101 Mystery Stories

95 The Odor of Melting Edward D. Hoch

The thing he remembered most vividly from the last instant before the plane hit the cresting Atlantic waves was the odor of melting, the pungent wisp of a smell which told him the electric circuits had gone. Then there was no time for anything else — no time to reach the passenger compartment, no time for anything but a clawing endeavor to survive.

He couldn’t have lived long in the freezing waters, but it seemed that he bobbed like Ishamel for days, the only survivor of this black disaster, clinging to one of the plane’s seats until at last some unseen hands were lifting him. Perhaps he was bound for heaven, or for hell. He no longer cared. He merely slipped into a quiet slumber where the dreams were thick and deep, like the waters of the Atlantic...

When he opened his eyes, some time later, a man in white slacks and a white turtleneck sweater was bending over him. He was aware of the man’s face, and of the coolness of the sheets against his naked body, and nothing more.

“How do you feel?” the man asked.

“I... I don’t know. I expected to be dead. Where am I?”

The man smiled and felt the pilot’s forehead. “We saw the crash and pulled you out of the water. You’re very lucky. It’s an awfully big ocean.”

Now he was aware of the gentle swaying of the room, and he knew he was on a boat of some sort. “What ship is this?” he asked.

“The yacht Indos.” The man smiled at the pilot’s blank expression. “Owned by J. P. Galvan. Perhaps you’ve heard of him.”

He tried to connect the name with something in his memory, and then suddenly everything else flooded back. “The President!” he gasped. “The President was on the plane! I must—”

He was struggling to get out of bed, but the man restrained him. “You were the only survivor. There is nothing you can do now.”

“How long have I been here?”

“You’ve been sleeping. It’s almost seven hours since we pulled you from the water.”

“But... my God, I’ve got to get word to Washington!”

“That’s been taken care of. They know you’re here.”

“But the President! I’ve got to tell them what happened. I was the pilot — it was my responsibility!”

“Rest for a while. Mr. Galvan will want to speak with you soon.” The man turned and went out, perhaps to summon the owner of the yacht.

Alone between the cool white sheets, he ran over the whole thing again in his mind. He’d been the chief pilot of the presidential plane for only six months when the President of the United States decided on a flying trip to France and West Germany. The visit, and the high-level talks that accompanied it, had been most successful. The President and his advisors had been pleased when they finally boarded the plane in Paris for the return flight.

They were more than an hour out to sea when it happened, suddenly and without warning. An autumn storm blowing up from the tropics — perhaps an offshoot of some distant hurricane — had hurled a single lightning bolt at the plane, knocking out the radio and electrical systems. It was a freak accident that shouldn’t have happened; but it did.

He remembered then the odor of melting as the plastic insulation began to go, remembered even seeing the yacht, a single speck on the vast expanse of storm-tossed waves. Suddenly the plane would no longer function. It was a dead thing, dead beneath his prodding hands.

He had screamed something at his copilot, frantically pressing every emergency button within reach. They’d got the auxiliary radio transmitter to function for a few seconds, but he’d only managed a brief gasping of words — “Going down, rush help!” — before that too fizzled into a spectrum of sparks.

He remembered the water, and then nothing else until now. “How long was I in there?” he asked the man in slacks when he returned. “It seemed like hours.”

“We had you out in about twenty minutes.”

“No one else?”

The man shook his head. “No one else.” He offered him a cigarette and added, “Mr. Galvan is coming down to talk to you.”

“Fine.” The cigarette tasted good. “Are you Mr. Galvan’s son?”

“Nothing so important. I’m only his secretary. You may call me—” he hesitated, then finished, “Martin.”

The cabin door opened and a small, middle-aged man entered. He wore a dark-blue nautical jacket with brass buttons, and a captain’s cap that seemed oddly out of place above his thin, pale features. “You would be John Harris, the pilot of the plane,” he said without preliminaries. “I am J. P. Galvan.”

He partly lifted himself from the bunk to shake the man’s hand. Memory stirred again, and this time it was a magazine article he’d read some time back. J. P. Galvan, international banker, a man who gloried in the power to manipulate fortunes in world currency. “Thank you for saving me,” he said.

“It was nothing. A stroke of luck on your part, that the plane came down so close to my yacht. But I was sorry for the others. Your President — a fine man.”

“Do you have a radio I could listen to? I’d like to know what they’re saying.”

Galvan nodded and sat down beside the bunk. “All in due course. First, tell me what happened.”

The yacht had begun a gentle rocking and Harris was aware for the first time that the engines had been cut. He wondered why. He wondered if they were perhaps preparing to shift him to a larger ship, possibly an American warship that had reached the search area.

“The electrical system failed,” he told Galvan, going through the story as he remembered it, reliving once more the unexpected fury of the brief storm. “There was no chance to save the President, or even get off a radio message.”

