he thinks his boss is particularly enthusiastic about an
idea. Winstein didn't want yes-men around him; he wanted men who could
and would think. And he had a theory that, while the tenseness of an
emergency could and did produce some very high-powered thinking indeed,
an atmosphere of that kind wasn't a good thing for day-in-and-day-out
work. He saved that kind of pressure for the times that he needed it, so
that it was effective because of its contrast with normal procedure.

* * * * *

Elshawe took his heavy briar out of his mouth as Winstein sat down on
the corner of the desk. "You have a gleam in your eye, Ole," he said
accusingly.

"Maybe," Winstein said noncommittally. "We might be able to work
something out of it. Remember a guy by the name of Malcom Porter?"

Elshawe lowered his brows in a thoughtful frown. "Name's familiar. Wait
a second. Wasn't he the guy that was sent to prison back in 1979 for
sending up an unauthorized rocket?"

Winstein nodded. "That's him. Served two years of a five-year sentence,
got out on parole about a year ago. I just got word from a confidential
source that he's going to try to send up another one."

"I didn't know things were so pleasant at Alcatraz," Elshawe said. "He
seems to be trying awfully hard to get back in."

"Not according to what my informant says. This time, he's going to ask
for permission. And this time, he's going to have a piloted craft, not a
self-guided missile, like he did in '79."

"Ho_ho_. Well, there might be a story in it, but I can't see that it
would be much of one. It isn't as if a rocket shoot were something
unusual. The only thing unusual about it is that it's a private
enterprise shoot instead of a Government one."

Winstein said: "Might be more to it than that. Do you remember the trial
in '79?"

"Vaguely. As I remember it, he claimed he didn't send up a rocket, but
the evidence showed overwhelmingly that he had. The jury wasn't out
more than a few minutes, as I remember."

"There was a little more to it than that," Winstein said.

"I was in South Africa at the time," Elshawe said. "Covering the civil
war down there, remember?"

"That's right. You're excused," Winstein said, grinning. "The thing was
that Malcom Porter didn't claim he hadn't sent the thing up. What he did
claim was that it wasn't a rocket. He claimed that he had a new kind of
drive in it--something that didn't use rockets.

"The Army pick