Lancelot Biggs was dead; or else missing in the gray nothingness of negative space....
Since the life-skiff in which he had entombed himself was tiny, poorly provisioned and inadequately supplied with water, there was no longer the faintest glimmer of hope that he might, somehow and miraculously, have survived. Even had he found some way of escaping the minus boundaries of the weird nega-universe into which he had fled. Therefore, today he had been formally "buried". In spirit, so to speak, or by remote control. The way the old boys in the 19th Century used to bury lost mariners. With a long cortege and a tall stone, engraven with the words: Here lies So-and-so—Lost at Sea.
Only this being the enlightened 22nd Century and we being a bit more reasonable, Biggs' marker read: In Memory of Lt. Lancelot Biggs—Lost in Space.
So we were a sad looking trio when we came back to the apartment which Lanse Biggs and I used to share near Long Island Spaceport. Cap Hanson had lost the finest First Mate to ever tread the ramps of a space-lugger, I had lost the best friend a man had ever had, and Diane—well, her loss was the greatest. She had lost the man she loved, the lean, gangling man to whom, had not fate's grim hand intervened, she would now be married.
And like I said—folks call me hard-boiled. But I reckon I'm only gently poached compared to the men who operate under the title of Big Business, because when we entered the apartment the telephone was jangling like an opium addict's nerves, and when I picked it up I was talking to the Assignment Clerk of the I.P.C., the Corporation from which we draw our weekly credit checks.
"Donovan?" he yelped. "Is that you, Donovan?"
"Mmm," I said.
"Is Captain Hanson there?"
I glanced at the skipper, whose arms were about his quietly sobbing daughter. He was a gruff old codger, Hanson; a more irascible space-tyrant never lifted gravs. But he had a heart buried somewhere beneath that crust, a heart that was now as hurt and grieved as my own.