His brain, with all its knowledge of the Unregenerate camps, was safe for a time. Knowing the hopelessness of it, he smiled sardonically, wondering if sheer habit had taken the place of reason. Then Sheila's bright head made him think of Kitty, and he knew that his tired body had betrayed him. He could never give up. He went down beside Sheila. He took her hands and said: "Thank you. Thank you, Sheila Moore." And then, quite peacefully, he was asleep with his head in her lap. * * * * * The heat was a malignant, vampire presence. Eric Falken felt it even before he wakened. He was lying in Avery's bunk, and the sweat that ran from his body made a sticky pool under him. Sheila lay across from him, eyes closed, raw-gold hair pushed back from her temples. The torn green silk of her dress clung damply. The starved thinness of her gave her a strange beauty, clear and brittle, like sculptured ice. She'd lived in alleys and cellars, hiding from the Hiltonists, because she wouldn't be Happy. She was strong, that girl. Like an unwanted cat that simply wouldn't die. Avery sat in the pilot's chair, watching through the shaded port. He swung around as Falken got up. The exhaustion was gone from his square young face, but his eyes were still veiled and strange. Falken couldn't read them, but he sensed fear. He asked, "How long have I slept?" Avery shrugged. "The chronometer stopped. A long time, though. Twenty hours, perhaps." Falken went to the controls. "Better go back now. We'll swing wide of Mercury, and perhaps we can get through." He hoped their constant velocity hadn't carried them too far for their fuel. Relief surged over Avery's face. "The size of that Sun," he said jerkily. "It's terrifying. I never felt...." He broke off sharply. Something about his tone brought Sheila's eyes wide open. Suddenly, the bell of the mass-detector began to ring, a wild insistent jangle. "Meteor!" cried Falken and leaped for the 'visor screen. Then he froze, staring. It was no meteor, rushing at them out of the vast blaze of the Sun. It was a planet. A dark planet, black as the infinity behind it, barren and cruel as starvation, touched in its jagged peaks with subtle, phosphorescent fires. Paul Avery whispered, "Good Lord! A planet, here? But it's impossible!" Sheila Moore sprang up. "No! Remember the old legends about Vulcan, the planet between Mercury and the Sun? Nobody believed in it, because they could never find it. But they could never explain Mercury's crazy orbit, either, except by the gravitational interference of another body." Avery said, "Surely the Mercurian observatories would have found it?" A pulse began to beat in his strong white throat. "It's there," snapped Falken impatiently. "And we'll crash it in a minute if we ... Sheila! Sheila Moore!" The dull glare from the ports caught the proud, bleak lines of his gypsy face, the sudden fire in his blue eyes.