"Yes, Mr. Taylor. Just trying to help out a little," said the erstwhile
pirate.
"He cooks as well as he pilots," said Mark.
"We're safe, then." Joe made it a statement rather than a question as
he shook some pepper onto the steaming eggs.
"Yes," said Zip. "The asteroid will sweep past the Earth in a week,
missing it by about 50,000 miles. It will be visible for almost the
whole night over the south Pacific, like a fast-moving star. Should be
quite a sight!"
"Then what?" asked Joe between gulps of juice.
"Then what, what?" responded Mark.
"Then where does it go?"
"As Gene said yesterday," explained Zip, "it's moving too fast to enter
an orbit around the Earth, so Gene steered it into a course around the
sun. It will take about seven months to circle the sun just inside
Earth's orbit. Then it will catch up to the Earth and can easily be
placed into an Earth orbit at that time. Scientists from Starlight
Enterprise will live on it and try to learn its secrets. In fact, a
ship will be launched from SE in a couple of days with a crew of them.
They'll intercept the asteroid and start the exploration right away."
Mark continued bringing Joe up to date. "The Captain's got a team
replacing the huge airlock on the surface of the asteroid, and the
temporary power supply packets are being reloaded on the ships.
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