Lori smiled, although it was an old joke. “I know. Is that our plane out there?”

“Yeah. Don’t let it fool you. The boss has a real fancy one just for his own use. The rest of them are corporate jets. We almost always fly commercial, but if we took Varig down, with all the changes and schedule problems, we’d never be sure of getting where we need to get in time. When you have a schedule problem, the Powers That Be unfreeze their rusted-shut purses and spring for a special. You have bags?”

“Two. They’re still in the hangar over there—I hope.”

“We’ll get them.”

“I hope I’m going to be able to pick up something before we go into the bush,” Lori told her. “I’m not even sure my old stuff fits.”

“I know what you mean. Well, we’ve got about seventy hours total, and it’ll be tight, but we should have a little time in Manaus to get something, anyway. It’s a decent city for being out there in the middle of nowhere, particularly since it became a main port of entry for airplanes. I was down a year or so ago when we did a rain forest depletion story. One of these times I’m going to be able to see something of these places we get sent. It’s always hurry, hurry in this business, and after being ying-yanged around the world, when you get some time off, you want to spend it home in bed.”

Lori nodded and smiled, but deep down she envied somebody with that kind of life.

“She never stops talking,” Gus commented in a dry Minnesota accent that fit him well. “Ain’t gonna get no sleep at all on this trip.”

Perez looked up at him with a wry expression. “Gloomy Gus, always the soul of tact. No wonder you can’t keep a job.”

Lori looked puzzled, and Perez said, “Gus is a freelance. Half the foreign photographers, sound men, and technicians are, even for the broadcast networks. Nobody can afford to keep on a staff so large that it can be all the places with all the personnel it needs to cover the world. I have a list of hundreds in different categories. This time Gus was the first one I called who was available.”