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A career program manager in the ''National Space Department'' faces a very delicate decision: as the person assigned to write the testimony for his boss for a congressional hearing on a failing program, should he come clean or should he fudge? The system in question has not worked in tests and is approaching a 20 percent cost overrun. The agency has run out of ''creative'' ways to cover the escalating costs and some congressional staffers are aware of the bad news: this bird is just not going to fly. On the other hand, there is a great deal at stake with this program - the reputations of those who enthusiastically supported it at the start, the many jobs it has created in numerous congressional districts, the hoped-for boost it could give to the national economy at a time of recession. And, of course, there is, conceivably, the outside chance that, with a major infusion of appropriated funds, it might work after all. This case raises the question of where the obligations moral, ethical, political, personal - of a career public employee lie. What is the ''right'' thing to do and how should one decide exactly what that is? The case examines the powerful and complex pressures that can be exerted on a public employee in the course of what might, nominally, be seen as a routine task.