"Ye're no suggestin', Mr. Biggs," he said, "that I try to double the _Saturn's_ speed?" "You must!" Garrity grinned mirthlessly, ducking his grizzled head to designate the laboring, old-fashioned hypatomics in the firing room. "Them motors," he said, "is calculated to carry us from Earth to Venus, and visey-versey, in ten days. By babyin' 'em we can make it in nine. By strainin' 'em we can make it in eight--mebbe. "But if we force 'em beyond that limit--" Once again he shook his head. "--we'll arrive at Long Island rocketport as a fine conglomeration of assorted bolts, plates and rivets. Ye wouldn't like that, Mr. Biggs," he appended speculatively. We went to the bridge, then, and discussed the problem with our junior officer, Dick Todd. Dick had lots of ideas, none of them good. Our confab ended in a "no-decision" draw. And finally I said, "Well, Mr. Biggs, I'm afraid it's over my head. I'd better get back to my turret in case any messages come through...." He didn't even hear me. He was pacing the floor, moaning softly from time to time and scraping his scalp with frenzied fingers. * * * * * All of which took place our first day out of Sun City. It was a bad start, and things rapidly became worse. At 24.00 on the dot, Solar Constant Time, I got a flash from a ham operator on Venus, advising me that the _Slipstream_ had just slipped her gravs. Which meant that the race was on. Huh! What race? Eight hours later our _perilens_ picked up the _Slipstream_. She was cutting a path through space like a silver arrow. And you can bet your bottom buck that her skipper knew how important this trip was. I was asleep when she whizzed by us, but my relief man woke me up to show me the message her C.O. had sent us. It said, "Greetings, goats! Want a tow?" It wouldn't have been a bad idea at that! Well, Garrity and his black gang were working themselves blue, and to the everlasting credit of the _Saturn_, I'll confess that the old freighter wallowed along in handsome style. We logged a trifle over three million miles in the next twenty-four hours, which is about five hundred thousand over par for our crate. We did it with music, too! The plates were clinking and straining, the jets were hissing like a nestful of outraged rattlers, and once or twice, when our Moran deflectors shunted off fragments of meteoric matter, I thought we were going to move out to make room for some intra-stellar cold storage. So what? The _Slipstream_, traveling at better than double our speed, knocked off a cool six million that same day! Oh, if ever a "race" was in the bag, that one was! The second day was another dose of the same business. Biggs insisted that we maintain our forced speed, although Garrity warned him bluntly that it was dangerous.