"Right!" Leo tapped his holovid controls. "But check down this scan—where have all our little bubbles gone? Anybody think they magically closed between tests? Thank you," he said to their knowing grins, "I'm glad you don't think that. Now let's put both maps together." Red and blue melded to purple at overlapping points as the computer integrated the two displays.

"And now we see the little bugger," said Leo, zooming in again. "These two porosities, plus this lamination, all in the same plane. You can see the fatal crack starting to propagate already, on this rotation—" The holovid turned, and Leo emphasized the crack with a bright pink light. "That, children, is a defect."

They oohed in gratifying fascination. Leo grinned and plunged on. "Now, here's the point. Both these test scans were valid pictures—as far as they went. But neither one was complete, neither alone sufficient. The maps were not the territories. You have to know that x-radiography is excellent for revealing voids and inclusions, but poor at finding cracks except at certain chance alignments, and ultrasound is optimum for just those laminar discontinuities x-rays are most likely to miss. Both maps, intelligently integrated, yielded a judgment."

"Now." Leo smiled a bit grimly, and replaced the gaudy image with another, monochrome green this time. "Look at this. What do you see?" He nodded at Tony again.

"A laser weld, sir."

"So it would appear. Your identification is quite understandable—and quite wrong. I want you all to memorize this piece of work. Look well. Because it may be the most evil object you ever encounter."

They looked wildly impressed, but totally bewildered. He commanded their absolute silence and utmost attention.

"That"—he pointed for emphasis, his voice growing heavy with scorn—"is a falsified inspection record. Worse, it's one of a series. A certain subcontractor of GalacTech supplying thruster propulsion chambers for jumpships found its profit margin endangered by a high volume of its work being rejected—after it had been placed in the systems. So instead of tearing the work apart and doing it over right, they chose to lean on the quality control inspectors. We will never know for certain if the chief inspector refused a bribe or not, because he wasn't around to tell us. He was found accidentally very dead due to an apparent power suit malfunction, attributed to his own errors made when attempting to don it while drunk. The autopsy found a high percentage of alcohol in his bloodstream. It was only much later that it was pointed out that the percentage was so high, he oughtn't to have been able to walk, let alone suit up.