"I know. My apologies, Lucky. Meanwhile we have very little time to do anything. We'll have to strike at the heart instantly. A squadron of ships sent to the key asteroid Lucky has told us of-"

"No," said Lucky. "No good."

"Why do you say that?"

"We don't want to start a war, even if it's with a victory. That's what they want to do. Look here, Uncle Hector, the pirate, Dingo, might have burned me down right there on the asteroid. Instead, he had orders to set me adrift in space. For a while I thought that was to make my death look like an accident. Now I feel it was intended to anger the Council. They were going to broadcast the fact they had killed a Councilman, not hide it, goading us into a premature attack. One of the reasons for the Ceres Raid might have been to insure an added provocation."

"And if we do start the war with a victory?"

"Here on this side of the Sun? And leave Earth on the other side stripped of important units of the fleet? With Sirian ships waiting at Ganymede, also on the other side of the Sun? I predict that it would be a very costly victory. Our best bet is not to start a war, but to prevent one."

"How?"

"Nothing will happen until Anton's ship reaches Ganymede. Suppose we intercept him and prevent the meeting-"

"Interception is a long chance," said Conway doubtfully.

"Not if Z go. The Shooting Starr is faster and has better Ergometrics than any ship in the fleet."

"You go?" cried Conway.

"It would be unsafe to send fleet units. The Sirians on Ganymede would have no way of being certain an attack wasn't heading their way. They'd have to take counteraction and that would mean the very war we're trying to avoid. The Shooting Starr would look harmless to them. It would be one ship. They'd stay put."

Henree said, "You're overeager, Lucky. Anton has a twelve-hour head start. Even the Shooting Starr can't make that up."

"You're wrong. It can. And once I catch them, Uncle Gus, I think I can force the asteroids into surrender. Without them Sirius won't attack and there'll be no war."

They stared at him.

Lucky said earnestly, "I've come back twice now."

"Each time by half a miracle," grumbled Conway.

"The other times I didn't know what I was tackling. I had to feel my way. This time I do know. I know exactly. Look, I'll warm up the Shooting Starr and make the necessary arrangements with the Ceres Observatory while that's taking place. You two can get on the sub-ether to Earth. Get the Co-ordinator to-"

Conway said, "I can take care of that, son. I've been dealing with government affairs before you were born. And Lucky, will you take care of yourself?"

"Don't I always, Uncle Hector? Uncle Gus?" He shook hands warmly and whirled away.

Bigman scuffed the dust of Ceres disconsolately. He said, "I've got my suit on. Everything."

"You can't go, Bigman," said Lucky. "I'm sorry."

"Why not?"

"Because I'm taking a short cut to get to Ganymede."

"So what? What kind of a short cut?"

Lucky smiled tightly. "I'm cutting through the Sun!"

He walked out on to the field toward the Shooting Starr, leaving Bigman standing there, mouth open.

Chapter 14

To Ganymede Via The Sun

A three-dimensional map of the Solar System would have the appearance of a rather flat plate. In the center would be the Sun, the dominant member of the System. It is really dominant, since it contains 99.8% of all the matter in the Solar System. In other words, it weighs five hundred times as much as everything else in the Solar System put together.

Around the Sun circle the planets. All of them revolve in nearly the same plane, and this plane is called the Ecliptic.

In traveling from planet to planet space-ships usually follow the Ecliptic. In doing so they are within the main sub-etheric beams of planetary communication and can most conveniently make intermediate stops on the way to their destination. Sometimes, when a ship is interested in speed or in escaping detection, it veers away from the Ecliptic, particularly when it must travel to the other side of the Sun.

This, Lucky thought, might be what Anton's ship was intending to do. It would lift up from the "plate" that was the Solar System, make a huge arc or bridge above the Sun, and come down to the "plate" on the other side, in the neighborhood of Ganymede. Certainly Anton must have started in that direction, or the defending forces on Ceres wouldn't have missed filming him. It was almost second nature for men to make all spationautical observations along the Ecliptic first of all. By the time they thought of turning away from the Ecliptic, Anton would have been too far away for observation.

But, thought Lucky, the chances were that Anton would not leave the Ecliptic permanently. He might have started out as though that would be the case, but he would return. The advantages in a return would be many. The asteroid belt extended completely about the Sun, in the sense that asteroids were evenly distributed all the way around. By keeping within the belt Anton could remain among the asteroids all the way to within a hundred million miles or so of Ganymede. This would mean security for him. The Terrestrial government had virtually abdicated its power over the asteroids and, except for the routes to the four large rocks, government ships did not penetrate the area. Moreover, if one did, Anton would always be in the position of being able to call for reinforcements from some nearby asteroidal base.

Yes, thought Lucky, Anton would remain in the belt. Partly because he thought this, and partly because he had his own plans, Lucky lifted the Shooting Starr out of the Ecliptic in a shallow arc.

The Sun was the key. It was the key to the entire System. It was a roadblock and a detour to every ship man could build. To travel from one side of the System to another, a ship had to make a wide curve to avoid the Sun. No passenger ship approached closer than sixty million miles, the distance of Venus from the Sun. Even there, cooling systems were imperative for the comfort of the passengers.

Technical ships could be designed to make the trip to Mercury, the distance of which from the Sun varied from forty-three million miles in some parts of its orbit to twenty-eight million in others. Ships had to hit it at the furthest region of its retirement from the Sun. At closer than thirty million miles various metals melted.

Still more specialized ships were sometimes built for close-by solar observation. Their hulls were permeated by a strong electric field of peculiar nature which induced a phenomenon known as "pseudo-liquefaction" in the outermost molecular skin. Heat reflection from such a skin was almost total, so that only a tiny fraction penetrated into the ship. From outside such ships would appear perfect mirrors. Even so, enough heat penetrated to raise the temperature within the ship above the boiling point of water at distances of five million miles from the Sun, the closest recorded approach. Even if human beings could survive such a temperature, they couldn't survive the short-wave radiation that flooded out of the Sun and into the ship at such distances. It could kill anything living in seconds.

The disadvantage of the Sun's position with respect to space travel was obvious in the present instance, in which Ceres was on one side of the Sun while Earth and Jupiter were almost diametrically opposed on the other side. If one was in the asteroid belt, the distance from Ceres to Ganymede was about one billion miles. If the Sun could be ignored and a ship could cut straight across space through it, the distance would be only six hundred million miles, a saving of about forty per cent.