CHAPTER III

Lancelot Biggs' [sqrt](-1)

Things moved so swiftly then that the series of surprises I received was practically one continuous blow. The walk through the _Saturn_ was a revelation in itself. Like the cabin in which I had awakened, the ship was all metal, glass and plastic. And a funny metal at that. It was hard, but it looked soft, if you know what I mean. Which I'm sure _I_ don't! The name of the metal, Donovan told me, was "permalloy." It was a special, non-conductive, something-or-other resistant alloy.

"--invented," said Sparks, "around the end of the twentieth century." And he looked at me curiously. "Oh. I forgot. You wouldn't know about that, would you?"

"Look," I said desperately. "Let me know when we get to the Psychopathic Ward, will you?"

But he didn't get it. We walked down one ramp and up another, through an observation room, climbed a ladder, and finally ended in the room the skipper had called the "control turret." And what a place _that_ was!

It looked like an overgrown cyclotron with a purpose. Huge, banked panels with studs on them, cryptic plates, coiled thingamajigs, mechanical what nots and doolollies all over. More guys in sky-blue uniforms. Bells tingling, television screens popping on and off at intervals....

"Interestin'," said a voice at my elbow, "ain't it?"

And it was Hank, gulping and grinning and shaking my hand.

"Kinda worried about you, Jim. You shouldn't ought to have allowed yourself to be drawed into the power-field."

But seeing Hank had made me think of Helen; and now, looking for Helen, I found something that completed my mental collapse. Helen was standing shoulder to shoulder with--none other than her old man, himself, in person! And right behind H. Logan MacDowell stood the missing professors, Hallowell and Tomkins. And lurking behind them, looking more baffled--if possible--than myself, was an exceedingly disgruntled individual in a hard hat. The vanishing detective.

I answered their nods weakly. Then I turned to Hank.

"I give up, pal. What is it? The after-world? Or Old Home Week?"

Hank said seriously, "Well, reckon as how you might call it the after-world, Jim. In a way. It's the world which is to be. But here comes the feller that can explain everything."

For the door had opened, and in walked the chap whom we had seen thrice in my apartment, the effervescent spirit of electricity, the blue-green mystic, the first mate of the _Saturn_--Lancelot Biggs!

* * * * *

Did I say "walked?" Excuse it, please. What he did with his feet could never, by the wildest stretch of the imagination, be called walking. Oh, he progressed forward, yes--but there are no words to describe his locomotion. Think of a polar bear on a pogo stick. Or a secretary bird on skates. A two-footed octopus, even.

His gait was a combination of the worst features of all three. He lurched and shambled, his bony knees protruding as if acknowledging introductions at each passage. A sort of, "You let me by this time, and I'll let you by next time!" deal.

But the peculiarities of Signor Biggs did not end at that point. He had others. I have said that he looked a bit like Hank Cleaver. That is true. They shared lean lankiness of build. Each was blessed--or cursed--with a mop of faded-yellow hair; their eyes were alike in that they mirrored soft curiosity. But Biggs had an appendage Hank lacked.

Matter of fact, no man ever had an Adam's-apple like that before or since. It hung in his scrawny throat like an unswallowed cud; and when he smiled--which was often--or talked, it woggled up and down like a runaway elevator.

To Sparks, beside me, I said dreamily,

"I see it, but I don't believe it. Is it alive?"

And then Biggs addressed us.

"First of all, I must apologize to you, Mr. Cleaver, and to Miss MacDowell and Mr. Blakeson for this rude infringement upon your personal privacy. It was an unwarranted step I took, intruding on your lives this way, but I hope that you'll agree it was not unforgivable.

"I have already explained to these gentlemen"--he bobbed his head toward the pedagogues and the shamus--"the urgency of our situation. To clarify in your minds the how and where of your present location--"

Hank Cleaver _harrumphed!_ and interrupted.

"Reckon as how you can skip that, Lootenant," he said. "It's purty clear. You bridged the time gap from _your_ time to _ours_ by means of an ultra-wave temporal aberrant. Brought us up a couple o' centuries to 'bout the--well, 'bout the twenty-third century."

