“Is this going to work, Doc?” Landow asked. “We’ve broken just about every federal law in the books already—we’re going to make it a million times worse by flying those planes to Libya. Libya is a prohibited country—technology export and import sanctions, terrorist support sanctions, money sanctions, travel and immigration restrictions, the works. If we don’t get our asses shot down by the Libyans, we could all be in prison for the rest of our lives.”

“Nah. Everything’ll be okay,” Jon Masters said confidently, giving Kelsey a reassuring hug. “You haven’t been with the company too long, John. We do this sort of thing all the time.”

“And you’ve never been caught?”

Jon shrugged, then gave Landow a sheepish grin. “Well... we’ve always gotten away with it before,” Jon admitted. “That’s just as good.” He turned to Kelsey. “Unfortunately, the only plane we won’t have with us is the second Dragon airborne laser aircraft. We can’t fly it in its current state unless we remove all the plasma-pumping equipment you’ve put on it and reassemble the diode pumping system on the laser. You gave it a good try, Kels.”

“Jon, I promise, it will work,” Kelsey said. “Don’t keep on thinking in two-dimensional ways. The plasma generator doesn’t need to be a multimegawatt monster—all we need is a large pulse for a hundredth of a second to excite the neodymium lasing amplifier chips. Let’s reassemble the plasma generators we have, install them, and try it.”

“We’re going to lose our lab in less than eight hours, Kels—”

“Then we better hurry, shouldn’t we?” Kelsey asked. “We have a plasma generator we know will work on Dragon Two right now. Let’s load it up, put the screws back in, and leave before that angry Mr. Willison comes back.” She smiled and touched Jon’s hand. “Jon, we’ll have time to write up the documentation and the engineering later—right now, we have to get Dragon flying, before they come and take her away. You’re worried that you won’t know how it works if it does, and so you won’t be able to start preparing marketing plans and prospectuses for the project. Don’t worry about all that stuff, Jon—let’s see if it flies first, then worry about selling it later.”

Jon Masters looked at Kelsey with a grin. Her enthusiasm was indeed infectious. “Kelsey, you know there’s no way this should work,” Jon said. “It’s too dangerous. We still haven’t gotten the right yield out of the singlegenerator system to be an effective weapon with the proper safety tolerances. We won’t know if it’s ready to let go until just before it blows up. And all these unknowns will be going on with two human beings riding on top of it.”

Kelsey took Jon’s face in her hands, pulled his head down, and kissed his forehead. “You’re silly, you know that?” she said. “I know we don’t know all these things, Jon—doesn’t that want to make you go and try it out?” When he hesitated in replying, Kelsey added, “Jon, wasn’t there once a time when you would have given anything— even your own life—for one chance to try?”