"Certainly. I watched them check it myself. I--" He brought himself up short and said: "Give me that torch, will you? I want to take a look at the thing." Jayjay handed him the flashlight and grasped the captain's belt. With one arm in a splint, Al-Amin couldn't hold the flashlight and hold on to anything solid at the same time. "I don't see anything wrong," he said after a minute. "Neither do I," Jayjay admitted. "But the way it acts--" "I got the toothpicks!" Jeffry Hull propelled himself across the room toward the three men who were clustered around the screamer. Jayjay took the toothpicks, selected one, and inserted it into the female plug. "Hard to see those threads with all the tubes blocking that plug," he said offhandedly. Hull said: "Captain, did you know that the refrigerator is off?" "Yes," said Atef Al-Amin absently. "It isn't connected to the emergency circuits. Wastes too much energy. What do you find, Mr. Kelvin?" 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. "How could it happen? It's ridiculous!" The captain, his maintenance officer, and Jeffry Hull were clustered around the screamer unit in the lounge. Off to one side, Jayjay Kelvin held a deck of cards in his hands and played a game of patience called "transportation solitaire." His eyes didn't miss a play, just as his ears didn't miss a word. He pulled an ace from the back of the deck and flipped it to the front. "You said the screamers had been checked," Jeffry Hull said accusingly. "How come they _weren't_ checked?" "They _were_!" Al-Amin said sharply. "Sure they were," Smith added. "I watched the check-off. There was nothing wrong then."