* * *

"When Telstar One packed up, they sent me down the whole gate from
that sector," I said. "Dr. Stone asked me to run destruct tests on the
whole assembly, which I did. The only failures I have induced so far
are failures in M1537, the solenoid that all the shouting is about."

"What kind of failures did you get?"

"Armature froze on the field," I said. "I guess the bearings really
went. When there was enough load on them, they couldn't maintain
concentricity."

"What kind of loads?" he growled, sinking down lower in his chair. He
put his elbows on the arm and laced hairy-backed fingers together
under his chin.

"I put the whole gate on the centrifuge and swung it up to twelve
gees" I said. "Switching was normal there for the twenty thousand
cycles I gave the gate. But when I added undamped vibration at twelve
thousand to fifteen thousand cycles per second, I could induce failure
pretty quickly. Say an hour or so."

"You had to apply the vibration throughout the whole test period to
get these failures?"

"Yes, Mr. Cleary."

"Then how do you explain how vibration during no more than six or
eight minutes of blast-off and launch could have the same effect on
the actual installation on M1537 in a satellite, Mr. Seaman?" Smoke
poured from the curve-stem.

"I don't have to explain it," I said, beginning to get a little hot.
"All I have done is find a way to make one part quit. I haven't said
it did quit in use, or that it could be made to quit in use."

"Then what the hell are you good for?" Cleary growled.

I didn't have any answer for that.

He repeated his question, blue eyes glittering. "I asked you what the
hell you were good for, Seaman!" he said, much more loudly.

"For putting in the middle," I snapped back.

"That's how you interpret this affair, then?"

"Yes."

"All right," Cleary said, straightening up. "We'll stop talking about
your work as if it were scientific study and talk about it as a play
in office politics. Is that what you want?"

"I don't want any part of it," I said, hoping I wasn't plaintive. "I
work under orders. The director of assembly asked me to test the part
to destruction. I tested it. I'm sorry that it wasn't a soldered joint
that failed. It wasn't. It was a solenoid. What has that got to do
with me?"

"Nothing, maybe," Cleary conceded, pushing himself up out of his
chair. He went to his window to stare out at the parking lot. "You can
be a test engi