Shortly after Kinnison won his Lens, he was called to Prime Base by Port Admiral Haynes, the Patrol's chief of staff. There, in a room sealed against spy rays, an appalling situation was bared. Space piracy, always rife enough, had become an organized force; and, under the leadership of a half-mythical entity about whom nothing was known save the name "Boskone," had risen to such heights of power as to threaten seriously the Galactic Patrol itself. Indeed, in one respect, Boskonia was ahead of the Patrol, its scientists having developed a source of power vastly greater than any known to Galactic Civilization. It had fighting ships of a new and extraordinary type, from which even convoyed shipping was no longer safe. Being faster than the Patrol's fast cruisers, and more heavily armed than its heaviest battleships, they had been doing practically as they pleased in space. For one particular purpose, the engineers of the Patrol had designed and built one ship--the _Brittania_. She was the fastest thing in space, but for offensive armament she had only one weapon, the "Q-gun." This depended upon chemical explosives, which, in warfare at least, had been obsolete for centuries. Nevertheless, Kinnison was put in command of the _Brittania_ and was told to take her out, capture a pirate war vessel of late model, learn her secrets of power, and transmit the information to Prime Base with the least possible delay. He was successful in finding and in defeating such a vessel. Peter van Buskirk led the storming party of Valerians--men of remote Earth-human ancestry, but of extraordinary size, strength and agility because of the enormous gravitation of generations of life on the planet Valeria--in wiping out those of the pirate crew not killed in the combat between the two vessels. The _Brittania's_ scientists secured the required data, but were unable to report immediately to Prime Base, as the pirates were blanketing all available channels of communication. Boskonian ships were gathering for the kill, and the crippled Patrol ship could neither run nor fight. Therefore each man was given a spool of tape bearing a complete record of everything that had occurred; and, after setting up a director-by-chance to make the empty ship pursue an unpredictable course in space, and after rigging bombs to explode her at the first touch of a ray, the Patrolmen paired off by lot and took to the lifeboats.