I answered their nods weakly. Then I turned to Hank.
"I give up, pal. What is it? The after-world? Or Old Home Week?"
Hank said seriously, "Well, reckon as how you might call it the after-world, Jim. In a way. It's the world which is to be. But here comes the feller that can explain everything."
For the door had opened, and in walked the chap whom we had seen thrice in my apartment, the effervescent spirit of electricity, the blue-green mystic, the first mate of the Saturn—Lancelot Biggs!
Did I say "walked?" Excuse it, please. What he did with his feet could never, by the wildest stretch of the imagination, be called walking. Oh, he progressed forward, yes—but there are no words to describe his locomotion. Think of a polar bear on a pogo stick. Or a secretary bird on skates. A two-footed octopus, even.
His gait was a combination of the worst features of all three. He lurched and shambled, his bony knees protruding as if acknowledging introductions at each passage. A sort of, "You let me by this time, and I'll let you by next time!" deal.
But the peculiarities of Signor Biggs did not end at that point. He had others. I have said that he looked a bit like Hank Cleaver. That is true. They shared lean lankiness of build. Each was blessed—or cursed—with a mop of faded-yellow hair; their eyes were alike in that they mirrored soft curiosity. But Biggs had an appendage Hank lacked.
Matter of fact, no man ever had an Adam's-apple like that before or since. It hung in his scrawny throat like an unswallowed cud; and when he smiled—which was often—or talked, it woggled up and down like a runaway elevator.
To Sparks, beside me, I said dreamily,