Part 2

I didn't have to wait long. Results began resulting immediately, if not more so. I suddenly discovered that once again--as earlier in the day--I was sweating. I removed my coat. That didn't help. I took off my shirt. No use. If I hadn't been dead certain that within a short time there would be visitors to my turret, I'd have jettisoned my southernmost garments, too. But having no desire to embarrass Mrs. Biggs, I stood fast. And stuck fast, too, by the way!

So things started happening. The Chief audioed from the engine-room. He hollered, "Sparrrks, thot domned heat is on again. Turrn it off; or bi-gawd, sirrr--"

Well, Biggs hadn't said anything about an allegiance with the crew, but it looked like a great opportunity to stir up a mild case of mutiny. So I said placidly, "Sorry, Chief, but I can't do anything about it. Take a gander through your _perilens_. You see that big red thing blazing out in front of us? That's what's causing the heat."

Garrity gasped. "Ye--ye mean the Sun, Donovan?"

"We're going to pass it," I told him, "at a distance of only ten million miles. Figure it out for yourself." And I hung up.

Then Doug Enderby called from the mess-hall. I gave him a dose of the same medicine. Then Harkness. He screamed like a stuck pig, and began demanding a change of trajectory. I told him, "Don't squawk to _me_ about it; tell Gilchrist. He laid the course."

And I had just blanked the screen when in raced Gilchrist himself, followed by Cap Hanson, Diane, and Dick Todd.

"All right, Sparks!" bellowed the efficiency expert, "What are you up to _now_? I'll see that you get busted out of the service for this! Rank disobedience, conspiracy to break shipboard morale, plotting with an imprisoned officer, deliberate sabotage--"

Yeah--Biggs was right! Major Horatio Gilchrist was a nice guy, in a repulsive sort of way. I glared at him.

"Just a moment, Major!" I said boldly. "If you mean this heat, you'd better hunt yourself up another victim. You know perfectly well Lt. Biggs is in durance vile. And as for _my_ having done anything, why--how could I? You assumed complete control of all electrical equipment."

Gilchrist raged, "But--but this _heat_! Somebody has made the ship unbearably hot again--"

"Some_body_?" I asked him shrewdly, "or some _thing_? I guess you've forgotten, Major, that our real peril--of which Mr. Biggs warned you--is our proximity to the Sun."

"Nonsense, sir! The Sun--"

"Is getting closer," I finished, "every minute. You have undoubtedly looked at the ship's hull to make sure there are no wires or coils on it?"

Some of Major Gilchrist's cockiness had oozed out of him. He said uncertainly, "Y-yes, I did. The entire hull is thickly coated with some glutinous substance--"

* * * * *

Oh, golly! That was one thing which hadn't occurred to me. I had just sort of taken it for granted that the fuel I had dumped would have whipped away into space. Silly logic on my part, for I've run the spaceways long enough to realize that nothing ever floats away in the void; anything you chuck from a spacevessel shares your velocity and hangs right along by your side. But I made the finest dramatic act of my life; gasped, and clutched at my forehead wildly.

"The oil! Migod, the oil-tanks have burst! Captain Hanson, we're doomed!"

And the skipper, too, came through nobly. He moaned and raced to the wall thermo, whirled from it frantically.

"A hundred an' two!" he bleated, "an' gettin' hotter every minute! We'll be stewed like peas in a pot!"

Gilchrist's lips turned a sickly bistre. He ran his tongue over them and faltered, "But my computations--"

"Were wrong!" I told him. "Dead wrong! Take a look at these other figures. Lancelot Biggs' figures!"

And as I thrust the sheet of paper into his fingers, I reached out and elbowed the audio button that establishes a complete circuit of every chamber aboard ship. Instantly the babel of angry, frightened, complaining voices burst upon our ears. The cries of hot and terrified men demanding help from the bridge.

"--can't stand it a moment longer," came the cry of Enderby. "Change course, Skipper!" And from the engine-room the roaring blast of Chief Garrity: "Ye've no richt t' drive us t' death like this, Captain. Change coorrse, sirrr, or by the saints, there'll be _moootiny_!"

And that did it! Major Gilchrist's nerve collapsed. His self-assurance slipped from him like a robe from a strip-teaser's torso, and all of a sudden he was no longer a tough, gimlet-eyed, hard-boiled efficiency expert, but a nervous and very frightened Earth-lubber caught in the grip of forces too strong for him.

"Into the Sun!" he babbled wildly. "The _Sun_? Oh, I mustn't die like this! Do something, somebody! Captain, you must change the course. Use the other set of co-ordinates. I was wrong--"

That was all I waited to hear. I shoved the new set of figures into Todd's hands, shoved him toward the door.

"Get going, Dick! There's no time to waste! We--"

But before I could even finish, there came an interruption that turned my spinal column to a slow trickle of icy water. The plates beneath my feet seemed to sag momentarily, then rise and hurl themselves forward. I slipped and fell to my hands and knees--and found it hard to rise again! A dull weight fastened itself upon me. Nor was I the only person so stricken. Diane had tumbled, too, and Cap Hanson was holding onto an upright stanchion for dear life. Gilchrist lay prone on his puss, his face a mask of terror. And the audio rasped with an ominous cry from the bridge.

"Captain Hanson! Captain Hanson, sir, come quickly! We've been caught by Sol's gravs!"

* * * * *

Well, it was about that time my heart began pounding the hell out of my shoelaces. Up to now I had been disgusted and sore and fretful, but not in the least worried. In spite of Gilchrist's pork-patedness, I had felt a serene confidence that before danger actually threatened Lance Biggs would find some way to wangle us out of our difficulties. But now--

But now we were in a sorry mess indeed! Caught in a gravitational grip thousands of times greater than Jupiter's; a million times more deadly. Once, from afar, I had been the unwilling but horror-fascinated witness of the fate of a ship gripped by Sol's terrific attraction. A dark mote struggling futilely against the brazen magnet that beckoned ... a moment's brief and hopeless essay to escape ... then a tiny, ochre flame glinting wanly....

