“We’ve already taken the tour, Dr. Masters,” Duffield said. “We arrived yesterday, remember? You set that up for us then.”

“And we’ve already downloaded a copy of your financials from your website and from the Defense Department’s audit department,” Hudson said. “Your staff should be commended, Doctors. Your own marketing information parallels the government data exactly, neither overstating nor understating your situation.”

“Situation?” Jon asked defensively. He remained standing. “There’s no ‘situation.’ ”

Duffield looked down at the table, paused for a moment as if steeling herself for the confrontation she knew had to occur, then spread her hands and looked sternly at Jon. “With all due respect, Dr. Masters, your company is, shall we say, running a little peaked.”

“ ‘Peaked’? What does that mean?”

“In our analysts’ view, your company is spending lots of money, acquiring equipment and real estate, flying aircraft, and making space launches—all without any obvious possibility of translating the activity into a government contract,” Duffield said. “You’re a publicly traded company with apparently no responsibility or accountability to your shareholders.”

“I guess you just don’t know us as well as you think.”

“Your outlays for new equipment don’t even come close to your contracts,” Hudson said. “You have projects on two-, three-, five-, even ten-year timelines with no contract, no requests for proposals, not even draft technology memos.”

“We’re a research firm as well as a design-and-development center,” Helen said. Jon took his seat, gearing himself up to defend his company alongside his wife, trying to present a unified front. “Jon and I have spent most of our careers in advanced research, most of it begun completely in-house with no government inputs. Jon has written over a thousand papers on dozens of emerging technologies, things the government has never dreamed of before.”

“We make the RFPs and technology memos happen, folks,” Jon said pointedly, “not the other way around. They read our research abstracts and come up with ideas based on our research. That’s why they come to us when they want something.”

“But they haven’t been coming,” Hudson said. “Contracts have all but dried up.”

“We line up four or five new technology-maturation grants and feasibility study funds every month,” Helen said. “They may not be long-term big-ticket contracts, but they pay the bills and allow us to do what we do best—design and develop cutting-edge technology. The contracts will come. Everything takes time.”

“Then we’re in the dark, Doctors, because the numbers don’t balance,” Hudson pressed. “You’re running a slight deficit, showing large sums borrowed from investors, shareholders, and company officers. But we look around your facility and we see at least three times the capital outlays just at this facility. And we know you have at least one other design center and three operations facilities. Where does the money come from, Doctors?”

“It’s all in the audit. Read it again.”