For the first time in his life, Manuel understood the fear of death. Fear, real fear—and overwhelming dread. How could one puny engineer hope to survive what was coming in just eight hours? But, survive he must. He also realized that Cathy and the boys couldn’t be allowed a window on his real feelings. He didn’t know how he was going to do it, but he determined to stay calm and told himself that, one way or the other, he and his family would survive the night.

When Cathy focused in on the monstrous object through the telescope lens, she let out a sharp cry, “Oh, Manolo, we’re going to die! All of us!”

“No, we’re not going to die!” Manuel insisted, hoping his voice sounded more confident than he felt. “We are not going to die. We are going to come through this thing. Alive!”

He embraced his wife briefly, then turned to the telescope and moved the lens back toward the sprawling city below. Words could not describe the chaos he saw. It was as if every vehicle in Greater Los Angeles had moved onto the freeways. None of them was moving. Hoods were up on many vehicles, and geysers of steam poured out of overheated radiators.

Just beyond the freeways, he could spot puffs of smoke rising into the blistering sky. Fires, he thought, in the bone-dry woods and fields. To the southeast, he could see whole neighborhoods engulfed in flames. There was no way firefighters would ever reach those places. It was just a question of time until the whole city would be ablaze.

Manuel went back into the transmitter building, leaving Cathy on the observation deck. He said softly to himself, “It’s all gone. The life’s work of ten million people. Everything they’ve struggled for, and everything they’ve fought so hard to get. Up in smoke. Wiped out by a huge chunk of hot rock from outer space. Why? Why is this happening?”

He snapped out of his reverie long enough to see that the transmitter was wavering and about to shut down. At this point it had less than ten minutes of life left in it. But what he saw on the picture monitor made him wish he had cut the thing off hours before. The station was showing live and taped feeds from its chopper.

Temperatures at street level were reported to be in excess of 140 degrees. Some people had stripped off their clothes and were running naked in the scorching heat, screaming for help. One reporter estimated that the number of heart attacks alone had already passed one hundred thousand.

According to the reporter, deaths from heat prostration were approaching the same level. There were gruesome close-up shots of the dead, their faces puffed up and contorted. Dead bodies were hanging out of the windows of cars stalled up and down the freeways.

A large group of people were on their knees crying out to God that this tragedy would somehow be averted. Some begged for death—anything to escape the hellish heat that descended from the sky. Radiation, like steam, shimmered before their eyes. The pavement, concrete buildings, and every metal object were now scorching hot.