As it turned out, though, it was not I, nor the Old Man, nor Lancelot, who solved the problem. It was Mrs. Biggs. In a calm, decisive voice she said, "But, Lanse, dear--such commotion! Of course you will go!" "What!" blurted Lanse. "And leave you? Never!" "Stuff," sniffed Diane, "and nonsense! Stop talking like a cheap play. What earthly good are you doing here? Not a bit! But out _there_, men have died ... betrayed by a race of scoundrels. Brave men. Spacemen like yourself. Your duty is plain. You must go. You have no choice." "B-but--" protested Lanse. "But," interrupted Diane, "nothing! Now, I'm tired. You boys run along and clean up this little job. I'll be here at home, waiting for you." Biggs asked apprehensively, "And--and you'll be all right while we're gone? You're sure--" "Certainly I'll be all right," declared Diane. "Now, lift gravs, sailors! And--good luck!" * * * * * So we went. It was one hell of a job collecting the _Saturn's_ crew. Some of them were miles away, several of them were--well, let's be charitable and say, "unshipshape"--and _all_ of them were madder than an alizarin dye at having their leaves cancelled. But none of them were foolhardy enough to refuse the order. So, to make a long story less so, several hours later the _Saturn_ roared from its mooring cradle, all jets blasting. And we were off to Themis. Well, the planet Saturn is approximately nine hundred million miles from the Sun, and (since it was currently on our side of that central beacon) about 800,000,000 from Earth. In the good old days B.B.--Before Biggs--that would have meant a voyage of weeks. But since our ship was equipped with Lancelot's invention, the V-I (or "velocity-intensifier") unit, which enables spacecraft to attain speeds limited only by the critical velocity of light, we could expect to reach our destination in a trifle more than ten hours. To forestall cracks from Earthlubber mathematicians who point out that 186,000 x 60 x 60 would give us a cruising speed of almost seven hundred million _m.p.h._, let me explain that you have to let the hypatomics warm for about five hours before you can cut in the V-I unit. Then the unit has to be switched off at least an hour before you reach your objective so you can decelerate without breaking every bone in your head. Thus we had a ten hour trip ahead of us. So, as the _Saturn_ jogged along outward into space, I sat back and tried to remember everything I'd ever heard about Themis. It wasn't much. I knew that in 1905, Pickering, the discoverer of Phoebe, had first spotted Saturn's tenth satellite. He had named this tiny body Themis, after the goddess of Law and Order. Which, in view of later events, was a huge and mirthless horselaugh.