The Twilight Zone (TV Series)

The Arrival (1961)

Harold J. Stone: Grant Sheckly

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Quotes 

• Grant Sheckly : Gentlemen, this is not a formal hearing. It's more in the nature of a preliminary meeting. As your Operations Chief noted, we're here to unearth as many facts as we can. I'd appreciate hearing from you only facts. You can save us all a lot of time if you'd avoid personal hypotheses, so we can keep the air clear and not clutter it up with six dozen theories. Theories happen to be my business. In the 20-odd years I've been with the FAA I've got a pretty good record in putting together jigsaw puzzles. Maybe some of them haven't been as abnormal as this one, but I'll lay my betting average on the line any hour of the day. All right? Let's get down to business.

• Grant Sheckly : Did you notice anything abnormal?

  Robbins : No, she came in right on the button. She followed my signal up the ramp. She stopped right on the mark where I told her to. She cut her engines when I gave her the signal.

• Grant Sheckly : Gentlemen, I have a theory. Unfortunately, the only way I can prove it or disprove it is going to put me in considerable jeopardy. Any one of you ever hear of mass suggestion?

  Paul Malloy : So?

  Grant Sheckly : I think that's what we're dealing with now - a kind of hypnosis. To put it more bluntly or perhaps a little less believably, I don't think this airplane is really here. I think every one of us had a little hypnosis performed on him, a little suggestion. Someone somewhere told us that a DC-3 is inside this hangar and that it landed this morning. That's what they said, so every one of us had pictured in his mind a DC-3 as he knows one. Therefore, one of us sees the seats as blue, another sees them as brown, still another sees them as red. I read one number off the tail. Two other guys read two others. Don't you understand what I'm trying to say? This particular aircraft doesn't exist. It really isn't here at all.

• Airline Executive Bengston : This is Paul Malloy, our public relations man.

  Grant Sheckly : How much public, and what kind of relations are you poor guys going to have after this one? I got 22 years in this saddle and I've never been licked yet. Oh, some of them take a long time. Couple of tons of metal spread over 50 square miles of countryside. Sometimes, all it is is a misplaced air scoop or maybe a loose bolt in the elevator hinge or... once in a blue moon, a pilot with a psychosis. But it's always something. And that something always shows up.

• Grant Sheckly : Have you checked out every one of the names on this passenger manifest?

  Airline Executive Bengston : No, I have not.That's all I need now is to have a small army of relatives from upstate New York clutching at my lapels, asking me for a definitive statement as to where their loved ones are who took Flight 107 out of Buffalo this morning.