In Situ by David Samuel Frazier Page A

replied Long, while he racked his brain trying to remember his briefing on the Pan-STARRS project. He could vaguely recall a lot of scientific jargon about ‘near earth objects’ and ‘impact probabilities,’ pretty boring stuff considering what he had on his plate. The briefing had been some time ago.
    “Sir, we have strong reason to believe that an asteroid approximately 2.9 kilometers in diameter will strike the earth in less than twenty nine days somewhere near Mexico in the western Pacific Ocean.”
    The President sat down, holding the receiver to his ear, searching for something to say , the details of that long ago meeting snapping back into his head in living color.
    “Sir?”
    “Have you been able to come up with any calculations regarding potential damage?” the President finally managed to say.
    “ Sorry, Sir, but I have spent the last five or six hours just trying to pinpoint the exact trajectory of the object and to confirm the impact probability before I called.”
    “And?”
    “Well Sir, as I said, as near as we can tell, somewhere around 25 degrees North and 118 degrees West. The impact probability is essentially one hundred percent. We are still working on a precise Torino number.”
    “I’m sorry , Doctor, I meant, can you say anything about damage.”
    “Not yet , Sir, as I mentioned…,”
    “Doctor,” the President interrupted as calmly as he could, “can you give me a ballpark idea?”
    “Well, roughly, something on the order of several million nuclear devices exploding simultaneously, Sir.”
    The President looked over to Anders and covered his mouthpiece. “We need to find Batter.”

Chapter 9
The Caves
    Tom and Alex climbed over some rubble and entered the rough opening, switching on their flashlights almost simultaneously. It was pitch black inside. Alex stepped carefully, sweeping her light high across the cave’s rafters, trying to get a sense of its size. The area they were in was large, with twenty to thirty foot ceilings and almost as wide. Aside from the hole Tom and his men had inadvertently knocked open in the ARC, it looked as if there were two other natural entrances; one which seemed to lead upward, and one down, all part of some sort of vast natural tunnel system.
    “Which way, Tom?”
    “That way,” he said, pointing his light at the entrance that looked like it went up, “only goes for about two hundred feet and then it’s totally blocked by a slide, but this way,” he said turning the other direction, “well, you’ll see.”
    Alex followed Tom toward the second entrance. The cave narrowed considerably and then began to descend more rapidly. As they stepped off into the dark she stumbled into him.
    “Watch it Alex,” he said, concerned for her safety, “shine your light down so you can see where you are going.”
    Alex turned her flashlight to the floor of the cave and was astonished at what she saw. This cannot be, she thought to herself. She knelt down and looked at the area ahead of her, moving the light from side to side, touching the floor with her hands. Impossible. “What would have… What could have? No, there must be some mistake,” she said to herself. “This has to be a natural phenomenon.” She realized she had tripped on a step!
    “Amazing huh? Just like I promised,” Tom offered smugly.
    “This must be some kind of natural rock formation, right?” Alex was looking at a series of steps that continued into the dark below. They were cut directly into the stone, approximately six feet wide from side to side, a foot and a half deep, and had a drop of about eight inches. Each one seemed perfectly proportioned to the next.
    “You tell me , Doctor,” Tom replied. “All I know is that one of the guys from the team that was down here earlier today said that they had found pre-K-T specimens and no other evidence of any other occupancy since, suggesting that these were cut, what, over sixty million years ago?”
    “That’s impossible. What