“Nah. We are one hundred percent shit-outta-luck,” she said, voice high and brittle as she leaned back from the computer. She gave a tight little laugh as she gestured at different possible trajectories, the different deflections achievable with nukes or booster rockets or heroic space missions. The wall of screens in front of us showed projected death tolls and ecological changes, with a lot of graphs that dropped sharply right at the end. “Earth is, uh … not to be melodramatic about it, but, absolutely doomed.”
I glanced at the screen, then out the window. The comet wasn’t quite visible with the naked eye yet, but I’d be damned if that little spot in the night sky didn’t seem a little brighter than the others.
It would get brighter yet.