There was one other test that they would keep in reserve in case their audience was not convinced by this massive and impressive show. The second test was fairly expensive, a little strange, and very messy, so they would only show it if someone in the review board asked the same question that Laurie had asked immediately after Neal had finished explaining the first test.

While considerations of cost and clean-up affected the test’s appeal for the Institute’s administrators and financiers, Neal and most of his colleagues were hoping more than a little that they would have to go to plan B.

* * *

The next day, seated in three rows on white plastic fold-out chairs, the review board was arranged like a wedding, with the naval officers on one side, the air force’s on the other, and the various civilian assistants and advisors to each dotted amongst them like their proverbial dates. The chairs had been arranged in the same spot Neal and Laurie had stood in only a day beforehand viewing the massive tank that housed their main experiment.

In the back row Laurie sat between General Pickler and an ex-naval captain who had joined the Institute full-time four years ago after being assigned there for two years as a navy liaison. The appropriateness of Captain Hawkson’s assignment had been a little too good, it turned out, and his passion for the specific brand of naval ingenuity the Institute required had drawn him away from his career in the navy proper. Well, passion and a private sector paycheck. Laurie had met him when the project had been initiated eight weeks beforehand, and since then, he and Neal had clearly become friends. The night before the team had gone out for a drink after the dress rehearsal was complete and they had ended up polishing off beers into the wee hours. No doubt if they were successful today, they would repeat that this evening, but first they had seventeen pragmatic and dispassionate senior military men to show the light to. Considering the audience, they had felt it best not to set Neal loose on them, so they had picked one of the Institute’s own to lead the demo.

And so, after introducing the project and the team, Laurie had handed over to the team’s designated driver and taken her seat, winking at Neal on his spot on the other side of the tank from them. He was standing at the control panel that linked him with the remote cranes at the bottom of the deep well of murky water.

* * *

An hour or so later, the demo was going well, and they were approaching the end of the third and final repositioning. Dr. Madeline Cavanagh, the designated speaker and another member of the previous evening’s celebration, continued her description of the way the tools worked, and how they had solved the multitude of problems they had been presented with.