Hartnett laughed. “A joke. A beautiful joke on the dear public. Three hundred pages of pompous drivel, harebrained speculations, pseudo-science, and what not.
“I made a solemn vow many years ago, Nick, that if I ever became an explorer, I would write a book to end all travel books, in retaliation for the ghastly piles of dung about which pedants rave so heartily and which are crammed down the throats of otherwise innocent schoolboys.
“Here on Hastur I had the time to do it—and it was a good way of keeping my spirits up. Oh yes—I worked on solid stuff, too—but that isn’t for public consumption; too deep.”
“But seriously,” broke in Edgar, “haven’t you any idea as to the reason for the signals in reverse English?”
“I don’t want to be personally slain and dismembered, Edgar. That tabu explanation very frankly is the only one I’ve found so far. The signals were warped—unless you want something utterly fantastic like their traveling around the universe, or being slipped through the continuum.”
“What does that mean?” asked Dorothy.
“Nothing. It’s a sort of gibberish which some people use to explain things otherwise inexplicable.” He paused as the familiar figure of Grenville, wreathed with beatific smiles, entered the room. “What’s in the bottle?”
“I have here,” sighed the chemical engineer, “the ne-plus-ultra of our own private rocket-blast. It’s smooth!”
“Yeah? What happened to your fingernails?”
“I got hungry!—Okay, if you don’t trust me, I’ll sample it first.” He uncorked the bottle and took a mighty quaff of the curiously-colored contents.