*** Days to Impact: 7 ***

Chapter 1

"What are we going to do?"

Kara looked up from the book she had been reading. It was just too hot for reading outside. The screen around the porch kept out the bugs, but it didn't help at all when it came to the muggy heat of a Florida summer. Kara generally preferred reading outdoors, but with one hundred percent humidity and the temperature up around ninety ... She shook her head as if to answer some unspoken question, got up from the lawn-chair, and went inside. Her father was sitting on the living-room couch, watching something on the television. A news report. From the kitchen came the sounds of something sizzling in a frying pan as her mother prepared the family's dinner. They had been getting home from work early for the past month, which was very unusual.

When Daryll Shayen noticed his daughter, he quickly turned the TV off. He smiled. "Hey, Kenz," he said, calling her by the family's abbreviation of her given name.

Kara smiled in return. "Hi Daddy. How was work?"

"Good, good." He seemed slightly distracted, as though he hadn't had the best of days and just wanted to drop the subject. He noticed the book in her hand and asked if she had been reading.

"Yeah." Kara flopped onto her favorite arm chair and set the book down on the nearby coffee table. "Just some summer reading for school." Her dad nodded again, and said nothing. He looked as though he had something on his mind and was about to say it, but not quite sure whether he should. Kara was debating asking him what it was.

She was spared the decision when her dad finally looked up and called to her mother. "Julia, would you come in here for a minute? The dinner can wait."

Mrs. Shayen came into the living room, drying her hands off on a dish towel. "I've been meaning to have a family meeting for the past couple weeks," Mr. Shayen told his daughter as his wife came over and sat beside him. Kara immediately thought she was in trouble, but did not say anything.

Mr. Shayen continued, "I was waiting for the right time to tell you, and I guess that now is as good as any, I mean, if you didn't hear it from us ... It's leaked to the media, so you'd hear it from them."

He took a deep breath. "Mackenzie, there's a huge asteroid that's going to hit Earth in about a week. It is going to destroy Earth, and there's nothing anyone can do about it. Your mother and I have known about it for some time, and we've been working on something NASA's calling the Mayflower Project. It's a shuttle that's going to be outfitted with eighty experimental stasis chambers. They're not greatly tested, and they're probably not very safe, but they are the last hope anyone has for survival."

Kara sat there, stunned. Wouldn't you be stunned if you suddenly found out the world was coming to an end? She said nothing, but looked around the room at the things so familiar to her that would be gone in a week. Tears silently filled her eyes. When she finally did speak, her voice was very soft. "What are we going to do?"

Mrs. Shayen answered, her voice trembling, "Your dad was able to get berths for you and me, Sweetie."

"But what about Daddy?" she cried in alarm. She unconsciously rushed to her father's side and held his hand tightly, as though to both keep him from some terrible danger and protect herself as well.

"I'm going to stay here," he answered her. "They need me on land. You and your mother will go without me."