“What’ll you have?” Boone demanded.

“The refrigs, Boone! They are on the blink. Overstrained themselves and burned themselves out. Inside of half an hour this ship’s going to be an oven hot enough to kill us all!”

“Half an hour, men!” Ackerman Boone cried. “Now, do we take over the ship and man those lifeboats or don’t we!”

The roar which followed his words was a decidedly affirmative one.

“These are the figures,” Admiral Stapleton said. “You can see, Mr. President, that we have absolutely no chance whatever if we man the lifeboats. We would perish as assuredly as we would if we remained with the Glory of the Galaxy in normal space.”

“Admiral, I have to hand it to you. I don’t know how you can think—in all this heat.”

“Have to, sir. Otherwise we all die.”

“The air temperature—”

“Is a hundred and thirty degrees and rising. We’ve passed salt tablets out to everyone, sir, but even then it’s only a matter of time before we’re all prostrated. If you’re sure you give your permission, sir—”

“Admiral Stapleton, you are running this ship, not I.”

“Very well, sir. I’ve sent our subspace officer, Lieutenant Ormundy, to throw in the subspace drive. We should know in a few moments—”

“No crash hammocks or anything?”

“I’m sorry, sir.”

“It isn’t your fault, Admiral. I was merely pointing out a fact.”

The squawk box blared: “Now hear this! Now hear this! T/3 Ackerman Boone to Admiral Stapleton. Are you listening, Admiral?”

Admiral Stapleton’s haggard, heat-worn face bore a look of astonishment as he listened. Ackerman said, “We have Lieutenant Ormundy, Admiral. He’s not killing us all by putting us into subspace in minutes when it ought to take hours, you understand. We have Ormundy and we
 
have the subspace room. A contingent of our men is getting the lifeboats ready. We’re going to abandon ship, Admiral, all of us, including you and the politicians even if we have to drag you aboard the lifeboats at N—gunpoint.”

Admiral Stapleton’s face went ashen. “Let me at a radio!” he roared. “I want to answer that man and see if he understands exactly what mutiny is!”

While Ackerman Boone was talking over the squawk box, the temperature within the Glory of the Galaxy rose to 145° Fahrenheit.

“Fifteen minutes,” Larry Grange said. “In fifteen minutes the heat will have us all unconscious.” Only it wasn’t Larry alone who was talking. It was Larry and Johnny Mayhem. In a surprisingly short time the young Secret Serviceman had come to accept the dual occupation of his own mind. It was there: it was either dual occupation or insanity and if the voice which spoke inside his head said it was Johnny Mayhem, then it was Johnny Mayhem. Besides, Larry felt clear-headed in a way he had never felt before, despite the terrible, sapping heat. It was as if he had matured suddenly—the word matured came to him instinctively—in the space of minutes. Or, as if a maturing influence were at work on his mind.

“What can we do?” Sheila said. “The crew has complete control of the ship.”

“Secret Service chief says we’re on our own. There’s no time for co-ordinated planning, but somehow, within a very few minutes, we’ve got to get inside the subspace room and throw the ship out of normal space or we’ll all be roasted.”

“Some of your men are there now, aren’t they?”

“In the companionway outside the subspace room, yeah. But they’ll never force their way in time. Not with blasters and not with N-guns, either. Not in ten minutes, they won’t.”

“Larry, all of a sudden I—I’m scared. We’re all going to die, Larry. I don’t want—Larry, what are you going to do?”

They had been walking in a deserted companionway which brought them to one of the aft escape hatches of the Glory of the Galaxy. Their clothing was plastered to their bodies with sweat and every breath was agonizing, furnace hot.

“I’m going outside,” Larry said quietly.

 
“Outside? What do you mean?”

“Spacesuit, outside. There’s a hatch in the subspace room. If their attention is diverted to the companionway door, I may be able to get in. It’s our only chance—ours, and everyone’s.”

“But the spacesuit—”

“I know,” Larry said even as he was climbing into the inflatable vacuum garment. It was Larry—and it wasn’t Larry. He felt a certain confidence, a certain sense of doing the right thing—a feeling which Larry Grange had never experienced before in his life. It was as if the boy had become a man in the final moments of his life—or, he thought all at once, it was as if Johnny Mayhem who shared his mind and his body with him was somehow transmitting some of his own skills and confidence even as he—Mayhem—had reached the decision to go outside.

“I know,” he said. “The spacesuit isn’t insulated sufficiently. I’ll have about three minutes out there. Three minutes to get inside. Otherwise, I’m finished.”

“But Larry—”

“Don’t you see, Sheila? What does it matter? Who wants the five or ten extra minutes if we’re all going to die anyway? This way, there’s a chance.”

He buckled the spacesuit and lifted the heavy fishbowl helmet, preparing to set it on his shoulders.

“Wait,” Sheila said, and stood on tiptoes to take his face in her hands and kiss him on the lips. “You—you’re different,” Sheila said. “You’re the same guy, a lot of fun, but you’re a—man, too. This is for what might have been, Larry,” she said, and kissed him again. “This is because I love you.”

Before he dropped the helmet in place, Larry said. “It isn’t for what might have been, Sheila. It’s for what will be.”

The helmet snapped shut over the shoulder ridges of the spacesuit. Moments later, he had slipped into the airlock.

“I say you’re a fool, Ackerman Boone!” one of the enlisted men rasped at the leader of the mutiny. “I say now we’ve lost our last chance. Now it’s too late to get into the lifeboats even if we wanted to. Now all we can do is—die!”

There were still ten conscious men in the subspace room. The others had fallen before heat prostration and lay strewn about the floor,
 
wringing wet and oddly flaccid as if all the moisture had been wrung from their bodies except for the sweat which covered their skins.

“All right,” Ackerman Boone admitted. “All right, so none of us knows how to work the subspace mechanism. You think that would have helped? It would have killed us all, I tell you.”

“It was a chance, Boone. Our last chance and you—”

“Just shut up!” Boone snarled. “I kn............