ied him past the point of no return.

A constant re-checking of every one of his instruments might have saved
him. But he had been too terrified to think straight, and too ashamed
of his "first-run" inexperience to send out a short wave message
requesting emergency instructions and advice. Now he was hopelessly off
his course and it was too late. Too late!

He could almost feel the steadily-growing pull of his mindless enemy in
the distant sky. Floating and kicking his way over to the Tele-screen,
he quickly switched the instrument on. Rotating the control dials, he
brought the blinding white image of the onrushing solar disk into
perfect focus. Automatically he adjusted the two superimposed polaroid
filters until the proper amount of light was transmitted to his viewing
screen. They really built ships and filters these days, he reflected
wryly. Now if they could only form a rescue squad just as easily--

Even through the viewing screen he could almost feel the hot blast of
white light hit his face with the physical impact of a baseball bat.
With what was almost a whimper of suppressed fear he rocked backward on
his heels.

The Sun's ghastly prominences seemed to reach beckoning fingers toward
him, as its flood of burning, radiant light seared through the
incalculable cold of space, and its living corona of free electrons and
energy particles appeared to swell and throb menacingly.

Fearfully he watched the flaming orb draw closer and closer, and as its
pull grew more pronounced he wondered if it were not, in some
nightmarishly fantastic fashion becoming malignantly aware of him. It
resembled nothing so much as a great festering sore; an infection of the
very warp-and-woof stuff of space.

He flipped off the power control on the Tele-screen and watched the
image fade away with a depleted whine of dying energy. That incandescent
inferno out there-- Grimly he tried to recall the name of the man who
had said that, philosophically, energy is not actually a real thing at
all.

He knew better than to waste time trying the pilot controls again. They
were hopelessly jammed by the great magnetic attraction of the Sun. They
had been jammed for hours now. He forced his way back to his bunk, and
securely lashed himself to it again. Sleep was his only hope now, his
only real escape from the growing, screaming hysteria within him.

He flung an arm across his tired face. His thin features trembled as he
remembered the continu