"Speak with words that are soft and sweet. You never know which ones you may eat."

American cowboy saying

It was Friday and not a moment too soon. At the retirement party for the chief engineer, much reminiscing took place about his early days on the invisible airplane project shortly after he had graduated from college. It was hard to believe that the six redesigns and accompanying flight test series had taken so many years. It was pointed out how his career had skyrocketed him through the organization: first as a tool designer during the initial proposal phase, then as a task leader during the production engineering phase, subsequently as a group engineer for the first redesign, as a section chief on the second, and finally as chief engineer where he made his impact doing failure analyses during the crashes. Here, truly, was a man who proved the invalidity of the Peter Principle, rising not one but several levels above his level of competence. Meanwhile, having completed the task of segregating the heroes from the villains, effort by the project's rear guard turned toward explaining to those astute enough to have not been involved in the project just what had happened. Daedalus's program manager had of course been resigned and was now consulting for six small companies seeking to do business with the government. His government counterpart had, in keeping with federal employment practices, been retired in place. The task of explaining the events which had so regrettably transpired thus ultimately fell...