"Peter, I think he deserves to know," Marshall said.

"But, sir, do you think that's a wise idea?" Mansfield asked.

The President ignored Mansfield and looked right into Maddox's eyes.

"Terrorism, Wesley. We have plenty of security measures in place to defend against unwanted intruders but if a terrorist were to make a move against the complex, it would probably happen near the end of ground construction."

Maddox nodded. He sensed this was not the only reason for releasing the false information but Peter Mansfield was right about one thing: if President Marshall told him to do something, Maddox had better damn well do it.

As he excused himself from the media, Maddox felt confident that he'd said enough for the story to make tonight's newscast.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE.

November 24, 2014

James Armour could not remember a time when so much tension and anxiety filled the air of the Oval Office. When Mae showed him into the room, it was the first time that President Marshall and Peter Mansfield stood around quietly, not discussing a single topic. For that matter, it was the first time he found Mansfield not speaking at all, or making threats, or trying to assert his will on one situation or another. The Chief of Staff stood by one of the windows, staring at the night sky, barely noticing that Armour entered the room.

A general feeling of depression hung ominously over Armour's two fellow 'Inner Circle' members. The two men hadn't even appeared so downcast when they found out Henry Wilson dropped dead of a heart attack. One thing was for certain, though. Armour's heart felt the same downtrodden feeling that gripped the President and Mansfield. And this feeling led back to one man: Neil Peterson.

"James, how are you feeling?" the President asked as Armour entered the room.

"Very good, sir. Although it's not nearly as important or serious about what will be taking place tomorrow, I did receive a bit of good news recently. My cancer has gone into remission for the time being."

"That's great," Marshall said, the gloom temporarily gone from his voice.

Mansfield also muttered a few contrived words of relief before they changed the subject to the truly important matter at hand.

"I do have a bit of bad news, though. I still haven't raised Peterson on the communications system. I've tried every day for the past week with no success."

"That's nothing different," Mansfield said. "We haven't been able to raise him for two years. Assuming he's still alive."

"Have any of the probe's computer readings shown signs that Peterson's okay?" President Marshall asked.

Armour shook his head.

"This comet has controlled our lives for six years now. For six years, we've had to plan every move possible to save humankind. So far those plans have paid off. When Peterson reaches the comet in..." Marshall glanced down at his watch. "...less than 24 hours, we can only hope that we won't have to rely on the rest of our future plans."

Armour nodded in agreement. Tomorrow would be the day that they waited for the past four and a half years. It would be the day to determine the future of the space station, the future of the Earth and the future of humankind.

"And if Peterson fails his mission, at least the world won't be around long enough to remember that the three of us made the biggest mistake in the history of humanity," Mansfield added solemnly.

Armour tried to avoid thinking of such things, especially since he believed the actions they'd taken over the past six years were the world's best chance. If Peterson failed to deflect the comet, Armour might doubt the steps the group had taken, but he refused to think this way before the deep space probe reached Comet Clement. Armour steered the conversation away from the thought of failure.

"At least our backup plans are shaping up well," Armour added. "I spoke with Wesley Maddox earlier today. He said space construction should be ready in six months."

Mansfield walked back over to the window and looked at the night sky, as if he might see the comet or the probe.

"I'm amazed at the job Maddox and his company have done up to this point," Mansfield said in a rare moment of praise for the space station project leader. "And I saw the news stories earlier reporting that space construction won't begin for years. He's done well."

"He's leaked the exact information we wanted," Marshall agreed. "Maddox has proven himself valuable to our cause."

"His success wouldn't have been possible if not for your job recruiting the Russians, Mr. President," Armour said.

A man once known for his affinity of receiving praise, President Marshall hardly recognized the compliment from his Defense Secretary.

"Speaking of the Russians, I heard from President Metachenko four or five times already today," Marshall told Armour. "He keeps asking if we've heard anything from the probe yet. He can't believe I won't be with you in mission control tomorrow."

"Your presence there will help nothing," Armour said. "In fact, my presence there will help nothing. If all goes according to plan, the only way we'll know the nuke exploded will be if all the probe's systems simultaneously go dead."

"I explained that to him," Marshall said. "I also explained that all we can do now is pray that Peterson succeeds."

For the first time since he began this mission five years earlier, Neil Peterson did not feel chilly. Space travel was cold, no matter what the temperature in the probe was supposed to be. As the years past and Neil's physical health weakened, as malnutrition caused the pounds to gradually melt away from his stick-like figure, his body felt like it absorbed more and more of the cold.

But now as he looked out the window in the cockpit area of the space probe, warmth spread over him as he stared at the incredible view. To Neil, Comet Clement appeared as big as the moon did to a person on Earth. Having seen it as a tiny dot in every satellite photo, he really did not know what to expect when much closer to the comet. He'd always assumed the comet would look like a round white ball, but he now saw differently.

