The conference center for the U.S. Naval Air Station in Key West was next door. It was a brand-new building of modem design, one of the few edifices on the base to break the architectural monotone that could best be described as 'white stucco, World War II.' Lieutenant Todd worked in one of the nondescript white buildings as head of Special Projects for the site. Todd and his group were essentially troubleshooters for the command, crackerjack systems engineers who were moved from project to project depending upon where they were needed. Todd himself was twenty-eight, an Annapolis graduate in aerospace engineering, a gung-ho Navy bachelor who had grown up in Littleton, a suburb of Denver in Colorado. Todd was ambitious and in a hurry. He felt as if he were out of the mainstream down here in Key West and longed for a chance to move to somewhere he could really prove his mettle, a weapons design center, for example, or even the Pentagon.
The sign on the door in the conference center read TOP SECRET — BROKEN ARROW. Lieutenant Todd checked his watch. One minute remained before 0930, the time for the meeting. He entered an alphanumeric code into the door lock and walked into the back of a midsized conference room with three large screens in the front. His group of five younger officers and a couple of members of the senior staff had already arrived. They were standing around the coffee and donuts that were on a table at the left. Commander Vernon Winters was sitting alone at the center of a long table that ran across the room and virtually bisected it. He was facing the screens with his back to the entrance.
'All right, all right,' Winters said, first looking around the room and then at the digital time printout in the upper left corner of the front wall, 'let's get started. Are you ready Lieutenant Todd?' The other officers sat down at the table. At the last minute another senior staff officer entered the room and took a seat in one of the chairs at the back.
Todd walked around the table to the front of the room, to a podium with a built-in keyboard underneath a small monitor, and eyed Commander Winters. 'Yes, sir,' he answered. He activated the computer system in the podium. Todd indicated that he wanted access to the Top Secret Data Base. He then entered a complicated keyed input that was the first pan of a password system. The interactive monitor in the podium next requested the password of the day. Todd's first attempt was unsuccessful, for he hadn't remembered the correct spelling. He began to search his pockets for the piece of scrap paper.
The only other keyboard in the room was in the center of the long table where Winters was sitting. While Lieutenant Todd fumbled around at the podium, the commander smiled, entered the password, and then added some code of his own. The center screen came alive in vivid color and showed a stylized woman in a yellow dress, sitting at a piano, while two young boys played checkers behind her. A sense of red flooded forth from the picture. It was a reproduction of one of Matisse's paintings from his late years in Nice and was magnificently projected at the front of the room. Lieutenant Todd looked startled. A couple of the senior officers laughed.
Winters smiled engagingly. 'There are some fairly amazing things that can be done with the resolution power of a 4K-by-4K image and a nearly infinite data base.' There was an awkward silence and then Winters continued. 'I guess it's hopeless to keep trying to expand the education of you young officers on this base. Go on. Continue. I've put you already into the Top Secret Data Base and any new input will override the picture.'
Todd composed himself. This man Winters is certainly a queer duck, he thought. The admiral who was the commanding officer of the Key West base had assigned the commander last night to lead this important Panther missile investigation. Winters had an impressive background in missiles and in systems engineering, but whoever heard of starting such a critical meeting by calling a painting up on the screen? Todd now entered 17BROK01 and, after counting the people, the number nine. In a few seconds a machine in the back corner of the room had copies of the presentation collated and stapled for the use of the participants. Todd called his