"Warm?" she asked. "The cooling units are going full blast. The vision plates are all shuttered, but if you want to look, I've swung dark glass into place."
She gestured to one of the darkened vision plates, and her fingers slid to a button that opened the shutters. Barnard looked and closed his eyes when he saw the monstrous body that was the sun.
"I've seen enough," he assured her. "Where are we?"
"Inside the orbit of Mercury. We'll be closer before we're farther away."
Barnard studied her. At the most dangerous part of their journey, where space was filled with cosmic debris plunging into the sun, she had lost her hunted look and worked with a graceful nonchalance. She seemed actually to be enjoying the whole thing.
The murderous forces of radiant energy pounded at and through the heavily insulated hulls. Barnard mopped his sweat-soaked face and waited for the metal of the space ship to ignite. He stared at the girl and wondered how she could be so happy and poised, though she was as bedraggled as he was. Was her mind gone, too?
He decided so when she told him, much later:
"Congratulations, Mr. Barnard. Right now you and I are closer to the sun than any other human beings ever have been—"
He studied her face.
She stared through the darkened glass into the inferno. "Except," she said thoughtfully, "for a few unfortunate expeditions that fell into it."