Lancelot Biggs tried hard to swallow the billiard ball under his chin.

"How--how did you know that, Mr. Cleaver?"

Hank scratched his head, and into his eyes came the old, baffled look that always came there when he was asked _how_ he knew anything.

"Well," he confessed, "I don't 'zackly know how I know, but I do. Just stands to reason, that's all. When you come slidin' down the visible waves to hunt for us, an' when we woke to find ourselves on a space ship--an' as for the time element, well, I alluz 'lowed as how it'd take people bout fifty years, more or less, to make the first successful space flight, an' another two hundred to git it workin' proper--"

Lancelot Biggs' eyes lighted with a great joy.

"Mr. Cleaver, I touch my rocket to you! The ancient records do not lie. You are indeed a remarkable man. _Now_"--he turned to his fellow officers triumphantly--"now I _know_ we shall win free of our difficulties. With your assistance."

* * * * *

Hank flushed, and squirmed a bulldog toe.

"Mebbe you better explain these here difficulties."

It was Biggs' turn to flush.

"I'm afraid," he said miserably, "it's all my fault. Six days ago, Earth Standard time, we lifted gravs from Long Island space port for Mars Central. This was to be my final shuttle before getting married to the skipper's daughter, Diane. Consequently I was a trifle--well, impatient. But I'm sure you understand, Mr. Cleaver."

Hank said hastily, "You better git on, Lootenant." He didn't look at Helen, which was a good thing.

"For some time," continued Biggs, "I have been experimenting with a new device, designed to increase the speed of our vessel. It seemed particularly appropriate that this shuttle should be the test period. So with Captain Hanson's permission I installed my new velocity intensifier on the hypatomics. After we cleared Lunar III, I switched it on--"

Biggs stopped. His eyes were haunted.

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.

Tomkins and MacDowell were napping quietly. The second mate, a guy named Todd, was making motions at guiding the ship's flight through nothing, and also making a mild play for Helen MacDowell. And not getting very far with either job.

Biggs and Cleaver had finished inspecting the instrument panels, and were in earnest confab by the plot charts. Hank seemed to be summarizing their decisions.

"--your new gadget was supposed to eliminate every speck of energy waste, huh?"

"That's right. And thus conserve fuel, at the same time giving tremendous speed," Biggs nodded.

"An' when you plugged the switch, it gave one whoop an' holler, the _Saturn_ went like a bat out o' hell for a few seconds--"

"--and then," finished Biggs, "we found ourselves here. That's the story, Hank. The whole story, so help me. But if, from those few facts and what I've shown you, you can explain in what part of the universe we are, you're an even greater genius than history says you were--I mean, are."

Hank cocked a quizzical eye. "That's funny, ain't it?" he mused. "I was, but I still am. Time's tricky, Lanse. But, listen, you made one mistake."

"Yes?"

"In sayin' 'what part o' the universe.' Way I see it that ain't the explanation _a_-tall. Way I see it, there's two kinds o' universes. The _is_ an' the _ain't_. An' we're in the other one."

"I--I beg your pardon?" faltered Biggs.

"Put it this way. You draw a graph, an' you cross two lines. The block at the upper right intersection o' them two lines is the _is_ universe. The one we live in. Ain't that right?"

Biggs nodded. "That's a simple way of graphing existence, yes. The horizontal line would represent existence in space, the vertical line existence in time. At any given moment, a man's position in space and time is coördinated in the positive sector. But--"

He stopped abruptly, looking at Hank with startled eyes.

"But you don't mean, Hank, we're in the _bottom_ sector of the graph!"

Hank sighed. "'Fraid that's 'zackly what I do mean, Lanse. It's no wonder nuthin' looked natcheral to you. We done bust plumb out o' space an' time as we ordinarily know it. We're in the imaginary sector o' space-time! The coördinate of where we are now ain't even positive numbers. They're all based on a negative factor--the square root o' minus one!"