The telegram had come from Ralph Gershon, one of the astronauts on the evaluation board. It was basically a list of questions about the Columbia bid. A lot of them were brutal, and the first was a doozie: translated from corporate speak it was, How can a pissant bunch of amateurs like Columbia handle the development of a major spacecraft like the MEM?

“Well, I guess this is it,” Morgan said, studying Lee. “We’re dead.”

Morgan had never seen Lee so low as in the last couple of months, since the MEM presentation. The release of tension, the sleep deficit, and all the rest of it had dumped Lee into a deep, deep trough of depression. And Lee’s overspend on the proposal had finally come out into the open, and there was a lot of muttering against him within Columbia. During the MEM exercise Morgan had become genuinely worried about what Lee was doing to himself. Not to mention his family. With the MEM thing being over, Morgan knew he was going to have to broach the health thing with Lee, somehow. Maybe he’d try to work through Jennine.

But just then Lee, sitting back in his chair, seemed bright, alert, and his eyes had that slightly glazed, almost high look in them that Morgan had come to associate with Lee’s major bursts of activity.

“Hell, no,” Lee said vehemently. “Don’t you get it? This damn note means we’re still in the running. They wouldn’t be asking us these questions otherwise.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Get the answers, of course.” Lee stabbed at his intercom. “Bella. I want you to start putting out calls. Get the MEM team leaders in here as soon as you can. And book a flight for us all, out to Houston, for — let me think — two days’ time.”

“But that’s a Sunday, JK.”

“Here you go again with your but but but,” Lee said. “I’ve told you about that before.”

“Yes, sir, JK.”

Morgan was aghast. “You’re not serious. It’s unheard of for a bidder to make a personal visit during an evaluation process.”

“What is that, a rule?”

“An unwritten one, I guess.”

Lee arched his eyebrows. “Imagine my concern.”

After the visit of the Columbia people to JSC, the scoring was revised again, and the senior people on the evaluation board took the proposal to Tim Josephson in Washington.

Muldoon’s people recommended Rockwell on the basis of the scoring system, with Columbia finally showing up at third.

The Administrator listened carefully.

Then Josephson thanked the board, and he asked Joe Muldoon, Ralph Gershon, and a couple of others to stay behind.

“Tell me the truth.” His tone sounded to Gershon typically dry and bureaucratic. “Are there any factors, other than those presented by the evaluation board, which I ought to take into account in this decision?”