The draft of fear that had moved through the halls for a year and a half had finally found its door and gone out of it.

Chapter 17 — The Engineer, Not the Showman

The most important decision I made in that first year was the one the newspapers found least interesting.

I chose the next person to run the company.

Damian had been a showman.

He had been good in a room, good on a stage, good at the performance of leadership, and that performance had very nearly killed the company, because a performance consumes resources and returns nothing but applause.

When it came time to choose his replacement, I went looking for his opposite, and I found her three floors down from the executive suite, in the propulsion lab, where she had been quietly doing the best engineering in the building for years while men with louder voices took the credit for it.