Pulp Fiction | The Finger in the Sky Affair by Peter Leslie by Unknown Read Free Book Online

them, sir."
    "I see. Well, to generalize—You do know about the Murchison-Spears complication, I guess? Good—to generalize, we can divide the five disasters into two groups." He moved two of the folders meticulously to one side. "The three crashes in Nice fall into one category; the two in the U.S. into another."
    "What's the difference between them?"
    "Well, granted that the aim of the operation is to discredit T.C.A. in general and the Murchison-Spears equipment in particular, we find the two categories align neatly with those propositions."
    "Meaning?"
    "That the three crashes at Nice, France, were due to some kind of tampering with the Murchison-Spears gear—and that the two accidents in the U.S.A. were due to a—er—less sophisticated kind of sabotage, shall we say?"
    "But it was sabotage? In fact they were not accidents?"
    "Right. The plane which blew up in mid-air was a pressurized 707. It disintegrated at 33,000 feet. My investigators—and the Federal accident people agree with them—believe the ship collapsed when a baggage compartment porthole was forced open. At that height, of course, a pressurized plane pops like a toy balloon if the higher pressure inside is allowed to get out."
    "You said 'forced open...'"
    "I did. From a painstaking examination of thousands of fragments gathered over half the state, the investigators concluded that the port was forced open by some kind of time-actuated mechanism—a small hydraulic ram, perhaps, set off by a clockwork alarm. Something of that sort."
    "But surely, Mr. Plant, that suggests an accomplice on the staff of T.C.A.? No outside person would be able to get to a plane for long enough to arrange a device like that, would they?"
    "They would not, Mr. Solo. It suggests precisely that."
    "I see. And the other one?"
    "The other one implies even greater complicity on the part either of T.C.A. personnel or the airport staff—I genuinely believe it to be the latter...You know what we call a five- five in T.C.A.?"
    "A run that's half passengers and half freight?"
    "That's it. Well, this flight was a five-five. We had a rush of passengers at the last moment, and the freight compartment was full—up to the maximum permitted load. Up to, but never over, understand...Right. Now the plane's flying with an absolute maximum payload and the freight includes a number of large, but empty, crates."
    "Empty?"
    "Yes. There's a firm that makes shockproof containers—insulated crates and padded boxes for carrying delicate machinery, radar components, nose cones for small rockets, and that sort of thing. Very specialized stuff. Well, we were shipping some of these to an electronics firm in New Jersey—they were going to use them for transporting computer parts or some such, but on our plane they were empty. Are you with me?"
    "Yes I am."
    "Right. Now the plane had been loaded and checked—all weights including passengers and baggage calculated and allowed for. But somehow, after the check, these empty crates had been removed and others—looking exactly the same, but filled with solid ice—had secretly replaced them."
    "My God! But surely —"
    "Exactly. The unsuspected extra weight was enough to alter the ship's trim and cause it to stall on take-off...and then of course the ice melted in the fire after the crash, leaving no trace."
    "Just a minute! If the ice melted and left no trace, how in hell did your investigators —"
    "Aha! A clever piece of deduction, young man! That's how they found out. Mind you, it is deduction only—there's no proof. But it sure satisfied me."
    "How did they work it out, then?"
    "Two things, Mr. Solo. Either one of them might not have been conclusive. But the two together..." Maximilian Plant shrugged eloquently. "Among the cargo were several small loads of consumer goods," he continued. "Stuff for drugstores and wholesale houses, replacements of stock, that kind of jazz. And among them were the two things that tipped our men off—a hundred gross of