Free Star One: Tycho City Survival by Raymond L. Weil Page A

shoes,” commented Mase, thinking about how President
Kateland would react upon hearing all of this. He wondered how it would feel to
have to tell the president that the world might be coming to an end.
    “Me neither,” replied
Steve, somberly “This is going to be a difficult situation for a lot of
people.”
    “I will
continue to monitor the situation here and at Farside. We currently have a
communication blackout at Farside until we’re sure we can control the
information coming out from the observatory complex. We don’t want to cause a
panic.”
    Mase spoke to
Steve for a few more minutes about how this news would affect Earth before
signing off. Leaning back in his chair, Mase closed his eyes. He also wondered
how soon it would be before the big observatories and antenna arrays Earth side
discovered the neutron star.
    Opening his
eyes, Mase pressed a button on his desk and the large viewscreen on the wall to
his right came on. It was set to display a view of the surface and was currently
focused on the shuttle launching and landing pads. Everything for now seemed so
normal, but word of Farside’s discovery was bound to leak out shortly. Then
everything would change.
    Mase wondered
worriedly what the future held for Tycho City which, over the years, had become
his only home. He also knew it might be necessary for him to contact his
brother Phillip and have him and his family come up to Tycho City much sooner than he had originally planned. It might be crucial to contact a number of key
personnel, and he speculated about how many additional people could be brought
up to Tycho City. He also wondered if Tycho City and Star One could survive
without Earth.
     

Chapter Five
     
    Mase carefully
studied the latest information he had just received from Farside. A copy of
this information was already on its way to Star One aboard a shuttle. There was
no doubt about it: the neutron star was coming, and it was going to prove
disastrous to the solar system.
    If these
reports were correct, the orbital path of the Earth would be changed
dramatically. Several of the scientists at Farside questioned whether the Earth
would be able to survive the intense gravity disturbances from the passage of
the neutron star. They felt there was even a slim possibility that the Earth
might break up from the stress.
    Mase leaned
back in his chair and let out a deep breath. He had spoken briefly with Pierre
LaRann about these results. LaRann had stressed that these were just
preliminary results, and it would take at least another week of intense
observation of the neutron star to confirm everything in the report.
    Mase had also
asked Pierre if they had located the dust cloud that Charles thought might have
played a part in concealing the neutron star. Pierre had reported that, as of
yet, they had not been able to locate the dust cloud, but Charles felt sure it
would be found shortly. Mase only shook his head. He found all of this still
hard to accept.
    Linda opened the
door to Mase’s office and stepped inside. “Mr. Anderson and Mr. Darrow are here
to see you,” she announced, crisply.
    She saw that
Mase had a strange look upon his face. Something was wrong; she just didn’t
know what. Mase had always seemed to be able to handle any emergency, and she
wished she knew what was bothering him. She wondered if it had anything to do
with what was going on over at Farside. She had heard a few rumors, but they
were so fantastic she wasn’t sure what to believe.
    “Send them
in,” replied Mase, leaning forward in his padded chair and thinking about what
he was going to say to the two men. If Tycho City was going to have any chance
of surviving, it would depend considerably on the skills of the two men he was
about to talk to.
    Mase knew that,
at some point in time, he was going to have to tell Linda what was going on.
There was going to be too much communication traffic for her not to know that something
was up. He didn’t know how she would