Moonfall

COSMIC BULLET TO STRIKE MOON

Narrow Miss For Earth, But Other Objects Have Come Closer

The headline was replaced by an image of the comet. All comet heads-at least, all the ones whose pictures she'd seen- looked alike. Below the golden halos they were dark fissured chunks of ice and dirt, occasionally cratered, irregularly shaped. They were singularly uninteresting, and she never quite understood why anyone would care about them. This one was no exception. It had a couple of craters, and some long parallel rifts, as if someone had taken a scraper to it. "It looks pretty ordinary," she said.

Charlie shook his head. "It's wider than New Jersey. We don't want to be here when it shows up."

Evelyn felt thoroughly beaten. Had the comet given her a few years, allowed Moonbase to prove its value and develop a cash flow, the corporation might have survived even this kind of catastrophic hit. But not now. This was the critical moment, and she could not escape the sense that the comet's appearance was somehow deliberate, as if the universe were out to get her. "You know what else?" she said. "When this is over, L1 won't be worth a damn anymore either."

"Why not?"

She looked at Charlie, surprised. "Because it's the mutual attraction of Earth and Moon that keeps it in place. You won't be able to maintain a satellite there if the Moon goes south. There won't be a Lagrangian point."

"Oh."

"So we'll be confined to low earth-orbit, and there won't be a convenient short-range target left in the sky. Charlie, we had a window when the technology, the money, and the will were all there. Briefly. But I think the window is closing."