The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Last Straw, by William J. Smith
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
Title: The Last Straw
Author: William J. Smith
Illustrator: George Schelling
Release Date: December 23, 2009 [EBook #30746]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LAST STRAW ***
Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Greg Weeks, and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from Analog Science Fact & Fiction September
1963. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.
copyright on this publication was renewed.
THE LAST STRAW
Some hypotheses are rational--
if not logical--but,
by their nature,
aren't exactly open
to controlled experiment!
by WILLIAM J. SMITH
ILLUSTRATED BY GEORGE SCHELLING
* * * * *
"There's absolutely nothing we can pin it down to with any real
certainty," Kessler said. "No mechanical defects that we're sure of,
no sabotage we can put our finger on, no murder or suicide schemes,
nothing! We've put that plane back together so perfectly that it could
almost fly again! We've got dossiers an inch thick on practically
everybody who was aboard, crew and passengers. We've done six months'
work and we don't have one single positive answer. The newspapers were
yelling about the number of insurance policies issued for the flight
but none of them looks really phony."
He stood at the huge window of Senator Brogan's office, looking out at
the shimmering sunlight on one of Washington's green malls. Over the
treetops he could catch a glimpse of the Capitol dome.
Brogan sat comfortably in the big chair behind his desk. "But weren't
there an unusually large number of policies issued?" he asked. His big
hands toyed with a little silver airplane propeller, a souvenir of his
long-standing interest in the problems of commercial aviation. "You
know," he we
|