"That's right."
"Well, you don't happen," I asked him shrewdly, "to have any bright new inventions hatching under your skull, do you? Like the uranium time-trap, for instance, or the velocity intensifier?"
He said, "Now, Sparks—can I help it if neither of them worked exactly as I had planned? After all—"
"Answer," I insisted, "yes or no. Do you?"
He flushed and wriggled one toe in the carpet.
"We-e-ell, not exactly. I did have a little idea I wanted to try out, though. An anti-gravitic attachment. On the cargo lofts. It occurred to me that—"
"Well, junk it!" I said. "Hasten, don't hobble, to the nearest incinerator, and give your diagrams the good old heaveroo!"
He said, "Eh?" and looked faintly startled. "Eh?" he repeated. His liquescent larynx Immelmanned. "But, why, Sparks?"
I said, "Them stripes on your sleeve, Lieutenant—they're pretty, ain't they?"
He glanced down, fingered his triple braid proudly.