She shrugged. “Fascinating, but we’ve had ones as big or bigger than this come in between us and the moon.”

“Yes, but they missed.”

She felt a cold, eerie chill go through her, and she looked at the computer readouts again. “It’s going to hit? This is— this could be Meteor Crater or Tunguska!”

He nodded. “Yes, on page three, there, you see that the current estimate based on angle, trajectory, and spectrum analysis of the composition estimates that possibly a third of it will survive to impact, possibly as a single unit. The explosion and crater are going to be enormous.”

“And it’s going to hit land? In South America?”

“We can’t be completely certain, not for another ten to twelve hours, maybe not even then. There are a lot of questions as to the exact angle of entry, how much true mass it represents, whether it will fragment, and so on. They’re now giving better than even odds that it’ll impact off the Chilean or Ecuadorian coast in the Pacific, but if it’s very heavy and hard inside and if the mass is great enough, it’ll come down short, possibly in the Andes, more likely in the Brazilian rain forest short of there. Fortunes are being wagered in every observatory and physics department in the world, or will be. It’ll hit the news shortly; there’s much debate, I understand, on how early to release it, since we’ll inevitably get special media coverage with experts talking about global warming and a new ice age from the dust and you name it and people living in both the wrong hemispheres panicking anyway. It’ll be out regardless by the evening news tonight.”

She nodded, fascinated but still puzzled. “So what has this to do with me?”

“There’ll be scientists from all over and news organizations as well gearing up to go in, but the Brazilian government is very concerned about possible injuries or deaths and wants nobody in the area.