He gave her a peck on the cheek. "Always a pleasure to see my government at work."

Sandecker climbed in, followed by Yaeger and the stranger. He merely nodded at Pitt and Giordino. He walked directly to Pat O'Connell. "You don't know how happy I am to shake your hand again, Doctor."

"You don't know how happy I am to be here," she said, kissing him on the forehead, to his obvious embarra.s.sment. "My daughter and I are in your debt for sending Dirk and Al to rescue us."

"I didn't have to send them," he said wryly. "They would have gone on their own."

Yaeger greeted his old friends and Pat, who was introduced to Loren for the first time. Then Sandecker introduced Dr. Timothy Friend. "Tim is an old school pal. He helped me pa.s.s algebra in high school. When I went to the Naval Academy, he went to the Colorado School of Mines for a degree in geophysics. Not content with that, he obtained his Ph.D. in astronomy at Stanford, and became one of the country's most respected astronomers and director of the government's Strategic Computing and Simulation Laboratory. Tim is a wizard of innovative visualization techniques."

Friend's bald head was encircled by wisps of gray hair, like a school of silverfish swimming around a coral dome. A short man, he had to tilt his head back slightly to gaze up at the two women, who were considerably taller. Giordino, who stood five feet four, was the only one he could look straight in the eye. A quiet man among friends, he became outgoing and lively when lecturing before students, directors of corporations, or high government officials. It was easy to tell that he was in his element.

"Would you all care to sit down?" said Pitt, motioning to comfortable leather chairs and sofas s.p.a.ced in a square in the center of the truck's cargo area. Once they were seated, an emba.s.sy staff member served coffee and sandwiches from a small galley behind the cab.

"Loren asked to come along," said Sandecker, without preamble. "She and her congressional aides investigated Destiny Enterprises and came up with some intriguing information."

"What I found in the past two days is quite worrisome," Loren began. "Very quietly, under astounding secrecy, the Wolf family and Destiny Enterprises have sold every business, every one of their shares in national and international corporations, every financial holding, all bonds, all stocks, all real estate, including every stick of furniture in their homes. All bank accounts have been cleaned out. Every a.s.set large and small has been liquidated. Billions of dollars were converted into gold bullion that was transported to a secret location-"

"Where it is now stored in the cargo compartments of their fleet of ships," Pitt finished.

"It's as though the entire family of two hundred members has never existed."

"These are not stupid people," Pitt said convincingly. "I find it inconceivable that they are capable of irrational judgment. So is there a comet coming, or isn't there?"

"The very reason I've asked Tim to come along," explained Sandecker.

Friend laid out several small piles of papers on a table between the chairs and sofas. He picked up the first one and leafed through it before consulting his notes. "Before I answer that, let me go back a bit, so you can understand what the Wolfs have been preparing for. I think it best to begin with the comet's impact on earth sometime around seven thousand B.C. Fortunately, this is not an event that occurs on a regular basis. Although Earth is struck daily, it's by small asteroid fragments no larger than a fist that burn up upon entry into the atmosphere. About every century, one approximately a hundred and fifty feet in diameter strikes Earth, such as the one that produced the crater in Winslow, Arizona, and the other that exploded before impact in Siberia in 1908 that plastered eight hundred square miles. Once every million years, an asteroid half a mile wide strikes with a force equal to detonating every nuclear device on Earth simultaneously. Over two thousand of these big celestial missiles cross our orbit on a regular schedule."

"Not a pretty picture," said Pat.

"Don't lose any sleep over it," Friend said, smiling. "Your odds of dying from an asteroid are twenty thousand to one during your lifetime. We can't, however, discount the logical possibility that it's only a question of time before our luck runs out."

Pitt poured a cup of coffee. "I a.s.sume you're talking about a really stupendous bang."

"Indeed," said Friend, nodding vigorously. "Once every one hundred million years, a mammoth asteroid or comet strikes Earth, like the one that smacked into the sea off Yucatan sixty-five million years ago and caused the extinction of the dinosaurs. This impact came from an object six miles in diameter that left a crater one hundred and twenty miles wide."

Friend paused to scan his paperwork before continuing. "That was smaller than the one that struck nine thousand years ago. Our computer model indicates that it measured nearly ten miles in diameter and plunged into Hudson Bay, Canada. The resulting chain reaction annihilated nearly ninety-nine percent of all plant and animal life on the planet, which is twenty percent more than the asteroid that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs sixty-five million years earlier."

Loren stared at Friend with rapt interest. "A chain reaction comprising what type of disasters?"

