“You mean you’ve been secretly assembling an identical copy of the Machine in Japan?” “Well, it’s not exactly a secret. We’re testing out the individual components. Nobody said we can only test them one at a time. So here’s what Yamagishi-san and I propose: We change the schedule on the experiments in Hokkaido. We do full-up systems integration now, and if nothing works we’ll do the component-by-component testing later. The money’s all been allocated anyway. “We think it’ll be months—maybe years—before the American effort gets back on track. And we don’t think the Russians can do it even in
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