"I've seen enough," he assured her. "Where are we?"

"Inside the orbit of Mercury. We'll be closer before we're farther away."

Barnard studied her. At the most dangerous part of their journey, where space was filled with cosmic debris plunging into the sun, she had lost her hunted look and worked with a graceful nonchalance. She seemed actually to be enjoying the whole thing.

The murderous forces of radiant energy pounded at and through the heavily insulated hulls. Barnard mopped his sweat-soaked face and waited for the metal of the space ship to ignite. He stared at the girl and wondered how she could be so happy and poised, though she was as bedraggled as he was. Was her mind gone, too?

He decided so when she told him, much later:

"Congratulations, Mr. Barnard. Right now you and I are closer to the sun than any other human beings ever have been—"

He studied her face.

She stared through the darkened glass into the inferno. "Except," she said thoughtfully, "for a few unfortunate expeditions that fell into it."

Then they were starting to recede. The Chicago was inside the eccentric orbit of Vulcan, and starting to plunge away from the sun. The tremendous velocity they had been building up was far more powerful than the titanic pull of the sun's gravitational field. Gradually, the temperature went down to a cool 100 degrees, and the two humans, limp and worn, took turns catnapping.

Barnard lugged can after can of fuel for the tanks. The motors pounded constantly, building up greater and greater velocity. At timed intervals, Gail took sights of the visible planets to check their speed.

Their course curved far above the plane of the ecliptic. No passage through the asteroid belt at this speed!

That was Gail's main worry. "We're veering out of the crowded belt, but there're stray asteroids far from the ecliptic plane. If we pass that region, we'll be in fairly empty space, and more or less safe, except for the Space Police."

Barnard raised his eyebrows. "Space Police? How could they trace us at this speed?"

"We're as obvious as a green spaced Venusian in New York," she told him. "It's the speed—we're actually tearing up space. Lansfer's instruments could 

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