie was perhaps excusable. That people
should fall in love with her was natural enough, but that she should
display a similar weakness was extremely undignified, to say the
least. And besides, she was not even sure she had been in love with
George Trant. Was not there in her an instinct which had said (in
effect, if not in so many words): “This is mere sentimental flapdoodle.
Wallow as much as you like in its painful ecstasy, but don’t imagine
for a moment that it’s the real stuff ...?”
§5
George Trant was a member of the Upton Arts Club.
In the room over Burlington’s Music Emporium the Upton Arts
Club met on Sunday evenings at 8.30.
One Sunday during the discussion following a paper on
“Cézanne and the Modernists,” George drawled sleepily from his
arm-chair by the fire:
“Of course, as a staunch Conservative in politics, I——” A
startled hush fell upon the assembly. “Disraelian, I need hardly say,”
he added, and the amazement was more profound....
§6
George Trant was also a member of the Upton Rising
Conservative and Unionist Association.
The Upton Rising Conservative and Unionist Association existed
from 8 a.m. till 12 midnight every day for the purpose of playing
billiards, drinking whisky, and reading sporting newspapers.
Occasionally its members would talk politics. It was on one of these
comparatively rare occasions (the topic was Mr. Lloyd George’s
Land Tax) that George announced quietly from behind his evening
paper:
“Of course, as a convinced Socialist in the matter of landed
property, I——” The elderly white-whiskered gentlemen were thrilled.
“Not Marxian, I need scarcely add,” resumed George placidly, and
the conviction grew that George Trant was a very strange young
man.
The Disraelian Conservative and un-Marxian Socialist acquired
the reputation of being somewhat bewilderingly clever.... The
Bockley Advertiser reported in full his secondings of votes of thanks.
The Arts Club were proud to hear his exposition of “Ibsen: the Man
and the Prophet.” It was in the days when to read Ibsen was to be
modern. And the Conservative Club were never more conscious of
their brazen Philistinism than when he talked to them easily of
Scriabin and Ravel and César Franck.
“And of course one must not forget the Spanish School. There is
a great tendency to ignore the Spanish School nowadays. But it’s
wholly unfair. Such men as ... for instance.”
Even in politics he could be mystifyingly erudite. A reference to
Jeremy Bentham or Ricardo or Huskisson would floor them
absolutely...
“Queer chap,” was their verdict. “Must read a lot, I suppose....”
And, content with that explanation, they resumed their billiards or
their whisky or their Pink ’Un....
§7
It happened that upon a certain bright morning in August a smart
motor-cycle with side-car attachment went teuf-teufing along the high
road in the direction of the Forest. The side-car was occupied by a
girl with violently red hair, and the whole installation was manœuvred
by an individual in mackintosh overalls, who was (although you might
never have guessed it by looking at him) a Disraelian Conservative
and an un-Marxian Socialist....
Catherine, incidentally, was riding in a side-car for the first time in
her life.
George, incidentally, was driving a motor-cycle, if not for the first
time, at any rate for the third or fourth time in his life. The machine
was brand-new. One or two lessons on a friend’s motor-bike (to
which there was no side-car) had convinced George that he was
capable of taking a young lady for a hundred miles’ spin in the
country without undue risks. Accordingly, he had purchased a
machine out of the accumulated savings of several years, and had
written to Catherine the following note:
dear cathie,
I have just bought a motor-bike and side-car. I shall run it round a
bit next Saturday, if fine, and should be pleased to take you if you
care to come.
And when he had met her (by arrangement) at the corner of the
Ridgeway, he had said, offhand:
“You see, there must be somebody in the side-car or else you
don’t give the thing a fair chance.”
And the implication was: “You are nothing but ballast, my dear
girl; a sack of potatoes would have done just as well, only you are
more easily procurable.”
Somehow the beautiful shining enamelled creature bristling with
taps and levers and handles made him talk with a cultivated
brusqueness. It was as if the machine occupied the first place in his
attentions and she came next. At the moment this may very likely
have been true. She seated herself snugly in the torpedo-shaped
car, and watched him manipulate levers and buttons. He looked very
strong and masculine in his overalls. For several minutes he tried in
vain to induce a liveliness in the engine. The policeman on point duty
at the corner (who knew Catherine) smiled; some street urchins
shouted facetious remarks. After five minutes of intense examination
he pounced upon an apparently vulnerable part of the mechanism
and performed a subtle and invisible operation. Then he pushed off,
and the engine woke into clamorous applause. They began to move.
The street urchins cheered ironically.
“I thought that would do it,” he shouted to her triumphantly above
the din, with the air of one who had performed a masterpiece of
mechanical surgery.
Yet to himself he blushed. For he had forgotten to admit the
petrol from the tank!
§8
When they reached Epping, George told himself: “It’s absurdly
easy to drive a motor-bike and side-car. Absolutely nothing in it. I’ll
put the pace on a bit between here and Stortford.” The thirteen miles
to Bishop’s Stortford were done in twenty-eight minutes. At Stortford
they had early lunch.
Afternoon saw them jostling in and out amongst the crowded
streets of Cambridge. They garaged the machine, and went to a café
for tea.
§9
He was full of a kind of boisterous arrogance.
“Stiff little bit from Stortford.... But, of course, we took it awfully
slow.... Road’s not so bad.... Ever been on the road from
Aberystwyth to Dolgelly?”
Catherine had not. (Nor had George for that matter.)
“Awful bit of road, that....” (It occurred to him as being a strip of
road that might conceivably be awful.)
She could see that he was showing off to her. He was proud of
his machine, proud of the white dust on his shoes, of his sun-tanned
face, of his goggles, his gauntlet gloves, and his earflaps. He was
superbly proud of having piloted himself and her from the corner of
Bockley High Street and the Ridgeway to the streets of Cambridge
without hitch or mishap. Six hours ago they were in Bockley. Now
they were in a self-sufficing and exceedingly provincial University
town, the very antithesis of suburbia. And the miracle was his! His
