“It seems you’ve been hearing a lot of things,” she said when he’d gone.

“Not from you,” he said. “That’s the problem. We never consulted about your reassignment.”

“You’re being unfair. I let you know a month beforehand.”

“After the decision was already made.”

“Pete—”

“I’d just like you to tell me why I wasn’t advised sooner,” he said. “All the years we’ve worked together, depended on each other, you never left me hanging. And then you did.”

“Pete, I’m sorry. Honestly. I didn’t realize that was how you felt.”

“Then tell me. Straight answer.”

Their eyes met. And held.

“It’s sort of complicated,” she said. “Gord wanting me here is the truth, but he’s the one to give you his reasons. As for myself, there were personal issues.”

“They involve Bob Lang?”

“Yes,” she said. “I preferred not to share them at the time.”

He nodded. Their eyes remained locked.

“And now?”

“I’d still rather not.”

“You change your mind, I’ll be ready to listen.”

“I know, Pete,” she said. “And thank you.”

He nodded again and sat there quietly finishing his espresso.

She reached out, touched his arm.

“Are we okay, Pete? Settled, I mean.”

“Settled.”

They were silent another minute, her hand still on his arm, squeezing it gently.

“All right,” he said then. “Coffee’s done. We should discuss the helicopter.”

She nodded, reached down into the kangaroo pocket of her bib-alls, and extracted a connected Palm computer.

“All the luxuries of home,” he commented.

Megan slipped the computer’s stylus out of its silo and tapped its “on” button.

“We try to be with it,” she said with a shrug. “Now hush, I need to jot out an e-mail. We’re presently short-handed as far as pilots go, but I’ll explain that later. Meanwhile, I think I’ve figured out how to kill two birds with one electronic stone.”

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Greenbelt, Maryland

The men were known as Ketchup and Fries.

These were of course not their given names.

Ketchup was really Jonathan Ketchum, a sixty-year-old project scientist at the Experimenters’ Operations Facility in Goddard’s Building 26, the operational nucleus of the SOHO project. He had been with the EOF’s permanent MDI/SOI team since its establishment in the mid-nineties, and was considered one of its top men by the principal investigator.

Fries was Richard Frye, another member of the MDI/ SOI team. At twenty-six, he was its most recent addition, regarded as a babe in the woods by senior group members. This is the embedded reflex of those with tenure who are protective of their own status. Ketchum saw in Frye an inquisitiveness and joy of discovery that was like a bright reflection of himself as a young man. He knew Frye was already a better scientist than most, and had potential to be the best by far.