No one is there to see them, for they lie far beyond the orbit of Mars. Fifty thousand asteroids tumbling and jostling in the blackness of space. Unobserved.
They have done so for nearly 5 billion years, answerable to no one, obeying nought but the laws of gravity. They are space debris – pieces of a planet the mighty forces of Jupiter refused to allow. Some are giants over a hundred miles across, but most are babies chasing each other around the oh-so distant Sun, it’s heat and light feeble this deep into space.
And every once in a while they collide and splinter. Today, one, less than a mile across, is nudged by a neighbour and begins its two year journey to Earth. No one witnesses the rock as it gracefully, silently, speeds through the void towards a blue dot in the blackness.
Men go about their business, unaware that a countdown has begun.