Galvan smiled slightly. “Oh, but you did get off a message, Mr. Harris.”

“What?”

“Your new President — who has already been sworn into office — is under the impression that the plane was shot down by the Russians.”

“What!” He sat up in the bunk again, this time with a sudden cold sweat forming over his body. “How could he think that?”

“They picked up a few garbled words. Russians was the only one they understood.”

He thought back to that hasty final message. Rush help could have sounded like Russians in the static of the storm-swept airwaves. “But that’s terrible! That could start a war!”

“Exactly,” Galvan agreed.

“I’ve got to use your radio at once! I have to get the truth to Washington!”

But the small man restrained him. “There is plenty of time for that. Your new President took the oath of office almost immediately, even though the search for survivors still continues. I am most anxious to see how he handles the situation.”

“How he handles it! We could be at war any minute now, and the President might be powerless to prevent a nuclear holocaust.”

Galvan sighed. “Mr. Harris, my business is power. I have made a career out of the skillful manipulation of monkeys. Don’t you see? I have in my hands now the greatest single power a man has ever had? I have the power to stop World War III, or to let it proceed.”

Harris rolled over on the bunk, sweating freely now. “That’s crazy talk! It couldn’t have gone that far yet.”

“No?” Galvan motioned to his secretary. “Turn on the speaker for the short-wave radio.”

The secretary vanished for a moment and then reappeared as a hidden wall speaker suddenly came to life. “... no further word. Meanwhile, the great Atlantic search continues. A hundred aircraft and two dozen ships have now converged on the general area in which the President’s plane went down. Some bits of wreckage have been sighted, but there is no trace of survivors at this hour. Meanwhile, in Washington, both houses of Congress have gone into an extraordinary all-night sessions to hear an urgent address by the new President. It is expected that the President will attempt to calm those who are calling for an immediate declaration of war with Russia. But on the basis of the presidential pilot’s last words before the crash, it is becoming obvious that the pressure of an aroused public could plunge the United States and Russia into war within another twenty-four hours. Moscow has denied all knowledge of the missing plane, but it is known that Russian fishing boats were in the vicinity. Now for a direct report from...”

“We’ve got to stop them,” Harris interrupted from the bunk. “We’ve got to—”

Galvan signaled the secretary to turn off the speaker. “You see, Mr. Harris, that is my problem. Should I stop them?”

For the first time he felt the fear — not only for the others, but for himself. “What do you mean? I can stop them if you won’t. You told them you’d rescued me.” Overhead somewhere, one of the search planes dipped low and then climbed again. It was the first one he’d heard. “You did tell them, didn’t you?”

Galvan blinked and stepped closer to the bunk. “We have told them nothing, Mr. Harris. The crew does not understand English. Only the three of us know you are here. There has been no radio communication with the searchers.”

The pilot slumped back on his pillow, knowing now, yet not quite knowing all of it. “What do you plan to do?”

“I have been in touch with bankers in London, Rome, Rio, and Paris. There is much to be said for letting the war — this long-postponed confrontation — take place at last. Your Presidents have been men of peace, and even the Russians have shown no eagerness for world conflict. An event like this, today, is needed to plunge the world into chaos.”

“You want that?”

“I do not know, Mr. Harris. It might be more profitable for me to buy and sell against the market, realizing that I could produce your evidence at the last possible moment—”

“But this is the last possible moment,” he told Galvan. “Once the first missile is launched, by either side, it will be too late.”

There was an insistent buzzing of a signal from somewhere, and the man in slacks went off to answer it, moving smoothly and silently out of view. When he returned, he spoke to Galvan in a language Harris couldn’t understand.

The small man grunted and turned back to the bunk. “An American ship has hailed us — a bit sooner than I expected. I must tell them about you now, or not at all.”

Looking up at Galvan, Harris already knew the decision. The owner of the yacht could not now allow him to live, to give even a hint to the waiting world of this fantastic conversation. “You’re mad,” he said, very quietly.

“Do you think those who are calling for war — do you think they are sane?”

“There’s no money in it for you if the whole world goes up in smoke.”

Galvan blinked and turned away. “Perhaps I am only tired of the indecision of it all.”

“Or mad with the power of this moment.” He waited no longer, but threw back the sheet and hurled himself across the cabin at the little man. He grabbed him by the neck and was tightening his grip on the wrinkled throat when the secretary drew a pistol and fired a single shot at close range.

Harris stumbled backward, seeing the two of them — the only two in the world who knew — suddenly tall above him, and he felt very tired as his life drained away. Again there came to him the unmistakable odor of melting, and he wondered if perhaps he was back in the dead plane, if all that went between had been but a drowning man’s dream...

Or was this the way the earth smelled, as it died?