Lunar One

Chapter 10: The End Of The World

     The other astronauts got out of their seats, eager to watch the asteroid as broke through the Earth's atmosphere and slammed into the surface. They were very disappointed to see Morgan had closed the windows again.

     "If you thought the flash that those nukes made was bad," he told them, "This one is going to be ten times worse."

     "He's right." Rogers said as he closed the blinds to his windows as well. Before he did, he took one last glance at the earth for a second then slammed the blinder down.

     Morgan and the rest of the crew waited and then there was a flash. They knew it had happened because despite being closed, the flash seemed to still brighten the window panels anyway. Morgan could only imagine how bright it would have been to look at or even how bright it looked back at lunar one. Morgan waited almost thirty seconds and when the flash seemed to start to die down he opened the shade to take a look. When the others realized it was safe, they all opened their windows to witness the rest of the event with their own eyes. The large rock caused an explosion the planet hadn't experienced in over a hundred million years. Thousands of tones of earth were flying so high that a lot of it was leaving the atmosphere.

     "I hope the station made enough distance to be clear of all that debris." Elizabeth said as she looked out.

     "We'll try to contact him from Lunar One." Morgan said, "It might take a few days to establish communications. I'm pretty confident Lunar One will try for at least a few weeks."

     "I'll do you one better." Rogers called out from his seat. "When the debris clears, I'm going to refuel and come back to look for him."

     "Thank you." Elizabeth said as she was clearly concerned for her friend.

     "It was a land hit." One of the other scientists called out.

     "Are you sure about that, Phil?" Elizabeth asked him.

     "I'm pretty sure." Phil said as he gestured. "Impact zone looks to be north of the Indian Ocean because there's Australia. This bugger hit land all right."

     "Right in the middle of Asia," Morgan said as he agreed with Phil's projection. "China and India were obliterated in a matter of seconds. That's over three billion people on impact."

     "That planet is mostly water." Rogers replied. "What are the odds that this thing would hit land?"

     "The odds were against it." Phil called back "This dart just hit triple twenty on the board."

     "Had it hit water, humanity might have had a chance." Morgan replied as he kept watching. "A land hit is going to wipe out all life. It's the worst case scenario."

     "It certainly is." Elizabeth concurred.

     "This is going to be hard to recover from." Another astronaut from the space station said as they all kept watching.

     "Even if we do." Phil started, "Our species will never be the same again. There are no natives from the Americas on any of our stations, no people originating from Africa or the Middle East. Whole peoples have just vanished from existence."

     "It's hard to think about." Morgan said as he turned away from the window. "We all know someone down there and we'll never see that person again for as long as we live."

     "Our culture is down there as well." Elizabeth said as she turned to Morgan. "Our art galleries, museums, our history... all wiped out."

     "Some of it will carry on." Rogers called from his seat in the cockpit. "Whole archives of books, literature and even art were transferred to Lunar One just in case something this bad occurred. If we don't make it the reason won't be because we didn't try."