Dennis picks up the point casing, places it over the points, takes up a wrench and begins to tighten one of the nuts that holds it to the sidewall.

“Is that all you think I do?” he asks quietly. “Make bombs?”

“Isn’t that what you do?”

“No, it isn’t. Mostly I make guidance systems.”

“It’s the same thing!”

“No. It isn’t.”

“Oh come on, Dad. It’s all part of the same thing. Defense! Weapons systems!”

Dennis’s jaw is bunched hard. He threads the second nut, begins to tighten it, all very methodically.

“You think we don’t need such systems?”

“No, we don’t!” Jim has lost all composure, all restraint. “We don’t have the slightest need for them!”

“Do you watch the news?”

“Of course I watch the news. We’re in several wars, there’s a body count every day. And we provide the weapons for those wars. And for a lot of others too.”

“So we need some weapons systems.”

“To make wars!” Jim cries furiously.

“We don’t start the wars by ourselves. We don’t make all the weapons, and we don’t start all the wars.”

“I’m not so sure of that—it’s great business!”

“Do you really think that’s it?” Surely that nut is tight by now. “That there are people that cynical?”

“I suppose I do, yes. There are a lot of people who only really care about money, about profits.”

Abruptly Dennis pulls the wrench off the nut.

“It’s not that simple,” he says down at the motor, almost as if to himself. “You want it to be that simple, but it isn’t. A lot of the world would love to see this country go up in smoke. They work every day to make weapons better than ours. If we stopped—”

“If we stopped they would stop! But what would happen to profits then? The economy would be in terrible trouble. And so it goes on, new weapon after new weapon, for a hundred years!”

“A hundred years without another world war.”

“All the little wars add up to a world war. And if they go nuclear it’s the end, we’ll all be killed! And you’re a part of that!”