Anna Charles was climbing into the cabin of her sleek, black space flier, which rested on the landing platform on the flat roof of the house where she lived.
She was prepared to seal the door, when a booted foot was thrust against it, preventing her action. A slow, admiring grin was turned upon her. The sullen, half-humorous line in the intruder's bronzed cheek, was like a steel wall, against which her fury and her surprise and contempt lashed in vain.
"Ron Leiccsen!" she choked. "I was ready to start for Mars! What do you want? You and your negative talk!"
Ron entered the ship's cabin. "To Mars, then," he drawled. "But not all by yourself. You see, I've changed my mind, Miss Charles. About half the colonists will stay on Titan, no matter what advice is given, though I hope they'll have sense enough to get most of the kids out. Result of this stubbornness, as far as they're concerned—well—Arne Reynaud's shipload of I-don't-know-what is the one barely possible salvation. So, not being able to rescue my friends with argument, I have no choice. If I deserted them now, I'd only prove myself to be the yellow rat you seem to think I am. Anyway, this trick of bringing that ship back from Mars, is a real, man-size job."
Deliberately, Ron closed the flier's door. He worked the controls. The ship shot up over the blackened, smoke-wreathed plains of Leiccsenland, where splendid corn and grain had grown, under the stimulus of special vitalizing radiations, mixed with the ordinary light and heat that Bart Mallory's sun-ray globes emitted.
In a twinkling, Leiccsenland and Titan were dwindling away, below. In brief minutes, even the bulk of giant Saturn and his Rings and ten glowing moons were shrinking away astern. Ahead was the tiny sun, Mars and Earth and Venus completely lost in its rays.
"Pray for speed, Miss Charles," Ron grated grimly. "Pray that we make this trip in time! And that Arne Reynaud's idea is something better than the froth of an addled brain!"
Their velocity was demoniac. But the distance they had to go was tremendous. They plotted a course across the orbit of Jupiter, and through the dangerous Belt of Asteroids. Luckily, Mars and Saturn, in their respective orbital positions, were near their closest possible approach to each other. So the journey was about as short as it could ever be.
The spacial stars leered sardonically, and Ron and Anna stuck to their posts like fiends, charting, piloting, keeping watch for meteors in that dangerous region of cosmic debris, the Asteroid Belt. There was no time for quarreling, there was no time for sentiment, there was little enough time to eat, and only moments for sleep.