Part 1

The Ghost of Lancelot Biggs

BY NELSON S. BOND

_The shade of that gangling genius of the spaceways--Lancelot Biggs--comes back to haunt his old ship mates._

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Weird Tales January 1942. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

Folks say I'm hard-boiled; well, maybe so. My mama told me a long time ago--when I was a brat in three-cornered britches--that if you keep your upper lip rigid and a steely glint in the old optics and _le craque sage_ dripping from your tongue, not many people will be hopping around, pushing chips off your shoulder and daring you to take off your glasses.

And mama was right. So I'm commonly known as "that smart-Aleck Bert Donovan," and folks think I'm hard-boiled--but I didn't feel like any ten-minute egg the afternoon Diane Hanson, her pop, Cap Hanson, skipper of the freighter _Saturn_, and I came home from Lancelot Biggs' funeral.

Lancelot Biggs was dead. Or missing for more than seven weeks in the gray nothingness of negative space--which is the same thing. He had hurled himself into this desolate matrix universe deliberately, sacrificing himself to save the lives of his friends and shipmates when we were all doomed to die horribly by crashing headlong into massive Jupiter.

[Illustration: Lancelot Biggs was dead; or else missing in the gray nothingness of negative space....]

Since the life-skiff in which he had entombed himself was tiny, poorly provisioned and inadequately supplied with water, there was no longer the faintest glimmer of hope that he might, somehow and miraculously, have survived. Even had he found some way of escaping the minus boundaries of the weird nega-universe into which he had fled. Therefore, today he had been formally "buried". In spirit, so to speak, or by remote control. The way the old boys in the 19th Century used to bury lost mariners. With a long cortege and a tall stone, engraven with the words: _Here lies So-and-so--Lost at Sea._

Only this being the enlightened 22nd Century and we being a bit more reasonable, Biggs' marker read: _In Memory of Lt. Lancelot Biggs--Lost in Space._

So we were a sad looking trio when we came back to the apartment which Lanse Biggs and I used to share near Long Island Spaceport. Cap Hanson had lost the finest First Mate to ever tread the ramps of a space-lugger, I had lost the best friend a man had ever had, and Diane--well, her loss was the greatest. She had lost the man she loved, the lean, gangling man to whom, had not fate's grim hand intervened, she would now be married.

And like I said--folks call me hard-boiled. But I reckon I'm only gently poached compared to the men who operate under the title of Big Business, because when we entered the apartment the telephone was jangling like an opium addict's nerves, and when I picked it up I was talking to the Assignment Clerk of the I.P.C., the Corporation from which we draw our weekly credit checks.

"Donovan?" he yelped. "Is that you, Donovan?"

"Mmm," I said.

"Is Captain Hanson there?"

I glanced at the skipper, whose arms were about his quietly sobbing daughter. He was a gruff old codger, Hanson; a more irascible space-tyrant never lifted gravs. But he had a heart buried somewhere beneath that crust, a heart that was now as hurt and grieved as my own.

"Why?" I asked.

"Never mind why!" snapped the A.C. "Put him on!"

I said grimly, "Okay, Buster! I'll play toddle-top with you. I'll _put_ him on now and _take_ you on the next time I see you. Skipper--" And I handed him the phone.

Whatever the A.C. told the Old Man, it threw a jolt into him. I saw Hanson stiffen like a rheumatic neck, and he roared, "_Wha-a-at!_ Impossible! Why, you damned young jackanapes, don't you know the staff and crew of the _Saturn_ are in mourning? We won't--"

* * * * *

Then there was clacking from the ear-piece, metallic and ominous, and the Old Man's face turned from crimson to an outraged mauve. But anxious lines corrugated his brow and he forced a modulated acquiescence to his voice.

"I see," he said thoughtfully. "So that's the way it is, eh? Well--" Grudgingly "--all right, then. But I don't like it, sir. And you may tell your superiors--"

The A.C. must have hung up on him. He turned to us slowly. "Sparks--" he said.

Diane Hanson stared at her father. "Daddy, what is it? Is it--some news about Lancelot?"

