The Old Man looked at him like he had just grown a second head.
"B-but that's impossible, son!" he gasped.
"Oh, no," said Lanse quietly. "Unlikely, yes. But not impossible. Because—well, because the situation does exist, you see." He clucked thoughtfully. "Strange, isn't it, that we should be the first to find it out? After these many years. But that's the Laws of Chance for you. Every other time a ship visited Themis, the invisible moon must have been on the far side."
Hanson was fidgeting like he had wasps in his weskit. Now he broke in, "That's all very interestin'! But how about the chances of our crackin' up on this aforesaid moon-of-a-moon?"
"Oh," replied Biggs negligently, "that's all taken care of. We've plotted a new trajectory around it. We should see Themis again in a moment—Aaah!" He breathed a sigh of satisfaction. "There she is! Nice looking little satellite, isn't it!"
And true enough, Themis was beginning to appear in the vision plate before us. A weird looking sight it was. A thin sliver of terrain at first ... then widening, growing into a full sized cosmic body as it stopped being occulted by its phenomenal little companion.
Biggs punched the intercommunicating stud and spoke to the engine room.
"All right, Mac," he called. "You can cut the V-I. Prepare to land in about fifty minutes." Then he turned to us again. "Remarkable thing, what? Some day when we're not so busy we'll have to drop jets on that invisible moon, eh? Should be an interesting visit to make."
The skipper groaned feebly.
"Interestin'! He finds an invisible moon, figures a trajectory around it, then says it's—Oooh! Let me out of here! I'm feelin' heat-waves!"