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Casey stood up at her desk, stretched, looked at her watch It was ten-fifteen She&039;d better get so to appear on television tomorrow She didn&039;t want her , "Dear, you looked so tired"
Casey folded up the printout, and put it away
Zero, she thought, was the perfect default value Because that hat she was co zero
Nothing
"A big fat zero," she said aloud "Means nothing on the line"
She didn&039;t want to think what itout, that her plan to push the investigation had failed, and that she was going to end up in front of a television ca her questions, and she would have no good answers to give hiive
Just lie Hell with it
Maybe that was hoas going to turn out
You &039;re old enough to knoorks
Casey turned out her desk light, and started for the door
She said good night to Esther, the cleaning woot into the elevator, and pushed the button to go down to the ground floor
The button lit up when she touched it
Glowing"1"
She yawned as the doors started to close She was really very tired It was silly to work this late She&039;d lowing button
And then it hit her
"Forget so?" Esther said, as Casey came back into the office
"No," Casey said
She rifled through the sheets on her desk Fast, searching Tossing papers in all directions Letting them flutter to the floor
Ron had said the default was zero, and therefore when you got a zero you didn&039;t know if the line was used or not But if there was a 1then that would er down the columns of numbers:
AUX 1 00000000000
AUX 2 00000000000
AUX 3 00000000000
AUX COA 01000000000
There was a nu of the flight Thatused by the aircraft
But as it used for?
She sucked in her breath
She hardly dared to hope
Ron said that AUX COA was a line for Customer Optional Additions The customer used it for add-ons, like a QAR
The QAR was the Quick Access Recorder, another flight data recorder installed to help the maintenance crews It recorded ular DFDR If a QAR was on this aircraft, it could solve all her problems
But Ron insisted this plane didn&039;t have a QAR
He said he&039;d looked in the tail, which here it was usually installed on an N-22 And it wasn&039;t there
Had he ever looked anywhere else?
Had he really searched the plane?
Because Casey knew an optional iteulation It could be anyplace in the aircraft the operator wanted it - in the aft accessory coo hold, or the radio rack beneath the cockpitIt could be just about anywhere
Had Ron really looked?
She decided to check for herself
She spent the next ten h thick Service Repair Manuals for the N-22, without any success The manuals didn&039;t mention the QAR at all, or at least she couldn&039;t find any reference But the manuals she kept in her office were her personal copies; Casey wasn&039;t directly involved in maintenance, and she didn&039;t have the latest versions Most of the manuals dated back to her own arrival at the company; they were five years old
That hen she noticed the Heads-Up Display, sitting on her desk
Wait a les, slipped theed the happened
She fiddled with the equipment for a few moments, until she realized there was no CD-ROM in the machine She looked in the cardboard box, found a silver platter, and slid it into the player She pressed the power button again
The goggles glowed She was staring at a page from the first les She wasn&039;t quite sure how the systeles were just an inch froe appeared to float in space, two feet in front of
her The page was alh it
Korman liked to say that virtual reality was virtually useless, except for a few specialized applications One wasin technical environrease, didn&039;t have the tih a thickto repair a jet engine, you couldn&039;t carry a stack of five-pound manuals around with you So virtual displays were perfect for those situations And Kor buttons on the CD player, Casey found that she could scroll through the manuals There was also a search function, that flashed up a keyboard hanging in space; she had to repeatedly press another button to move a pointer to the letter Q, then A, then R It was clue hung in the air before her:
N-22
QUICK ACCESS RECORDER (QAR)
RECOMMENDED LOCATIONS
Pressing ra in detail all the places where the QAR could be located on the N-22 aircraft
There were about thirty places in all
Casey clipped the player onto her belt, and headed for the door
AIRPORT MARINA
10:20 PM
Marty Reardon was still in Seattle
His intervieith Gates had run long, and he&039;dJennifer had to revise the schedule
It was going to be a difficult day, she realized She&039;d hoped to start at nine Now she couldn&039;t begin until ten at the earliest She sat in the hotel roo it out
9:00-10:00 Transfer from LAX
10:00-10:45 Barker at ofc
11:00-11:30 King at airport
11:30-12:00 FAA at airport
12:15-1:45 Transfer to Burbank
2:00-2:30 Rogers at Burbank
2:30-3:30 Stand-up outside Norton
4:00-4:30 Singleton at Norton
4:30-6:00 Transfer to LAX
Too tight No time for lunch, for traffic delays, for normal production screwups And tomorroas Friday; Marty would want to make the six o&039;clock plane back to New York Marty had a new girlfriend, and he liked to spend the weekend with her Marty would be very pissy if heto miss it
The probleleton in Burbank, it would be rush hour He&039;d never make his plane He really should leave Burbank by two-thirty Whichoff the lawyer She was afraid she&039;d lose the FAA guy if she changed him at the last minute But the laould be flexible He&039;d wait until ht if they asked hi was a blowhard, but he was plausible in short bites Five, ten seconds Punchy Worth doing
9:00-10:00 Transfer from LAX
10:00-10:45 Barker at ofc
11:00-11:30 FAA at airport
11:30-12:30 Transfer to Burbank
12:30-1:00 Rogers at Burbank
1:00-2:00 Stand-up outside Norton
2:00-2:30 Singleton at Norton
2:30-4:00 Transfer to LAX
4:00-4:30 King at airport
5:00-6:00 Pad
That would work In her ood (Jennifer hadn&039;t ht run over with hi to transfer to Burbank, she&039;d blow off Rogers, eak anyway, and go right to Marty&039;s stand-up Singleton would be fast - Jennifer wanted to keep Martythere, so he didn&039;t attack the woht schedule would help
Back to LAX, finish with King, Marty&039;d leave at six, and Jennifer would have her tape She&039;d go to an editing bay at the O and O, cut the seght She&039;d call in and get Dick&039;s coain about noon That was plenty of time toand tell theleton up two hours
Finally she turned to the stack of faxed background documents Norton had sent her office, for Deborah&039;s research Jennifer had never bothered to look at these, and she wouldn&039;t bother now, except she had nothing better to do She thuh them quickly It hat she expected - self-justifying papers that said the N-22 was safe, that it had an excellent record
Flipping froe, she suddenly stopped
She stared