Mrs. Biggs

“ Biggs, who always washed on Saturdays, had just put Tim's shirt through the wringer. Holding it at arm's length with one hand and steadying herself on the side of the tub with the other, she stared blankly at Eloise for a moment, and then said, "Your mother's cloak! Child alive, that's Mrs. Amy's. I've seen her wear it a hundred times when she was a little girl. She has got on a spell of givin' this mornin', and sent it to you by Sarah. She's kep' it well all these years. What ails you?" she continued, as Eloise's face grew as white as the clothes in Mrs. Biggs's basket. ”

“ The problem before the board is—"
"I was just wondering," commented Biggs, "how there should be a lake on the planetoid Iris—and why? As we know, there are no natural bodies of water on this tiny orb. Therefore they must be artificial—"
"All right," growled the skipper, "so they're phoney! Maybe Steichner's got a sense of beauty!"
"Sure," I agreed. "What he likes best is a lovely dagger, attractively decorated with nice, fresh blood. Cap's right, Biggs. We're not here to marvel at the scenic wonders of Iris. We've got a job to do, and we're getting nowhere—fast!" ”

“ The boys went about their business and left the girls to theirs.
"I don't think a note is enough for George," Helen said as she rolled up her sleeves. "A man without a mother or a father, and only a Mrs. Biggs!"
"H'm," Miriam commented. "Except for Mrs. Biggs, I don't know that he's to be pitied. Still, I'm quite willing to be agreeable, unless you mean to go and knock at the farm door?"
"No. Couldn't we catch him somewhere!"
"Yes," Miriam said too promptly. She made a cautious pause. "He won't be riding on the moor today, because there'll be undertakers and things. ”

“ Eloise said, and Mrs. Biggs replied, "Of course not; how could he be? He never seen you. It's the normal, and bein' put out of office—he and Ruby Ann. They've run things long enough. They say he did swear offel at the last school meetin' about normals and ingrates and all that,—meanin' they'd forgot all he'd done for 'em; but, my land, you can't b'lieve half you hear. I don't b'lieve nothin', and try to keep a close mouth 'bout what I do b'lieve. I ain't none o' your gossips, and won't have folks sayin' the Widder Biggs said so and so." ”

“ Bills was gone she sat down to review the situation, and resolved to accept it gracefully and to call upon Eloise. It would be certainly en regle and Christian-like to do so, she thought, and the next afternoon she presented herself at Mrs. Biggs's door and asked if Miss Smith were able to see any one.
Mrs. Biggs belonged to the radical party which favored a change of teachers. Five years was long enough for one person to teach in the same place, she said, and they wanted somebody modern and younger. ”

“ The original tank wherein Biggs had sprinkled the rose seeds was completely invisible, submerged beneath a crawling octopus of greenery. Writhing fronds spewed from the container to twist in tumultuous entanglement beneath our feet ... up the walls ... across the ceiling. Twining and spiraling around every piece of furniture, every bracket, any support to which suckered tendrils could cling. A heady perfume thickened the air; perfume from monstrous growths that no more resembled a rose than I look like a wasteland Martian.
Cap Hanson had been right. ”

“ Biggs looked like "Before" in the Are You a Man? advertisements. He was lean and lanky and gangly and awkward, and he walked like an anaemic stork on ice-skates. His chief topographical feature was an Adam's-apple that cavorted up and down his neck like a runaway elevator. I'd known Biggs six months, and still couldn't figure out whether he was a sixty horsepower genius or the luckiest mortal in space.
Right now, both he and Diane were wearing size 12 grins. With a prideful sidelong glance at her fiance, the skipper's gal demanded, "Wasn't it wonderful, Dad? ”

“ I remembered, then, that every cabin was hooked into a round-robin circuit, via telaudio. So though it would have been humanly impossible for Lancelot Biggs to come up to this turret now, he was as truly with us as if he stood beside us. I cried back answer.
"But what can we do, Mr. Biggs?"
And—most stunning surprise of all!—my words were echoed by the groveling goon on the floor! Major Gilchrist, his voice cracked and fearful, bleated, "What can we do? You must help me, Mr. Biggs! Save me—"
Biggs was yelling into the speaker while Gilchrist babbled in terror. ”

