Krinsky returned, now wearing the insulating bulk of the heatsuit over his standard rebreathing outfit. He looked more like a small tank than a man. “Is the crawler approaching, sir?”
“I’ll check.”
Ross adjusted the lensplate in his mask and narrowed his eyes. It seemed to him that the temperature had risen a little. Another illusion? He squinted into the distance.
His eyes picked out the radar tower far off towards Sunside. He gasped.
“Something the matter?” Krinsky asked.
“I’ll say!” Ross squeezed his eyes tight shut and looked again. And—yes—the newly erected radar tower was drooping soggily and beginning to melt. He saw two tiny figures racing madly over the flat, pumice-covered ground to the silvery oblong that was the crawler. And—impossibly—the first glow of an unmistakable brightness was beginning to shimmer on the mountains behind the tower.
The sun was rising—a week ahead of schedule!
Ross ran back into the ship, followed by the lumbering figure of Krinsky. In the airlock, obliging mechanical hands descended to ease him out of his spacesuit; signaling to Krinsky to keep the heatsuit on, he dashed through into the main cabin.
“Brainerd? Brainerd! Where in hell are you?”
The senior astrogator appeared, looking puzzled. “What’s up, Captain?”
“Look out the screen,” Ross said in a strangled voice. “Look at the radar tower!”
“It’s melting,” Brainerd said, astonished. “But that’s—that’s—”
“I know. It’s impossible.” Ross glanced at the instrument panel. External temperature had risen to 112°—a jump of four degrees. And as he watched it glided up to 114°.
It would take a heat of at least 500° to melt the radar tower that way. Ross squinted at the screen and saw the crawler come swinging dizzily towards them: Llewellyn and Falbridge were still alive, then—though they probably had had a good cooking out there. The temperature outside the ship was up to 116°. It would probably be near 200° by the time the two men returned.
Angrily, Ross whirled to face the astrogator. “I thought you were bringing us down in the safety strip,” he snapped. “Check your figures again and find out where the hell we really are. Then work out a blasting orbit, fast: That’s the sun coming up over those hills.”
The temperature had reached 120°. The ship’s cooling system would be able to keep things under control and comfortable until about 250°; beyond that, there was danger of an overload. The crawler continued to draw near. It was probably hellish inside the little land car, Ross thought.
His mind weighed alternatives. If the external temperature went much over 250°, he would run the risk of wrecking the ship’s cooling system by waiting for the two in the crawler to arrive. There was some play in the system, but not much. He decided he’d give them until it hit 275° to get back. If they didn’t make it by then, he’d have to take off without them. It was foolish to try to save two lives at the risk of six. External temperature had hit 130°. Its rate of increase was jumping rapidly.
The ship’s crew knew what was going on now. Without the need of direct orders from Ross, they were readying the Leverrier for an emergency blastoff.
The crawler inched forward. The two men weren’t much more than ten miles away now; and at an average speed of forty miles an hour they’d be back within fifteen minutes. Outside the temperature was 133°. Long fingers of shimmering sunlight stretched towards them from the horizon.
Brainerd looked up from his calculation. “I can’t work it. The damned figures don’t come out.”
“Huh?”
“I’m trying to compute our location—and I can’t do the arithmetic. My head’s all foggy.”
What the hell. This was where a captain earned his pay, Ross thought. “Get out of the way,” he said brusquely. “Let me do it.”
He sat down at the desk and started figuring. He saw Brainerd’s hasty notations scratched out everywhere. It was as if the astrogator had totally forgotten how to do his job.
Let’s see, now. If we’re—
He tapped out figures on the little calculator. But as he worked he saw that what he was doing made no sense. His mind felt bleary and strange; he couldn’t seem to handle the elementary computations at all. Looking up, he said, “Tell Krinsky to get down there and make himself ready to help those men out of the crawler when they show up. They’re probably half cooked.”
Temperature 146°. He looked down at the calculator. Damn: it shouldn’t be that hard to do simple trigonometry, should it?
Doc Spangler appeared. “I cut Curtis free,” he announced. “He isn’t safe during takeoff in that cradle.”
From within came a steady mutter. “Just let me die…just let me die…”
“Tell him he’s likely to get his wish,” Ross murmured. “If I can’t manage to work out a blastoff orbit we’re all going to fry right here.”
“How come you’re doing it? What’s the matter with Brainerd?”
“Choked up. Couldn’t make sense of his own figures. And come to think of it, I’m not doing so well myself.”
Fingers of fog seemed to wrap around his mind. He glanced at the dial. Temperature 152° outside. That gave the boys in the crawler 123° to get back here…or was it 321°? He was confused, utterly bewildered.
Doc Spangler looked peculiar too. The psych officer wore an odd frown. “I feel very lethargic suddenly,” Spangler declared. “I know I really should get back to Curtis, but—”
The madman was keeping up a steady babble inside. The part of Ross’s mind that still could think clearly realized that if left unattended Curtis was capable of doing almost anything.
Temperature 158°.
The crawler seemed to be getting nearer. On the horizon the radar tower was melting into a crazy shambles.
There was a shriek. “Curtis!” Ross yelled, his mind hurriedly returning to awareness. He ran aft, with Spangler close behind.
Too late.
Curtis lay on the floor in a bloody puddle. He had found a pair of shears somewhere.
Spangler bent. “He’s dead.”
“Dead. Of course.” Ross’s brain felt totally clear now. At the moment of Curtis’ death the fog had lifted. Leaving Spangler to attend to the body, he returned to the astrogation desk and glanced through the calculations he had been doing. Worthless. An idiotic mess.
With icy clarity he started again, and this time succeeded in determining their location. They had come down better than three hundred miles sunward of where they had thought they were landing. The instruments hadn’t lied—but someone’s eyes had. The orbit that Brainerd had so solemnly assured him was a “safe” one was actually almost as deadly as the one Curtis had computed.
He looked outside. The crawler had almost reached the ship. Temperature 167° out there. There was plenty of time. They would make it with a few minutes to spare, thanks to the warning they had received from the melting radar tower.
But why had it happened? There was no answer to that.
Gigantic in his heatsuit, Krinsky brought Llewellyn and Falbridge aboard. They peeled out of their spacesuits and wobbled around unsteadily for a moment before they collapsed. They were as red as newly boiled lobsters.
“Heat prostration,” Ross said. “Krinsky, get them into takeoff cradles. Dominic, you in your suit yet?”
The spaceman appeared at the airlock entrance and nodded.
“Good. Get down there and drive the crawler into the hold. We can’t afford to leave it here. Double-quick, and then we’re blasting off. Brainerd, that new orbit ready?”