Muhlenhoff runs things. At least, that's what the title on his door says. He's the manager of Subatlantic Oil's deep-sea drilling operation, the man with the authority, the face of competence. But when the ocean floor begins to rupture and the impregnable armor starts failing, he discovers the uncomfortable truth: he's a figurehead, a negotiator, a man whose job is to manage perceptions while the actual engineers do the work he cannot do. As panic spreads through the crew and the structure groans under pressures it was never meant to withstand, Muhlenhoff must confront the gap between the authority he's been given and the power he actually wields. Pohl's 1956 novella is a sharp, unsettling portrait of managerial illusion, tracing one man's dawning recognition that the big picture he was hired to see contains no image of himself.
