"Y-yes, sir!" Biggs saluted meekly; tossed me a grateful glance. "Thanks, Sparks. I've got an idea, and if I'm right—"
"Get out, Biggs!" roared the skipper.
"Yes, sir." Biggs backed out hastily. He was thumbing the pages as he disappeared. Hanson yanked his lower lip angrily.
"The Corporation goes busted. The Saturn goes under the hammer. We're all out of jobs. And that—that insane young whippersnapper wants to play school!"
"He seemed mighty excited about something," I said.
"He'll be worse than that," promised the skipper, "if he doesn't get those jars back on board."
All this, to get Biblical about it, took place on the seventh day. The Saturn is a ten-day freighter. So we had three more days of headaches before us till we slipped into New York spaceport.
They were three days of headaches, too. The skipper and I spent most of our time hanging over the radio, watching the progress of the stock market slump in New York. We hoped the situation would ease up so that our coming in with a zero cargo wouldn't make any difference—but no such luck. Somehow the rumor had gotten around that the Saturn's cargo would not be of sufficient value to keep the Corporation in the blue. And the Wall Street wolves were closing in, getting ready to snap if the rumor were true.
In the meantime, our stupid friend, Biggs, was taking a hell of a long time to reclaim those Forenzis. It's really not a hard job, you know. All he had to do was slip out through the airlock, throw a grapple around each jar, and bring it in.
But he seemed to be as awkward at this as at every other job he had ever attempted. On an off-period, I went down to watch him once. I found he'd thrown grapples around the jars, but had not brought a single one into the airlock yet.