I'm imagining basically a mass exodus involving pretty much everything that could be thrown at the problem of getting people out of cissolar space: fleets of Living Estates that would be essentially Grover's Corners on steroids, space stations that are equipped with 'wavium drives (and more that may have to have such drives retroactively fitted if they don't have them already), even down to individual personally-owned 'waved vehicles (which might or might not make a resurgence in popularity, depending on whether 'Danelaw is changed in order to allow individuals to 'wave their vehicles in the hopes of getting even more people off the Earth in time).
Additionally, I wouldn't be surprised if at least a few Fen get blue-hair days and attempt to develp ways to deflect or even destroy the neutron star. Now, destroying it is pretty much out of the question: even if a workable way to destroy a neutron star was found in time, actually using it poses the risk of causing far more damage than leaving the damn thing intact would. Blowing it up would lead to so much energy being unleashed that you can kiss goodbye all life within at least several dozen light years, let alone cissolar space (which could easily be one of the biggest and most spectacular Darwin Award nominees of all time)!
Deflecting it, on the other hand, would pose less of a risk of causing a mass-extinction event, but the engineering challenge could very well tax resources and inventiveness to their limits. One way to divert a neutron star might involve a process similar to a real-life proposal for deflecting dangerous asteroids, albeit on a larger scale: essentially, place an object close enough to the target that its own gravitational field starts to cause the target to drift ever so slightly off course. Add in a few fast-moving objects slingshotting close by to help rob the neutron star of momentum, and you could get a fairly decent change in velocity after a while. However, you'd need to take into account a huge number of variables, many of which could potentially set back the efforts by dangerous margins. In addition, the timescale required to make it work may turn out to be far too long for it to actually be practical under the time constraint.
Nonetheless, I'd imagine, that there'd be at least a few Fen(1) who may give it a try...
(1) And I wouldn't be surprised if the Professor was among that number. After all, it sounds like the kind of thing that'd be right up his alley...
Additionally, I wouldn't be surprised if at least a few Fen get blue-hair days and attempt to develp ways to deflect or even destroy the neutron star. Now, destroying it is pretty much out of the question: even if a workable way to destroy a neutron star was found in time, actually using it poses the risk of causing far more damage than leaving the damn thing intact would. Blowing it up would lead to so much energy being unleashed that you can kiss goodbye all life within at least several dozen light years, let alone cissolar space (which could easily be one of the biggest and most spectacular Darwin Award nominees of all time)!
Deflecting it, on the other hand, would pose less of a risk of causing a mass-extinction event, but the engineering challenge could very well tax resources and inventiveness to their limits. One way to divert a neutron star might involve a process similar to a real-life proposal for deflecting dangerous asteroids, albeit on a larger scale: essentially, place an object close enough to the target that its own gravitational field starts to cause the target to drift ever so slightly off course. Add in a few fast-moving objects slingshotting close by to help rob the neutron star of momentum, and you could get a fairly decent change in velocity after a while. However, you'd need to take into account a huge number of variables, many of which could potentially set back the efforts by dangerous margins. In addition, the timescale required to make it work may turn out to be far too long for it to actually be practical under the time constraint.
Nonetheless, I'd imagine, that there'd be at least a few Fen(1) who may give it a try...
(1) And I wouldn't be surprised if the Professor was among that number. After all, it sounds like the kind of thing that'd be right up his alley...