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elapt1c
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ElapticAI-512

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Horse-sense Hank said, "Yeah?"
"There was a moment of frightful acceleration, then a sharp explosion,
and when order was resumed here we were!"
Nobody spoke, which seemed silly.
"That," I said, "doesn't make sense. Here you were. So where were
you?"
"That," said Biggs dejectedly, "is just what we don't know! Ah, that
sounds ridiculous to you, gentlemen? Believe me, if you knew space, as
we who shuttle back and forth within it in our daily toil, you would
recognize by merely glancing through the quartzite viewpanes that we
are nowhere within the confines of man's studied universe!
"Space is an ebon, eternal night, pricked by a myriad glowing sparks.
The stars wheel in their courses. Comets scream through the infinitude.
The planets, firmly shining in the reflected glory of their several
suns are colored gems upon a velvet pall. But about us now we see
nothing but a dull, endless gray. There are no cosmic clouds, no meteor
mists, no stars; neither light nor dark. Only nothingness, complete and
unresponsive to our best instruments!"
"Huh!" broke in Hank. "Whazzat you say?"
"Apparently," explained the young lieutenant, "our delicate instruments
were broken during the explosion. That is the factor making more
perilous our position. We are not able to orient ourselves, discover
into what portion of the universe our moment of wild flight flung us.
"I have studied and worked and thought on the problem, but to no avail.
That is why, Mr. Cleaver, I undertook to find you."
Cleaver looked at the youngster admiringly.
"Smart feller!" he said. "Time-travel, huh? Alluz thought it could be
made to work. Mighta tried it myself if it hadn't been I was so durn
busy on them turnips "
"It was an accidental discovery, sir. I chanced upon it several months
ago while inventing a new type of uranium speech condenser. It turned
out to be a time-speech trap."[4]
[Footnote 4: "The Madness of Lancelot Biggs," FANTASTIC ADVENTURES,
April, 1940. ED.]
"Nevertheless," insisted Hank, "you done a good job. Findin' a way to
transport your body across time. An' pickin' me up outa 1940, bringin'
me here. Like to talk to you about that later. But right now " He
frowned severely. "You say them instruments o' your'n won't work?"
"No, sir."
"Not a-tall?"
Biggs swallowed with difficulty.
"The truth is, Mr. Cleaver "
"Hank's good enough."
"Well, Hank, the truth is the instruments do work! But they work so
dad-blamed funny "
"Let's," suggested Horse-sense Hank mildly, "have a look."
That was all the invitation the young lieutenant needed. Without so
much as a backward glance at the rest of us, he led Hank to the control
banks of the space freighter. They began to talk in undertones. Biggs
pushed buttons and explained things. I heard snatches about, "tensor
alleviators," "orbital velocity adjusters," and a bunch of terms even
less comprehensible, and gave it up as a bad job.
It was Hank's party. And his headache.
I turned to my self-appointed guide, the radioman, Bert Donovan.
"Do you understand what they're talking about?"
He grinned. "Buster, I've been listening to Lancelot Biggs talk for
almost a year now. And I have yet to understand the first thing he
tells me."
"Then in that case," I said, "it looks to me like a drink is indicated.
Right?"
Right is might, and shall prevail.
I don't know how long later it was that we wandered back to the control
turret. It must have been quite a while, for Sparks had shown me
through the entire ship. When we got back, Cap Hanson and Doc Hallowell
were playing a game of high-low, and the Saturn's skipper was giving
Hallowell a good old-fashioned, twenty-third century going over.