Pickering told Luis. “I’ll do the report and send you a copy. We’ll get back to you in a few days, Mrs. Jackson. One of us will. Right now we need to get a set of your fingerprints to compare with whatever is on that cigarette pack. Just in case, you understand.” Camacho jotted the report number on a piece of paper from Pickering’s desk, then excused himself. Curious about the two items he carried, he walked them straight to the lab and logged them in. Tomorrow afternoon, he was told. After three- The Consolidated Technologies prototype had a hangar all to itself in Palmdale. As Jake stood and looked about the cavernous inte- rior, he was surrounded by engineers and vice presidents, at least twenty people all told. The vice presidents all wore business suits, but the engineers seemed fond of short-sleeved white shirts with dark ties. If that garb didn’t announce their profession, they all sported nerd buckets—plastic shirt-pocket protectors full of pens and pencils, from which dangled their building passes.
