Lancelot Biggs COOKS A PIRATE By NELSON S. BOND "Cooking," explained Biggs, "is simply a matter of chemistry." But he didn't expect that he'd have to prove that statement! [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Fantastic Adventures February 1940. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] The whole trouble started with Slops. Slops wasn't a _bad_ cook, you understand. He just wasn't a cook at all, rightly speaking. He had what you might call a "tapioca complex." It was tapioca for breakfast, tapioca for lunch, tapioca for dinner. Every day. Boiled tapioca, stewed tapioca, even fricasseed tapioca-- Ugh! When you hop gravs twice a month on a lugger shuttling between Earth and Venus, you can't get by forever on a diet of ta--that stuff! Anyhow, it finally got to be too much for even an iron-bellied old spacedog like Cap Hanson. So when we pulled into the Sun City airport, Cap said firmly, "You're through, Slops. And I do mean through!" And he kicked our (alleged) chef off the _Saturn_, along with his clothing, his back pay, his harmonica and his ta--you know what. Which left us way out on the end of a limb, for it turned out that there wasn't a single spaceriding cook dry-docked in Sun City. While the _Saturn_ was taking on its cargo for Earth, pepsin and medical supplies, mostly, with one or two holds full of _mekel_ and _clab_, the Skipper did his doggonedest to scare up a grub-wrangler. But no soap. An hour before we were scheduled to blast off, he ambled up to my control turret. He plumped himself into my easy chair and scratched his gray pate nervously. "Damn it, Sparks," he complained, "I thought I was doin' the right thing when I fired Slops, but--" "You were," I told him. "By chucking that grease-ball off the ship you saved fourteen lives. The crew. They were planning on either mutiny or murder, they didn't care which, if they had to eat one more dish of that goo." "But," he continued worriedly, "in another hour we throw lugs for Earth. And we don't have no cook. What the blue space are we goin' to do?" Our First Mate, Lancelot Biggs, had entered as the skipper was talking. Now he offered, helpfully, "I'll ask Slops to come back if you want me to, Captain. I saw him at the Palace Bar--" "_No!_" said the Cap and I in the same breath. Biggs looked hurt. His wobbly Adam's-apple bobbed in his throat like an unswallowed orange. And he defended, "Well, after all, tapioca's good for you! It contains valuable food elements that--"