"And that visiplate device? I never saw one like that before. Is that something new?"
"So new," I said, "that Mr. Biggs invented it. A urano-selenoid plate. Maybe you'd better explain its operation, Mr. Biggs. You can do it better than I can."
I meant the suggestion as a joke, because Lancelot Biggs is the most bashful man in space. But to my surprise he stepped forward, a thoughtful look on his homely puss, and began explaining the plate.
And to make a crazy situation loonier, he garbled the explanation like a woman describing a picture-show! That was unusual. Because Biggs' one motivating principle, as he had often demonstrated, was to "Get the theory first!"
But this time, while I stood baffled, while Dick Todd frowned and looked puzzled, while Cap Hanson hemmed and hawed as restlessly as a frog on a hot griddle, Biggs stammered through an almost hopelessly tangled explanation. The way he described the operation of that audio, it would take a man approximately fourteen light years to tune in the nearest station in space.
Twice he fumbled for a word. Each time the little passenger, Thaxton, who was hanging intently on his fumbling fumbles, supplied the missing term. And when, finally, he had faltered to a conclusion:
"Well," said the visitor, "that's very interesting. Thank you very much, Lt. Biggs. And now, Captain—you were going to show me your storage holds, I believe? Didn't you say something about the aft holds?"
"Migawd, no!" said the skipper. "I mean—er—no. There's nothin' down there. We'll go visit the for'rd hold."
And they left. All of them, that is, but Lancelot Biggs. He made some excuse and stayed there in the control-turret with me.
Being now his bunkmate as well as his friend, I took the liberty of letting the formalities go when we were alone.