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nuclear warheads."
    "So the smaller pieces won't be dangerous?" asked Nick Gordon, a young science correspondent for the Independent News Network.
    Dr. Mishra shook his head. "No, Mr. Gordon," he replied, recognizing Gordon from his award-winning science reporting over the last few years. "The real danger lies in doing nothing."
    "Yes," Dr. Reyes agreed. "After all, hundreds of smaller asteroids - we call them meteors or shooting stars - strike our planet every day. Most of them burn up in the atmosphere; a few even reach the surface of the planet. But compared to the menace the human race faces from the asteroids, the smaller meteors pose almost no danger..."
    * * *
    Several hours later, the very tip of the Reyes-Mishra Asteroid Swarm crossed Earth's orbit. Small space rocks began to enter the atmosphere.
    Over the Midwestern United States and Canada, the meteor shower lit up the night sky for thousands of miles. Millions of North Americans gathered on hillsides and rooftops to witness the celestial show of bright lights and brilliant colors.
    True to the scientists' predictions, the vast majority of meteors that fell in that night's shower burned up in the Earth's atmosphere. The meteor shower continued for three hours, then ceased.
    Only a few fist-sized space rocks actually made it to the surface of the Earth. One struck deep in a Kansas grain field with enough force to shake loose a dozen green apples from Oswald Peaster's fifty-year-old trees, a good two miles away.
    Farmer Peaster never noticed what had been delivered to his property. Nor did anyone else in the little rural town of Natoma, Kansas.
    But they would soon take notice.
    Very soon, in fact, the eyes of the whole world would be on this sleepy American town - or, more precisely, what would remain of it.

6
BACK FROM
THE GRAVE

    Sunday May 23, 1999, 1:12 P.M.
Fifteen miles northeast of Merida, Mexico
On the Yucatan Peninsula

    Robin Halliday gazed through the helicopter's window at the rough, deep blue and aquamarine Waters of the choppy Gulf of Mexico far below. She gripped her microphone with a sweaty hand as she waited for her cue from the director. Below her, Robin spotted a group of long-necked pink flamingoes flying gracefully in formation over the green canopy of the rain forest.
    As the helicopter climbed into the brilliant blue sky, Robin peered farther along the coast of the peninsula. Through the late afternoon haze, she could barely make out the tower of another one of the massive modern resort hotels that dotted the white beaches all along the Yucatan Peninsula.
    Not a bad place to be when the world ends , she thought.
    "Thirty seconds," she heard the director say through her headphones. Robin hoped that her long, dark hair covered them and the thin electronic wires that ran, down her blouse. Robin didn't want to look "wired up" on camera.
    This is my first report on live television , she thought, tingling with excitement. It had taken a lot of work to get this far, though she knew she'd impressed her boss with her audition tape.
    And flirting with him didn't hurt, either.
    Now Robin Halliday, of Avalon, Pennsylvania, was in a helicopter over the Mexican coast, waiting to do her first ever network news story.
    Pretty good for an almost-eighteen-year-old intern , she thought proudly. Today's live report was a lucky break for her career, and it only happened because her boss, Nick Gordon - chief correspondent for the Science Sunday program on the Independent News Network - got the chance to cover an even better story at the last moment. So while Nick went off for a one-on-one interview with Dr. Ramon Reyes in Mexico City, Robin got this plum on-camera assignment over the Yucatan Peninsula.
    Luckily, there was no one else around to do it.
    Robin suspected ulterior motives for Nick's last-minute change of assignments. Gossip at the bureau says he hates helicopters , she recalled with a smile. If it's true, then thank goodness for airsickness!
    "Twenty