"So I made it look bad, eh, Bert?"
"Bad? Awful! That heat—great comets, pal, you nearly killed us all! But why? I heard part of that transmission from Luna. I heard enough to know that if you passed your final test you were going to be given a command immediately. A ship of your own. The Tethys or the Antigone or the Orestes. All good ships—"
Biggs said quietly, "There was another one, Bert."
"What? No, there wasn't. I looked it up. There were only those three waiting captainless in port."
"But there would have been four," he said, "if I'd passed my exam. Sparks—Cap Hanson's a great guy, isn't he?"
"Sure. A grand old-timer. But—"
And then, suddenly, I got it! Got it, and realized what an all-around humdinging hell of a real man Lancelot Biggs really is! I said:
"You mean—you mean that if you had earned your stripes, the Old Man was going to be set down? And you'd be placed in command of the Saturn? Is that it? Why, you—"
And I swallowed hard, and I gave him a shove. And I said, "Aw, Lanse—"
But Lancelot Biggs isn't the kind of guy you can act gooey with. He just grinned again, and he said, "Sparks, old-timer, what do you say you and me have a drink or three, eh?"