"No, honey," said the Old Man gravely. "Don't keep that hope burning, dear. You'll only torture yourself. This is something entirely different. Something--" His stifled anger burst out afresh "--something dastardly! They should be boiled in oil, the whole rotten kit and kiboodle of them! But I'm helpless. Orders are orders. Sparks, get in contact with the staff and crew immediately. Tell them to pack their duffle and be aboard the _Saturn_ by midnight."

I said, "What! But, Skipper, we were granted leave to mourn Biggs--"

"I know it! But the Corporation has countermanded our leaves. We're to lift gravs at twelve sharp for Europa. Polarium has just been discovered there, and the whole solar system has gone crazy. Prospectors from every corner of the universe are blasting for Europa as fast as their jets will push them. And since the _Saturn_ is the fastest lugger in the I.P.S. fleet, we've got to get there and stake claims for the Corporation.

"I--I'm sorry it has to be this way, Diane. I don't want to leave you. But the clerk said if I refused to take command, they'd appoint someone else--"

"I know, Daddy," said Diane. She forced a wisp of a smile to her lips. She understood as well as I did what he was trying to tell us. The Old Man was--and is--one of the greatest skippers who ever blasted a rocket. But he's an old man in fact as well as title. Twice before our employers had threatened to remove his command, ground him, give his bridge to a younger officer. A man of action, the Skipper dared not look forward to the day when he had to bid farewell to space. To refuse this emergency command would be to risk everything. And so:

"I understand, Daddy," said Diane Hanson "But you don't have to leave me."

"And, Sparks, tell Todd he'll serve as First Mate," the skipper told me. "Wilson will be Second--_hey?_ What did you say, Diane?"

Diane's voice was gentle, but there was a tightness about her eyes and lips I recognized. I'd seen it before, on her father's face. I knew what it meant. Stubbornness mixed with a dash of determination.

"You won't leave me," she said calmly, "because I'm going with you!"

"You're going with--Oh, no! No, you're not! This isn't any shuttle for a girl. There's danger out there near Jupiter, honey. I won't let you--"

"You can't stop me, Dad. Can't you see I've _got_ to go? Please! I'll go crazy sitting home here by myself. And besides, it was out there--near Jupiter--that _he_--"

Well, I saw how she felt. And I didn't much blame her for feeling she had a right to make at least one farewell trip to the part of space wherefrom her lover had disappeared. The Old Man growled softly. Then he wiped his glasses with a sort of savage vehemence. And he said, "Well, then, get your things packed. And Sparks--call Chief Garrity. Tell him to have the hypos and all control equipment ready for immediate flight--"

Thus at twelve midnight sharp, Earth time, which is 7-R-4 Solar Constant, the _Saturn_ lifted gravs for Europa, the second satellite of monstrous Jupiter.

* * * * *

There's no use boring you with the routine details. We blasted from a Long Island cradle, set course and constant for Europa, waited till we were about six hours away from the Earth's gravitational field, then cut over to the V-I unit--the "velocity intensifier" invented by Lancelot Biggs which had made the _Saturn_ the fastest ship in space, increasing its speed potential from a slovenly 200,000 _mph_ to something only a trifle less than the limiting velocity of light.

In the old days, before the installation of the V-I unit, a shuttle to Jupiter meant a journey of about a hundred days, more or less, depending on the positions of the planets. Now, however, the _Saturn_ had a speed potential of 650,000,000 miles per hour! Which _didn't_ mean that we could actually get to Jupiter in an hour. There were other factors which had to be allowed for: initial velocity, deceleration upon approaching our goal, and all that stuff.

To make a short story stubby, though, we could look forward confidently to setting foot on Europa within two days at the most.

Which gave us a big jump over the rest of those who were high-balling it for the wealth-laden satellite.

Dick Todd, looking awkward and a trifle embarrassed in his First Officer's braid, came to my turret at the end of our first day's flight. Things had happened so suddenly that no one had found time to tell him the score. He was one huge question mark on toes.

"How come, Sparks?" he demanded. "What's this all about? First we're on leave of absence, then they dump us in the _Saturn_ and shove us off for Europa. Why?"

I said, "The answer's as simple as your half-witted brother. What do you get from the bank, stupid?"

