ly enough.
It had failed to cut through the eddying fog that was rising slowly into
his ebbing consciousness.

He did not remember undoing the straps with benumbed and aching fingers.
He did not remember the befogged and stumbling "walk" into the Control
Room. Dimly, as if viewing himself and the room from a distant world, he
switched on the dying hum of the radio and tried futilely to transmit a
message.

The faint crackle of the radio grew more distant. He slumped forward in
the bucket seat, his head striking the controls in front of him--and,
for him, the sounds of the muted radio died out completely.

The burning heat seared into the metal hull of the MR4. Its outer hull
was almost at the boiling point. Inside, it was a burning, suffocating
hell. Perhaps it was the heat that aroused Hal Burnett once again.
Somehow he managed to stumble to the Tele-screen. With the last vestige
of a waning strength, he managed to switch it on and hold himself erect.

The stupendous white blast of the Sun struck across his staring eyes,
but he did not flinch. Unconscious, his hands clutched at the control
knobs as his sagging legs let him drift weightlessly toward the floor.
He was like a drowning swimmer, out of control and helplessly floating
under water.

He seemed to become aware for a moment as a last flicker of
consciousness crossed his mind. He mouthed something unintelligible--a
last, forgotten word.

Anchored only by his grip on the control knobs, his weightless body
floated aimlessly in the almost steaming cabin as the awful stillness
re-echoed throughout the hollow vault of the ship.

Down below, with ever-growing closeness, the Sun waited patiently, like
a bright and hovering vulture.

The MR4 swung and pivoted gently like a ship at sea straining at its
anchor in the first, fresh breezes of a gathering storm. For a moment it
seemed to hesitate like a coy maiden on the verge of some unknown
threshold. Then, abruptly, she climaxed her voyage and plunged directly
toward the waiting Sun some twenty million miles below, carrying with
her only her dead cargo; her pilot--

* * * * *

The radio crackled noisily after Hal Burnett's last incoherent
transmission. It crackled aimlessly for a few moments--and then was
still.

"Something's wrong," said Williams, a thin thread of moisture shining
down his face. "Something's gone wrong up there!"

"It sure has," said Donnelly, quietly. "And I