Lancelot Biggs: Master Navigator: When Blunders Become Brilliance in Outer Space

Lancelot Biggs: Master Navigator by Nelson S. Bond - Trust Lancelot Biggs to get his ship into a mess just when speed and good navigation meant the prize contract of the year...!

Everything happens to me. We finished taking on cargo at 13:10, Solar Constant Time, and I went to my turret for firing orders from the Sun City spacedrome officer. I plugged in the audio and stared into the familiar pan of Commander Allonby.

I said, 'Freight lugger Saturn preparing to up gravs, Commander. Standing by for the O.Q.'

His jaw dropped like a barometer in a cyclone. He gasped, 'You, Sparks? And the Saturn? What in blue space are you doing in port?'

'Don't look now,' I advised him, 'but we've been here since day before yesterday. Matter of fact, you and me h'isted elbows together last night at the Cosmic Bar, remember?'

'Remember?' he howled. 'How could I? The last I heard of you, Cap Hanson was running the Saturn through the planetoids on some sort of cockeyed transmutation experiment![1] When did you get back? How did you—?'

'Damn!' I groaned, 'and double-damn!' I knew what had happened. It was that confounded new invention of Lancelot Biggs'. It was a uranium audio plate which, when activated in low radiations, acted as what you might call a 'time-speech-trap.'

In other words, I was talking to Allonby not as he was now, but as he had been five months ago!

Don't ask me how it works. I'm a stranger here myself. Anyhow, I shook my head, shifted the dials, picked up Allonby in the current time level, got a take-off order and relayed it to the bridge. Pretty soon a bell dinged, another one donged, and a slow, humming vibration tingled through the ship as our hypatomics caught hold. I steadied myself for the lift—

And whammo!