"Just four more days, Sparks!" he chortled happily to me. And then, "Just three more days! Just two more—" He rubbed his hairy paws together gleefully. "Two captains in the same family! Ain't that somethin'? Boy, did you see the way he come through on that test yesterday? Cooper got Garrity to cross the heat control an' grav plates. The ship was hot an' weightless at the same time—"
"So that's what it was?" I grumbled. "Hell, who's taking this test—Biggs or us guinea-pigs? I went soaring to the ceiling, boiling like a kettle—and with the gravs off, I couldn't even drip sweat!"
"But Lanse fixed it!" gloried Hanson. "Spotted the trouble in three minutes flat, and had the circuits straight before you could say 'hypertensile dynamics'! What a lad!"
"Two more days," I said. "All I hope is that I can live through it. If Cooper gets any more whacky ideas—"
"Hrrrrumph!" came a voice from the doorway. I spun, startled.
What did my mama tell me about talking in front of a person's back? It was Inspector Cooper!
I said, "Look, Inspector—the acoustics are lousy in this room. Anything you heard which might have sounded like your name was strictly coincidental."
He glared at me. Then at Cap Hanson. Then at me. And, boy, what I mean—that guy could really glare!
"So!" he said. "Inspector, eh?"
Oh-oh! It dawned on me, all of a sudden—but too late—that I'd upset the legumes with a vengeance. Calling him "Inspector," when, so far as I was concerned, he was an officer in the Quarantine Service.