So after that, he started taking material home — draft scripts, documents, notes — and set himself to memorize every piece of the system he was proposing. He even took the stuff to bed, and sat there propped up against his pillows, with his reading light and his glasses.

Jennine would wake up, and mumble something, and he’d be shocked to find it was four in the morning, or some such godforsaken time. An hour until he had to get out and start all over again.

But he was full of energy. He couldn’t believe it. Day after day. He felt like he could fly.

Eventually he had a cot brought into his office. It seemed to him he saved a lot of time that way.

Lee received a call from Art Cane.

“I’m getting kind of worried about what you guys are costing me. If we don’t win the bid, I’m looking at one hell of a write-off. How’s my two million budget looking, by the way?”

“Fine, Art.”

Actually, that was a barefaced lie. Lee was well aware that he had long since gone beyond that two million limit, and in fact he was headed for three or four times that limit.

One of Art’s more endearing characteristics, from Lee’s point of view, was his distrust of computerized accounting systems. He insisted on inspecting the figures every month, analyzed, summarized, and interpreted more or less by hand. Just as when he’d started the company.

So Cane was always at least a month behind the action. And by a little manipulation, Lee could juggle his billings and payments to pick up another thirty days. So he had two months’ grace in all.

That was all Lee needed. In two months, the bid would be in. He figured that if he won the bid, nobody would care how much it cost. And if he lost, Art would have his hide anyway. Either way the important thing was to have the resources he needed at hand, at that moment.

Cane said, “I just got a call from McDonnell Douglas.”

“Oh, yeah? And?”

“It wants to throw in with us on a joint effort to bid on the MEM. How about that, JK? Now, I want you to think about this…”

Cane went on about the details.

Lee thought hard.