Monica was at one end of a long conference table with Henry’s lectern at the far end, together with an overhead projector and a laptop computer, and three members of the President’s science team, boosted today by a suit from the Pentagon: Admiral Joan Bromwich, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The Building was next door to the White House itself. In fact, when Monica looked past the small window-unit air conditioner and out the window she was looking along Pennsylvania Avenue.

So it was a big day for Henry, maybe the biggest in his career, the clearest sign there could be that Washington was taking him and his dire warnings seriously. And yet here he was standing at the lectern in dirty jeans and a shirt that looked as if it had been slept in and his thick black hair like a mop: the picture of disrespect, or independence of thought, or unconventionality, or whatever the hell other Hollywood-scientist clichés he thought he was projecting. How were the suits sitting around the table supposed to respond to him?

And how was she supposed to get through today, before she got back to her apartment, found the blessed oblivion of a few hours sleep?

Just don’t embarrass me, she thought. She, and many others, hadn’t forgotten how Henry had shot his mouth off on TV and the Internet and in the newspapers to campaign, over the head of NASA management, for his doomed Shoemaker missions. It didn’t help his credibility, today. She’d had to put her own reputation on the line to bring this meeting together. She would be very damaged if Henry fouled up today. Just don’t embarrass me.

She was surprised, in the circumstances, how much that still mattered.

And she was glad Alfred was here. She’d even, on his advice, consented to wear a hat, so the attendees could concentrate on the matter at hand rather than her latest chemotherapy Bad Hair Day.

She gathered her strength. “Let’s start.”

A rumble of assent from around the room.

“Dr Meacher, have you prepared a formal briefing?”

Henry tapped at his laptop, and images filled the projector screen. Maps of Earth, molecular structure charts and equations, energy expressions. He began without preamble. “We established conclusively that the Edinburgh outbreak flowed from the Moon rock, Apollo sample 86047.”

“Fucking careless handling,” Bromwich growled.

Henry wasn’t fazed. “We were doing geology. Not epidemiology.”

Monica said, “I don’t think apportioning blame is helpful right now, Admiral.”

Bromwich glowered.

“Anyhow,” Henry said, “that was the primary source. We’ve been able to trace secondary outbreaks, in the US and elsewhere, to the ash cloud that spread out from Edinburgh, through the stratosphere, around the planet.”