This news sends a little chill through McPherson. “So,” he says, “we’ve got a General James who didn’t want us to get the contract. Why?”

“I don’t know. I was hoping you could tell me. We’re still trying to find out, but I doubt we will any time soon. Certainly not before the GAO releases their report. It’s due out soon, and from what we hear it’s going to be very favorable to us.”

“Is that right?” After all he has heard so far, McPherson is surprised by this. But Goldman nods.

All of a sudden the possibility of getting these men—James, Feldkirk, the whole Air Force—Parnell—the possibility of taking their corrupt, fraudulent, cheating decision and stuffing it back down their throats and choking them on it—the possibility of forcing them to acknowledge that they have some accountability to the rules—oh it rises in McPherson like a great draft of clean fresh air; he almost laughs aloud. “And if it is favorable to us?”

“Well, if their report is stated in strong enough terms, Judge Tobiason won’t be able to ignore it, no matter what his personal biases are. He’ll be forced to declare the contract improperly awarded, and to call for a new process under the Defense Procurement statutes of 2019. They’d have to repeat the bidding process, this time adhering very closely to the RFP, because the courts would be overseeing it.”

“Wow.” McPherson sips his drink. “That might really happen?”

Goldman grins at his skepticism. “That’s right.” He raises his glass, and they toast the idea.

So McPherson returns to California feeling as optimistic about the whole matter as he has since the proposal went from superblack to white.

Back at the office, however, he has to turn immediately to the problem of Ball Lightning. Things are as bad as ever on that front. McPherson’s role has been deliberately left vague by Lemon, as part of the punishment; he is to “assist” Dan Houston, whatever that means, Dan Houston who has had less time with the company and is clearly not competent to do the job. Galling. Exactly what Lemon had in mind.

But worse than that are the problems with the program itself. The Soviets’ new countermeasure for their slow-burning boosters, introducing modest fluctuations in their propulsion—called “jinking”—has made LSR’s trajectory analysis software obsolete, and so their easiest targets have become difficult. Really, offensive countermeasures to the boost-phase defenses are so easy and cheap that McPherson is close to convinced that their free-electron laser system is more or less useless. They’d have better luck throwing stones. (In fact there’s a good rival program at TRW pursuing a form of this very idea.) But the Air Force is unlikely to be happy to discover this, some thirty billion dollars into the project, with test results in their files that show the thing is feasible. Strapped chicken results.