"You take an object ten miles in diameter, weighing several billion tons, and then hurl it through a vacuum into a big soft ball at a speed of one hundred and thirty thousand miles an hour, and you're going to have a blast that is gargantuan beyond comprehension. The earth probably rang like a bell, as the shock of impact was transmitted into every corner. Using computer simulation and visualization techniques, which were very complicated and would take me two hours to explain, we determined that the comet came on an angle, punching into the southeastern section of Hudson Bay and blasting out a crater two hundred and thirty miles in diameter, or more than twice the size of the island of Hawaii. The entire ma.s.s of water in the bay was vaporized, as the bulk of the now-disintegrating comet plowed into the Earth to a depth of two miles. Astronauts have taken photos that show a perfect sphere where the sh.o.r.eline circles the remains of the crater."

"How do you know it was a comet and not an asteroid or meteor?" asked Yaeger.

"An asteroid is a small body or minor planet that wanders the inner solar system and revolves around the sun. Some are rich in carbon; others contain minerals rich in iron, silicon, and other minerals. Meteorites for the most part, are smaller fragments from asteroids that have collided with one another and broken up. The largest ever found weighed seventy tons. A comet is quite different. It's often called a dirty s...o...b..ll made up of ice, gas, and rocky dust particles. They usually travel in very long oval orbits on the outer edge of the solar system, and often beyond. Because of gravitational interaction from the sun and planets, a few are diverted and orbit around the sun. When they come close to the sun, the comet's surface ice vaporizes and forms a spectacular elongated cone or tail. It's generally thought that they are leftovers from the formation of the planets. By drilling and then a.n.a.lyzing the composition of the microscopic debris found in and around the Hudson Bay crater, geophysicists discovered tiny particles that they identified as part of the comet that slammed into the earth in seven thousand B.C. Tests revealed no traces of the usual minerals and metals a.s.sociated with asteroids."

"So we have impact," said Sandecker. "Then what happened?"

"A measureless inverted cone of red-hot rock, steam, dust, and debris was hurled up and above the atmosphere, only to plunge in a fiery rain back down on Earth, igniting uncontrollable forest fires around the world. Huge amounts of sulfur, shock-heated nitrogen, and great doses of fluorides were injected into the atmosphere. The ozone layer would have been destroyed, skies blotted out, as winds of hurricane strength whipped across the land and seas. Our simulation suggests this cloud of debris and smoke lasted no less than fourteen months. This alone would have killed off most of Earth's life and collapsed the food chain."

"It sounds too horrible for me to imagine," said Loren quietly.

Friend made a taut smile. "Lamentably, that's only the opening act. Because Hudson Bay opened into the Atlantic Ocean, waves as high as seven or eight miles were formed that burst across the lowlands. Florida would have been totally inundated, along with most of the islands of the world. Much of Europe and Africa saw waves surging hundreds of miles inland from their sh.o.r.elines. Because most of Australia's ancient inhabitants lived on or near the coasts, the continent would have suffered a ninety-nine-percent death rate within minutes. Southeast Asia would have been buried under water. Vast mult.i.tudes of sea life would have been carried far inland and left to die when the giant waves finally receded. The chemical balance of the oceans was altered. What the upheaval didn't kill in the oceans, the silt, mud, and debris would.

"Shuddering from the comet's impact, ma.s.sive earthquakes far beyond the top end of the Richter scale forever changed the dimensions of the mountains, plains, and deserts. Then volcanoes around the globe, dormant or active, erupted; molten lava in great sheets as high as a mile stormed over whatever land wasn't submerged. If an astronaut had flown to Mars before the cataclysm and returned two years later, he would not have been able to recognize the world, nor would anyone he knew or loved still be alive. He could very well find himself the only man on Earth."

Pitt looked at the astronomer. "You don't paint a very pretty picture."

"The aftermath was ghastly to behold. Once the deluge waters retreated, boulders of every size and shape were dispersed throughout the landscape, where they still rest today and are a great puzzle to geologists, who otherwise can't explain how they came to be there. Vast deposits of mangled trees, along with the bodies of animals and sea life carried far inland, were heaped in huge deposits. These deposits can still be found in the frozen regions of the world, proving that they were hurled there by a giant cataclysm. Huge bodies of water were trapped, and formed lakes. In one known instance, the land strait that separated the Atlantic Ocean from the valley and rivers of the Mediterranean was swept away and the sea was formed. Old glaciers melted, new ones were formed. Tropical forests began to grow in mild climates that were once lashed by frigid winds and freezing temperatures. The Gobi, Sahara, and Mojave regions, then tropical forests, became dry and arid. The continental shelves that once stood above the water were now drowned. The magnetic poles reversed their polarity. Civilizations that existed were buried as deep as five hundred feet beneath the surface. It might have taken as long as twenty years before the world became completely stable again. The few humans who somehow survived were faced with a very grim existence, and it was a miracle any of them endured to become our ancestors."

