My ears hummed with a high, thin singing; a sort of weird, unearthly harmonic vibration. There was a biting odor in my nostrils, a scent so subtle I could not tell whether it were charnelly repugnant or just plain annoying. The phantom itself was gray, drab, colorless. Immobile. Tense, strained of visage. For a moment its white lips seemed to move—
Then it was gone! As quickly as it had come it was gone, and the paralysis left my limbs, and I was on my knees beside Todd, shaking him.
He came out of his blackout howling. "Did you see him, Sparks? It was Biggs' ghost! Standing right there—"
"What the hell's going on in here?" interrupted the irate voice of Cap Hanson. The door had burst open; he stood in the archway with Diane a few feet behind him. "What's all this, Mister Todd? The two of you groveling on the floor—drunk again, eh? Well, my two fine sirs—"
Todd pulled himself to his feet uncertainly. His voice was cracked, incoherent.
"N-no, sir! S-something horrible. This ship is—is haunted, sir! I saw—Upph!"
My elbow caught his bread-basket just in time. His next words represented my own private opinion. But I didn't want Diane Hanson to hear them. After all, it isn't soothing to a heartbroken gal to learn that her lover has turned into a noisy, malodorous, spaceship spook.
"Haunted?" roared Hanson. "Are you mad, Lieutenant Todd? What do you mean, haunted?"
I tried to catch the skipper's eye so I could give him the business to lay off the quiz program for the time being. But my finger-flagging came to naught. Diane shouldered past her father and into the room. Her voice was intense, eager.
"Sparks," she said, "tell me! It was—he, wasn't it? Lancelot?"