By this point, the boys were as close as any brothers. Where one was, the other was almost always guaranteed to be found. Derek and Rob even went on their first date together, when in tenth grade, they took the Miller twins to the school dance and later spent half the night trying to get the girls to show an interest in astronomy. The date ended when Tara Miller asked why anyone would care so much about a bunch of dumb stars' and her sister Lisa agreed.

Since they each worked only part-time on the campus of West Coast University while they studied, they tended to be a little short of cash most of the time, which had led them to the All-You-Can-Eat buffet at the Golden Dragon Chinese restaurant today. It wasn't uncommon for them to eat only one real meal a day and they generally chose to make it a big one at some buffet where they could eat enough to sustain them for the next twenty-four hours. Doing this made it possible to get by on as little as ten dollars a day for food and allowed them to put away more of their meager funds for astronomy journals or texts.

The two aspiring astronomers had been on a high for the last several months, since discovering the strange properties of a comet which was traveling towards the Earth. They'd worked with their professor to verify their data and checked to confirm there was no other record of this comet's irregularities in any of the typical sources.

They had wanted to publicize their findings, but their professor had insisted on discretion. Apparently, he knew of an astronomy program on the East Coast. They had what they thought was a significant finding involving an asteroid several years before. After going public and creating a minor panic, it turned out that there was a calculation with an unnoticed error in it, one which radically changed the 'big find' into a 'big nothing'. The event had caused a significant amount of embarrassment for the school and their astronomy program.

It was this negative publicity which Professor Mallox was determined to prevent. He had quietly forwarded their findings to NASA, by way of a congressman he knew and was awaiting a response.

The boys reluctantly went along with the decision, but after almost six months, they were getting tired of waiting. One of the few arguments they'd ever had occurred a week ago, when Rob suggested they stop delaying and publicize their findings on their own.

Derek was adamantly opposed to this idea, and the boys had come close to having a shouting match. In the end, they'd agreed to wait two more weeks for Professor Mallox's direction to get answers.