Trust Lancelot Biggs to get his ship into
a mess just when speed and good navigation
meant the prize contract of the year...!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Fantastic Adventures May 1940.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Everything happens to me. We finished taking on cargo at 13:10, Solar
Constant Time, and I went to my turret for firing orders from the Sun
City spacedrome officer. I plugged in the audio and stared into the
familiar pan of Commander Allonby.
I said, "Freight lugger _Saturn_ preparing to up gravs, Commander.
Standing by for the O.Q."
His jaw dropped like a barometer in a cyclone. He gasped, "You, Sparks?
And the _Saturn_? What in blue space are _you_ doing in port?"
"Don't look now," I advised him, "but we've been here since day before
yesterday. Matter of fact, you and me h'isted elbows together last
night at the Cosmic Bar, remember?"
"Remember?" he howled. "How could I? The last I heard of you, Cap
Hanson was running the _Saturn_ through the planetoids on some sort of
cockeyed transmutation experiment![1] When did you get back? How did
you--?"
[Footnote 1: Fantastic Adventures, November, 1939.]
"Damn!" I groaned, "and double-damn!" I knew what had happened. It was
that confounded new invention of Lancelot Biggs'. It was a uranium
audio plate which, when activated in low radiations, acted as what you
might call a "time-speech-trap."
In other words, I was talking to Allonby not as he was _now_, but as he
had been five months ago!
Don't ask me how it works. I'm a stranger here myself. Anyhow, I shook
my head, shifted the dials, picked up Allonby in the current time
level, got a take-off order and relayed it to the bridge. Pretty soon a
bell dinged, another one donged, and a slow, humming vibration tingled
through the ship as our hypatomics caught hold. I steadied myself for
the lift--
And _whammo_! The stars exploded and seven mules let me have it in the
you-know-where, and there I was on the ceiling, squawking like a stuck
pig and scrambling to get down to my control banks. I didn't scramble
long. For suddenly the artificial gravs came on and I made a perfect
three-point landing--nose, knees and navel--on the floor.
I got up gingerly. No arms or legs fell off when I shook myself, so
I started for the bridge to ask Cap Hanson whyfore. But just as I
reached the door it swung open, and in came the skipper himself. He was
swearing with the dull, unemotional fluidity of a man who has abandoned
hope.