"Forty years?" Richman said, incredulous. "You build them to last forty years?"

Casey nodded. "We've still got lots of N-5s in service around the world-and we stopped building them in 1946. We've got planes that have accumulated four times their design life-the equivalent of eighty years of service. Norton planes will do that. Douglas planes will do that. But no one else's birds will do that. You understand what I'm saying?"

"Wow," Richman said, swallowing.

"We call this the bird farm," Casey said. "The planes're so big, it's hard to get a sense of the scale." She pointed to one aircraft to their right, where small clusters of people worked at various positions, with portable lights shining up on the metal. "Doesn't look like many people, right?"

"No, not many."

"There's probably two hundred mechanics working on that plane-enough to run an entire automobile line. But this is just one position on our line-and we have fifteen positions in all. There's five thousand people in this building, right now."

The kid was shaking his head, amazed. "It looks sort of empty."

"Unfortunately," Casey said, "it is sort of empty. The wide-body line's running at sixty percent capacity-and three of those birds are white-tails."

"White-tails?"

"Planes we're building without customers. We build at a minimum rate to keep the line open, and we haven't got all the orders we want. The Pacific Rim's the growth sector but with Japan in recession, that market's not placing orders. And everybody else is flying their planes longer. So business is very competitive. This way."

She started up a flight of metal stairs, walking quickly. Richman followed her, footsteps clanging. They came to a landing, went up another flight. "I'm telling you this," she said, "so you'll understand the meeting we're going into. We build the hell out of these planes. People here are proud of what they do. And they don't like it when something s wrong."