Then there was Eli Seibel, also awake, pawing through the matchbook covers, paper napkins, torn envelopes and crumpled papers he is pleased to call his working notes. I never complain to him about it, though I grit my teeth when I see him at work. Out of the chaos he manages to turn in very good work. He's overweight and allergic to just about everything and the only one of us without a pilot's license, but he's cheerful, popular with the secretaries at the office, and competent at his specialty, which is powerplants.

In the seats behind me was Tom Stanley, with his feet out in the aisle and the rest of him vainly trying to curl up and get comfortable. At twenty-seven, he's the youngest member of the team. He'd never been in the service -- I suspected he'd have been a draft-dodger if he'd been old enough for Viet-Nam -- and the only aviation-related job he'd held before coming to work for the Board was as an Air Traffic Controller. His family has a lot of money. He started out at Harvard, of all places, before switching to M.I.T., and his dad paid every penny.

He lives in a house that's worth five times what mine would sell for. All in all, I could hardly imagine a biography more calculated to bring out hostility from the likes of old pros like Jerry, Craig ... and myself. And that's pretty much how Haubner and Bannister felt about him. Eli Seibel tolerates him, and Levitsky more or less tolerates all of us.

But I get along with Tom quite well. If there was such a thing as a second-in-command of an NTSB investigation (which there is not), I would choose Tom Stanley for the post. As it is, I confer with him a lot.

The secret is probably his love of flying. He's been doing it since he was about eight, and I love flying so much myself that I can't find it in myself to resent the money that made it possible for him.