"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?"