Rufus’s transmission was getting scratchy. Dinah wiped her eyes and looked out her window to see Earth encircled by a belt of fire. The trails of the incoming meteorites, once a pattern of bright scratches in the air, had merged into a blinding continuum of superheated air that had set fire to anything on the surface capable of burning. Since more of the rocks were coming in around the equator, the belt of radiance and fire was brightest there; but north and south of it, long swaths of the surface were aflame, and the belt was widening to envelop the high latitudes of Canada and South America.