Free [The Fear Saga 01] - Fear the Sky (2014) by Stephen Moss

who was, after all, the gatekeeper to one of the most influential men in the world, and took a seat on the waiting room couch beside the general.
    Jim Hacker’s office was linked to the bustling hub of activity that was the president’s staff center by a heavy wooden door, but he also had a separate corridor to the reception area. It would not do to have every one of his wildly varied daily guests coming through the president’s nerve center, both for their sake and his.
    He finished refreshing himself on the doctor’s and general’s files, a habit that served him well, and then closed his laptop. He had studied the original request of one Neal Danielson that had apparently prompted this meeting after getting off the phone with Dr. West, the Senior White House Scientific Advisor and was, he thought, somewhat prepared for the meeting.
    As they sat on the waiting room couch outside, the general, remaining facing forward, said to the doctor, “So I imagine there is some new information to consider on this?”
    Laurie mirrored his lack of body language, but said in a quiet voice:
    “New information of a sort, General. In much the same way as he did with our mass estimates not long ago, our friend at the Array has not found something new so much as brought a fresh perspective to existing data.”
    She turned now to him, and he met her gaze, “Michael, we have worked with each other for six years now, I hope I have always shown you just how much respect I have for the many factors I know you have to consider when making decisions on these things, and the dilemma which that poses for you.”
    The general was stunned by the sudden candor of his normally unflappable civilian colleague, but that surprise also opened a small gap in his professional armor for a moment, and it was through this gap that Laurie hoped to reach.
    “I hope you have also gathered some measure of respect for me too, over the years,” she continued, “and now I hope I can cash in some small part of that mutual respect for your trust when I say that we have something here. Something unusual, something potentially unique, and though I don’t know what it is yet, when something like this lands just out of reach, I think it is our job, our duty, to reach farther. To keep reaching until we have it in our grasp.”
    She held his gaze, and he felt the full weight she was putting behind her words. Her powerful sincerity met him head on, and he realized that he did indeed have a great deal of respect for this woman. As his usual pragmatism struggled to reassert control over him, he was overcome with the knowledge that she had proven to him again and again that she had a formidable mind, and he had never seen her be unreasonable or behave like the stereotypical blinkered pursuer of truth at-all-costs. He had also never seen her lose her cool. This formidable woman was asking for his trust, and more than that she was asking for his help.
    The moment was broken by the smiling invite from Margaret to go in, and the two of them stood, the general indicating for Laurie to go first. Jim Hacker was ready with handshakes and platitudes as they came in, prepared to talk the doctor down from what sounded like a potentially costly project.
    He was not ready, however, for the usually pragmatic General Pickler to be on her side.

Chapter 10: Testing the Waters

    Neal had never enjoyed living in Arizona, so the change of venue would have been welcome anyway. The fact that he was also working on something that was so cutting edge also helped make up for the fact that he was also, frankly, well outside his area of expertise.
    Luckily the same skills that had gotten him through seven years of university with a pretty much constant hangover had served him well when he was invited to join Dr. West at the Marine Research Institute in Florida. Though this was officially a navy project, the Institute was actually a private facility. It owed a lot of its funding, however, to the US