Norman tried to fling her away from him but the fear-crazed woman clutched his hair as he took the wheel again and he was almost dragged from his seat as he turned the wheel another notch. The wheel blistered his fingers, but he turned it with will-screaming slowness, ignoring Keren's clawing hands. The pointer on the stratometer climbed up the dial in short, inexorable jerks. Tick-tick-tick-tick! Tolling their funeral march at a thousand fiery miles per second ... per second....  
In the nightmare of those moments, Norman saw Dorothy's reflection in the fog-smeared glass, tugging at the frantic brunette, trying to pull her away from him. He saw her hand rise, a wrench in it. She brought it down on the Venusian's dark head as the clock swept to its nerve-breaking jump and he spun the wheel with all his strength.
 
It was a timeless instant. His hand lay limp on the wheel, his eyes on Dorothy's dim figure in the foggy glass. She stood there like a bad camera shot of a little girl dressed up in her papa's overalls. Then, slowly, he realized that what he thought was the reflection of one of her blue eyes was instead a small, luminous globe suspended in the bright nothingness of sunlight ahead. He rubbed his sweat-burning eyes.
 
The blackness of the glass was fading quickly, the seam bulges sinking back with the contraction. Without the slightest tremor, the counteractive had stopped their plunge into the Sun, and the reverse rockets had taken over. They were headed out again. The blue globe grew swiftly as they approached. Source of a thousand tales of terror, Vulcan sped toward them out of the distance.
 
In a few moments, washed air cooled the pilot room as the air conditioning unit purred full speed. Its soft whistle, the brighter light and Norman's instruments were the only evidence that they swam effortlessly in a wild current that swept into the gates of the solar hell.
 
"If we had enough insulation," Norman said, "we could go into the very flames of the sun. Like we almost did anyhow." Johnny's counteractive had given the universe new eyes—to seek an elixir to save his life.
 
Keren moaned.
 
Dorothy held a glass of water to Keren's scarlet lips. "There's a mirror in the galley," she told her. "Go freshen up before we land." Keren looked like a wilted orchid and Norman smiled, finding it difficult to hate anyone after the ordeal they had just survived.
 
Keren's eyes raised to him with an unexpected softness as she stood up. "I'm sorry I acted like an idiot," she said coolly. "You saved my life and you won't regret it." She shook her sleek hair and turned to the galley. "Get out of my way, brat!" she snapped at Dorothy and left the pilot room.
 
Norman grinned at Dorothy. "You wield a wicked wrench," he said. "I'm glad you're on my side."
 
The fifteen year old fugitive from a high school journalism class grinned back, wrinkling her freckled nose. "You wield a wicked heart attack," she said. "Miss Vaun's on your side now if not on mine."
 
He turned back to the controls. They were but a few minutes from the unexplored planet. There was nothing he could do now but take the girls along with him. A junior miss and a Venusian beauty queen, landing on an unknown world.
 
As they approached, Vulcan filled their window, a great smooth curve, its blue color lightening to green. Norman switched off the counteractive and cut in the landing rockets.
 
When Keren's exotic perfume entered the room again, the land below was a map of verdant plains, rolling mountains and glassy seas. Quickly it swelled to jungle and flashing water and, with a champagne tingle in his blood, Norman dropped toward an open well of meadow in the trees.
 
His excitement, however, was tinged with sadness. Johnny should be here now. They had dropped upon a score of unknown worlds together. Now he landed without his partner, in a last-hope venture to save that partner's life.
 
The green vegetation was a colorful contrast against the bright yellow of dead grass. They would have to be careful about fire, Norman knew. He'd seen that thick grass on other Sun-tropical worlds; it burned fast as gunpowder.
 
This close to the Sun, Vulcan probably had a constant wind. The gravity seemed approximately the same as Earth's. He plugged in the spectroscope to test the air and as he glanced out the window at the intake valve a slow chill trickled down his back.
 
It wasn't only the wind moving the grass outside. The grass was growing.
 
Dorothy and Keren came to the window. As they watched, the grass beside the hull rose two inches.
 
"It's horrible," Dorothy whispered. Then, "Look!" she shrilled, pointing.
 
Norman shook his head as if recovering from a blow, the words of the Mercurian Ambassador ringing in his ears: "Vulcan is a planet without a human footprint...." All science knew of this supposedly untrod planet was suddenly a lie. There, beside the ship, was the unmistakable imprint of a human foot.
 
As Norman looked up he saw a man step out of the jungle and walk toward them across the grass. A jet gun bounced on the stranger's hip. He wore high-top boots, a checkered hunting shirt and his black-mustached face was heavily tanned. Norman tore himself from his bewilderment and turned on the outside speaker. "Who are you! How did you get here?"
 
"Same way you did," the receiver brought the fellow's voice inside. "Think you're the only one with a counteractive?"
 
To Norman's verified knowledge, Johnny's counteractive was the only one listed under inter-planetary patents. He turned on Keren. "What do you know about this?" But she held her carmine lips tight, staring out the window.
 
"The air must be all right," he said. "Let's go." He took his jet gun from the compartment in the control panel and strapped the holster close to his right hand. Hot sunlight burnished the room as he threw the panel switch opening the space port.
 
He walked to the door. The stranger waited below, hairy hands on his hips. "I hope you've got an Earthian cigarette. They're scarce around here."
 
Norman dropped the folding steps and Dorothy, curiosity bright in her kitten-blue eyes, walked out into the windy sunlight. As Norman started out, the port clanged shut in his face, hurtling him back into the middle of the room. Rockets hummed as the ship leaped ten feet in the air.
 
