Frane Lewis was no coward, but his hands began plucking nervously at the space suit. The previously tough, folds of shiny, impermeable fabric were now distended into a rock-like rigidity.
He stood up suddenly, and his feet squished in his sandals. The sweat was a puddle up over his toes. He was getting weak and thirsty. Very thirsty. He felt he must have no more water in him. He stood in a trancelike state for minutes staring blindly into the heavens. His mind wouldn't work right. He hurt. He itched. He craved water, gallons of it.
Then he stopped sweating. He had been deliberately keeping his eyes off the temperature dial, forcing his mind away from a problem he didn't understand, when he felt his face go dry. The caked streaks of salt made his skin feel stiff and itchy.
Temperature: 104.3 F.
Frane now knew he was sick. At that rate of increase he couldn't last much longer. His head was buzzing, and the fantasies of fever were flashing lights across his bleared vision. He strove to fight off the hallucinations. He focussed his eyes on the dim-faced chronometer and realized with a start that he had endured over three hours of his vigil. Perhaps he could last out. Whatever the fever was, it must ease off sometime.
He staggered to the oxygen control, eased it open to full again and watched the temperature needle for minutes. He became dazed. Then his eyes came alive again, and he stared. Temperature: 104.5 F.
His hands drifted listlessly to the control again. This time he throttled it down, down, below normal pressure. Slowly, slower than the minute hand of a watch, the needle climbed on. Why? Why?
His swollen tongue licked at dry lips. He couldn't swallow any more. Around his neck a salty puddle burned a ring of itching hell fire.
He choked down more on the air valve. It didn't make sense to him, but if more oxygen raised his temperature faster, then less should do the opposite. At 104.5 F a man doesn't always think straight.