As the meeting proceeded, he noticed that she would occasionally interpose a thought or suggestion, always to the attentive silence of the group at the Pentagon, but she never grandstanded. Colonel Milton proved equally surprising. He was not a dolt, as Neal had assumed, but a capable man who was actually in the right job here at the Array. He had demonstrated surprisingly little difficulty absorbing the new ideas Neal had proposed, and had shown virtually none of the inflexibility that Neal expected from a man of his rank and station. Within his arena the colonel’s was clearly a strong mind, trained after years of rigmarole into a practical conformity that was no doubt appropriate to his rank.

While the stereotype had been wrong for the colonel, though, it was becoming clear it was very much applicable to General Pickler, Neal thought, as he looked at the general’s corpulent face. Though he had a strong stature, his coloration showed that an abundance of a younger man’s indulgences were still stubbornly allowed to pass his lips, and no doubt he would continue to insist he was fine till the day his seemingly healthy, five-mile-a-day body keeled over, his bacon and filet mignon soaked blood finally congealing in his veins.

Sadistically entertained though Neal was by this image after nearly an hour of painstakingly banal briefings, he was broken from his reverie by the sudden turn of the meeting’s focus to the topic he was here to discuss.

“Colonel Milton,” the general said, “you had some business from the Array’s comet, asteroid and meteor review, I believe. Another Armageddon, is it, colonel?” the general chuckled as he made his little joke, bless.

Apparently the ridicule that Neal had encountered for what he did was not limited to undergrad guys at bars competing with him for the attention of their impressionable female counterparts.

The colonel breezed past the patronizing, if innocently intentioned joke by the general, “Yes, sir, I have called your office’s attention to the report dated September 20th of this year from this facility.”

“Yes, Colonel, we have the report in our packets.” the general said, his aide handing him the copy.

“General, if I may,” said the colonel, “we have made some additional calculations based on revised estimates that are not in the version of the report you have in front of you.”

“New estimates? Based on new information?” the general questioned, looking through the screen at the colonel.

“Not new information, per se, sir, but different interpretations of the existing data by our experts.”

Neal spoke up: “We didn’t factor in a lack of gas cloud or debris, err, sir, so the original estimates were, well, wrong.”