The return of Lancelot Biggs

By NELSON S. BOND
Gilchrist had no fear of the sun's heat. Then Biggs gave him a new kind of hotfoot.
I guess it was about 7:58 Solar Constant Time—yes, it was exactly that, because I'd just received a clearance O.Q. for 8:00 from the Sun City portmaster—when the portal of my radio turret opened and in waddled Cap Hanson, skipper of our void-mangling freighter, the Saturn .
The Old Man's optics were dancing like a nudist in a hailstorm, and he wore a grin on his lips that stretched from ear to there.
Guess what, Sparks? he chortled. I got a s'prise for you! Guess who just came aboard?
I said gloomily, If it's anybody like that sourpuss encyclopedia-on-legs who came aboard at Luna, you can have my resignation right now, if not sooner. I've been hectored and bulldozed and criticised so much lately that I'm beginning to feel like one large apology with corpuscles.
I wasn't joking, either. You know me—Bert Donovan—the easy-goingest bug-pounder who ever loused up the ether with Morse code. I don't get mad often, and my nerves are as steady as a forger's fingers, but this newest addition to the Saturn's personnel had me on the verge of babbling baby-talk.
His name was Horatio Gilchrist, his rank was Major and his title was efficiency expert. To summarize briefly: Major Horatio Gilchrist was a rank efficiency expert—and I do mean rank! He had pale, green, watery, squinting eyes and a nose like a gimlet. Said proboscis was always in everybody else's business. He snooped and sniffed and sidled about the Saturn like a pup in the Petrified Forest, and he had a habit of popping out where least expected, like a fat man in tights.
He was always making suggestions. He told me how to conserve juice by pre-heating the tubes before I transmitted. He advised Cap Hanson, who has been roving the spaceways, man and boy, for more than forty years, on astrogation practices. He quoted facts, figures and statistics at Dick Todd till our acting First Mate grew as haggard as a parson at a burleyque.