sun
was large before them.

"We're going to have a job cutting down our velocity; we're traveling
pretty fast, relative to that sun," Arcot told the others. Their
velocity was so great that the sun didn't seem to swerve them greatly as
they rushed nearer. Arcot began to use the molecular drive to brake the
ship.

Morey was busy with the telectroscope, although greatly hampered by the
fact that it was a feat of strength to hold his arm out at right angles
to his body for ten seconds under the heavy acceleration Arcot was
applying.

"This method works!" called Morey suddenly. "The Fuller System For
Finding Planets has picked another winner! Circle the sun so that I can
get a better look!"

Arcot was already trying vainly to decrease their velocity to a figure
that would permit the attraction of the sun to hold them in its grip and
allow them to land on a planet.

"As I figure it," Arcot said, "we'll need plenty of time to come to
rest. What do you think, Morey?"

Morey punched figures into the calculator. "Wow! Somewhere in the
neighborhood of a hundred days, using all the acceleration that will be
safe! At five gravities, reducing our present velocity of twenty-five
thousand miles per second to zero will take approximately twenty-four
hundred hours--one hundred days! We'll have to use the gravitational
attraction of that sun to help us."

"We'll have to use the space control," said Arcot. "If we move close to
the sun by the space control, all the energy of the fall will be used in
overcoming the space-strain coil's field, and thus prevent our falling.
When we start to move away again, we will be climbing against that
gravity, which will aid us in stopping. But even so, it will take us
about three days to stop. We wouldn't get anywhere using molecular
power; that giant sun was just too damned generous with his energy of
fall!"

They started the cycles, and, as Arcot had predicted, they took a full
three days of constant slowing to accomplish their purpose, burning up
nearly three tons of matter in doing so. They were constantly oppressed
by a load of five gravities except for the short intervals when they
stopped to eat and when they were moving in the space control field.
Even in sleeping, they were forced to stand the load.

The massive sun was their principal and most effective brake. At no time
did they go more than a few dozen million miles from the primary, for
the more intense the gravity, the better e