He looked around the canteen, with its battered serving bays and scuffed floor and stink of tomato sauce. It was the pits. And it was going to be a tough regime in here. He’d already issued a notice that for the duration of the proposal development he’d expect everybody to be at their desks by 7 A.M. and to work through until at least 9 P.M. And the work here would just be the center of a huge effort right across the company, with teams of engineers in laboratories and wind tunnels generating data to support the thesis that Columbia was going to be able to do this, to build this unprecedented machine…

But this was the focus: it was in this big, dirty room, he felt with a growing excitement, that the final proposal for the Mars Excursion Module would be drawn up.

He started scouring the organization, taking out whoever he thought was going to be of use to him in constructing the bid. When anybody howled, he just waved Cane’s name at them, and that was usually enough. That was Art Cane’s culture, Lee reflected. He might have doubts about the wisdom of this bid, but once they had gotten into it, it was a corporate effort, all or nothing, and Cane would expect the whole organization to support Lee as best it could.

During that first week Art Cane spent some time trying to assemble corporate partners: potential subcontractors who would support Columbia’s bid. A coalition of subcontractors was, by traditional wisdom, a major feature of any serious bid for a contract like this.

At Cane’s recommendation, Lee and Bob Rowen flew out to Culver City, the headquarters of Hughes Aircraft. That was where Cane had cut his teeth, and he still had some contacts out there. Cane arranged an appointment for them with a vice president called Gene Tyson. As it happened Hughes hadn’t been signed up by anybody else in the MEM bidding process yet. And Hughes was skilled in control and stabilization, so the company would be good to have on Columbia’s side.

But when Lee and Rowen got to Culver City, Tyson kept them waiting for three hours, and when they’d given their pitch, Tyson and his aides laughed them out of the office.

Gene Tyson was a fat, soft-looking man who reeked of cologne and tobacco, and he irritated the hell out of Lee. He put a fatherly arm around Lee’s shoulders as he walked him to the door. “Take my advice,” Tyson said. “Art Cane is a great old guy. But, JK, you’re wasting your time. Not to mention mine. You have no chance of winning this contract, absolutely none. You’re just a bunch of lab boys.”