"Right!" cried the president, Professor Pludder, disdainfully. "Who ever
heard of a watery nebula? The thing's absurd!"

"I don't see that it's absurd," replied Professor Jones. "There's plenty
of proof of the existence of hydrogen in some of the nebulae."

"So there is," chimed in Professor Abel Able, "and if there's hydrogen
there may be oxygen, and there you have all that's necessary. It's not
the idea that a nebula may consist of watery vapor that's absurd, but it
is that a watery nebula, large enough to drown the earth by condensation
upon it could have approached so near as this one must now be without
sooner betraying its presence."

"How so?" demanded a voice.

"By its attraction. Cosmo Versal says it is already less than three
hundred million miles away. If it is massive enough to drown the earth,
it ought long ago to have been discovered by its disturbance of the
planetary orbits."

"Not at all," exclaimed Professor Jeremiah Moses. "If you stick to that
argument you'll be drowned sure. Just look at these facts. The earth
weighs six and a half sextillions of tons, and the ocean one and a half
quintillions. The average depth of the oceans is two and one-fifth
miles. Now--if the level of the oceans were raised only about 1,600
feet, practically all the inhabited parts of the world would be flooded.
To cause that increase in the level of the oceans only about one-eighth
part would have to be added to their total mass, or, say, one-seventh
part, allowing for the greater surface to be covered. That would be one
thirty-thousandth of the weight of the globe, and if you suppose that