"All right," said Kellard. "I'll tell you. I've been disinherited. That's what's wrong with me."
He would say nothing more, nor did Halfrich ask him another question, until the Y-90 was far in past the orbit of Venus and going into its pattern of approach.
"I assume," said Halfrich, "that you bear none of us any personal ill-will. If there is anything dangerous awaiting us, now would be the time to tell us."
Kellard considered. "You're going to land, I suppose, at the same spot where we crashed."
"Of course."
"Then land," said Kellard. "As far as I know, there is not a thing there to harm you."
In the scanner, he watched Mercury swing slowly toward them, a tiny crescent of white that was hard to see against the Sun. For here the Sun was a monster thing, fringed with writhing flames, paling the stars, drenching this whole area with radiation that already would have killed them but for the ship's anti-heaters.
Kellard remembered that when he had come this way before, Binetti had quoted something, a line from William Blake's poems, he had said. "The desire of the moth for the star." And that was what we were, he thought. Three little moths, going right into the furnace, and I was the only one to get out of it, but now I'm going back.