The orbit of Mercury was a boundary, a limit. Any ship that went inside it was challenging the awful power of the great solar orb. Only ships equipped with the anti-heat apparatus dared enter that zone of terrible force — and then only at great peril.
Only the fourth of the Futuremen seemed unworried. He crossed to the window, his towering metal bulk looming over them all. The same scientific genius that had created the android had shaped also this manlike metal giant, endowing him with intelligence equal to the human and with a strength far beyond anything human.
Grag’s photoelectric eyes gazed steadily from his strange metal face, into the wild shaking glare. “I don’t know what you’re jumpy about”, he said. “The Sun doesn’t bother me a bit.” He flexed his great gleaming arms. “It feels good.”
“Stop showing off”, said Otho sourly.
“You’ll burn out your circuits and we’ve better things to do than trying to cram your carcass out through the disposal lock.”
The android turned to Captain Future. “You haven’t raised Vulcan yet?”
Newton shook his head. “Not yet.”
Presently a faint aura of hazy force surrounded the little ship as it sped on — the anti-heater unit building up full power.
The terrible heat of the Sun could reach through space only as radiant vibrations. The aura generated by the anti— heaters acted as a shield to refract and deflect most of that radiant heat.
Newton touched a button. Still another filter-screen, this one the heaviest of all, slid across the window. Yet even through all the screens the Sun poured dazzling radiance.