Nelson S. Bond

“ And we'll never be able to explore Jupiter until some clever jasper invents an anti-gravitational shield—"
"Say!" enthused Todd. "Now, there's a great idea, Sparks! I think I'll work on that!"
I looked at him and groaned.
"You invent an anti-gravitational shield? What are you going to use for brains? Buttons? I've never known but one man in my life with the genius to pull that miracle—and he's dead. Lanse Biggs. I hope that wherever he is he can't hear you. ”

“ He grinned in that amiable, modest way of his.
"Why, it wasn't much, really, Sparks," he protested. "I never was lost in hyper-space, of negative space, at all! You see, when I cut myself loose in the life-skiff from the 'infinite mass' of the Saturn, in order to reestablish the ship's finiteness, I also made my own craft finite again. Which is pure common sense. Anything less than infinite is necessarily finite—"
"Comes the dawn," I groaned. "And I like to think I've got brains. ”

“ Most of us bent to our labors eagerly. Myself, for instance—I didn't know what Biggs had in mind, or what the final result of our efforts would be. But I knew damned well that Biggs never gave purposeless orders. Some good would be the end of this fantastic webwork of plates, wires and coils we were weaving through, in and about the Saturn.
Diane, despite the fact that her hands soon became raw and sore, insisted on doing a share of the manual labor.
"I must, Sparks!" she declared. "I'd never respect myself again if I didn't help in some small way. ”

“ Depress that No. 3 lever, Todd! Shoot the juice through those coils we've been building!"
And Todd was so rattled that he obeyed me. Like I told you before, we'd created a wild-looking network of wires all over the framework of the Saturn. We had even constructed a whole new inner hull, juicing it according to some diagram that didn't appear to make sense.
Now rheostats rheostated and condensers condense and the air got so full of electricity that my teeth began to hum like bees in a bathtub. And it got hot in the control-turret. ”

“ There's no use boring you with the routine details. We blasted from a Long Island cradle, set course and constant for Europa, waited till we were about six hours away from the Earth's gravitational field, then cut over to the V-I unit—the "velocity intensifier" invented by Lancelot Biggs which had made the Saturn the fastest ship in space, increasing its speed potential from a slovenly 200,000 mph to something only a trifle less than the limiting velocity of light. ”

“ Todd fidgeted nervously. "That his orders will help us, somehow. Suppose—suppose, Sparks, our first hunch was right, after all? That Biggs is really dead? And that it was his ghost we saw?"
I wet my suddenly dry lips. "Go on!" I said.
"They say the dead are lonely," husked Todd. "And Biggs, who died in the loneliness of negative space might be doubly so. Suppose he wants company. After all, he didn't promise us success. He only said, 'We'll soon be together.' But where, Sparks—where? ”

“ Orders are orders. Sparks, get in contact with the staff and crew immediately. Tell them to pack their duffle and be aboard the Saturn by midnight."
I said, "What! But, Skipper, we were granted leave to mourn Biggs—"
"I know it! But the Corporation has countermanded our leaves. We're to lift gravs at twelve sharp for Europa. Polarium has just been discovered there, and the whole solar system has gone crazy. Prospectors from every corner of the universe are blasting for Europa as fast as their jets will push them. ”

“ If the Corporation ever finds out about this—"
"They can't miss," I said. "They know how long it should have taken us to get to Europa. Matter of fact, Cap, we should be landing there right now. We're going to lose a little time in establishing those claims. But if by losing a little time we can find Lanse Biggs again, why—"
"Awfully close!" complained the skipper. He turned to Todd suddenly. "Dick—we can't risk it! There must be a mistake somewhere. Jupiter fills all space before us. If we get caught in its gravitational power, we'll all be killed. ”

“ The instructions I gave you created a dual-magnet hull for the Saturn. Inner hull positively charged, outer hull negative. Counterbalance, you see. The outside of the ship repelled the gravitational attraction of Jupiter so strongly that it could never have landed. The inner hull tempered the effect of the outer so that an easy, drifting motion was obtained. You could vary the speed of this simply by altering the amount of E.M.F. running through the coils—"
"We discovered that," interrupted the Old Man. ”

“ Lancelot Biggs was left-righting to me, "g ... o ... t t ... o b ... e b ... r ... i ... e ... f. Power limited. Tell Chief line inner hull posi-charge steel lining, throw nega-circuit through outer. Have Todd revise course to following trajectory...."
I'll spare you the rest. It was all technical. So technical, in fact, that I couldn't make head or tail of it. There wasn't a man aboard the Saturn who could. It was, furthermore, absolute proof that we were dealing with no spook, but with L. Biggs himself. For this was typical "Biggsian" mathematics. ”

“ Diane cried, "Daddy! But Lanse—"
"I'm sorry, honey. But we can't risk twenty lives and a quarter million credits' worth of Corporation property on the hazard of finding one man. Give the order, Mr. Todd!"
Todd said willingly, "Aye, sir!" and reached out to push the audio stud. My heart sank. The needle was almost upon the split second that should have seen us putting Biggs' mysterious plan into operation. I yelled, "Skipper, please!"
"Give the order, Todd!" repeated Hanson regretfully. ”

“ Lanse wasn't that kind of boy. He wouldn't come back from the—from Beyond for no better purpose than to frighten the living daylights out of his old friends and the woman he loved. He was a logical man—
"Here's what I think! ”