Twilight Convoy

First came the scientific reports. Deep space tracking: a fast, massive object, changing speed and heading in unnatural fashion.

Second came the research. All the observable parameters run through Markov concordances of cosmological data. Every hint and hunch plundered from the Arkham Archives of data exfiltrated from R'lyeh. The batteries of deep sense-dep espers under the Arctic ice retasked from cajoling the fundamentals of reality to bouncing astrotelepathic doppler pings off the incomer.

Third came the conclusion: We had fallen under the gaze of The God From Space, the Radula of Extinction, the Hunger, the Terror. The stars aligned, and our horoscope said Doom.

Fourthly, we armed ourselves against the end.

And fifth...