"When dark comet UD3 was spotted near Jupiter's orbit, its existence was largely ignored. But to scientists like Benjamin Schwartz, manager of NASA's Center for Near-Earth Object Studies, the threat the eight-kilometer comet posed to the human race was unthinkable. The 150-millimion-year reign of the dinosaurs ended when an asteroid impact generated more than a billion times the energy of an atomic bomb. What would happen to Earth's seven billion inhabitants if a similar even were allowed to occur? Ben and his indomitable girlfriend, Amy Kowalski, fly to South America to assemble an international counteraction team, whose notable recruits include Love Mwangi, a UN interpreter and nomad scholar, and Shen Liu, an engineer from China's national space agency. At the same time, on board a polar icebreaker, life continues under the looming shadow of the comet. Jack Campbell, a photographer for National Geographic, works to capture the beauty of the Arctic before it is gone forever. Gustavo Wayãpi, a Nobel Laureate poet from brazil, struggles to accept the recent murder of his beloved twin brother. And Maya Gutiérrez, an impassioned marine biologist, is --quite unexpectedly--falling in love for the first time. Together, these men and women have two choices: neutralize the greatest threat the world has ever seen or come to terms with the annihilation of humanity itself. Their mission is code-named The Effort." --page [4] of cover