“Why can't you do something useful, instead of getting in the way here?” her father shouted at her from across his office. He never thanked her for the work she did. He didn't want her there in the first place.

“I just want to pick up one of the cargo logs, Dad. I need to make a note in it.” She said it quietly, looking for the book and then the page that she needed. She was familiar with all their logs, and all their procedures.

“Get your hands off my logs! You don't know what you're doing!” He was enraged, as usual. He had grown irascible over the years, though at fifty he was still one of their finest pilots. But he was adamant about his philosophies and ideas, although no one paid much attention, not even Cassie. At the airport, his word was law, but his battle against women pilots and his arguments with her were fruitless. She knew enough not to argue with him. Most of the time she didn't even seem to hear him. She just quietly went about her business. And to Cassie, the only business she cared about was her father's airport.

When she'd been a little girl, sometimes she'd sneaked out of the house at night, and come to look at the planes sitting shimmering in the moonlight. They were so beautiful, she just had to see them. He had found her there once, after looking for her for an hour, but she was so reverent about his planes, so in awe of them, and of him, that he hadn't had the heart to spank her, no matter how much she'd scared them by disappearing. He had told her never to do it again, and had taken her back to her mother without saying another word about it.

Oona knew too how much Cassie loved planes, but like Pat, she felt it just wasn't fitting. What would people think? Look what she looked like, and smelted like, when she came home from fueling planes, or loading cargo or mail, or worse yet, working on the engines. But Cassie knew more about the inner workings of planes than most men knew about their cars. She loved everything about them. She could take an engine apart and put it back together again faster and better than most men, and she had borrowed and read more books on flying than even Nick or her parents suspected. Planes were her greatest love and passion.