PATRICIA SMITH

A beautifully descriptive story about love, self-sacrifice and the desperate battle to avoid extinction on a dying world.
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A massive cloud of hydrogen is traveling through space on a collision course with Earth.

At a high-ranking meeting two astronomers, Edward and Joseph, are sworn to secrecy when they reveal that in six months’ time, as the gas envelops the planet, it will turn the atmosphere into a fireball.

Their beautiful young prodigy, the resourceful Lauren, is initially kept in the dark, but soon discovers the destination of the cloud when she calculates its route.

Two months before its encounter with Earth, the gas is captured and absorbed by the planet Jupiter. They think they have avoided disaster, but you can be looking the wrong way when the end of the world sneaks up on you.
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Those by the coast had advanced warning something was wrong when the tide suddenly swept an incalculable distance out to sea. A violent wind followed then, as the air thickened and breathing became difficult, a glow appeared around the horizon.

This was not unusual on a world with two suns, but the speed and intensity with which the light grew was a different matter. It climbed to fill the sky until, further and higher than sight allowed, a wall of blue fire sped towards the land at a phenomenal pace.

Fear and wonder held some in place, but for those who did run there would still be no escape.

The closer the flame drew, the more ferocious the wind; it ripped at trees and undergrowth to combine animals and plants in a terror-filled roar. Then moments later a sonic blast reached the shore: a solid wall of air which tore across the land, smashing any stronghold in its path, to leave most dead or dying when the inferno arrived and burned all to ash in its wake.