"I see it, but I don't believe it. Is it alive?"
And then Biggs addressed us.
"First of all, I must apologize to you, Mr. Cleaver, and to Miss MacDowell and Mr. Blakeson for this rude infringement upon your personal privacy. It was an unwarranted step I took, intruding on your lives this way, but I hope that you'll agree it was not unforgivable.
"I have already explained to these gentlemen"—he bobbed his head toward the pedagogues and the shamus—"the urgency of our situation. To clarify in your minds the how and where of your present location—"
Hank Cleaver harrumphed! and interrupted.
"Reckon as how you can skip that, Lootenant," he said. "It's purty clear. You bridged the time gap from your time to ours by means of an ultra-wave temporal aberrant. Brought us up a couple o' centuries to 'bout the—well, 'bout the twenty-third century."
Lancelot Biggs tried hard to swallow the billiard ball under his chin.
"How—how did you know that, Mr. Cleaver?"
Hank scratched his head, and into his eyes came the old, baffled look that always came there when he was asked how he knew anything.
"Well," he confessed, "I don't 'zackly know how I know, but I do. Just stands to reason, that's all. When you come slidin' down the visible waves to hunt for us, an' when we woke to find ourselves on a space ship—an' as for the time element, well, I alluz 'lowed as how it'd take people bout fifty years, more or less, to make the first successful space flight, an' another two hundred to git it workin' proper—"