But later, Dick Todd raised the same point, when I spoke to him in the control-turret. He had been checking the course Biggs had designated. Now, frowning, he laid his computations before me.
"You see what this means, Bert?"
"Yeah," I said, looking at the rumpled sheet. "It means you ought to wash your hands more often. Well, what?"
"This course," said Todd nervously, "sets a direct trajectory to—Jupiter!"
I said, "O.Q. So it sets a direct traj—What did you say?"
"Jupiter!" repeated Todd miserably. "I've checked and rechecked it. I can't be wrong." He stared at me, small dancing lights of fear in his eyes. "Sparks," he whispered, "that was Biggs we saw, wasn't it?"
"If it wasn't," I told him, "I'm a ring-tailed baboon. And no cracks!"
"But everyone seems to be taking it for granted he is still alive." Todd fidgeted nervously. "That his orders will help us, somehow. Suppose—suppose, Sparks, our first hunch was right, after all? That Biggs is really dead? And that it was his ghost we saw?"
I wet my suddenly dry lips. "Go on!" I said.
"They say the dead are lonely," husked Todd. "And Biggs, who died in the loneliness of negative space might be doubly so. Suppose he wants company. After all, he didn't promise us success. He only said, 'We'll soon be together.' But where, Sparks—where? In this world, or—"