Todd wailed miserably, "And it was all my fault. I brought the haunt on by bragging—"
"Nonsense!" snapped the Old Man. He wore a worried frown on his pan. He released Diane, took a few swift paces across the room, spun, came back to us. "Sheer nonsense!" he repeated angrily. "It isn't reasonable!"
I said, "Yeah, I know. That's what folks have been saying for centuries, Skipper. That ghosts aren't reasonable. But the fact remains, people see them—"
"That's not what I mean. I don't give a hoot about the possibility or impossibility of a ghostly afterworld, I'm just saying that it's not reasonable we should see a ghost of Biggs! Lanse wasn't that kind of boy. He wouldn't come back from the—from Beyond for no better purpose than to frighten the living daylights out of his old friends and the woman he loved. He was a logical man—
"Here's what I think! If you saw Biggs—"
"We did!"
"Very well! Then it wasn't his ghost you saw! It was some sort of projection of him. Don't ask me what kind, or how he did it, or where he is. But I'll bet my last cent—Lancelot Biggs is not dead!"
The pronouncement galvanized Diane. Her eyes shone and she cried, "Oh, Daddy—do you mean that?" Looking upon her joy, I groaned inwardly. It was cruel of the Old Man to reawaken false hopes in her like that. As I said before, I know what I see. And that vision of Biggs didn't look like the projection of a living man's image. It wasn't flat. It was transparent and tri-dimensional. And filmy—
I opened my mouth to protest. But I never got one chirp out of my peeper. For at that moment the turret audio rasped to life, Chief Garrity's grizzled face gleamed on the screen, and the C. E.'s Scottish burr accosted us with accusing indignation.
"Captain Hanson, sirrr!"