The Archangel Algamatant
"Of course, my boy, our Endlessness was at once informed of this general cosmic misfortune. And immediately, a full commission of angels and archangels, specialists in the work of world-creation and world-maintenance, under the direction of the Great Archangel Sakaki, was dispatched from the Most Holy Sun Absolute to the solar system Ors.
"The Most High Commission came to our planet Mars, since it was the nearest to the planet Earth, and from there began its investigations.
"The sacred members of this High Commission promptly reassured us by saying that there was no longer any danger of catastrophe on a great cosmic scale.
"And the Arch-Engineer Archangel Algamatant was good enough to explain to us personally that in all probability what had happened was this:
"'The broken-off fragments of the planet Earth had lost the momentum given by the shock before reaching the limits of this planet's sphere of influence, and hence, according to the law of falling, they had begun to fall back toward their original mass.
"'But they could not actually fall upon their original mass, because in the meantime they had come under the cosmic law called the "law of catching up," and were inevitably subject to its influence. Therefore they would now have to make regular elliptical orbits around their original mass, just as this mass itself, the planet Earth, made and still makes its orbit around its sun Ors.
"'And that is how it will always be, unless some new unforeseen catastrophe on a large scale changes it in one way or another.
"'Glory be to chance,' concluded His Pantameasurability, 'The harmonious general system movement was not unduly disturbed by all this, and the peaceful existence of the system Ors was soon reestablished.'
"Nevertheless, my boy, this Most High Commission, having considered all the available facts and also all the possible consequences, came to the conclusion that, although the fragments of the planet Earth might maintain themselves for the time being in their existing positions, yet in view of certain 'tastartoonarnian displacements' envisaged by the commission, they might some day stray from their positions and bring about many irreparable calamities, both for the system Ors and for neighboring solar systems."
Beelzebub's Tales To His Grandson, by G. I. Gurdjieff, page 78
Viking Arkana Edition, 1992.