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challenge getting the truth out of the Alaskan group, he thought. They were well aware their jobs were on the line.
    Maybe, he thought, / should have entered the room a little more pleasantly.
    Martin cleared his throat and the conversations ceased.
    “Okay, team. We’re in deep excrement here and up against the deadline. What happened last night, why did it happen, and how are we going to fix it and retest it in the next forty-eight hours? I also need to hear any lingering concerns anyone might have over the system’s safety before we give it to the Air Force and ask for our check.” All but two of the Anchorage contingent appeared ready to bolt from the room in fear. Tone it down, he warned himself, as he pointed to the senior project manager in Anchorage.
    “Joe? Why don’t you give me the basics.”
    Joe Davis scooted his chair forward and narrated the sequence of events over the Gulf of Alaska the night before, describing Dr.
    Ben Cole’s ultimate solution, which had been to simply turn off the main computer.
    “So, Ben’s computer was the culprit?” Martin asked. “Not the software?”
    “We think so. We’re running all kinds of diagnostics. Have been all night. Our best guess right now is a hardware fault of some sort.”
    Martin could see the look of alarm on Ben Cole’s face. He turned to him. “Ben? You look upset.”
    “Well…”
    “You agree with Joe’s assessment?”
    Ben shot Joe Davis a worried look before answering. “Ah …
    turning the computer off did unlatch the relays, Mr. Martin, so, technically …”
    “Your onboard computer was sending signals to lock the aircraft in its control, right?”
    Ben nodded without enthusiasm.
    “But,” Martin continued, “why was it diving you to fifty feet and then skimming the water?”
    “We don’t know,” Ben answered cautiously.
    “Well, hardware or software? Or both?”
    There was a flurry of activity to one side of the suite in Anchorage and a woman entered with a note for Joe Davis, withdrawing quickly. Martin saw a broad smile spread over Davis s face as he shared the note with the others and gestured for the chairman’s attention.
    “I think we’ve got it!” Davis said, looking at Ben. “Our guys just found a bad circuit board in Ben’s computer aboard the Gulfstream, and it’s the board that governs pitch and altitude as well as the latching relays for the flight controls.”
    Martin smiled and exhaled as he flashed a thumbs-up gesture.
    “Great!”
    But Ben Cole was not smiling, and the chairman noticed.
    “Ben? You look unconvinced.”
    “Well…”
    “Spit it out.”
    Ben pursed his lips and smiled as he shook his head. “I hate to be the skunk at the party, and, of course, I haven’t seen what they found, but I really think we need to finish looking through the program to make sure there’s nothing else going on.”
    “Ben,” Joe Davis began, reaching a hand toward his sleeve, but Ben Cole’s eyes were locked on Will Martin’s across the transparent divide of the screen.
    “Leave him be, Joe,” Martin ordered quietly. “Everyone gets their say here. Go ahead, Ben.”
    “Well, first, we shouldn’t try to fly the acceptance test tonight, just in case I’m right. If we blow this one, as I understand it, we blow the on-time acceptance.”
    Will Martin was nodding slowly as he watched the young engineer and made quiet note of the perspiration glistening on his forehead.
    “Okay,” Ben continued. “This has nothing to do with the fact that we almost died in that Gulfstream last night. I just want to make sure we get this right, and the logic here—that it would be just a circuit board and not involve the software—really scares me.
    And after all, we’ve been moving awfully fast.”
    “So you think it could be software. Isn’t the software your responsibility as lead engineer, Ben?” the chairman asked. His words and tone were gentle, but the implication was devastating.
    Here was the chief software