Pat set down her cup. "The primitive people of the Earth were so badly decimated and fragmented, they kept no record of their activities for thousands of years. Except for the inscriptions by the Amenes, most of which were lost or buried, the only memories of the cataclysm that were pa.s.sed down came by word of mouth. Only after the early Egyptians, the Sumerians, and the Indus civilization of India reinvented the written language did records and stories of the deluge begin to spread."

"Who knows what cities," said Pitt, "what palaces with their archaeological treasures lie scattered on the deep seafloor or buried under hundreds of feet of silt and rock? Except for the inscriptions left by the Amenes, we have no way of a.s.sessing the splendor of the distant past before civilizations began rebuilding themselves."

Friend had remained silent while each member of the group envisioned the nightmare. He let his eyes rove around the sitting area inside the command truck, curiously observing the expressions of abhorrence in their eyes. Only Pitt's eyes seemed to be composed. It was as if he was contemplating something much different, something far off in the distance.

"And thus ends the cataclysm," said Sandecker morosely.

Friend slowly shook his head. "I haven't yet come to the worst part," he said, his earlier smile gone. "Only in the past few years have scientists come to realize the major upheavals Earth has experienced in the past, with and without influence by objects from outer s.p.a.ce. We know now that a significant impact by a large comet or asteroid has the capability to cause the earth's crust to shift. Charles Hapgood put forth the theory that because it literally floats on an inner molten core, the crust or sh.e.l.l, which is only twenty to forty miles thick, can and has rotated around the core's axis, causing great extremes in climate and the movement of the continents. It's called earth crust displacement, and its consequences can be catastrophic. At first, Hapgood's theory was laughed at by other Earth scientists. Then Albert Einstein focused his intellect on it and ended up agreeing with Hapgood."

"Sort of like the coating of Teflon around a soccer ball," suggested Yaeger.

"The same principle," Friend acknowledged. "Our computer simulation suggested that the impact exerted enough pressure to move the crust. The result was that some continents, islands, and other landma.s.ses shifted closer to the equator, while others shifted farther away. The movement also caused the North and South Poles to shift from their former positions into warmer climates, unleashing trillions of tons of water that raised the surface of the oceans over almost four hundred feet. To give you an example, before the deluge, a man or woman could have walked from London across the English Channel to France without getting their feet wet.

"In the end, the whole world was rearranged. The North Pole that was in the center of Canada was now far to the north in what is now known as the Arctic Sea. Siberia also shifted north in an incredibly short time span, as evidenced by fruit trees with leaves and woolly mammoths that were found quick-frozen, with vegetation undigested in their stomachs that no longer grew within a thousand miles of that location. Because North America and most of Europe revolved south, the great ice age abruptly ended. Antarctica also shifted south, nearly two thousand miles from the region it had once occupied in the southern sea between the lower portions of South America and Africa."

"Was Earth's...o...b..t affected?" Yaeger asked.

"No, the orbit remained on its present track around the sun. Nor was the Earth's axis altered. The equator remained where it had been since the beginning. The four seasons came and went as always. Only the face of the globe had changed."

"That explains a great deal," said Pitt, "such as how the Amenes could draw a map of Antarctica without its ice ma.s.s."

"And their city under the ice that the Germans discovered," said Pat. "Its climate was habitable before the shift."

"What about the Earth's axis of rotation?" queried Giordino. "Would that change?"

Friend shook his head. "Earth's tilt of twenty-three point four degrees would remain constant. The equator would also remain constant. Only the crust above the fluid core would move."

Sandecker said, "If we could get back to the comet for a moment, it's time for you to answer Dirk's question. Were the Amenes and the Wolf family right in predicting a cataclysmic collision with the twin of the comet that struck earth in seven thousand B.C.?"

"May I have another cup of coffee?" Friend asked.

"Certainly," said Loren, pouring from the pot on the center table.

Friend took a few sips and set the cup down. "Now, then, before I answer your question, Admiral, I'd like to describe briefly the new Asteroid and Comet Attack Alert System, which came online just last year. A number of telescope facilities and specially designed instruments have been set up in different areas of the world for the express purpose of discovering asteroids and comets whose orbits approach Earth. Already, astronomers manning the facilities have discovered over forty asteroids that will come unpleasantly close to Earth at some point within its...o...b..t. But detailed calculations reveal that they will all miss by a comfortable margin in the years ahead."

"Have they known about the approach of the second comet," said Loren in dismay, "and suppressed any warning of the threat?"

"No," said Friend. "Though the astronomers agreed to keep news of such possible encounters secret for forty-eight hours, until computer projections could definitely say a collision was imminent. Only when they are certain a collision is imminent would news of the discovery be made public."