Despite the machine's merits, it is rejected by bureaucrats. When Lopatkin gets a chance to have a demonstration model built at a Moscow institute, his opponents favor a rival machine and then cancel Lopatkin's. Lopatkin is offered a chance to work on his machine for the military, which he accepts, but he is soon arrested and accused of passing secrets to his lover, Nadia Drozdova, the estranged wife of one of the officials who opposes him.