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life.”
    I shuddered each time I heard that line. We’d learned in school how war had returned in the fight for dwindling resources, how close the human race had come to destroying itself.
    The screen was now filled with a view of the solar system.
    “And then fate intervened, although no one could have foreseen the silver lining that would accompany the storm clouds.”
    There was a more modern news report. The newscaster’s mouth was a thin line as she delivered her information.
    “We have breaking news. Scientists at the Global Observatory in Oslo say Earth is in the path of a massive asteroid. How big and how much time will it take to reach Earth? They have named it Perses, after the ancient Greek god of destruction.
    “We will have more details as they become available.”
    The screen showed a rapid-fire series of images as the object emerged from shadow into reflected sunlight. The closer it got, the more clearly scientists could gauge its size and shape. Then yet another news anchor appeared.
    “Scientists say Perses is actually an enormous planetoid, and it is hurtling toward Earth. Perses doesn’t need to directly strike the Earth to destroy everything. If it passes close enough, its gravitational pull could rip our atmosphere off like a sheet from a bed.”
    The anchor ended the report by staring at the camera in disbelief.
    The voiceover returned.
    “The world was again united. United in fear, but united in purpose. The world’s best scientists gathered in Norway to work together to try to save the Earth.”
    A series of newspaper front pages twirled on the screen with huge headlines.
    SCIENTISTS: BLOWING UP PERSES WON’T WORK
    NOT ENOUGH BOMBS TO BUDGE PERSES AN INCH
    MOVE THE EARTH WITH A MASSIVE EXPLOSION? SUICIDE, SAY TOP SCIENTISTS
    PEOPLE URGED TO PRAY FOR A MIRACLE
    My heart raced, knowing what was coming next.
    The booming music ended, replaced by the sound of boat horns, seagulls, and rocking waves. The camera showed a young bearded man sitting on the edge of acliff, watching as boats came and left the docks below.
    “The answer, in the end, was . . . tugboats.
    “Hans Melming, a brilliant young scientist, knew time was quickly running out as Perses grew closer and closer to Earth. He decided to visit his beloved seashore, perhaps for the last time.
    “As he sat on the cliff’s edge, he watched tugboats moving huge transport tankers into the port.”
    Now there was a clip of an interview Melming had given a reporter a few years later, his beard now flecked with white.
    “The tugboats are so tiny, they look like they should get crushed. But they use their smaller mass to tweak the movement of the bigger object ever so slightly. I instantly realized that the same approach would work in space. It had to do with gravity. The closer something is, the more its mass pulls on the objects around it.”
    “I’m not sure I totally understand,” said the reporter.
    Melming smiled like a kind uncle.
    “Take Jupiter, for example. Jupiter is huge, but it’s so far away from the Earth that it has almost no gravitational effect on us at all.
    “The Moon is miniscule in comparison, but because it’s so close, it changes the Earth’s orbit slightly and even sets the tides. See?”
    The reporter nodded, and Melming continued.
    “We couldn’t move something as big as the Moon, but we could send small rockets into the asteroid belt, out past Mars. These rockets, targeted precisely, would move small asteroids, which would then move bigger asteroids and then even bigger asteroids, and so on and so on, until there was a kind of fleet of space rocks heading right for the flight path of Perses.
    “The collective mass of all those rocks had a powerful gravitational pull, and they nudged Perses just enough to make the plan a success.”
    “To save the Earth, you mean,” said the reporter. “You are a hero.”
    Melming smiled but shook his head. “Those are very kind words. I am just a scientist who had