hands, his nerve, his eye had wrought it! He was excusably pleased
with himself.
But she was conscious of a curious sense of disappointment. It
was now three months since that evening when he had taken her to
Gifford Road in a taxi. It was three months since she had divined
intuitively that he was in love with her. And during those three
months he had been marvellously reticent, exasperatingly discreet.
She had almost begun to doubt the reliability of her instinct. And
though she knew she did not in the least reciprocate his feelings, she
was fascinated by the idea that she was something incalculable and
vital to him. Perhaps it was sheer pride of conquest, perhaps it was
merely her love of compliments and her extreme gratification at this,
the supreme compliment of all. Or perhaps it was just her own
inexplicable perversity.
He was anxious to get back before lighting-up time, and she, for
no very definite reason, was inclined to prefer a quick run under the
cool moonlight. She deliberately delayed him by showing
fastidiousness in the selection of a café. Then she got him talking
about the Arts Club.
“I hear you’re going to speak next Sunday.”
“Oh yes—just read a paper, that’s all. On Ibsen’s Wild Duck.... Of
course, you’ve read it?”
“I’m afraid I haven’t read any Ibsen.”
“Really? ... Oh, you must read him. Awfully good, you know.
Stimulating; modern; very modern. Doll’s House, you know.
Rosmersholm and Little Eyolf.... And, of course, Ghosts. Absolute
biological nightmare—Ghosts ... but terrifically clever.... I’ll lend you
the whole lot if you’ll promise to read them.”
“Right,” she said. And she thought: “Doesn’t he like to show he
knows more than I know? But if he is in love with me it won’t matter
about that.” (And she could not properly have explained that thought
either.)
But she kept him talking because she saw it was getting late.
§ 10
On the return journey they stopped to light the lamps at a lonely
spot called Stump Cross, some ten miles out of Cambridge. She
watched him as he stood in front of the machine with the acetylene
glare lighting up his face and his goggles and his earflaps and his
gauntlet gloves and his overalls, and, above all, his expression of
stern delight. They were two solitary figures with hills rolling up and
down on either side of them, and nothing in view save dim distant
ridges and a gaunt sign-post which said: “To London, by Stortford,
45½ miles.”
“We’ll put on a spurt,” he said, clambering into the saddle....
As they entered the outskirts of Bishop’s Stortford at a speed of
just over thirty miles an hour the full moon swept from behind a bank
of clouds and lay in pools over the landscape....
§ 11
It was in the narrow and congested portion of the main street that
something happened. (As a matter of fact they need not have gone
through the town at all: there is a loop road, but George was
unwilling to tackle a road he had not encountered by daylight.) There
is no doubt that George was feeling very conscious of himself as he
honk-honked his way through the crowded roadway. It was a
Saturday night, and the streets were full. As they swerved round the
corner of the George Hotel the huge acetylene beams lit up a sea of
faces. Men and women passed them on the kerb as in a dream: girls
with bright eyes and laughing faces, and men with the unmistakable
Saturday night expression flitted past them shadow-like. It was
ecstasy to be swirling past them all at a pace which, though not fast,
had just a spice of danger in it. George, in his overalls and headgear,
looked like a Viking steering his galley through heavy seas. What
was more, he knew he was looking like that, and was trying
desperately to look more like that than ever.
And then, at the point where the main highway narrows and
begins an S turn, with numerous side-streets complicating the
problem, George espied a vehicle proceeding slowly in the same
direction as he. It was a market-booth on four wheels, shuttered up
at the sides, returning to its stabling after the night’s market. On the
side in painted crimson lettering ran the inscription: “H. Bullock.
Temperance Liquors and Fruit Beverages.” The whole was drawn by
a tired, meditative horse. The existence of this equipage in the
middle of the road created a problem. George was rapidly overtaking
it, and of course he should have passed by on the right or off-side.
But that would have meant checking pace and honk-honking
vigorously to clear people out of the way. Whereas he was driving
close to the kerb and could see a space between it and the vehicle
which seemed ample for passage. Besides, it was rather stylish to
“nip in” between vehicles and the kerb. People would stare back at
him and mutter, “Reckless fellow!” and by the time they had resumed
their walk he would be on the outskirts of the town. Accordingly,
summoning his features for an intensely Viking expression, he
decided to “nip in.” The road was narrowing, and he knew he would
have to put on a spurt. The accelerator moved, and they went
forward with a bound. Blurred mists of passing faces swept by along
the kerb.... There was a sudden jar. The side-car wheel had mounted
the pavement, which was here only an inch or so above the
roadway. Nevertheless, no harm had yet been done. And then the
appalling vision of a lamp-post seized hold of George and wrought
havoc with his presence of mind. That lamp-post obsessed him,
possessed him, threw him into inarticulate terror. That lamp-post
would slice off the wheel of the side-car as a scythe cuts grass. It
was therefore necessary at all costs to avoid that lamp-post. With a
mighty sense of the tremendous issues that hung upon the merest
fractional movement of his hands, George swerved to the right. Even
as he did so he could almost feel the sickening impact of the lamp-
post. He waited for what seemed a long minute—waited for the
sudden jar and shiver and crumple. Strange to say it did not come....
Then with a feeling of overwhelming relief he perceived that the
obstacle had been passed. The lamp-post was already behind him,
an unsuccessful syren baulked of its prey. Exquisite moment!
Colossal thrill! Magnificent piece of steering! And then ...
A sudden grind of the front wheel, a sort of convulsive jerk which
threw him sideways on top of the side-car, and a medley of snapping
and shivering and crumpling sounds. Then (it seemed an age before
he mastered the situation) he shouted to Catherine, whose ear was
not so very far from his mouth: “By Jove, we must have cannoned
into that cart!”
His voice was as the voice of one who is immensely interested in
a subtle and curious phenomenon....