"Loans," said Todd promptly, "at five percent. But what has that got to do with--"

"The correct answer," I sighed, "is--_shekels_! The sinews of war, lamebrain. Cash. Gelt. Credits. The root of all evil. Filthy lucre. There's a polarium-rush at Europa, which if I'm any prophet will make the old gold-rushes on mama Earth and the radium-rush on Venus in 2078 look like Bargain Day in the Ladies' Basement.

"The Corporation that supplies our bread-and-butter wants in on the ground floor. So we're elected the official claim-stakers."

"Polarium!" echoed Dick. "That's that new element, isn't it? Number 106? The impossible one?"

I stared at his First Officer's stripes sourly.

"When I think of the genius who used to wear those stripes," I sighed, "and then look at _you_--Oh, well! Listen to papa, whackypot. Polarium is Element No. 106, yes! But it ain't impossible, no! Because they found it. And I have yet to hear of anybody finding anything which doesn't exist. It's a brand-new discovery, apparently rare as ideas in that spongy bulb you hopefully call your 'brain,' and it's _so_ new that nobody knows, yet, exactly what its properties are.

"Nevertheless, it's got a cash value. So we're on our way to collect some of the aforesaid same."

Todd said aggrievedly, "That's not a very nice way to talk to a superior officer, Sparks. Damned if I wouldn't report you--if I had any idea who to report you to. But--Europa, you said? That's kind of dangerous, isn't it? Our attempting to land there, I mean."

"No more dangerous," I told him, "than attempting to brush the teeth of a sabre-toothed tiger. Any time a ship gets within umpteen miles of Jupiter, pal, it's hold your hat and breath and give the prayerbook a quick riffle. That hunk of red goo has gravitational power--spelled with a capital, 'Phew!' More spaceships than you have corpuscles have fallen within old Jupe's drag, crashed on the planet. And not a man has ever yet managed to escape, get back to tell us what it's like.

"From what we know or can guess, the planet is not inhabited or habitable. But that's guesswork. Until we can explore it as we've explored its satellites, we'll never know. And we'll never be able to explore Jupiter until some clever jasper invents an anti-gravitational shield--"

"Say!" enthused Todd. "Now, there's a great idea, Sparks! I think I'll work on that!"

I looked at him and groaned.

"_You_ invent an anti-gravitational shield? What are you going to use for brains? Buttons? I've never known but one man in my life with the genius to pull that miracle--and he's dead. Lanse Biggs. I hope that wherever he is he can't hear you. He'll be rolling over in his grave so fast they'll call him 'Revolving Biggs.' Either that, or he'll come back and haunt you for daring to--"

And then it happened. Todd, who had been listening to me petulantly, suddenly stiffened. His jaw dropped ... his eyes popped out like marbles on stalks ... and his hair climbed two full, quivering inches off his scalp.

"S-s-sparks!" he wailed. "D-d-don't say that! Behind you!"

Then he keeled over in a dead faint. I turned. My heart took a running leap for my lips, and I think I screamed. Because I was staring at a thin, wavering nebulosity--a form gray and ghastly--a transparent simulacrum of--

_Lancelot Biggs!_

* * * * *

What happened next, I wouldn't rightly know. All I know is that for the first time I realized how a deep-rooted tree must feel when a pup comes sniffing at it with malice in his eyes. My brain said, "Get going, babies! Double-quick!" But my pedal extremities were as nerveless as a batch of yesterday's dough.

But there was nothing wrong with my senses. On the contrary: they were as sharp as a creditor's letter. And for the first time in my life I realized that the old stories you hear about ghosts are on the up-and-up. For this shimmering wraith of Biggs carried along with it all the visual, audible and olfactory accoutrements with which the ghosts of lore are usually endowed.

My ears hummed with a high, thin singing; a sort of weird, unearthly harmonic vibration. There was a biting odor in my nostrils, a scent so subtle I could not tell whether it were charnelly repugnant or just plain annoying. The phantom itself was gray, drab, colorless. Immobile. Tense, strained of visage. For a moment its white lips seemed to move--

Then it was gone! As quickly as it had come it was gone, and the paralysis left my limbs, and I was on my knees beside Todd, shaking him.

