So set the Liberty forth upon the second leg of its quest. Nor was it now a halting leg upon which they limped. For their bins were filled to the brim, "With enough fuel—" as Flick Muldoon put it—"to drive us from here to Hades and back, with lay-overs at Erewhon and Shangri-la!"
This phase of the journey was not so frenzied as had been the brief shuttle from Earth to Venus. For Mars lay not in conjunction with Earth, but in opposition to the green planet. Their course bore them sunward from Venus, inside the orbit of Mercury, then outward again two hundred million miles to where slow Mars, pursuing its inexorable course, should meet them in celestial rendezvous.
Thus the first week of their twenty day voyage was a far from pleasant experience. Nearing Venus they had experienced a sample of Sol's heat-dealing abilities. Now, as they flashed yet farther sunward, Gary Lane and his companions realized that this had been indeed but a tiny taste of what was to come.
Hour by hour the temperature within the Liberty rose as flaming radiation lashed at the cruiser's hull with scourges of flame. It scarcely mattered that the refrigerating unit strained and labored like a floundering Titan. The metal walls were unbearable to touch, and cool drinks were but a sop to bodies which oozed perspiration from every pore like desert-parched sponges.
Nor did it matter that the air-conditioning system functioned perfectly. Its vents and fans had no cool air with which to bathe their bodies. From its spouts gushed blasts of withering heat, scarcely less endurable than the thickly stagnant air of unventilated corridors. One by one the travelers shed layers of useless clothing. At their point of nearest proximity to Sol, the men on duty labored in sweat-soaked shorts, while those off duty—and Nora Powell—for modesty's sake sought the sanctuary of stripped relaxation in their private quarters.
To Gary Lane's unspacetrained eye it appeared that save for this raw discomfort the period passed without incident. Once, to be true, there was a time when it seemed they would never swing out, past, and away from the sky-filling crimson globe which is Earth's sun. And once there came a breathless moment when it seemed the Liberty choked and throbbed in mid-flight, shuddered violently ... then ploughed along her course.
But he was not spaceman enough to read meaning into these episodes. It was not until much later, when they had recrossed the Mercurial orbit and already the scorching heat was a fading memory, that Captain Hugh Warren told him how near they had come to disaster.
"Nip and tuck there for a while," he confessed, "just as we reached perigee. Even at our rate of speed I didn't think we were going to make it for a minute. And we might not have, either, if it hadn't been for O'Day."
"What are you talking about?" demanded Lane.