However, while still accelerating into the sun for maximum boost, the fleet received information that two Enemy cruisers were in pursuit. The five ships cracked on all possible speed, drawing on the solar drive's high efficiency near the sun and expending all their hydrogen and most material capable of being vaporized, including some of the light-metal hydrogen storage tanks--like an old steamer burning her cabin furniture and the cabins themselves to win a race. Gradually the curving course that would have taken years to reach the outer planet flattened into a hyperbola that would make the journey in 200 days. In the asteroid belt the pursuing cruisers turned aside to join in the crucial Battle of the Trojans with Earth's largely new-built, more heavily and wisely armed Combined Fleet--a battle that proved to be only a prelude to the decisive Battle of Jupiter. Meanwhile the five-ship fleet sped onward, its solar drive quite useless in this twilight region even if it could have scraped together the needed boilable ejectant mass to slow its flight. Weeks became months. The ships were renamed for the planet they were aimed at. At least the fleet's trajectory had been truly set. Almost on collision course it neared Uranus, a mystery-cored ball of frigid gas 32,000 miles wide coasting through space across the fleet's course at a lazy four miles a second. At this time the fleet was traveling at 100 miles a second. Beyond Uranus lay only the interstellar night, into which the fleet would inevitably vanish.... * * * * * Unless, Grunfeld told himself ... unless the fleet shed its velocity by ramming the gaseous bulk of Uranus. This idea of atmospheric braking on a grand scale had sounded possible at first suggestion, half a year ago--a little like a man falling off a mountain or from a plane and saving his life by dropping into a great thickness of feathery new-fallen snow. Supposing her solar jet worked out here and she had the reaction mass, _Prospero_ could have shed her present velocity in five hours, decelerating at a comfortable one G. But allowing her 12,000 miles of straight-line travel through Uranus' frigid soupy atmosphere--and that might be dipping very close to the methane seas blanketing the planet's hypothetical mineral core--_Prospero_ would have two minutes in which to shed her velocity. Two minutes--at 150 Gs. Men had stood 40 and 50 Gs for a fractional second. But for two minutes.... Grunfeld told himself that the only surer way to die would be to run into a section of the Enemy fleet. According to one calculation the ship's skin would melt by heat of friction in 90 seconds, despite the low temperature of the abrading atmosphere. The star Grunfeld had been waiting for touched the hazy rim of Uranus. He drifted back to the eyepiece and began to follow it in as the pale planet's hydrogen muted its diamond brilliance. III