"Nobody," I told him, "but us amperes. Why all the Desperate Desmond stuff, Skipper? Got an old corpus delicti you want hid? You might try the air-lock—"
He snapped back to normal with a profane bang.
"Don't be a damned fool, Donovan! I ain't murdered any members of my crew yet. Though if I ever do, I've got a good notion who to start with. I got reason to be cautions. I just learned something—Listen!" He hunched forward and shoved his lips so close to my ear that I could almost hear his whiskers sprouting. "You know that Captain Cooper which come aboard at Long Island?"
"The Quarantine officer, you mean?"
"Quarantine officer your eye!" The skipper's voice was triumphant. "He ain't no more a Q.O. than I'm the Queen of Sheba! He's an inspector from the S.S.C.B."
"An inspector!" I gasped. "From the Space Safety Control Board! Why—why, that means—"
"Exactly!" Hanson rubbed his hands gleefully. "It means that Lanse is being examined for a commander's brevet. Well, what do you think of that? My son-in-law. Captain of his own ship. And him with only one year's active service!"
I said, "That's swell!" and meant it. The Old Man exaggerated a trifle when he called Lancelot Biggs his "son-in-law"; Biggs' marriage to Diane Hanson was not scheduled to take place, yet, for a couple of months. But with Hanson I could enthuse over the prospect of seeing Biggs win his four stripes and his own command. Lieutenant Lancelot Biggs was not only my superior officer, he was my friend, as well. He had once been my bunkmate. I had watched him rise from a gangling, awkward, derided Third Mate to First Officer; had been present when he earned his Master Navigator's papers; had seen him overcome seemingly insurmountable handicaps of appearance and personality to win a place in the affections of crew and command alike.
A screwball gent, this Biggs. Tall, angular, inconceivably skinny, graced (or disfigured?) with a phenomenally active Adam's-apple that bobbed eternally up and down in his skinny throat like an unswallowed cud—but blessed with two saving graces. A swell sense of humor and a brain!
True, his thought processes were oftimes fantastically involved. His motto, "Get the theory first!" sometimes led him down dark passageways of logic. But there never was a problem too deep for him; time and again his screwy logic had saved the personnel of the Saturn from peril to person or purse.