: Peril Orbit by Wedlake C J - Science fiction; Short stories; Survival Fiction; Space ships Fiction

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PERIL ORBIT

Caught in the sun! The young pilot stared at the mass of angry flame--wondering why his training wouldn't let him give up.

Across the blazing face of the sun moved a round dark speck, a tiny, one-man space ship. It was very small, very close, and utterly helpless. The side facing the sun glowed dull red.

Inside, Jim MacDonald stood glumly regarding the thermometer on the pilot compartment bulkhead. Sweat made dark patches on the light blue of his uniform and ran in beads down his forehead. He rubbed his arm across his face. The thermometer read over two hundred. He shook his head slowly. It couldn't be that hot, heat must be conducting along the magnesium bulkhead to the instrument.

Jim ran his fingers through his hair to brush back the damp strands that clung to his forehead. The hand came away with little droplets clinging to his fingertips. He wiped it across his pants, and tapped the thermometer again. The pointer stayed where it was, stuck against the peg.

"About one forty-five," he guessed aloud, and turned to walk with a slow, dragging step across to the pilot's seat. Weakly he slumped down with his arms dangling loose over the chair arms, knuckles almost touching the deck. He sat very still trying to ignore the temperature in the compartment, but the hot stifle wrapped around him and his chest heaved in a sigh.

Jim MacDonald was done for and he knew it. The thermo-couple to the outside skin showed three thousand degrees. The inside cooling system had not been built for this and had long since ceased to cope with the heat. There seemed to be no use continuing his grim little existence, or facing the worse smother of heat to come.

Yet, driven by the dull automatism of training and habit, he listlessly swung the stand with the ship's log over before him and noted his temperature readings. Then he critically reread what he had already written.

A few days ago, he had been using the gravitational field of the sun as a booster to help fling the little ship from Earth to Venus. In the mighty field, a space warp had funneled out, caught him, and sucked the ship toward the blazing maw.

The struggle to escape was a masterpiece of calculation. He had figured with such a nicety that his fuel had run out just at the moment the jet tubes at the rear became molten lumps on the ship's skin. He had escaped the warp. But it was a futile thing now, for the ship swung around the sun fuelless, inoperative, in a tight orbit that had a little initial inward momentum.

He had tried to radio for help, but radioing from where he was, was like trying to signal from the heart of an atomic bomb; if a signal got through, it would be only a part of the meaningless jabber of static that always came from here. And if the little black speck were seen, it would only be taken for a stray meteorite moving across the sun's incandescent face.

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