PROLOGUE
Summer along Lake Baikal was a glorious time for the boy and his family. The brutal winter was over and the longer days of summer were upon them. The lake was crystal clear and almost completely still, reflecting the light of the sunlike gems set in an expensive ring that might belong to a Czarina. The morning was cool, about fifty degrees, and the boy was outside doing his chores. His father was tending the cattle and his mother was busy weeding the garden they kept behind the modest house in which he and his three siblings lived with their parents.
Not much happened during the all-too-short summers in Siberia. The snow and ice melted and the darkness that seemed to define their lives for most of the year took a vacation. The skies tended to be clear and blue during the day and filled with the mysterious stars at night. The boy’s father would often tell his children stories about his ancestors, whom he claimed were nobles in exile, as they sat around their cooking fire in the long twilight so typical of northern latitudes. None in the family had received a formal education and they didn’t expect that any of them would ever do so. They were farmers and farmers they would remain.
The boy had a few friends, and they planned to get together later in the day, after their chores were behind them, to go fishing and perhaps swimming in the lake—as cold as it was, it was far warmer and tempting now than at any other time of the year. He looked forward to these outings with his friends. They were a welcome respite from his work and the unpleasant habits of his older sister. Since she turned fourteen, she had become almost unbearable to be around. All she seemed to think and talk about were boys. The boy, himself only ten, promised himself that when he turned fourteen he wouldn’t spend all his time thinking and talking about girls. NEVER.
He was clearing debris from the previous week’s storm from the outer part of the field, near the lake, when the column of blinding blue light flashed across the sky to the north. It was brighter than the sun, and its light reflected from the surface of the lake was blinding. There was no sound and that, more than the light, disturbed the boy. He dropped the branches he’d gathered and began running toward the house. He could see his sister just outside the house staring dumbfounded into the sky. His father was emerging from the barn and appeared to be looking for the source of the light that had undoubtedly brightened its interior.
He had just reached his sister, the one about whom he had just been complaining, when the shock wave struck them. Time passed in what seemed like slow motion to the boy. He saw the debris at the front of the blast wave only moments before it reached him, yet it seemed like several minutes. Dirt, debris, and even water were being thrown into the air as what seemed like a wall of air reached them standing just beside their house. He had to cover his eyes to protect them from the dust and dirt in the air. He then heard the sound of the house being battered by the sudden gust of strong wind and saw parts of the roof flying off, along with the window shutters and much of the siding that covered the right side of the house. The sound was as deafening as the light had been blinding. He was terrified.
Simultaneously with the arrival of the shock wave, the ground trembled like in an earthquake. What the wind had not blown over, the shaking Earth did its best to tumble. The cook stand collapsed onto the fire that had been lit this morning to cook breakfast and much of the fence the boy’s father was building shook out of the postholes and onto the ground.
After it—whatever “it” was—had passed, the boy and his family were all alive and mostly uninjured. The damage to their property was significant but repairable, and aside from there being some exciting tales exchanged with their neighbors, who had similar experiences, the most lasting effects of the mysterious light and ensuing storm were the stories.
Only a few hundred miles away it was a completely different story. Resulting from what scientists would later estimate was the equivalent of a ten-megaton nuclear bomb—or one about one thousand times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima but without the nuclear radiation—a meteor or a comet had crossed paths with the Earth, entered the atmosphere and exploded just before impact at an altitude of about five miles. The affected area beneath the blast was over eight hundred square miles, and, fortunately, it was mostly uninhabited. The boy and his family were in one of the closest villages to the impact zone and because they weren’t within it, they survived. Eighty million trees and the animals living among them weren’t so lucky. The damage within the zone where the object exploded was nearly complete.
The year was 1908, and it was just another day in the life of the solar system.