The comet looked no bigger than a baseball hanging against a black backdrop, but the sight was still awe-inspiring. He sat for hours and just stared at the blue object hurtling his way. With less than ten hours before interception, Neil knew he was getting closer and closer to the comet, which seemed to glow a shade of blue that reminded him of the color of sky, a color he never thought he'd see again. Neil could even faintly make out a small mist behind the blue circle, no doubt the comet's long tail.

So this blue baseball is the reason for all our problems, Neil thought to himself. Years ago, he'd resigned himself that the comet would cause his death, so now he viewed the huge astronomical anomaly with only the utmost respect and admiration.

Now was the best time to eat the remaining food on board the probe. His appetite greatly reduced throughout his years in space, to the point where he sometimes went a few days between eating. His lack of hunger was ironic since he viewed hunger as his biggest problem during the first few years of his journey. He saved plenty of food for a feast before the end of his mission but now didn't want to eat any of it.

You should eat, he tried convincing himself. You're going to need your strength later when you have to fly this thing. That ten minutes of flying will feel like forever if you don't have food to energize yourself.

"I don't need food to get my inspiration for this," Neil said out loud. "My Emily will give me all the strength I need."

Neil pulled his eyes away from the comet to look at the one vision more perfect and wonderful than the comet: the picture of his little girl. It felt like a lifetime had passed since he'd last seen her.

He looked at the smiling image of his daughter when she was younger and wondered what she looked like now. Little girls grew up quickly, especially between the ages eight and twelve. Emily would look totally different now but Neil knew that she would still be beautiful, that her smile would still be radiant.

I wonder if she's tall like me? he thought. Hopefully she doesn't take after her mother for height, Susan was always short. Emily will need to be tall if she plays basketball, though maybe her mother turned her into a cheerleader type. I'm sure she'd be pretty enough to be a cheerleader...

In the time he spent with Emily before the start of the mission, Neil tried converting her into a sports fan but she probably pretended to like sports to please him. No matter what Emily decided to do, Neil just hoped that she was running around somewhere, carefree and enjoying her youth.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR.

November 25, 2014 Emily Peterson sat in her grandmother's attic, reading a book in an attempt to distract gloomy thoughts. When she immersed herself in a good book, Emily could forget the traumatic events of her life, forget about the scars that continually haunted her, both physically and emotionally. Most of all, she was able to become someone else, far away from the prison that her life had become.

The prison's warden soon interrupted her freedom.

"Emily, I'm home from the market," her grandmother yelled up to her. "Why don't you come downstairs so I can fix you some lunch?"

"Leave me alone," Emily whispered.

Although Emily hadn't yet hit her teenage years, the girls at school already began to stress the importance of being thin. It was bad enough that Emily was branded an outcast because of the crutches she needed to help her walk. The other girls at school played sports and got plenty of exercise to stay thinner, something Emily did not have the luxury of doing. So if she needed to skip some meals here and there to avoid becoming more of a loner than she already was, Emily would have to sacrifice. Besides, her book was starting to get interesting.

What's in the abandoned spaceship? Emily desperately wanted to know. She was tempted to flip to the final few pages of the science-fiction book but resisted the urge to do so. After all, the astronauts in the story had just docked with the apparently abandoned spaceship, and it would only be a few more pages until they discovered if the ship was indeed empty. As the two astronauts walked through the corridor connecting the two ships, Emily's heart began to pound at what they were about to discover...

"Didn't you hear me?" her grandmother yelled, causing Emily to nearly jump out of her chair. Emily had not heard her grandmother walking up the attic.

"I'm not hungry," Emily said. " I'm in the middle of reading."

Emily continued looking at the words on the page, not giving her grandmother the satisfaction of a single glance. Tension was always present between the two of them, especially as Emily grew older and more defiant. The older woman expected Emily to act like every other twelve-year-old girl, even though her situation in life was clearly different.

"You and those books all the time," her grandmother said, not taking the hint that Emily wanted to be left alone. "You read those bizarre science fiction books all the time, yet your teachers write to me and say you won't read the books you're assigned in school. I tell them you're constantly reading and they just laugh at me."

Poor you, Emily thought to herself. Emily received the message loud and clear, a message the old woman seemed to pound into her brain: you are an embarrassment to me. Emily was nothing like her grandmother expected or wanted her to be and this was a constant source of embarrassment to the older woman.

"I like my books," Emily said. "They make me happy."

Go ahead, argue with that. Emily knew that her own happiness was not nearly as important to her grandmother. She was not surprised that her grandmother still had more to say.

"A girl your age should be out playing with friends, not sitting alone in an attic, reading strange books."

"I don't like playing. And besides, I don't have any friends," Emily said. It was painful to think that nobody liked her but Emily slowly came to accept that fact over the years.

"That's not true," her grandmother said, seemingly offended. It was as if her granddaughter's lack of popularity was a reflection of the way she raised her. "What about that girl you brought to the house to play last week? Karen, wasn't it? You two seemed to get along nicely."

