The ads Carl created were seen all over America. A stack of Addy Awards testified to his position in the industry. He could have had a high-paying job anywhere in the ad world, but JPT Worldwide snapped on his wrists a very attractive set of golden handcuffs—a $500,000 annual salary, generous performance bonuses, and enough stock options to squelch any thoughts he might have had of moving on.

Carl could dream of the stars in heaven, but for now he was a star in the advertising galaxy on Earth—and it appeared that nothing would ever change that fact.

“Look, Carl!” Lori exclaimed, pointing up at the night sky. “Look how bright that star is tonight! Isn’t that Venus?”

Carl leaned back in his chair and looked up into the sky. “No,” he said, “that’s not Venus, my love. We can’t see Venus from here tonight.”

“Well, Galileo,” she said, laughing, “what is it, then? It’s not the North Star, is it?”

“No, I’m not sure what that is, honey. It’s not a star at all. It could be a low-level satellite, I suppose. But if so, it’s in the wrong place. It can’t be a comet—it’s moving too slowly. Maybe a weather balloon—or maybe it’s an asteroid like the one that missed the earth by six hours about ten years ago.”

“An asteroid? What are you talking about?” Lori asked, looking intently at Carl. “Are you serious? An asteroid missed the earth by just six hours?”

“Sure,” he said. “Don’t you remember? There were stories in the newspapers—after the fact, of course. There was even a TV documentary, and a big cover story in Newsweek. I’m sure we talked about it at the time, but an asteroid really did pass through Earth’s orbit just six hours after Earth passed by. It was the closest near miss of that magnitude in recorded history. If there had actually been a collision, it would have been disastrous.”

“I didn’t hear anything about an asteroid,” Lori said, sitting up in her chair. She looked at him closely. “You’re putting me on, right?”

“No, I’m not, Lori. It’s true. That big black expanse of space out there is full of rocks and debris—some big and some little. The little ones are called meteors. The big ones—some of them the size of little planets—are called asteroids. Usually when meteors hit the earth’s atmosphere, they just burn up. We call them shooting stars, and usually only a small amount of debris ever reaches the earth. But sometimes fragments of meteors do get through, and those are called meteorites. You’ve seen meteorites, haven’t you?”

Lori nodded. “Yes, I think so.”

“Big ones, like the ones they’ve found in Arizona and Mexico, can leave huge craters in the earth’s surface. But if an asteroid were ever to hit our planet . . . hold on to your hat. Honolulu and Nome, Alaska, would probably trade places!”

Looking up again, Carl paused, considering his own words. “If a meteor hit southern California, the ride would be so bumpy that not many of us would still be around to talk about it.”