"N-no, sir! S-something horrible. This ship is--is _haunted_, sir! I saw--_Upph!_" My elbow caught his bread-basket just in time. His next words represented my own private opinion. But I didn't want Diane Hanson to hear them. After all, it isn't soothing to a heartbroken gal to learn that her lover has turned into a noisy, malodorous, spaceship spook. "Haunted?" roared Hanson. "Are you mad, Lieutenant Todd? What do you mean, haunted?" I tried to catch the skipper's eye so I could give him the business to lay off the quiz program for the time being. But my finger-flagging came to naught. Diane shouldered past her father and into the room. Her voice was intense, eager. "Sparks," she said, "tell me! It was--_he_, wasn't it? Lancelot?" Too late, Dick understood why I'd poke-checked him. He turned red and began gobbling like a block-bound turkey. "N-no, Miss Diane. N-nothing like that. Bert and I were just having a little horseplay. We'd had a drink--" "Don't lie to me, Dick! It _was_ Lancelot! It must have been. I--I saw him myself!" Well! That was one for the books. It was our turn to gape. Cap Hanson stared from one to another of us wildly. "What's this? You saw Lancelot, Diane? Where?" "In my cabin. An hour or so ago. I was trying to take a little nap. Something wakened me--I don't know what--and I saw him standing in the middle of the room. He was so pale. So thin, and so sad. Oh, Daddy--" * * * * * She buried her face on his shoulder. Hanson said, "Now, there, honey!" He looked like an accident hunting for some place to happen. He stared at us dismally. "Is that the truth, boys? Is that what you saw?" We nodded. I said, "I'm not what you might call a superstitious guy, Skipper, but I know what I see. It was his ghost, all right." Todd wailed miserably, "And it was all my fault. I brought the haunt on by bragging--" "Nonsense!" snapped the Old Man. He wore a worried frown on his pan. He released Diane, took a few swift paces across the room, spun, came back to us. "Sheer nonsense!" he repeated angrily. "It isn't reasonable!" I said, "Yeah, I know. That's what folks have been saying for centuries, Skipper. That ghosts aren't reasonable. But the fact remains, people _see_ them--" "That's not what I mean. I don't give a hoot about the possibility or impossibility of a ghostly afterworld, I'm just saying that it's not reasonable we should see a ghost of _Biggs_! 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! If you saw Biggs--" "We did!" "Very well! Then it wasn't his _ghost_ you saw! It was some sort of projection of him. Don't ask me what kind, or how he did it, or where he is. But I'll bet my last cent--Lancelot Biggs is not dead!"