taken. Seeing the opportunity, Doremo points out the demonstrated implications of accepting the Sirian view; a war can start literally over every single rock. Then he manipulates the delegates into a vote before Sirius can work out a proper response. The conference ends with three client worlds voting with the Sirians, and the rest voting with Earth, with the result that the Sirians are ordered to leave Titan within a month – the principle of "Indivisibility of Stellar Systems" being firmly established, which the protagonists consider a positive and desirable outcome. Themes Lucky Starr and the Rings of Saturn was written between December 1957 and February 1958, in the immediate aftermath of the launch of Sputnik I by the Soviet Union, and Asimov comments thereon in chapter 8, by having Starr talk about the superiority of Sirian robots: "These robots are a human achievement. The humans that did the achieving are Sirians, yes, but they are human beings, too, and all other humans can share pride in the achievement. If we fear the results of their achievement, let's match it ourselves, or more than match it. But there's no use denying them the worth of their accomplishment". Twice in the Lucky Starr series, in Lucky Starr and the Pirates of the Asteroids and Rings of Saturn, Earth finds itself on the brink of war with the Sirians as the result of Sirian aggression. On both occasions, Starr uses his formidable intellect to avert the war, on grounds that a true war would mean ruin to both worlds. Again the analogy to the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union is obvious. Rings of Saturn is the only novel in the series in which the Sirians themselves appear as characters, as opposed to Sirian robots or Earthmen working for the Sirians. In chapter 10, a Sirian character contrasts his own society with that of Earth: "We have kept our descent pure; we have not allowed the weaklings in, or those with poor genes. We have weeded out the unfit from among ourselves so that we are now a pure race of the strong, the fit, and the healthy, while Earth remains a conglomerate of the diseased and deformed . . . . "To the Outer Worlds, Councilman Starr, Earth is a terrible menace, a bomb of sub-humanity, ready to explode and contaminate the clean Galaxy. We don't want