Ron decided to put the question of the cargo's value as a weapon out of his mind. Arne Reynaud's mysterious idea, in which he still felt scant confidence, would either fail or succeed—that is, if they got through to Titan. And there was no use seeking an easily possible unhappy disillusionment, now. Not when the cargo was the only hope of Titan Colony! He and Anna were pledged to deliver it, and to scatter it over and around Leiccsenland. That was their part of the job. If they accomplished the job, without any hoped-for result against the men of Achar—well—he couldn't help that.

They were only a million miles from Saturn, when danger finally became visible. Anna, at the lookout telescope, gave the warning, her lips atremble.

"I see them," she said. "Bright silvery dots against space. Callistan ships, maybe fifty of them, ahead and to port about a million and a quarter miles. They're coming this way, rapidly."

"They must have spotted us already, then," Ron stated with a slow, surly nod. "Even a black ship reflects enough sunlight to be seen easily from a long way off, through a telescope."

He moved the guide-levers, heading the ship to the right of Saturn's colossal, whirling bulk. Titan was to the left of the planet now, and far out.

After all his thinking, Ron had only one pathetic shadow of an idea to use against the enemy. By going to the right of Saturn, instead of to the left, he was avoiding the direct route to Titan, cherishing the forlorn hope that such action might confuse the Acharians a little, and perhaps enable the Barbarian to circle the gigantic gaseous world, and somehow reach Titan from the other side.

The engines of the freighter were throbbing and vibrating hideously, feeding every ounce of power they could produce, to the gravity plates, that hurled their propelling beams of reversed force, astern. Speed! Speed! Ron's fingernails bit savagely into his palms, as he guided the old freighter on, as fast as he could make her go.

"The Callistan ships are trying to close in ahead of us," Anna announced from the telescope.

"I guess they see, then, what I'm trying to do," Ron commented bitterly. "And they're twenty-percent more speedy than we are."

He didn't change his course. To do so would have been useless. He just kept driving the old merchantman on, determined to make it as good a race as possible.

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