The pronouncement galvanized Diane. Her eyes shone and she cried, "Oh, Daddy--do you mean that?" Looking upon her joy, I groaned inwardly. It was cruel of the Old Man to reawaken false hopes in her like that. As I said before, I know what I see. And that vision of Biggs didn't look like the projection of a living man's image. It wasn't flat. It was transparent and tri-dimensional. And filmy-- I opened my mouth to protest. But I never got one chirp out of my peeper. For at that moment the turret audio rasped to life, Chief Garrity's grizzled face gleamed on the screen, and the C. E.'s Scottish burr accosted us with accusing indignation. "Captain Hanson, sirrr!" "Yes, Chief?" "Will ye be so kind as to accept my rrreseegnation, sirrr, _ee_-fective _ee_-meejuttly! I willna ha' fairther dealin' wi' sooch scand'lous nonsense as is now goin' on down here!" Hanson snarled, "Resignation be damned, Chief! I've got troubles of my own. Don't come bellyaching to me because you can't handle your own men--" "'Tisna _my_ men are ablatherin'!" declared the Chief in high dudgeon. "'Tis one o' y'r ain men who by all rights should be dead an' planted these past seven weeks! 'Tis the ghost o' the late Lootenant Biggs--down here tryin' to gie my men orrrders f'r the _con_-struction o' some fantastic machine!" * * * * * I think we all must have said something, but what I said I can't remember. For I was conscious only of Hanson's exuberant roar. "See? I told you so!" and of Diane's glad little cry, "Daddy! Let's go down!"--then we were all high-balling it down the ramps toward the engine-room. What we found there was Bedlam. Bedlam in greasy overalls. The hypos, hooked up the V-I unit, were perking along in their usual smooth fashion. The rotor-pistons were chugging back and forth in their channels with the calm precision of a five-year-old sucking a lollypop. But in one corner of the room the members of Garrity's black gang were huddled, wide-eyed, white-faced, closer than a duffer and his topped drive; in another corner stood Chief Garrity, staring with speechless wrath at a figure in the middle of the floor. The figure was that which we had seen up topside. The wavering spectre of Lancelot Biggs. It's funny how the mind works. Even in that moment of stress I found myself thinking that translation into the afterworld had not done much to improve Biggs' handsomeness. He didn't look much like the chubby cherubs or stalwart angels you see pictures of. He was the same old Biggs I'd known and loved. Tall, gangling, lean to the point of ridiculousness--dressed in space-blues rather the worse, I thought, for wear--tousle-haired, grave-eyed, with that old familiar Adam's-apple bobbing up and down in his scrawny throat like a half-swallowed orange.