“ And after he had left, I turned to Biggs. I said, "Okay, pal—come clean!"
He started.
"I—I beg your pardon, Sparks?"
"Come," I repeated, "clean. You can fool some of the people some of the time, and you can fool some of the people some of the time—but you can't fool some of the people some of the time. And I'm them. Biggs, I know you like I know my own hangnails. ”

“ Simple, once you grant that a man possess infinite loyalty, infinite courage, in one lean and gangling frame.
"Biggs saw," I said, "that there was only one way to save us all from death. Oh, he bad blundered, yes, but we all blunder sometimes. But not all of us pay the penalty as willingly, as bravely, as he did.
"Jupiter was upon us. Within minutes we would have crashed into the greatest of the solar planets. Only Biggs saw a way out. And that was—to make the speed of our ship exactly approximate the speed of light at the moment of impact!" ”

“ He chortled, "Hey, Cap—"
"Go 'way!" mourned Cap Hanson. "I'm thinking."
"But, look!" Biggs opened one hamlike paw. And there was a wee, gray ship-mouse. He placed it on the floor before him. "Look what I found in the No. 4 Bin. It acts so darned funny—"
"Go 'way!" repeated the skipper, still gloomily. "If you make me lose my temper—"
Biggs said, "But he does act funny—" And to tell you the truth, the little mouse did. Usually, you know, a mouse is the scaredyest thing alive. Put him down in a place like this, surrounded by giant humans, and he'll run like mad to the darkest corner. ”

“ And it is a strange, strange thing that he, who of all men looked least like a spaceman, should have lived and died the greatest of them all.
Tomorrow or the next day I must tell Diane. Hanson will not do it because he can't.
He dares not face her when she hears. And I, myself, would sell my soul to be free of that sad duty. But I was Lancelot Biggs' best friend, and this is the least last thing I can do in his memory.
There is nothing else to say. He is gone. Will I ever see him again? That gangling frame, that easy, fluent grin—lost in the nameless depths of the crypts of space. ”

“ The control room became as noisy as a well-populated tomb, and out of the terrible silence came the faint, thin voice of the skipper demanding, "What—what does this mean?"
Biggs boomed pleasantly, "It means, Captain, that you've lost your bets. You'll remember that all our wagers were based on the result of this year's game—which you are now listening to.
"It is unfortunate that human memories are so brief. Otherwise some of you gentlemen might have recognized the astonishing similarity of the broadcast we've just listened to with that of last year's game! ”

“ It did look a lot, and Harris and I began to feel rather ashamed of it, though why we should be, I can't see. No cab came by, but the street boys did, and got interested in the show, apparently, and stopped.
Biggs's boy was the first to come round. Biggs is our greengrocer, and his chief talent lies in securing the services of the most abandoned and unprincipled errand-boys that civilisation has as yet produced. If anything more than usually villainous in the boy-line crops up in our neighbourhood, we know that it is Biggs's latest. ”

“ After all, Lancelot Biggs and I are old buddies. Once we were bunkmates, even. There came back to me a measure of the confidence I had once had in him. And I nodded to Todd.
"Try it, Dick. We've got nothing to lose and everything to gain. Give the order."
He did. Chief Garrity must have been startled but he was too good a spaceman to argue an order from the bridge. He said, succinctly, "Aye, sirr!" And then—
I felt the rocking plunge. The moment of brief, incredible dizziness of frightful speed being intensified to the limiting velocity of light. ”

“ Lancelot Biggs. Genius and crackpot, scarecrow and sage—and soon to become son-in-law of the skipper.
I said, "But why blame Biggs for this, Skipper? Is it his fault if the Home Office has gone squirrelly?"
"It is," grumbled Hanson savagely. "I never should have agreed to let Diane marry him. He started this mess at my house. Colonel Brophy and him was having dinner with me and Biggs told Brophy all about that new 'velocity intensifier' he invented—"
I shuddered. "You mean the gadget which got us all bolixed up in the negative universe? ”

“ Her thoughts were not uttered, yet to one of Ellen’s shrewdness they were clear. The smile said, “Of course a poor girl like you could not aspire to a New Yorker like Mr. Murdock, but I am doing my best to see that you get a good husband. Herman Biggs is respectable and honest. He’ll make a good husband. We must look higher for May. She must have something like Mr. Murdock.”
And even as she spoke the doorbell rang and the anemic Jimmy sped away to open it as if on the doorstep outside stood not the freckled Herman Biggs but some wild adventure in the form of a romantic stranger. ”

