Foraker felt her cheekbones heat, but she managed to meet his regard steadily enough, then glanced up with a hint of relief as Callahan returned with a tray of sandwiches and raw vegetables. He positioned it on a small table between their chairs, poured each of them a cup of coffee, set the coffee carafe beside the sandwiches, and disappeared once more.

“That’s someone else I’m delighted to have out here,” Foraker said wryly, contemplating the food and drink which had so magically appeared.

“I can’t imagine why,” Theisman murmured with a small smile, and reached happily for one of the sandwiches. “Ummm… delicious!” he sighed.

“He has a way about him,” Foraker agreed, and selected a carrot. She sat back, nibbling politely to keep the Secretary company while he ate, and waited.

It wasn’t a long wait. Theisman finished one sandwich and ate half of a second one, then built himself a small plate of celery and carrot sticks with just a little more of the rich bleu cheese dip than he really ought to be eating, and leaned back in his own chair.

“Now that the pangs of starvation have been blunted, I suppose I should get down to the reason for my visit,” he said, and his eyes gleamed as Foraker sat up straighter, her expression intent.

“To be perfectly honest,” he continued, “one of the reasons I’m here is to do a personal eyeball check of your reports. Not that I have any concerns about their accuracy, but because a part of me just has to see the reality behind them.” He shook his head. “I sometimes wonder if you really realize all you’ve managed to accomplish out here, Shannon.”

“I think you can safely assume all of us realize that, Sir,” she told him dryly. “At least, we all know we’ve spent the better part of four T-years—some of us over five—more or less in exile while we did it!”

“I know you have, and I expect the entire Navy is going to appreciate it just as much as I do when we finally tell them what you’ve been doing,” he said seriously. “And although I have rather mixed feelings about the timing, it’s possible that the rest of the Service is going to begin finding out just a bit sooner than we thought.”

“It is?” Foraker’s eyes narrowed, and he nodded.

“I know you’ve been working to my original timetable. And to be candid, I’d really prefer to stick to that timetable. Unfortunately, that may not be possible. And if it isn’t, at least you and Captain Anders and the rest of your people have gotten more done in less time then I’d believed would be possible when I first sent you here.”

“I’m happy to hear that… mostly, Sir,” she said cautiously when he paused. “At the same time, and as much as all of my people deserve to be recognized, we’re still well short of the deployment levels you specified when you assigned me here. And while I’ve gotten the number of building slips up to target levels, we’ve only laid the first keels in a third of them within the last six months or so.”