"They'll bracket us next salvo or two!" he yelled. "What's our chance?"

"Turn on heat-screens Six and Seven!" roared Harb Land, without looking around. "I'm going into orbit now!"

"It's too soon!" Jonny cried warning. "It's—"

Carlin saw that Harb hadn't even heard. The giant was recklessly cutting the elements of their plotted course, depending on their own power to pull into orbit in time.

The heat-screens, all they had, were on full now. Another salvo burst to spaceward of them. Carlin knew the men behind realized Floring was aboard. But Control Operations would sacrifice any men to prevent the Sun-mining that always before had meant disastrous solar disturbances.

"Great blazing stars!" breathed Loesser, staring. "Look at that!"

Forgotten, the deadly shells that were groping for them. For now the "Phoenix" was deep in the awesome corona of the star and was curving in closer through heat that was over two thousand degrees.

Carlin's mind shook to the fearful spectacle that was the firmament. Not he, nor any other living man, had ever come so close to a star. They were entering a region of such violent energies that all laws of space and time here seemed cancelled.

Blinding, eye-dazing even through the strong protective filter of the heat-screens, the brilliance of Sol stunned them. They looked on a vast, raging ocean of flaming gases, a sea of vaporized metallic and non-metallic elements that was like a cosmic furnace.

Even through the heat-screens, the radiance heated the air in the ship scorchingly. But now the visor-screen showed that the Control cruisers were falling back and disappearing from sight behind.

Blinding, eye-dazing even through the filter of the heat-screens, the brilliance of Sol stunned them.

"They couldn't follow us this close to the photosphere!" Harb cried exultantly. "We've shaken them and we're almost in orbit."

"You can't orbit the Sun!" Floring pleaded. "And even if you could, the cruisers will lay to outside the heat and range you by locator and fire till they destroy us! Put about!"

The man Vito, choking and gasping for breath, came into the pilot room from the engine rooms astern.

 Prev. P 46/54 next