Earth Smugly Thought It Had No Need to Explore Space -- but the Universe Had a Nasty Surprise Up Its Sleeve!Landen Keene could be forgiven for thinking that he was born into the wrong time. A nuclear propulsion engineer, he had battled for years against government bureaucracies and CEOs obsessed with the bottom line, both stifling innovation by forcing scientific 2-research into tried and proven channels with a sure payoff. The days of heroic scientific discovery and financial risk-taking were long over. Not surprisingly, Landen's dream of colonizing and exploiting space is too much of a long shot for either government or industry to take the risk. Of course, he could always emigrate to Saturn. . . .Among the Saturnian moons, farsighted individuals, working without help or permission from any government, had established a colony and called themselves the Kronians, after the Greek name for Saturn. Operating without the hidebound restrictions of bureaucratic Earth, the colony is a magnet, attracting the best and brightest of the home world, and has been making important new discoveries. But one of their claims -- that they have found proof that the Solar System has undergone repeated cataclysms, and as recently as a few thousand years ago -- flies in the face of the reigning dogma, and is under attack by the scientific establishment.The fact that the planet Jupiter has recently emitted a white-hot protoplanet as large as the Earth which is hurtling sunwards like a gigantic comet does not faze establishment scientists, who contend that this is a unique occurrence. But when it is learned that the new planet will come close enough to Earth to obliterate civilization, and may evencollide, panic and chaos reign. And with the world that we know ending around him, Keene has to choose between escaping with the Kronians on their ship, or making a desperate journey across a continent, trying to find a woman he didn't even realize he cared about -- if she is still alive. . . .
Description:
Earth Smugly Thought It Had No Need to Explore Space -- but the Universe Had a Nasty Surprise Up Its Sleeve!Landen Keene could be forgiven for thinking that he was born into the wrong time. A nuclear propulsion engineer, he had battled for years against government bureaucracies and CEOs obsessed with the bottom line, both stifling innovation by forcing scientific 2-research into tried and proven channels with a sure payoff. The days of heroic scientific discovery and financial risk-taking were long over. Not surprisingly, Landen's dream of colonizing and exploiting space is too much of a long shot for either government or industry to take the risk. Of course, he could always emigrate to Saturn. . . .Among the Saturnian moons, farsighted individuals, working without help or permission from any government, had established a colony and called themselves the Kronians, after the Greek name for Saturn. Operating without the hidebound restrictions of bureaucratic Earth, the colony is a magnet, attracting the best and brightest of the home world, and has been making important new discoveries. But one of their claims -- that they have found proof that the Solar System has undergone repeated cataclysms, and as recently as a few thousand years ago -- flies in the face of the reigning dogma, and is under attack by the scientific establishment.The fact that the planet Jupiter has recently emitted a white-hot protoplanet as large as the Earth which is hurtling sunwards like a gigantic comet does not faze establishment scientists, who contend that this is a unique occurrence. But when it is learned that the new planet will come close enough to Earth to obliterate civilization, and may evencollide, panic and chaos reign. And with the world that we know ending around him, Keene has to choose between escaping with the Kronians on their ship, or making a desperate journey across a continent, trying to find a woman he didn't even realize he cared about -- if she is still alive. . . .