“And the pods all worked,” McPherson says. That was the crucial test, the one of the target designation and tracking. With all those things functioning, they’ve fulfilled the specs. The fact that the Soviets’ best field SAM system isn’t fast enough to stop the Stormbee is just gravy, confirmation that the Air Force has asked for the right things. The main fact is, they have a system that works.

They spend the next few hours going over the data that the test generated. It all looks very good indeed. They pop the cork on a bottle of champagne and click plastic cups together before McPherson gets on the helicopter with the data, to return to El Paso and OC.

Flying over the magnets in the soundless, vibrationless calm of the tube train, McPherson can’t help but feel a little glow of accomplishment. He ignores the printouts in his lap and looks around the plush car of the train. Businessmen in the big seats are hidden behind opened copies of The Wall Street Journal. With no windows and no vibration and no noise, it’s difficult to believe that they are moving at Mach 2. The world has become an incredible place.…

When he returns it’ll be time for the painful task of writing up the description of the system, in proposal form. Several hundred pages it will run to, not as much as a bid proposal, it’s true, but still, it will be his job to oversee and edit the ungodly number of descriptions, charts, diagrams and such. Not fun.

Still. Being at that stage means a lot; it means they have a working system, within the size and power specs given. It’s more than a lot of LSR’s programs can say, at the moment. McPherson thinks of Ball Lightning briefly, shoves the thought away. This is one of the rare times that a program director can say, The work is done, and it’s a success. He hasn’t been given all that many commands like this one, and it means a lot.

The image of the test comes back to him. That inhumanly swift stoop, attack, disappearance; the quick, precise, and total destruction of the six lumbering tanks; it really was quite extraordinary, both physically and intellectually.