The Last Disaster

The astronomers at the International Symposium were faced with an alarming discovery. An unexpectedly early solar eclipse had caused the Moon's orbit to contract. Evidence from a hurried investigation all pointed in one direction: the Moon was drawing nearer to Earth, and in five years the two would collide and both would be destroyed.

What were the astronomers to do? They knew that once the news became public there would be a world-wide panic, and they turned for advice to Billy Gillanders, the head of the United Nations Exploration Agency. Gillanders and his deputy, Chris Godfrey, had one faint hope to offer, and it lay in the experiments of an eccentric retired professor...