In this bidding war, for instance, it was pretty obvious to Gershon that Columbia had the most plausible strategy. NASA, with the bigger players, had pissed away the best part of a decade on studies and proposals and evaluations of ever more exotic Mars landers, without ever really getting to the point. Lee’s people had come in fresh and had cut through all that crap, and presented something that looked as if it could be up and flying in a couple of years.

The trouble was, the scoring didn’t back up that intuition. Even though its technical pitch was well received — and the human factors stuff seemed particularly well thought through — Columbia was penalized by its status as a small experimental outfit. It just didn’t look as if Columbia was capable of delivering a complete spacecraft.

When the first-cut summary sheets came in, the overall totals gave Rockwell first place, with Boeing and McDonnell tied for second, and Columbia a distant last.

Gershon argued against the scoring in the final plenary sessions. “Damn it, you’ve got the results of the sims. I bust my balls trying to get a biconic to fly. We have to pick the bidder with the best chance of building something that will work…”

He got some sympathy from Joe Muldoon. The scores went through a rethink which helped Columbia a little.

But in the end Muldoon’s final report to Tim Josephson followed the scoring conclusions: “Rockwell International is considered the outstanding source as the Mars Excursion Module prime contractor…”

His assignment completed, Gershon went off to work at the Cape on the first of the Ares A-class missions, an unmanned proving flight of the upgraded Saturn VB.

In a couple of days he was called back to JSC to put his pawprint to the final MEM report. Gershon turned up, pretty pissed with the whole thing.

Muldoon caught him up.

“Where are you going?”

“It’s over, isn’t it? Oh, come on, Joe. You know as well as I do that Columbia was the only outfit with a real chance of building something in the time frame.. And now we’re dumping them.”

“Of course I know that. But it’s not over yet.”

“Are you kidding me? We’ve just signed off the final report, for Christ’s sake. Columbia never had a chance.”

“You’re learning fast, Ralph, but you’ve got a long way to go. In this game, a signed-off, final report is just the start of the negotiations.”

“What do you mean?”

“I want you to do something for me.”

A couple of days after that, a long telegram landed on JK Lee’s gunmetal desk.

He called in Jack Morgan and flipped the telegram across the desk at him.

Morgan read through the thing carefully, but he kept one eye on Lee as he did so.