"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 with nothing. The refrigs are in jig order, and if I know it then you know it. So, if the refrigs are in jig order, there's only one thing it can be: we're getting too near the sun!" Boone clamped his mouth shut and stood with thick, muscular arms crossed over his barrel chest. * * * * * A young technician third class said in a strident voice, "You mean you think maybe we're plunging into the sun, Acky?" "Well, now, I didn't say that. Did I, boy? But we _are_ too close and if we are too close there's got to be a reason for it. If we stay too close too long, O.K. Then we're plunging into the sun. Right now, I dunno." They all asked Ackerman Boone, who was an unofficial leader among them, what he was going to do. He rubbed his big fingers against the thick stubble of beard on his jaw and you could hear the rasping sound it made. Then he said, "Nothing, until we find out for sure. But I got a hunch the officers are trying to pull the wool over the eyes of them politicians we got on board. That's all right with me, men. If they want to, they got their reasons. But I tell ya this: they ain't going to pull any wool over Acky Boone's eyes, and that's a fact." Just then the squawk box called: "Now hear this! Now hear this! Tech/1 Ackerman Boone to Exec's office. Tech/1 Boone to Exec." "You see?" Boone said, smiling grimly. As yet, no one saw. His face still set in a grim smile, Ackerman Boone headed above decks. * * * * * "That, Mr. President," Vice Admiral T. Shawnley Stapleton said gravely, "is the problem. We would have come to you sooner, sir, but frankly--" "I know it, Admiral," the President said quietly. "I could not have helped you in any way. There was no sense telling me."