"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."
"Rescue," growled Bull. "That's not our kind of job. We're not outfitted for it. If that bunch of stuffed shirts didn't know enough to navigate through the corona and into the chromosphere, they deserve to die. Why should we risk our necks to save them?"
"We're the only ship near enough to stand a chance of reaching them during the next couple hours. But that's not all. Alistar of Cygnus is on board."
"Alistar of Cygnus?" one of the officers questioned. "Who the hell is he?"
"An inspector from Intergalactic Federation Headquarters. Remember that container of electron stripped nuclei found in Federation Headquarters Building last month?"
The men all nodded.