I was already pondering that problem. It was plain that Biggs' motions were not purposeless, that he was trying to communicate some message. I stepped forward, facing the wraith, formed short words clearly on my lips.
"Lanse—can you hear me?"
He shook his head.
"But you can read writing?" I had some crazy idea of scribbling messages to him for his perusal. Of course, it was a one-way ticket to the Observation Ward if anybody ever found out I'd been holding a chalk-talk confab with a ghost, but——
He didn't like that idea, either. He raised both arms. Then he did a funny thing. He started waving his paws in the air. Left paw—right—right again—left—left—
Todd groaned, and looked for a soft spot to faint on. "Not only a spook," he wailed, "but a dancing spook—"
"Shut up!" I yelled. "Cap, shove that alleged Mate through the airlock. This ain't cuckoo—it's code! Go on, chum! I'm getting it!"
For:
"S ... p ... a ... r ... k ... s," Lancelot Biggs was left-righting to me, "g ... o ... t t ... o b ... e b ... r ... i ... e ... f. Power limited. Tell Chief line inner hull posi-charge steel lining, throw nega-circuit through outer. Have Todd revise course to following trajectory...."
I'll spare you the rest. It was all technical. So technical, in fact, that I couldn't make head or tail of it. There wasn't a man aboard the Saturn who could. It was, furthermore, absolute proof that we were dealing with no spook, but with L. Biggs himself. For this was typical "Biggsian" mathematics.