Half rising from the pilot-seat, he was looking, too. They couldn't see much of their ship's flanks from the little window, but what they could see of its great, spreading guide-fins was plenty.
Those guide-fins had been deeply black, once. Now they were almost as bright and shiny as a polished mirror.
"When we were in the Rings," Ron explained, "all those fine meteors pounding against the Barbarian rubbed off every last speck of her black lacquer, and gave the metal underneath a swell polish, besides! I knew that it had to happen, of course. It was just a very ancient machinist's trick, with a new, cosmic wrinkle. In effect, this old tub of ours was just sand-blasted, Anna."
"Why, certainly!" the girl exclaimed in pleased startlement. "I should have guessed it, too! The Barbarian is bright silver now, instead of black! From a distance the Callistans think it's one of their own silvery ships! And so, naturally, they don't bother us!"
"Uhuh," Ron chuckled. "So far, so good! Now maybe we can concentrate on delivering our mysterious cargo, as per Arne Reynaud's instructions. It's all up to him, now! We're going to find out whether he was crazy, or, to put it mildly, truly clever!"
Disguised as it was, the Barbarian reached Titan's far upper atmosphere without trouble. Evidence of fighting could be seen, many miles beneath. Puffs of explosions in the weak sunshine. Silver ships flying, spreading final destruction over the richest farm country in the solar system—richest because of those scattered sun-ray towers and their secondary, plant-stimulating radiations, and the fact that Bart Mallory, the inventor, permitted the patent rights to be used only for the Leiccsenland Colony.
A few of those towers were shattered, now; but most of them still shed their sunlike brilliance. The Callistans needed them, if conquest was completed, to maintain the warm climate and the fertility of the farms. So, in general, they had avoided their destruction. And when, as now, the sun itself shone during the day, it was useless for the Earthians to shut off the globes for blackout protection.
