erent
people._

_Aren't you dead?_

_Is that supposed to be a joke, alter ego? When do the men in the white
suits come?_

_Good Lord, this was supposed to be a dead body!_

At that, the other sentience which shared the body with Mayhem snickered
and lapsed into silence. Mayhem, for his part, was astounded.

_Don't get ornery now_, Mayhem pleaded. _I'm Johnny Mayhem. Does that
mean anything to you?_

_Oh, sure. It means I'm dead. You inhabit dead bodies, right?_

_Usually. Listen--where are we?_

Glory of the Galaxy--_bound from Earth to Mars on perihelion._

_And there's trouble?_

_How do you know there's trouble?_

_Otherwise they wouldn't have diverted me here._

_We've got the president aboard. We're going to hit the sun._ Then,
grudgingly, Larry went into the details. When he finished he thought
cynically: _Now all you have to do is go outside yelling have no fear,
Mayhem is here and everything will be all right, I suppose._

Mayhem didn't answer. It would be many moments yet before he could
adjust to this new, unexpected situation. But in a way, he thought, it
would be a boon. If he were co-inhabiting the body of a living man who
belonged on the _Glory of the Galaxy_, there was no need to reveal his
identity as Johnny Mayhem to anyone but his host....

* * * * *

"I tell ya," Technician First Class Ackerman Boone shouted, "the
refrigeration unit's gone on the blink. You can't feel it yet, but I
ought to know. I got the refrigs working full strength and we gained a
couple of degrees heat. Either she's on the blink or we're too close to
the sun, I tell you!"

Ackerman Boone was a big man, a veteran spacer with a squat, very strong
body and arms like an orangutan. Under normal circumstances he was a
very fine spacer and a good addition to any crew, but he bore an
unreasonable grudge against the officer corps and would go out of his
way to make them look bad in the eyes of the other enlisted men. A large
crowd had gathered in the hammock-hung crew quarters of the _Glory of
the Galaxy_ as Boone went on in his deep, booming voice: "So I asked the
skipper of the watch, I did. He got shifty-eyed, like they always do.
You know. He wasn't talking, but sure as my name's Ackerman Boone,
something's wrong."

"What do you think it is, Acky?" one of the younger men asked.

"Well, I tell ya this: I know what it _isn't_. I checked out the refrigs
three times, see, and came up