Cane cut him off. “Listen to me, JK. There are some things you just don’t understand about this business. I’m not talking about specific problems. I’m talking about” — he waved his hands vaguely — “a cumulative effect.”

Lee was uneasy, but baffled. “Cumulative?”

“Things kind of pile up, one on top of another. It’s an image thing. There’s been a lot of comment about the performance of the Apollo hardware — the proven stuff, which brought the astronauts home flawlessly — compared to the problems of the MEM. Maybe the contract should have gone to Rockwell after all, is what they’re muttering. With talk like that around, before you know where you are you can’t do anything right. Even fixing what’s wrong, specifically, isn’t going to help. When you’re in this kind of mess all kinds of questions get asked. Queries about the basic competence of my company.” Lee heard frustration and anger in Cane’s thin voice. “Once they’ve decided you’re dogshit, you’ve had it.”

He turned to Lee, his face crumpled with anger and sadness, his rheumy eyes shining. “And that’s what’s happened to us, JK. NASA, Congress, the press — they’ve decided we’re dogshit. That I’m dogshit.”

The pain in his words tore at Lee. “Oh, Christ, Art, it isn’t as bad as that.”

“You know they’re talking again about moving the contract away.”

“They can’t do it,” Lee said vigorously. “You know that. Not without abandoning the schedule altogether.”

Cane was growing angrier. “They’re talking about reassigning a lot of the MEM work to Aerojet, Boeing, GE, McDonnell, Martin, maybe bringing in Rockwell project managers to Newport—”

Lee laughed. “All the usual suspects.”

“This isn’t a fucking joke, JK,” Cane snapped. “Maybe NASA won’t do it. Maybe they can’t. But they’re talking about it. And that’s the point. Goddamn it, don’t you understand any of this? NASA is trying to show us — and Congress and the press — how seriously it’s taking all of this.

“And heads have been rolling in NASA. Did you know that? Guys who’ve been jerking off instead of keeping a hawkeye on us.” He rattled off a list of names, people at Marshall and Houston.

“Yeah, but look, Art, those guys are mostly administrator types. It won’t make a damn bit of difference if they go or stay. It’s engineers that count. You know that.”

“But it doesn’t matter what I think. Don’t you see it, JK? It’s all a demonstration of intent. It might seem abstract to you, all a game, but believe me, up on the Hill, it’s real. And now, in response, we have to make our own gesture.”