He's about as tall as an old-fashioned hatrack, and built along the same general lines. He's got more bumps and knobs on his gangling frame than a hyperthyroid cucumber. Of these assorted protuberances, the most prominent is an Adam's-apple which bulges from his throat like a half-swallowed egg, and jiggles up and down when he's excited like a jitter-bug on an innerspring mattress.
He was excited now, and said voice-box was cavorting horribly from N to S and return in non-stop flight.
"I can't go now!" he repeated starkly. "Not now, of all times, Dad—"
Hanson shook his head regretfully.
"It ain't a case of can or can't, Lancelot. It's a case of got to. There's trouble on Themis again."
I said, "Themis—again! You mean another ship—?"
"That's right," nodded the skipper. "Attacked and smashed to smithereens. Not a man left alive. Yes."
"But that's impossible!" I cried. "Only last month the S.S.P. announced that a peace pact had been signed with the Thagwar of Themis. The natives of that satellite agreed to join the Solar Union—"
"Them Themisites," growled the Old Man, "keep their pledges about as good as them Japanese you read about in the hist'ry books. The little yellow squirts the United Nations had to wipe out a couple hundred years ago. This makes the sixth time the Thagwar has signed a peace pact. And it's the sixth time he's broke it. So—"
"So," I said, "we're elected, eh?"