"And in case you think we can't _prove_ it," I assured him sweetly, "it might interest you to know that I plugged in the audio-recorder five minutes ago. We've got a nice little transcription of everything you've said since you entered the turret. Would you like to hear _that_ played at the trial?" * * * * * So that, boys and girls, was all. Except for a tiny conclave some time later in Cap Hanson's quarters. Biggs was there, and Diane, and the skipper, and of course yours truly. We were asking, and receiving, a once-over-lightly on what to all of us save Lancelot Biggs was still a deep, dark mystery. The Old Man said: "So we really wasn't never in no danger at all, son? We never was going to run afoul of the Sun?" "Well, yes," said Biggs, "and no. We would not have fallen into the Sun. But we _were_ in danger. Our trajectory, as plotted by Major Gilchrist, within a few short hours would have carried us to a spot where Sol's blazing heat might have crisped every soul aboard to a cinder. "It was necessary to convince Gilchrist of our peril before it was too late to avert disaster. Heating the _Saturn_ artificially seemed the best way to do this. I tried to make him think Sol was burning us up yesterday, but he got wise to my little scheme for heating the ship electrically." "And you," I said, "got jugged. And he gathered all the electrical equipment into his own paws. But, nevertheless, you did turn the _Saturn_ into a stew-kettle. How?" Biggs grinned amiably. "Why, you ought to know, Sparks. You helped me." "A mule," I admitted, "helps a man plow a field, but it don't know how or why. Not that I'm a jackass, but--" "It was very simple, really. You turned the release valve, allowing the fuel oil to discharge from its tanks onto the outer hull. The hull became coated with a thick layer of oil. Now, think hard! Oil in a vacuum, heated by an outside source--" I got it. I groaned. That's the trouble with Lance Biggs' logic. Once you hear it explained, it always looks so easy! I said, "A convection oven!" "Why, yes! It's a heating principle invented by Dr. Abbot 'way back in the Twentieth Century. A large, curved reflector--in this case the hull of the _Saturn_--concentrates the Sun's rays on a layer of black oil. A container, highly evacuated, retains all the heat thus formed, raising the temperature of the 'oven' to almost any desired height." Biggs grinned. "Our problem was not the heating of the ship. That was a cinch. Our only hard job was convincing Gilchrist that we must change our course before we got _too_ hot." Cap Hanson nodded sagely. "An' your 'space-oven' worked fine, son," he acknowledged. "But they's still one thing I don't understand. The pressure. This ship's equipped with artificial gravs an' all them things. But I distinctly _felt_ the Sun's gravs grab hold of us. That's when I got the willies."