"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.