he Galaxy_ was now nineteen million miles out from the
sun and rushing through space at a hundred miles per second, normal
space drive. The _Glory of the Galaxy_ thus moved a million miles closer
to fiery destruction every three hours--but since the sun's
gravitational force had to be added to that speed, the ship was slated
to plunge into the sun's corona in little more than twenty-four hours.

Since the ship's refrigeration units would function perfectly until the
outer hull reached a temperature of eleven hundred degrees Fahrenheit,
none of its passengers knew that anything was wrong. Even the members of
the crew went through all the normal motions. Only the _Glory of the
Galaxy's_ officers in their bright new uniforms and gold braid knew the
grim truth of what awaited the gleaming two-thousand ton spaceship less
than twenty-four hours away at the exact center of its perihelion
passage.

Something--unidentified as yet--in all the thousands of intricate things
that could go wrong on a spaceship, particularly a new one making its
maiden voyage, had gone wrong. The officers were checking their
catalogues and their various areas of watch meticulously--and not
because their own lives were at stake. In spaceflight, your own life
always is at stake. There are too many imponderables: you are, to a
certain degree, expendable. The commissioned contingent aboard the
_Glory of the Galaxy_ was a dedicated group, hand-picked from all the
officers in the solar system.

* * * * *

But they could find nothing. And do nothing.

Within a day, their lives along with the lives of the enlisted men
aboard the _Glory of the Galaxy_ and the passengers on its maiden run,
would be snuffed out in a brilliant burst of solar heat.

And the President of the Galactic Federation would die because some
unknown factor had locked the controls of the spaceship, making it
impossible to turn or use forward rockets against the gravitational pull
of the sun.

Nineteen million miles. In normal space, a considerable distance. A
hundred miles a second--a very considerable normal space speed.
Increasing....

* * * * *

Ever since they had left Earth's assembly satellites, Sheila Kelly had
seen a lot of a Secret Serviceman named Larry Grange, who was a member
of the President's corps of bodyguards. She liked Larry, although there
was nothing serious in their relationship. He was handsome an