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

The Saturn is old, slow, and outclassed. When a secret government contract turns an ordinary Venus-to-Earth shuttle into a timed competition, the Corporation’s oldest freighter finds itself racing the sleek Slipstream—a ship that can cross the void in nearly half the time. Captain Hanson knows the numbers. The engineer knows the limits. Even Sparks, the radio man, can do the math. There is no way the Saturn can win by speed alone.

Then space itself tears open.

A drifting vacuole—a roaming pocket in the fabric of the void—swallows their rival and threatens to swallow them next. While the Slipstream fights to claw its way free, Lancelot Biggs makes a decision that leaves his captain speechless and his crew convinced he has finally lost his wits. Instead of avoiding the phenomenon, Biggs orders the Saturn directly into it. Cut off from radio contact and carried wildly off course, the crew can only wait as hours stretch and tempers snap. The old ship groans. The engines strain. And somewhere beyond that pocket of warped space lies Earth—and a contract worth millions.

“Lancelot Biggs, Master Navigator” is one of Nelson S. Bond’s most satisfying entries in the long-running Biggs series. Bond pits intuition against experience, youth against tradition, and forces a crew to decide whether to trust a man who refuses to explain himself. It is space opera at its most exuberant: bold gambles, hard science wrapped in humor, and a final maneuver that turns disaster into opportunity.

Nelson S. Bond published widely in Astounding Science Fiction, Blue Book, Amazing Stories, and Planet Stories during the 1930s and 1940s. His Lancelot Biggs tales became a recurring favorite, following the gawky but brilliant First Mate whose offbeat thinking repeatedly saves the day.