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An Introduction to the Solar System 3rd

Edition David A. Rothery (Editor)

Introduction to the Maths and Physics of the Solar

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An Introduction to the New Testament Contexts Methods

An Introduction to International Relations 3rd Edition

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Solar System THIRD EDITION

Edited by David A. Rothery, Neil McBride and Iain Gilmour

About the editors:

IAIN GILMOUR is Professor of Isotope Geochemistry at The Open University,

Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge.

Copyright © 2003, 2004, 2011, 2018 The Open University.

First published 2003. Revised 2004, 2011, 2018.

Edited and designed by The Open University.

ISBN 978 1 108 43084 5 paperback

1.1 A grand tour

Figure 1.2 Part of the Sun

Figure 1.4 A close-up of a

BOX 1.1 DENSITY

Figure 1.6 Details of the surface

1.1.3 Earth and the Moon

Figure 1.13 The surface of the

Figure 1.18 The planet Jupiter

Figure 1.19 Jupiter’s Great Red

Figure 1.25 Callisto (radius

Figure 1.24 Ganymede (radius 1.1.7 Saturn

Figure 1.26 The planet Saturn

Figure 1.28 Enhanced colour view

Figure 1.32 Dione (radius

Figure 1.34 Iapetus (radius 718 km), a moon

Figure 1.33 Rhea (radius 764 km),

Figure 1.37 Miranda (radius

Figure 1.42 The planet Neptune

Figure 1.44 Triton (radius

resolution, the surface appears to be heavily cratered. In addition, and reminiscent of

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