"She's not my friend," Emily said, finally putting the book down. "She only came over to play because she felt bad for me."

"I'm sure that's not true," her grandmother said weakly.

"How would you know that's not true?" Emily said, her voice beginning to grow angrier and louder. "I heard her talking to the popular girls about it. She said she felt sorry for me because of my legs and because I have no friends. I don't want people to feel sorry for me. I would rather spend my time alone."

Her grandmother refused to accept this explanation.

"You're just imagining that," the old woman said. "You want to be miserable so you are making excuses to be miserable. And you will continue to be lonely and without friends for the rest of your life if all you're going to do is sit around and feel sorry for yourself."

With that, her grandmother left the room, leaving Emily speechless and upset. The only person that Emily had left in life refused to show sympathy toward her. The inside of Emily's head felt like it was about to explode, like her skull was not large enough to hold her brain. The pressure built up so greatly that she began to cry and pull at her hair. A surge of angry energy coursed throughout her body. Emily wanted to get up and run far away from here, far away from her grandmother and the wretched life she'd been stuck with.

Yeah, get up and run. There's a good idea, she thought to herself, fighting the urge to throw her arm crutches through the single window in the attic. Breaking the window or her crutches would be a bad idea, but that still did not stop her from throwing the book across the room.

Hatred of her grandmother brought an end to her tears. She stood from the desk and slowly walked across the room, where her book lay on the floor beneath the window. She looked outside at her grandmother's large backyard. The leaves on the tree right in front of the window were gone, which gave Emily a full view of the yard. The dilapidated swing set that Emily's mother had 'spent hours playing on' swayed in the breeze.

Emily was about to walk away when something in the tree caught her eye. She'd been looking through the bare tree branches the whole time and nearly missed it. A bird's nest, located about halfway down the three-story tall tree, was resting on its side, swaying gently in the light breeze. It looked to Emily like the nest would blow over any second and plummet to the ground. Four tiny, blue eggs were inches away from the crest of the nest.

Emily stood breathless for several long seconds, waiting for the nest and eggs to topple over. Dread and fear for the eggs saturated her mind. At first, Emily did not know why she was having these intense feelings about the doomed eggs. But she suddenly remembered the beautiful blue birds that had perched themselves on the windowsill. Leaves must have always covered the tree and hidden the existence of the nest and until this moment, Emily never knew the birds lived right in the tree.

The mother bird is going to lose her babies.

Emily thought of her mother, thought of how easily the tractor-trailer had broken and killed her, as easily as how a slight breeze could send these eggs plunging to the ground. At this height, there was no way the eggs would survive the fall.

God is giving me a chance to do something.

Emily dropped the book on the desk and left the attic, moving as quickly as she could. Careful to keep silent, she didn't want her grandmother to know she was leaving the house.

She sneaked out the back door as her grandmother watched the afternoon news. The air was bitingly cold, which made the little girl's legs ache. The back door creaked when Emily closed it. Though it sounded as loud as an approaching train to Emily, her grandmother apparently hadn't heard it.

She reached the base of the huge tree but it took several minutes to locate the nest among the hundreds of branches. Finally spotting the nest, Emily's stomach dropped. When she'd looked down at the tree from the third-story attic, the nest did not look so high up.

You can do this, you can do this.

Emily unhooked the crutches from her arms and leaned her body weight against the bottom of the tree. The lowest hanging branch was within reach and once she wrapped her arms around it, she carefully pulled herself up to the first branch. Emily's arm strength had quickly grown since her doctor switched her from leg braces to arm braces. Her arms were stronger than all of the boys' in her class and more than strong enough to pull her body weight onto each successively higher tree branch.

Now if only I can get over my fear of heights...

President Marshall sipped from a glass of cognac, surprised by how calm he felt at this moment.

This is the moment I've been waiting over five years for... This is the moment that will determine the course that humankind will take in the near future...

When he put it to himself like that, it was no surprise that Marshall's hand began to lightly tremble when he brought the glass to his lips.

While the President attempted to keep his cool, Peter Mansfield did not try to hide his tension. The Chief of Staff paced back and forth throughout the Oval Office, completely unable to sit still. His insides felt like they were tumbling around in a cement mixer. Every few seconds he glanced down at his watch, which caused him to pace quicker and quicker as the big moment approached.

"Will you sit down and try to relax, please," President Marshall finally said, unable to hide the annoyance in his voice. "Pacing like a crazy person isn't going to help Neil any."

Mansfield looked down at his watch again.

"But it helps me with the nervous energy," he said, continuing to pace.

Marshall slugged back the rest of his drink before slamming the glass down on his desk.

"Well it's making me nervous," the President said forcefully. "Now sit the hell down already."

George Marshall rarely raised his voice. Mansfield sat down on the chair directly across from Marshall, who retrieved a second glass and filled them both. Mansfield downed the drink in one large gulp before looking at his watch again.

"I wonder if he's still alive," Mansfield said. "Wouldn't that be something if the bomb just didn't go off?"