Such a vision must have been flashing, also, through the mind of Major Gilchrist. For from his prostrate vantagepoint he loosed a howl of sheer panic.

"Oh, no!" he screamed. "Oh, no! No! No! No!"

How long that monotonous denial would have continued there is no way of guessing. But Cap Hanson, who despite all his faults has little use for a fool and _no_ use for a coward, put an abrupt end to it. Straining against the pressure that half-immobilized us, he lurched to Gilchrist's side, bent and silenced the efficiency expert's wailing with a sense-rousing slap across the cheek.

"Stop that, you damn fool!" he roared. "The audio's open! Do you want to panic every man aboard this ship?" And as Gilchrist relapsed into whimpering silence, he swiveled to me heavily. "Sparks, there's only one chance. The velocity-intensifier. Tell Garrity--"

The velocity-intensifier, or V-I unit to give it its more common name, was that device invented by Biggs which enables a spaceship to increase its normal cruising speed to an incredible 186,000 mps--the speed of light! I could see the Old Man's idea. Attain that velocity and we might break free of Sol's hold. I said, "Aye, sir!" and was just about to cry the necessary orders to the engine-room when:

"_No!_" The familiar voice of Lt. Lancelot Biggs rang through the turret. "No, Sparks! Don't do that! It is sure death! As our speed increases, so does our mass! We'll only accelerate our fall into the Sun!"

* * * * *

I remembered, then, that every cabin was hooked into a round-robin circuit, _via_ telaudio. So though it would have been humanly impossible for Lancelot Biggs to come up to this turret now, he was as truly with us as if he stood beside us. I cried back answer.

"But what _can_ we do, Mr. Biggs?"

And--most stunning surprise of all!--my words were echoed by the groveling goon on the floor! Major Gilchrist, his voice cracked and fearful, bleated, "What can we do? You must help me, Mr. Biggs! Save me--"

Maybe I was mistaken, but I thought I could detect a ghost of a chuckle in my gawky pal's voice. He said, "Major, according to Space Practice Law No. 3, section _viii_, 'A space officer convicted of malfeasance, or confined under suspicion thereof pending trial and conviction, may not offer, suggest, or cause to be given any orders, commands or directions which may affect his ship's course or trajectory--'"

"You're free, Mr. Biggs!" screamed Gilchrist. "Free to come and go as you please! I was wrong! You're not under arrest any longer! But save me! Save me--"

This time Biggs _did_ chuckle. I heard him do it. So did every man, mouse and mess-boy aboard the _Saturn_. And--

"Very well, Major," he said. "Thank you! Todd, set the ship on the new trajectory."

Todd said, "H-huh?"

Cap Hanson said, "W-what?"

And I croaked, "J-just ... like ... that ... Lance?"

Biggs' tone wobbled as if he were nodding his head.

"Sure. Just like that. Make the necessary stud adjustments, fire the rockets designated in my alternative plot-chart, and shift trajectory. That's all! And, oh, yes--you might send a couple of men outside, Skipper, with disrupters. Have them clear the hull of that caked fuel oil so it will be a little cooler in here.

"Honey--" He was talking to Diane now--"I'll meet you up there in a few minutes. Wait for me!"

Major Gilchrist's eyes looked like two poached eggs. As the full meaning of Biggs' words dawned upon him, he began roaring. But angrily. And loudly.

"A trick! A dirty, low, mean, contemptible trick by a renegade officer! Mr. Biggs! Mr. Biggs, sir, I am placing you under arrest again! Remain in your quarters, sir, or--"

But Todd had already sprung to his task, I had given the orders to Garrity's crew, and Cap Hanson handled this new threat. Again he hunched over Gilchrist's struggling-to-rise form, and his voice was a whiplash of scorn.

"I wouldn't, if I was you, Major!" he warned grimly. "You seem to've forgot that a minute ago forty-odd men aboard the _Saturn_ heard you beggin' Lance Biggs to save your scrawny hide. One more crack outa you between now an' the day we hit Earth, an' this whole affair will be reported to the Company, so help me Hannah!"

"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."

Biggs said modestly, "You can thank Sparks for that, too. He did it when he jammed the condensation valves. Made the moisture-content of the ship's atmosphere rise. The grav plates, being electrical by nature, short-circuited. Thus we were all subjected to an extreme 'gravitational attraction' which was the direct result of a capacity overload--but which under the odd circumstances every one naturally attributed to the Sun's proximity." He smiled faintly. "You might say it wasn't the heat--it was the humidity!"

* * * * *

Which sage--if time-worn--observation was the last comment our insanely sensible First Officer would offer on the case of Major Gilchrist _vs._ The-Rest-of-Us. And since the efficiency expert withdrew into his shell and stayed there for the rest of the trip, nothing more happened to disturb the peace and tranquillity of ye goode shippe _Saturn_ that voyage.

So Biggs is back! A slightly older, slightly wiser, definitely more conventional Biggs, now that he's a married man with responsibilities. And after all the messes his crack-pot ideas have got us into in the past, I guess we all ought to be glad he _has_ settled down.

But--I don't know. Married or not, Biggs is Biggs. And wherever his gangling frame intrudes itself, things have a way of happening. For instance, next month the _Saturn_ is taking off for Uranus on a simple, ordinary cargo trip. On the face of it, it looks like smooth sailing. But Biggs is back on the bridge. And--

Well--anybody want to make any bets?