He came out of his blackout howling. "Did you see him, Sparks? It was Biggs' ghost! Standing right there--"

"What the hell's going on in here?" interrupted the irate voice of Cap Hanson. The door had burst open; he stood in the archway with Diane a few feet behind him. "What's all this, Mister Todd? The two of you groveling on the floor--drunk again, eh? Well, my two fine sirs--"

Todd pulled himself to his feet uncertainly. His voice was cracked, incoherent.

"N-no, sir! S-something horrible. This ship is--is _haunted_, sir! I saw--_Upph!_"

My elbow caught his bread-basket just in time. His next words represented my own private opinion. But I didn't want Diane Hanson to hear them. After all, it isn't soothing to a heartbroken gal to learn that her lover has turned into a noisy, malodorous, spaceship spook.

"Haunted?" roared Hanson. "Are you mad, Lieutenant Todd? What do you mean, haunted?"

I tried to catch the skipper's eye so I could give him the business to lay off the quiz program for the time being. But my finger-flagging came to naught. Diane shouldered past her father and into the room. Her voice was intense, eager.

"Sparks," she said, "tell me! It was--_he_, wasn't it? Lancelot?"

Too late, Dick understood why I'd poke-checked him. He turned red and began gobbling like a block-bound turkey.

"N-no, Miss Diane. N-nothing like that. Bert and I were just having a little horseplay. We'd had a drink--"

"Don't lie to me, Dick! It _was_ Lancelot! It must have been. I--I saw him myself!"

Well! That was one for the books. It was our turn to gape. Cap Hanson stared from one to another of us wildly.

"What's this? You saw Lancelot, Diane? Where?"

"In my cabin. An hour or so ago. I was trying to take a little nap. Something wakened me--I don't know what--and I saw him standing in the middle of the room. He was so pale. So thin, and so sad. Oh, Daddy--"

* * * * *

She buried her face on his shoulder. Hanson said, "Now, there, honey!" He looked like an accident hunting for some place to happen. He stared at us dismally.

"Is that the truth, boys? Is that what you saw?"

We nodded. I said, "I'm not what you might call a superstitious guy, Skipper, but I know what I see. It was his ghost, all right."

Todd wailed miserably, "And it was all my fault. I brought the haunt on by bragging--"

"Nonsense!" snapped the Old Man. He wore a worried frown on his pan. He released Diane, took a few swift paces across the room, spun, came back to us. "Sheer nonsense!" he repeated angrily. "It isn't reasonable!"

I said, "Yeah, I know. That's what folks have been saying for centuries, Skipper. That ghosts aren't reasonable. But the fact remains, people _see_ them--"

"That's not what I mean. I don't give a hoot about the possibility or impossibility of a ghostly afterworld, I'm just saying that it's not reasonable we should see a ghost of _Biggs_! Lanse wasn't that kind of boy. He wouldn't come back from the--from Beyond for no better purpose than to frighten the living daylights out of his old friends and the woman he loved. He was a logical man--

"Here's what I think! If you saw Biggs--"

"We did!"

"Very well! Then it wasn't his _ghost_ you saw! It was some sort of projection of him. Don't ask me what kind, or how he did it, or where he is. But I'll bet my last cent--Lancelot Biggs is not dead!"

The pronouncement galvanized Diane. Her eyes shone and she cried, "Oh, Daddy--do you mean that?" Looking upon her joy, I groaned inwardly. It was cruel of the Old Man to reawaken false hopes in her like that. As I said before, I know what I see. And that vision of Biggs didn't look like the projection of a living man's image. It wasn't flat. It was transparent and tri-dimensional. And filmy--

I opened my mouth to protest. But I never got one chirp out of my peeper. For at that moment the turret audio rasped to life, Chief Garrity's grizzled face gleamed on the screen, and the C. E.'s Scottish burr accosted us with accusing indignation.

"Captain Hanson, sirrr!"

"Yes, Chief?"

"Will ye be so kind as to accept my rrreseegnation, sirrr, _ee_-fective _ee_-meejuttly! I willna ha' fairther dealin' wi' sooch scand'lous nonsense as is now goin' on down here!"

Hanson snarled, "Resignation be damned, Chief! I've got troubles of my own. Don't come bellyaching to me because you can't handle your own men--"

"'Tisna _my_ men are ablatherin'!" declared the Chief in high dudgeon. "'Tis one o' y'r ain men who by all rights should be dead an' planted these past seven weeks! 'Tis the ghost o' the late Lootenant Biggs--down here tryin' to gie my men orrrders f'r the _con_-struction o' some fantastic machine!"

