* * * * *
It was hotter as they moved toward the sun. Carl was sopping. The very
air danced. Under him the chair was beginning to burn him. The cosmic
bomb was a full three hundred thousand miles inside the boiling zone.
Carl could never catch up with it. He wordlessly banked the ship in a
long half-circle that put it a hundred miles inside the boiling zone,
and then on the road out.
He poured in every ounce of power he could, while thoughts zig-zagged
crazily in his head. He had gone beyond rage. He had ascended the scale
of human emotion and he was numb.
When the ship was near Worta, he turned on Rex. "What," he said, "do
you expect to gain by this?"
"Rescue."
"What about the Wortans?"
A simmering violence burst in Rex's eyes. His muscles bulged against
his bonds. "The Wortans!" he mimicked. "The Wortans! If you love those
Wortans so much why don't you plan to live with them the rest of your
life? They never did like me, and that goes double."