Joe Muldoon spoke up. “Hell, yes. You have to look again at the Columbia bid, Tim.”

“Why so?”

“Because in my opinion it’s the most technically plausible. It’s shallow in some areas, but overall it was the most coherent of the bids. With the support of good subcontractors, the small organizational weight of Columbia won’t be a handicap…”

Gershon tried not to grin. As he’d watched Muldoon and Josephson and the rest work in the last few days, he’d come to believe that running an organization had a lot in common with flying a plane. You had to use your instruments, sure, but raw data, however well interpreted and analyzed, was only one input; in the end — when you had to make the decisions that could save you or kill you — there was no substitute for the mysterious internal processing that amalgamated data and experience and the feel of a ship in your hands.

It was just what Tim Josephson and Joe Muldoon were doing, he thought. The Columbia bid felt right, and that might swing it for JK Lee, even yet.

Still, it was going to be difficult for Josephson to set aside the conclusions of his formal evaluation. Two decades earlier Jim Webb had done that, when he’d plumped for Rockwell to build Apollo. And there had been muttering about corruption and backhand deals ever since.

When Gershon left to take a plane to the Cape, the decision still hung in the balance.

Lee was getting steadily more depressed. Even though his unorthodox visit to Houston had gone well, the rumors coming out of Washington were strong and consistent: that Rockwell had the MEM contract wrapped up. Hell, he thought, they always did. Who was I ever trying to kid?

At 10 A.M. on the day after getting back from Houston he found himself staring out of his office window. He was thinking of going home. He could spend some time with Jennine. And his son, Bert, was playing baseball that evening for his high-school team. Maybe it would be good for Lee to show up, for once.

Then Joe Muldoon called.

“Can you come back over to Houston today?”

Lee was nonplussed. “I don’t know. The flights—”

“Tonight would be fine. I’d like to see you. Come to my office at JSC.”

Maybe Muldoon thought it would be kinder to tell Lee in person, even if it meant dragging him all the way out to Houston.

Lee thought of Bert and his ball game. That seemed a more attractive option.

He called Bella to ask her to fix up a flight to Houston.

He got to JSC in the late afternoon. He’d spent the flight, and the ride from the airport, bracing himself for the axe.

Muldoon took him into his office and closed the door. He stuck out his hand and grinned. “Congratulations. I wanted to tell you in person. You’ve won the MEM.”