* * * * *

I think we all must have said something, but what I said I can't remember. For I was conscious only of Hanson's exuberant roar. "See? I told you so!" and of Diane's glad little cry, "Daddy! Let's go down!"--then we were all high-balling it down the ramps toward the engine-room.

What we found there was Bedlam. Bedlam in greasy overalls. The hypos, hooked up the V-I unit, were perking along in their usual smooth fashion. The rotor-pistons were chugging back and forth in their channels with the calm precision of a five-year-old sucking a lollypop. But in one corner of the room the members of Garrity's black gang were huddled, wide-eyed, white-faced, closer than a duffer and his topped drive; in another corner stood Chief Garrity, staring with speechless wrath at a figure in the middle of the floor.

The figure was that which we had seen up topside. The wavering spectre of Lancelot Biggs.

It's funny how the mind works. Even in that moment of stress I found myself thinking that translation into the afterworld had not done much to improve Biggs' handsomeness. He didn't look much like the chubby cherubs or stalwart angels you see pictures of. He was the same old Biggs I'd known and loved. Tall, gangling, lean to the point of ridiculousness--dressed in space-blues rather the worse, I thought, for wear--tousle-haired, grave-eyed, with that old familiar Adam's-apple bobbing up and down in his scrawny throat like a half-swallowed orange.

There was one difference, though. He was not quiet, motionless, as he had been when I had seen him in my turret. There was a look of fretful anxiety in his eyes. He was gesturing impatiently to his awe-struck watchers, motioning them to approach him. His lips were moving, but no sound issued from them. There was in the air that same high, thin whining I had noted before; that same sharp, rather ammoniac odor.

Then Diane cried, "Lanse! Oh, Lanse, darling--!" and rushed forward. Straight toward, up to, into and _through_ the spectre of her lost lover. And she stopped, dazed. Her arms waved wildly. "B-but he's gone! He's not here? Where did he--"

I choked weakly, "D-don't look now, Diane, but you sort of--er--broke him up. Little chunks of him are floating around you."

Which was the God's-honest truth, so help me! When she burst into that phantom, it popped apart like pieces of a jig-saw puzzle.

Shattered into a thousand little shimmering, quivering bits, as an image will shatter in a quiet pool when you chuck a rock into it. Diane stepped back. The hunks of Biggs came drifting back together again. I saw, now, that he wore a happy smile. His lips moved, and we read the name he spoke. "_Diane!_"

Hanson whirled on the scowling Chief Engineer.

"How long has he been here, Chief? What's he want?"

Garrity's reply was as sultry as a Venusian sunset.

"And joost how, Captain Hanson, would I be capable of knowin' the _de_-sires of a disembodied speerit? I'm a mon of broad expeerience, sirrr, but I dinna pretend to comprehend _ee_-cleesiastical mysteries. _Shoo!_" He waved his arms at the ghostly Biggs. "Go 'way, ye bodiless demon! 'From ghoulies an' ghosties an' all sairts o' beasties an' things thot go "Boomp!" in the nicht, O Laird, deliverrr us!'"

Hanson turned to me in desperation.

"He's trying to tell us something, Sparks. You and him was friends. Can't you understand him?"

I was already pondering that problem. It was plain that Biggs' motions were not purposeless, that he was trying to communicate some message. I stepped forward, facing the wraith, formed short words clearly on my lips.

"Lanse--can you hear me?"

He shook his head.

"But you can read writing?" I had some crazy idea of scribbling messages to him for his perusal. Of course, it was a one-way ticket to the Observation Ward if anybody ever found out I'd been holding a chalk-talk confab with a ghost, but----

He didn't like that idea, either. He raised both arms. Then he did a funny thing. He started waving his paws in the air. Left paw--right--right again--left--left--

Todd groaned, and looked for a soft spot to faint on. "Not only a spook," he wailed, "but a _dancing_ spook--"

"Shut up!" I yelled. "Cap, shove that alleged Mate through the airlock. This ain't cuckoo--it's _code_! Go on, chum! I'm getting it!"

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