Lancelot Biggs, Master Navigator

Just then the door busted open again, and this time in came the skipper's daughter, Diane, followed by our gawky genius, L. Biggs. There was a sight for you. Beauty and the Bust! I know Venusian, Earth Standard, Universal and a smattering of Old Martian, but I don't know the words to describe Diane Hanson. She was paradise wrapped up in a five and a half foot bundle. She was honey and cream and lotus flowers streamlined into a single heartache. She was--well, she was terrific!

Biggs looked like "Before" in the Are You a Man? advertisements. He was lean and lanky and gangly and awkward, and he walked like an anaemic stork on ice-skates. His chief topographical feature was an Adam's-apple that cavorted up and down his neck like a runaway elevator. I'd known Biggs six months, and still couldn't figure out whether he was a sixty horsepower genius or the luckiest mortal in space.

Right now, both he and Diane were wearing size 12 grins. With a prideful sidelong glance at her fiance, the skipper's gal demanded, "Wasn't it wonderful, Dad? Lancelot made that take-off all by himself. Wasn't it something?"

Hanson strangled softly. I did a relief job. I said, honestly, "It was something. I haven't figured out what yet. After I get the curdles out of my brain--"

Mr. Biggs said apologetically, "I'm sorry if I caused you any inconvenience, Sparks. I was trying out a new wrinkle. Instead of using the aft blasts to throw us clear of Sun City spaceport, I used a single jet and reversed the ship's gravity. That gave us an automatic repulsion from the planet, and--"

"_What!_" roared the skipper. "Look here, Mr. Biggs, one more insane trick like that an' I'll have you cashiered, bet or no bet! I've been hoppin' gravs for nigh onto forty years, an' you can take my word for it, them nonsensical ideas don't work! They only waste fuel, an'--"

"But," interjected Biggs, "I just checked with the engine room, sir. They--they complained about the moment of weightlessness, but admitted we'd saved approximately sixty percent of our normal escape fuel."

"The hell you say!" Cap Hanson's jaw played tag with his breast-bone. Then he gathered up his self-respect and expelled it in an outraged snort. "Nevertheless," he proclaimed, "an' howsoever--the stunt's no good. Come to find out, you'll prob'bly discover we're at least a degree off course an' behind schedule--"

Just at that moment the audio buzzed. I plugged in and contacted the second officer, Lt. Dick Todd, calling from the bridge. Todd said genially, "Hi, Sparks. Tell Mr. Biggs I just finished checking the course revision, will you? And tell him that little trick of his was a whiz-bang. The tape shows we've gained two parsecs on the normal escape and we're point oh-oh-oh on course!"

The violent sound was Cap Hanson and his dignity slamming the door behind them....

After he left, I coughed gently at Diane and Biggs, who evidently thought my turret was the back row of a movie house, and while Biggs was wiping the lipstick off his chin I said, "Look, Mr. Biggs, I don't want to be critical, but that damned audio plate of yours--" And I told him about what had happened just before the take-off.

He grinned amiably.

"It doesn't really matter, Sparks. That's one of the paradoxes you'll have to get used to. The uranium trap has the faculty of probing into the past, but only when you operate it in low frequencies."

I said, "But I actually talked to Allonby over a five month lapse of time! Here's what gets me--shouldn't he have remembered that conversation yesterday when he and I had a couple of snorts together in Sun City?"

"No. Because you didn't talk to him on his present world-line. You see, every man moves through Time and Space in a series of four co-ordinates dependent upon what he does. Five months ago Allonby did not talk to you. Therefore he did not remember it yesterday. The next time you see him he will remember today's conversation as having happened--"

"Pardon the slight sizzling sounds," I apologized to Diane. "That's just my brains heterodyning."

"In other words," continued Biggs blandly, "today you sheared the Time-Space continuum from an unusual angle, thereby turning the Present-Past into the Past-Present, and altering the Future-Present. You might say you spoke not to Allonby, but to one of the many probabilities of Allonby. Do you understand now?"

"No," I said. "Where's the aspirin?"

"I'll try to make it clear," he persisted. "This is how it works--"

Then I got a break. The bug started chattering; I moved to the control board and said, "So solly, folks. Me makee talk-talk on phonee. Goombye!"

They left, wrapped around each other like a pound of melted chocolates, and I switched in to hear the finger of Joe Marlowe buzzing me from Lunar Station III. Marlowe was in fine form. He greeted me with a "_Haloj, nupaso!_" which means, "Hi, pickle-puss!"

I called him something untranslatable, and then he got down to business. "How's that dilapidated old crate of yours perking along, pal?" he asked.