The Ghost of Lancelot Biggs
BY NELSON S. BOND
The shade of that gangling genius of
the spaceways—Lancelot Biggs—comes
back to haunt his old ship mates.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Weird Tales January 1942.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Folks say I'm hard-boiled; well, maybe so. My mama told me a long time ago—when I was a brat in three-cornered britches—that if you keep your upper lip rigid and a steely glint in the old optics and le craque sage dripping from your tongue, not many people will be hopping around, pushing chips off your shoulder and daring you to take off your glasses.
And mama was right. So I'm commonly known as "that smart-Aleck Bert Donovan," and folks think I'm hard-boiled—but I didn't feel like any ten-minute egg the afternoon Diane Hanson, her pop, Cap Hanson, skipper of the freighter Saturn, and I came home from Lancelot Biggs' funeral.
Lancelot Biggs was dead. Or missing for more than seven weeks in the gray nothingness of negative space—which is the same thing. He had hurled himself into this desolate matrix universe deliberately, sacrificing himself to save the lives of his friends and shipmates when we were all doomed to die horribly by crashing headlong into massive Jupiter.
