Well, Biggs hadn't said anything about an allegiance with the crew, but it looked like a great opportunity to stir up a mild case of mutiny. So I said placidly, "Sorry, Chief, but I can't do anything about it. Take a gander through your perilens. You see that big red thing blazing out in front of us? That's what's causing the heat."
Garrity gasped. "Ye—ye mean the Sun, Donovan?"
"We're going to pass it," I told him, "at a distance of only ten million miles. Figure it out for yourself." And I hung up.
Then Doug Enderby called from the mess-hall. I gave him a dose of the same medicine. Then Harkness. He screamed like a stuck pig, and began demanding a change of trajectory. I told him, "Don't squawk to me about it; tell Gilchrist. He laid the course."
And I had just blanked the screen when in raced Gilchrist himself, followed by Cap Hanson, Diane, and Dick Todd.
"All right, Sparks!" bellowed the efficiency expert, "What are you up to now? I'll see that you get busted out of the service for this! Rank disobedience, conspiracy to break shipboard morale, plotting with an imprisoned officer, deliberate sabotage—"
Yeah—Biggs was right! Major Horatio Gilchrist was a nice guy, in a repulsive sort of way. I glared at him.
"Just a moment, Major!" I said boldly. "If you mean this heat, you'd better hunt yourself up another victim. You know perfectly well Lt. Biggs is in durance vile. And as for my having done anything, why—how could I? You assumed complete control of all electrical equipment."
Gilchrist raged, "But—but this heat! Somebody has made the ship unbearably hot again—"
"Somebody?" I asked him shrewdly, "or some thing? I guess you've forgotten, Major, that our real peril—of which Mr. Biggs warned you—is our proximity to the Sun."