Because the little man had said absolutely nothing! Now, smiling
faintly, he did say,
"I'm glad to meet you, Sparks. _Very_ glad to meet you!"
* * * * *
Lancelot Biggs was there, too, and Dick Todd, our second mate. Mr.
Biggs was staring at me curiously. Now he said,
"Sparks--perhaps you'd like to show Mr. Thaxton your equipment?"
"Why not?" I said. I showed him the ship's inter-communicating system,
the contact controls with which we get Lunar III, the asteroid
stations, and the lightships off the various planets. I showed him the
dwarf Ampie used to keep down excess voltage on the storage plates. I
showed him all the things that make visitors "oh!" and "ah!" He "ohed!"
and "ahed!" at the right time, then he asked,
"And that visiplate device? I never saw one like that before. Is that
something new?"
"So new," I said, "that Mr. Biggs invented it. A urano-selenoid plate.
Maybe you'd better explain its operation, Mr. Biggs. You can do it
better than I can."
I meant the suggestion as a joke, because Lancelot Biggs is the
most bashful man in space. But to my surprise he stepped forward, a
thoughtful look on his homely puss, and began explaining the plate.
And to make a crazy situation loonier, he garbled the explanation like
a woman describing a picture-show! That _was_ unusual. Because Biggs'
one motivating principle, as he had often demonstrated, was to "Get the
theory first!"
But this time, while I stood baffled, while Dick Todd frowned and
looked puzzled, while Cap Hanson hemmed and hawed as restlessly as a
frog on a hot griddle, Biggs stammered through an almost hopelessly
tangled explanation. The way he described the operation of that audio,
it would take a man approximately fourteen light years to tune in the
nearest station in space.
Twice he fumbled for a word. Each time the little passenger, Thaxton,
who was hanging intently on his fumbling fumbles, supplied the missing
term. And when, finally, he had faltered to a conclusion:
"Well," said the visitor, "that's very interesting. Thank you very
much, Lt. Biggs. And now, Captain--you were going to show me your
storage holds, I believe? Didn't you say something about the aft holds?"
"Migawd, no!" said the skipper. "I mean--er--no. There's nothin' down
there. We'll go visit the _for'rd_ hold."
And they left. All of them, that is, but Lancelot Biggs. He made some
excuse and stayed there in the control-turret with me.
Being now his bunkmate as well as his friend, I took the liberty of
letting the formalities go when we were alone.
"After this, Lanse," I kidded him, "when you give a speech, you ought
to pass out blueprints along with it. I wouldn't know how to operate
that gadget myself from the explanation you gave. Matter of fact, I'm
not sure I'll do it right the next time I try."
* * * * *
Strangely, he looked pleased.