“I wonder what’ll happen to what’s left of the moon?” Margo asked, looking toward the west “Will it just keep going in a ring?”
Opperly heard that and said in explanation: “No, now that its gravitational center has gone with the Wanderer, the fragments will spread out at the velocity they had in orbit-five miles a second, about. Some of them will strike Earth’s atmosphere in approximately ten hours. There’ll be a meteor shower, but not too destructive, I imagine. The ring lay in a plane passing above our North Pole. Most of the fragments should miss us. Many of them will take up long, elliptical orbits around Earth.”
“Gee, ” Wojtowicz remarked rather cheerily, “it’s like having Doc back to explain things.”
“Who’s Doc?” Opperly asked.
The group was silent for a moment Then Rama Joan said: “Oh…a man.”
At that moment a yellow flare shone in the zenith, became a lemon flame pointing and dropping earthward. There was a softly mounting roar, such as comes from a fireplace when all the wood catches. The Baba Yaga touched down, its yellow jets dying, to a perfect landing.