His swollen tongue licked at dry lips. He couldn't swallow any more. Around his neck a salty puddle burned a ring of itching hell fire. He choked down more on the air valve. It didn't make sense to him, but if more oxygen raised his temperature faster, then less should do the opposite. At 104.5 F a man doesn't always think straight. * * * * * At first his heart pounded loudly in protest. His breathing became quick and shallow. With staring, grateful eyes he watched the needle settle a tenth of a degree and stay there. The mental relief was almost overwhelming. Had there been moisture left in his tear ducts Frane would have cried. But now, with the strained concentration gone he became fuzzy. He slipped in and out of consciousness, and dead faces began drifting past his eyes. This wouldn't do. He had one more job left. He looked at his chronometer. In another eight minutes he must throw the drive lever and kill all acceleration. The pirate ship's orbital prediction was based on this timed interruption of the freighter's drive. So much as two minutes off, he had been impressed, would make their search hours longer, since they were approaching from the rear at an angle. He sagged into the pilot's chair again, but sitting down was no good. Instantly the ghost faces began their parade, and the death smell, mingled with the saturated dessicant's rank stink threatened to strangle him. The belly full of rations he had force-fed himself to sustain him the twenty hours of waiting pressed heavily against his heaving diaphragm. He gained his feet, stood with his hand on the fuel lever control and stared fixedly at his chronometer. Two minutes. The navigator's swollen face, eyes bulging, stared into his helmet. "Get out of my way. Got to see my watch. Get--" He brushed at the phantom as if it were a cloud of gnats. He was confident now. The temperature gauge showed his body heat to be constant at 104.4 F. Thirty seconds now and he could give himself over to his fever dreams. Twenty seconds. The broken jawed image persisted mistily. But now the face was repaired. It was the young tense face before he had crushed it with his blaster. It had that hard, determined look on it. The fire in his body swept up into his brain. The bodyless image spoke softly, "You're going to die. You are going to move the fuel control the wrong way. You can't remember which way they said to move it. It isn't marked. You can't remember." "Yes, I can!" The chronometer said twelve seconds. "You made one mistake. You put on your clothes over the spaceman's underwear. Your body heat can't escape. Your brain is burning up. You can't remember about the lever. You will move it the wrong way." "So what? Then I'll move it the other way," Frane screamed. The tiny clock zeroed. Frane pressed the lever away from him. That was the way to stop any earth vehicle--pressure forward on the air brake pedal. He shoved hard.