Keren stood before the panel with her hand on the rise lever. Norman sprang across the room and jerked her aside as the ship sailed out of the clearing and plowed through the tree tops. "I've had enough of your tricks, lady!" he said through clenched teeth.
 
"No, handsome!" Keren cried. "You've got to get us away from here!" Before he could right the ship she took him from behind and pinned his arms to his sides.
 
"You fool!" Norman yelled, twisting her hands from him. "We're going to crash!" But the woman fought like a panther, black eyes blazing. Controls gone wild, the ship rolled over on its side, and bumped heavily down into the shadowed mire and ground to a halt.
 
"You crazy witch!" Norman got to his feet, eying the sloping floor and the smoke curling up from the leaves under the ship. The rockets had set the woods on fire. His port rise-rockets dangled, a twisted mass of tubes. "Why'd you do this?" he demanded, facing her with itching fists. "Who was that fellow back there? Talk," he ordered, "before I slap your painted face off!"
 
Her eyes were like a half-tamed cat's. "I'm not talking, handsome."
 
Norman looked into her black eyes and ice formed in his heart. "So that was one of Sade's men back there."
 
The outside speaker was still on and in the silence came the crackle of flame as the wind fanned the jungle fire into a rage of orange tongues around the ship. The thermo glass instantly turned black and its faithfully expanding seams began pushing inward against the heat.
 
Into the room came the hissing of a giant snake. The glass was suddenly drenched with a misty green liquid.
 
Antipyrol!
 
The fire went out as Norman jumped to the window and a silvery bulk floated down into the jungle beside them.
 
It was a space cruiser, a late model. Twin burnished coils encircled its silvery hull-counteractive coils. Norman knew that, beginning now, was an ordeal that could end only in death for himself or whoever manned that ship. It was Johnny's ship. Inside it could not be a friend.
 
Through the filter glass, lighted with the fire gone, he could see out but they couldn't see in. A port opened in the cruiser's glittering side, steps fell to the jungle floor and three men stepped out. Norman was not surprised. Two of them wore the fiery red uniform of the Mercurian patrol and Norman's eyes narrowed when he saw their companion. Fat, clad in a silk shirt with his electric arm swinging jerkily, down the steps came the Mercurian ambassador, Gorig Sade.
 
He and his patrolmen strode through the muddy ashes with their guns drawn. Norman's fingers itched for the triggers of his starboard guns. With one burst—! But the guns were empty. Cursing the Venusian woman, he reached for his pistol. He'd shoot it out point blank from the door. Then as his hand moved toward the panel switch to open the door he barely felt the needle enter his back. He saw Keren jump away with the hypodermic needle in her hand.
 
If she had been a man Norman would have shot her on the spot. Instead, he just looked at her with all the hate in his soul, feeling now the stinging sensation in his back, knowing that something was already seeping into his veins—to knock him out, paralyze him, kill him—just when he had a chance at Sade, just when he had a chance to solve the mystery of Johnny's death sentence and perhaps find something here to save him.
 
"The crash must have shook 'em up pretty bad," said a voice outside. "We'll have to cut the door open."
 
Oddly, as Norman stared at the hypodermic syringe in Keren's hand he remembered a trick he'd once pulled on Jupiter. A last ditch trick.
 
His hand jumped to a lever on the panel and jerked it down. He heard an oath mingled with the hiss of antipyrol as his full extinguishers spurted their jets into the jungle for fifty yards around the ship. When he looked out, he saw Sade and the two red-uniformed patrolmen staggering about blindly in the green rain with their hands covering their eyes.
 
"They'll be blind as bats for half an hour," Norman laughed, cutting off the spray. He jerked a coil of rope from the panel compartment. "I don't know what you stuck me with," he told Keren, "but if I go out, you are going to be tied up till I come to." In a moment he had her wrists securely tied behind her. Keren remained silent, staring at him with black-cat eyes half closed.
 
Throwing the door switch, he stepped to the port and found the three men standing in the ashes between the ships, digging at their swollen eyes. "Get out," he ordered the sullen Venusian and she walked down the steps ahead of him.
 
As he went out a streak of flame hissed over the woman's head and splattered on the metal hull beside his shoulder.
 
He jumped backward into the cabin, behind the protecting wall. Peering out carefully, he saw a gun barrel glinting in the cruiser's door. He smiled. "Sade!" he yelled, loud enough for the blinded Mercurian on the ground to hear. "I'm giving you five seconds to tell whoever's in that cruiser to come out. Then I'm shooting you in the legs—then your good arm—then your yellow belly!"
 
The fat man groped about wildly, helpless and confused.
 
"One!" Norman counted. "Two ... three ... four—"
 
"Come out, Swart!" Sade shouted. "He'll kill me!"
 
"Throw down your gun and come out with your hands in the air," Norman ordered and to his surprise the dark-mustached man of his first acquaintance appeared in the door with his hands upraised as a pistol plopped into the mud. "Who else's in there?" Norman was taking no chances.
 
"Nobody, Mr. Norman. That's all of 'em." With excitement in her voice, Dorothy appeared behind the dark-faced Swart and Norman felt a warmth of relief that she was safe. "They picked us up right after you left," she said.
 
"Come here and hold this gun, honey," Norman said. "Miss Vaun sabotaged our ship but we've captured a whole herd of pigs and we're going to have a barbecue." Dorothy ran across the mud to him. "Keep this gun pointed at the fellow with the mustache. If he tries anything while I'm tying his hands, pull the trigger."
 
In a moment, Swart was firmly bound and sitting on the cruiser's steps. Sade and the patrolmen stood, rubbing their blind eyes and cursing. "You slimy ho............