Trouble Near The Sun By Alan J. Ramm Bull and Skip disagreed about the merits of the Cerebus III as a space ship. But a ship's mettle--like a man's--is proved in an emergency! [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy November 1954 Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] The Inner Planet Fleet's spacegoing salvage vessel _Cerebus III_ leaped sidewise as though she was trying desperately to escape from some mythical monster of the spaceways. Inside the instrument filled control room the tiny group of ship's officers, gathered together by Captain Stevens' urgent order, felt their feet leave the deck. They reached wildly for any hold available, the lucky ones clinging desperately with strained muscles, the others jumbled in awkward cursing heaps against the bulkheads. "You idiot!" Captain Stevens shouted. "Next time give us warning!" The lateral tubes pilot grinned wryly but didn't lift his eyes from the scanner before him. "Sorry, Sir. There was no time. When one of those calcium faculae come boiling up at you like a cannonball, you pick a new spot in the chromosphere for the ship and get there quick--or you don't arrive at all." Bull Wright, one of the two men who had been strong enough to keep his hold, slowly untwined his huge fingers from a projection and flexed them. He looked across the room and grinned down at the floor where Skip Allen was struggling to his feet. "How do you like good old Sol from that angle?" he drawled sarcastically. "Different from reading about it in a textbook, isn't it?" The slim built Ensign quickly came to his feet and automatically adjusted the cap on his red head. "Mr. Experience talking, eh? I wonder why Headquarters hasn't discovered that Ensign Wright sees all, knows all, and blabs all?" "Lay off it, you two," Captain Stevens ordered. "We've got a real problem this time." He paused dramatically, waving a sheet of spacegram paper in the air. "We've been ordered to find the _Regis_ and remove her crew and passengers." "Why that's Fleet Command's new sun cruiser," Skip gasped. "What's happened to her?" "Headquarters doesn't know exactly," Stevens replied. "They got part of a message saying her propulsion power controls were jammed and her anti-grav and anti-heat equipment was slowly losing effectiveness. They give her about four hours before she's falling too fast to contact; and about the same time before she gets too hot to maintain life. "A laminated layer of charged particles must have whipped across her sending beam about then because her message became garbled and finally faded out."