After a second's silence, Jayjay said: "Let me check once more." He was running the tip of the toothpick across the threads in the female plug, counting as he did so. "Uh-huh," he said finally, "just as I thought. There's one less thread in the female plug. The male plug is stopped before it can make contact. There's a gap of about a tenth of an inch when the coupling is screwed up tight."
"Let me see," Smith said. He took the toothpick and went through the same operation. "You're right," he said ruefully, "the female plug is faulty. We'll have to use one of the other screamers."
"Right," said Jayjay.
Wrong, said Fate. Or the Powers That Be, or the Fallibility of Man, whatever you want to call it.
Every screamer unit suffered from the same defect.
"I don't understand it!" A pause. "It's impossible! Those units were tested!"
For the first time in his life, Captain Atef Abdullah Al-Amin allowed his voice to betray him.
Arabic is normally spoken about half an octave above the normal tone used for English. And, unlike American English, it tends to waver up and down the scale. Usually, the captain spoke English in the flat, un-accented tones of the Midwest American accent, and spoke Arabic in the ululating tones of the Egyptian.
But now he was speaking English with an Egyptian waver, not realizing that he was doing it.