I wasn't joking, either. You know me—Bert Donovan—the easy-goingest bug-pounder who ever loused up the ether with Morse code. I don't get mad often, and my nerves are as steady as a forger's fingers, but this newest addition to the Saturn's personnel had me on the verge of babbling baby-talk.
His name was Horatio Gilchrist, his rank was "Major" and his title was "efficiency expert." To summarize briefly: Major Horatio Gilchrist was a rank efficiency expert—and I do mean rank! He had pale, green, watery, squinting eyes and a nose like a gimlet. Said proboscis was always in everybody else's business. He snooped and sniffed and sidled about the Saturn like a pup in the Petrified Forest, and he had a habit of popping out where least expected, like a fat man in tights.
He was always making suggestions. He told me how to conserve juice by pre-heating the tubes before I transmitted. He advised Cap Hanson, who has been roving the spaceways, man and boy, for more than forty years, on astrogation practices. He quoted facts, figures and statistics at Dick Todd till our acting First Mate grew as haggard as a parson at a burleyque.
"I can't stand it, Sparks!" Todd moaned to me feebly after a session with Gilchrist. "He's driving me whacky with his confounded 'efficiency'! The hell of it is half the time he's right! There are ways to save time, money and materials while operating the Saturn. We all know that. But you can't run a spaceship like an adding-machine!"
But such complaints were as futile as a bathing-suit on Mars. Major Gilchrist ranked every officer on the Saturn, and his "suggestions" had to be obeyed—or else!
Cap Hanson said commiseratingly, "I know, Sparks. I hate his g—I mean, I don't like the gentleman much, either. But, listen! This is something swell! The guy who joined us at Sun City is none other than—"
But he never finished his sentence. At that moment, the chronometer tagged 8:00, the hypos whined, the stern-jets roared, and the Saturn lifted gravs from Venus as smoothly as hot butter sliding off a griddle. My eyes opened wide and my mouth dittoed. There was only one pilot in space whose touch on the controls was that deft, that gentle!
"Biggs!" I cried. "Good old Lancelot Biggs!"
I turned and banged hell-for-leather out of my room, down the ramp, and into the control cabin, with Hanson vainly trying to lumber along in the suction of my slipstream. As I had guessed, it was my old chum and erstwhile roommate, Lance Biggs, at the studs. Beside him stood the dark-haired beauty who had been Diane Hanson, and was now Mrs. L. Biggs.