And then someone noticed that no more asteroids had peeled from the formation. The void between the asteroid belt and Earth was barren of hurtling rock.
"Wonderful!" the scientists enthused. "It means that each field down there on Earth ceased its tug the moment its meteor struck it. That means that once the final meteor lands, the Peter W. Merrill Moonplant will be dead, and we can get some of the crowd off this place. Earth's a bit ragged-looking, but after all, it's Home."
"Funny," said one of the younger scientists, "that the moonplant went so far afield for meteors, and yet did not disturb the delicate gravitational balance between Earth and the moon, its own Satellite."
"Let us hope," said an older scientist, "that this enormous Australian network has not been saving itself for us." He laughed at this little pleasantry, but no one joined him, because someone had just peered through a telescope and noticed that Australia seemed to be getting larger.
"You know what?" said the young scientist, finally. "We're falling to the Earth, to form the largest pockmark of all!"
"What a spectacle!" cried another scientist. "Pity we won't be alive to witness it. I wonder why the Peter W. Merrill Moonplant saved us for last?"
"Possibly," said the young scientist, "because—as with a wedding—the groom asks all his relatives to come and see him married, and finally picks out the person who is to be the Best Man. The moonplant probably considers the moon an old buddy."
The older scientists, however, gave this statement the stoniest of non-replies, and refused even to speak to the hapless young man for the duration of their journey downward to squashy death against the home planet.
Romanticism and Science just don't mix.