what Dodgers projected its capabilities as being.
“Dr. Dodgers, does the Athena device have to go on a stealth airplane?”
“No. sir. It would work on any airplane, stealth or not. It would work on a ship, on a building, on a tank, a truck — anything that has a fixed set of radar-reflective properties that the computer can be programmed to nullify.”
When Duquesne had finished, he opened the floor to questions from other members. The chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Representative Delman Richardson, from California, went first.
“I take it. Doctor, that you are convinced your device can be put into production cheaply and in a timely manner?”
“Yessir.”
“And it will work? It will do what you and the navy say it will do?”
“Yes. That is correct. It will prevent the object that it is placed upon from being detected by radar.”
“Yet, if I understand your earlier statement correctly, you think we should use this military advantage to convert the peoples of the world to Christianity?”
An uproar ensued as Duquesne tried to rule the question out of order and various members all tried to talk at once. The issue seemed to be whether the members from the House could ask the questions they could have asked had they not agreed to a joint hearing to save time. While all this was going on Rob Knight nudged Jake. “Best show in town,” he whispered.
On the threat of being abandoned by the House subcommittee members, Duquesne caved in. Dodgers was given free rein to state his views on religion, sin, and conspiracies by each and every mi- nority he could readily recall. Duquesne took it like a man, Jake thought. He should have known better. Other committee members took it less well, seeming to take offense that they had to sit through a recitation of Dodgers’ poisonous inanities.
Dodgers was finally silenced by mutual consent and shown the door. After a ten-minute recess, it was Jake’s turn. Gazing upward at the legislators on the dais, he immediately understood the psy- chological advantage the raised platform conferred on his interro- gators.
“Do you have a statement to make?” Duquesne asked him when the preliminaries were completed.
“No, sir.”
A chuckle swept the room- That’s a good start, Jake thought.
A committee staffer passed out copies of Jake’s report and led him through it, page by page, conclusion by conclusion. It took the rest of the morning. When Duquesne announced a lunch break, Jake was surprised at how much time had passed.
He and Knight walked back to the bagel place for a tuna salad sandwich.
“How am I doing?”
‘They haven’t even started on you yet. Ask me at five o’clock.”
“Are we going to be here that long?”
“Maybe. Depends on Duquesne.”
After lunch the senator resumed his questioning. “Tell me. Cap- tain, just what were your orders when you were given your present assignment?”
“I was told to evaluate the two prototypes and prepare a recom- mendation as to which one I believed the navy should select for production as the A-12 medium attack bomber.”
“Did Vice Admiral Henry or Secretary Ludlow tell you — let me rephrase that — did either of them suggest which prototype you should recommend?”
“No. They didn’t.”
“They didn’t even hint at which one they wanted?”
‘They discussed the navy’s requirements for a new medium at- tack bomber on numerous occasions with me, sir, and they did make it clear to me that the plane had to be able to meet the needs of the navy. But they did not tell me which plane they thought would best meet those needs. Determining that was the whole pur- pose of the fly-off.”
“So the conclusions stated in this report and the recommenda- tions made are yours?”
“Yessir. And the admirals wrote endorsements, and the Secre- tary of the Navy wrote one when he forwarded the report to SECDEF.”
“Did you tell your superiors what the substance of your report would be before you wrote it?”
“Yessir. I kept them fully informed about my activities and my opinions as I reached them.”
“Did they suggest changes to the draft document.”
“Yessir. That is normal practice. We were under a time crunch, and I circulated a summary of the report and they commented upon it and I made certain changes to the report that I felt were necessary based on their comments. But this is my report. I could have refused to make a suggested change and they could have commented on the matter in their endorsement. That, too, would be normal practice.”
“Did you refuse to make any changes?”
“No, sir.”
“So this report is now the way your superiors in the chain of command want it to be?”
“I believe the endorsements speak for themselves, sir.”
“You recommended the navy purchase the TRX plane in spite of the fact that the prototype crashed during evaluation and you failed to complete all the tests you had planned?”
“That is correct.”
“Why?”
“Senator, I think the report addresses that point much better than I could orally. I felt that the TRX plane had fewer technical problems than the Consolidated prototype and was a better coro- promise of mission capability and stealthiness. I also felt it was better suited to carrier operations. I thought that it would require less preproduction modifications to achieve the performance goals. All this is in the report. In short, I thought this plane gave the navy the most bang for its bucks.”
“Did you personally fly either plane?”
“No, sir. A test pilot did.”
“How much experience did this test pilot have?”
“I believe she has about sixteen hundred hours total flight time.”
“That isn’t much, is it?”
“Everything is relative,”
“How much flight time do you have. Captain?”
“About forty-five hundred hours.”
“Do you have any previous experience testing prototypes?”
“No, sir.”
“Did your test pilot have any previous prototype testing experi- ence?”
“No, sir.”
“Yet you used her anyway. Why is that?”
“She had an outstanding record at the Test Pilot School at Pa- tuxent River. She finished first in her class. My predecessor was on the staff at TPS and picked her for this project. I saw no reason to fire her and get someone else.”
“Yet she crashed the TRX prototype?”
“It crashed while she was flying it. The E-PROM chips in the fly-by-wire system were defective.”
“Would the plane have crashed with a more experienced pilot at the controls?”
“Well, that’s impossible to say, really.”
“You, for instance?”
“Senator, any answer I gave to that question would be pure speculation. I feel Lieutenant Moravia did a fine job handling that plane before and after it went out of control. There may be a pilot somewhere on this planet who could have saved it, but I don’t know.”
The Minotaur
Duquesne led him into the buy-rate and cost projections for the A-12. “I see here that you recommend a total buy of three hundred sixty planes: a dozen the first year, twenty-four the second, then forty-eight each year subsequently.”
