Back to LAX, finish with King, Marty'd leave at six, and Jennifer would have her tape. She'd go to an editing bay at the O and O, cut the segment, and uplink to New York that night. She'd call in and get Dick's comments Saturday morning, revise it, and uplink it again about noon. That was plenty of time to make air.
She made a note to call Norton in the morning and tell them she needed to move Singleton up two hours.
Finally she turned to the stack of faxed background documents Norton had sent her office, for Deborah's research. Jennifer had never bothered to look at these, and she wouldn't bother now, except she had nothing better to do. She thumbed through them quickly. It was what she expected - self-justifying papers that said the N-22 was safe, that it had an excellent record ...
Flipping from page to page, she suddenly stopped.
She stared.
"They've got to be kidding," she said.
And she closed the file.
HANGAR 5
10:30 P.M.
At night, the Norton plant appeared deserted, the parking lots nearly empty, the perimeter buildings silent. But it was brightly lit. Security kept floodlights on all night. And there were video monitors mounted on the corners of all the buildings. As she crossed from Administration to Hangar 5, she heard her footsteps clicking on the asphalt.
The big doors to Hangar 5 were pulled down and locked. She saw Teddy Rawley, standing outside, talking to one of the electrical team. A wisp of cigarette smoke rose up toward the floodlights. She went over to the side door.
"Hey, babe," Teddy said. "Still here, huh?"
"Yeah," she said.
She started through the door. The electrical guy said, "The building's closed. Nobody's allowed in. We're doing the GET now."
"It's okay," she said.
"I'm sorry, you can't," the guy said. "Ron Smith gave strict orders. Nobody's to go inside. If you touch anything on the airplane - "
"I'll be careful," she said.
Teddy looked at her, walked over. "I know you will," he said, "but you're going to need this." He handed her a heavy flashlight, three feet long. "It's dark in there, remember?"
The electrical guy said, "And you can't turn the lights on, we can't have change in the ambient flux - "
"I understand," she said The test equipment was sensitive; turning on the overhead fluorescents might change readings.
The electrician was still fretting. "Maybe I better call Ron and tell him you're going in."
"Call whoever you want," Casey said.
"And don't touch the handrails, because - "
"I won't," she said. "For Christ's sake, I know what I'm doing."
She went into the hangar.
Teddy was right; it was dark inside. She felt, rather than saw, the large space around her. She could barely discern the outlines of the plane, looming above her, all its doors and compartments were open, cabling hanging down everywhere. Beneath the tail, the test box sat in a pool of faint blue light. The CRT screen flickered, as systems were activated in sequence. She saw the cockpit lights go on, then off. Then the forward cabin lights, brightly lit, thirty feet above her. Then darkness again. A moment later, the beacon lights on the wing tips and the tail came on, sending hot white strobe flashes through the room. Then darkness again.
The front headlights suddenly glared brightly from the wing, and the landing gear began to retract. Because the plane was mounted above the ground, the landing gear was free to retract and extend. It would happen a dozen times that night.
Outside the hangar, she heard the electrician, still talking in a worried tone. Teddy laughed, and the electrician said something else.
Casey turned on her flashlight and moved forward. The flashlight cast a powerful glow. She twisted the rim, spreading the beam wider.
Now the landing gear was fully raised. Then the gear doors opened, and the landing gear began to extend, the big rubber wheels coming down flat, then turning with a hydraulic whine. A moment later, the insignia light shone up at the rudder, illuminating the tail. Then it went off again.
She headed for the aft accessory compartment in the tail.
She knew Ron had said the QAR wasn't there, but she felt she had to check again. She climbed the broad stairs rolled up to the back of the plane, being careful not to touch the handrails. Electrical test cables were taped to the handrails; she didn't want to disturb them, or to cause field fluctuation from the presence of her hand.
The aft accessory compartment, built into the upward slope of the tail, was directly above her head. The compartment doors were open. She shone her light in. The upper surface of the compartment was taken up by the underside of the APU, the turbine generator that served as the auxiliary power unit: a maze of semicircular pipes and white couplings wrapped around the main unit. Below was a cramped series of readout meters, rack slots, and black PCS boxes, each with the milled vanes for heat transfer. If there was a QAR in here as well, she might easily miss it; the QARs were only about eight inches square.
She paused to put on her goggles, and turned on the CD player. Immediately a diagram of the aft accessory compartment hung in space before her eyes. She could see through the diagram to the actual compartment behind. The rectangular block marking the QAR was outlined in red on the diagram. In the actual compartment, the space was taken up by an extra readout meter: hydraulic pressure for a flight control system.
Ron was right.
There was no QAR here.
Casey climbed back down the stairs to the floor, and walked beneath the plane to the forward accessory compartment, just behind the nose wheel. It, too, was open. Standing on the ground, she shone her flashlight up into the compartment, and flicked to the correct manual page. A new image hung in the air. It snowed the QAR located in the right anterior electrical rack, next to the hydraulic activator buses.