“ Dacres sat in silence with a gloomy frown over his brow.
"Besides, are you aware, my boy, of the solemn fact that Biggs's nieces are legion?" said Hawbury. "The man himself is an infernal old bloke; and as to his nieces—heavens and earth!—old! old as Methuselah; and as to this one, she must be a grandniece—a second generation. She's not a true, full-blooded niece. Now the lady I refer to was one of the original Biggs's nieces. ”

“ The foremost was that of my long-time friend and shipmate, Lieutenant Lancelot Biggs; behind him was his uncle Prendergast, 1st Vice-president of the I.P.C. It was the older Biggs who spoke.
"It's all right, Sparks. These men are acting under company orders. They are medical officers assigned to give a physical examination to every man aboard the Saturn."
"Every man?" choked Cap Hanson. "Did you say every man, sir?" ”

“ Because love or no love, fear or no fear, a spaceman has a tradition to live up to. And Lancelot Biggs had tossed into the discard the very tradition now upheld by Dick Todd as he said, quietly, "Shall I advise the men, sir?"
And by Captain Hanson who said, "Yes, Todd. And—and order Garrity to cut off Mr. Biggs' intensifier. We may die, but we can die trying to escape. And a slower speed will give us more time—"
"Yes, sir," said Todd, and moved toward the audio. ”

“ Biggs said soberly, "Now don't get upset, Sparks. It's not so silly as it sounds. As a matter of fact, it's one of the most intelligent moves I've ever known the stuffed sh—I mean, the officials of our company to make. You see, flower seeds are a great deal more valuable than vegetable seeds."
"Oh, yeah! Sure! That's easy to prove, too. When a man's starving, just give him his choice between a loaf of bread and an orchid corsage—"
"No, Sparks, that's not the situation at all. You see, the problem here is not one of feeding the Iapetan colonists. They have plenty to eat. ”

“ And when do we turn on that thingamajigger of your'n? Bert, where'd you find him? Shut up, you blabbermouth! Don't you know better than to talk when a space officer is cogitating? Can I help, Biggs?"
The one-man wordstorm was deafening. But it didn't seem to phase Biggs. He plunked himself down at the pilot's desk, scribbled for awhile, and came up with an orbit chart for Second Mate Dick Todd, seated at the control-board.
Then he heaved a volley of orders over the audio to Chief Engineer Garrity, and that was that. He relaxed. The skipper said nervously, "Is—is that all?" ”

“ Lancelot Biggs was still muttering to himself. I was beginning to get worried about Biggs. He had a bad case of water on the brain, apparently.
He kept saying, "Nile? Red? Saar?"
Cap Hanson had finished his calls. Anyway, that's what he thought. Thaxton thought differently.
"If you don't mind, Captain," he reminded him. "Give the same message to the chief steward. We don't want any mess-boys or waiters interrupting our little tête-à-tête. Too many cooks, you know—" And he grinned.
"Ha!" growled the skipper. "Ha! I'd gladly laugh at your funeral, Thaxton." ”

“ As the minutes ticked by, and the Rocketeers' margin became momentarily more insurmountable, he first taunted us Wranglers, then insulted us by offering ridiculous odds against our winning, and finally accused us all of lacking sportsmanship.
Biggs, standing carefully aloof from Diane in order not to rouse the skipper's latent wrath, had a strange pallor on his cheeks. Not so strange, maybe. It's hard to stand by and watch everything you possess slipping down the skids. ”

“ But Biggs came through, every time, with flying colors. And with each succeeding success, another of the grim, suspicious lines melted from around the corners of Inspector Cooper's mouth, until he was beginning to look almost like a human being. Meanwhile, Cap Hanson's face got daily ruddier, happier, and grinnier. He was just one big smile on legs as he saw his son-in-law-to-be coming closer and closer to the coveted stripes. ”

“ What I been hearin' is bad. They's a rumor floatin' around that we're on a dead trajectory for Sol due to Major Gilchrist's course plottin'."
"Oh, that?" I said. "Forget it, skipper. Mr. Biggs knows all about it. He's got ideas."
"Well," said the skipper, relieved, "in that case, I guess everything's O.Q." And he waddled happily away. Which gives you some idea who's the real Master Mind on the Saturn.
That very same night, Diane Biggs stopped me outside the Officers' Mess.
"Sparks, have you seen Lancelot anywhere? I haven't laid eyes on him all day, and I'm worried." ”