WHAT IF... ?: A GIANT OBJECT STRUCK OUR MOON?

Mars is missing its smaller moon, Deimos, and Trav (an astrophysics doctoral candidate at MIT), discoverer of the vacancy, is tasked with finding it before the Earth-Moon System is endangered. NERAL, NASA and ESA are likewise put into play to find out what happened to Deimos. Had it been destroyed by an asteroid, conjoined with an asteroid; or, is it in a binary system with its captor - spinning crazily in an unknown trajectory? Trav and his sidekick Otto, travel two continents in dank, dark cargo transports and upscale corporate jets, in search of cooperation in deterring the Martian Menace. Through all this, He finds romance. First, with 'good time' Sally. Then with his mentor's secretarial assistant, Patsy. It is Patsy who steals his heart, and a whirlwind courtship ends in a hasty marriage before the looming danger destroys them all. Traverse, and his mentor, Dr. Killinsdale, derive a theory to corral the remaining vagrant bogey but cannot test it because of mechanical/electrical constraints.