What are the forms of coherence in short stories?

Plot essentially has to cohere- stick together, if nothing else but maintain suspense. it is true there are some short stories that jump around from scene to scene they are difficult to follow and harder to make sense out of. this problem of incoherent plotting is known to occur in some Science Fiction stories- such as , if I recall this correctly- the Ray of Displacement. the device, developed by some amateur scientist ( rather like a radio ham) is on the verge of being tested, the operator switches it on, there are strobe-like light flashes=- then, Blackout- the plot jumps some years in the future where a group of KGB officers- are inspecting a crime scene in Russia trying to draw some clues, as Detectives would be expected to do- up to that incident there was no mention of Russia- or communists, Czarist survivals, etc- at all it was just about an amateur scientist and a light-radio coherence device ( and an INCOHERENT) plot structure- get things in focus!