Lancelot Biggs, Master Navigator

By NELSON S. BOND
Trust Lancelot Biggs to get his ship into a mess just when speed and good navigation meant the prize contract of the year...!
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?
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.