He grinned. "Buster, I've been listening to Lancelot Biggs talk for almost a year now. And I have yet to understand the first thing he tells me." "Then in that case," I said, "it looks to me like a drink is indicated. Right?" Right is might, and shall prevail. * * * * * I don't know how long later it was that we wandered back to the control turret. It must have been quite a while, for Sparks had shown me through the entire ship. When we got back, Cap Hanson and Doc Hallowell were playing a game of high-low, and the _Saturn's_ skipper was giving Hallowell a good old-fashioned, twenty-third century going over. Tomkins and MacDowell were napping quietly. The second mate, a guy named Todd, was making motions at guiding the ship's flight through nothing, and also making a mild play for Helen MacDowell. And not getting very far with either job. Biggs and Cleaver had finished inspecting the instrument panels, and were in earnest confab by the plot charts. Hank seemed to be summarizing their decisions. "--your new gadget was supposed to eliminate every speck of energy waste, huh?" "That's right. And thus conserve fuel, at the same time giving tremendous speed," Biggs nodded. "An' when you plugged the switch, it gave one whoop an' holler, the _Saturn_ went like a bat out o' hell for a few seconds--" "--and then," finished Biggs, "we found ourselves here. That's the story, Hank. The whole story, so help me. But if, from those few facts and what I've shown you, you can explain in what part of the universe we are, you're an even greater genius than history says you were--I mean, are." Hank cocked a quizzical eye. "That's funny, ain't it?" he mused. "I was, but I still am. Time's tricky, Lanse. But, listen, you made one mistake." "Yes?" "In sayin' 'what part o' the universe.' Way I see it that ain't the explanation _a_-tall. Way I see it, there's two kinds o' universes. The _is_ an' the _ain't_. An' we're in the other one." "I--I beg your pardon?" faltered Biggs. "Put it this way. You draw a graph, an' you cross two lines. The block at the upper right intersection o' them two lines is the _is_ universe. The one we live in. Ain't that right?" Biggs nodded. "That's a simple way of graphing existence, yes. The horizontal line would represent existence in space, the vertical line existence in time. At any given moment, a man's position in space and time is coördinated in the positive sector. But--" He stopped abruptly, looking at Hank with startled eyes. "But you don't mean, Hank, we're in the _bottom_ sector of the graph!" Hank sighed. "'Fraid that's 'zackly what I do mean, Lanse. It's no wonder nuthin' looked natcheral to you. We done bust plumb out o' space an' time as we ordinarily know it. We're in the imaginary sector o' space-time! The coördinate of where we are now ain't even positive numbers. They're all based on a negative factor--the square root o' minus one!"