For a moment he adjusted the velocity dials carefully. The _Barbarian_ slowed a little, then swerved, nosing at a gradual slant toward the glory of Saturn's Rings. No inferno could have held a magnificence like this! A stupendous, murky, curving ribbon, like an inconceivable circle-saw, rotating at meteoric speed! So, certain death seemed to hurtle closer. A matter of mere instants, now.... In a second, the plunge was completed. Within the _Barbarian's_ hull, a dazing din roared suddenly. Partly like a magnified hailstorm, beating on a sheet-metal roof. Myriads of dust-grains, and tiny pebbles of meteoric iron and rock, were colliding with the freighter's hull. It seemed impossible that any ordinary meteor-armor could turn aside such an avalanche. Even Ron Leiccsen wondered that they were still alive, and that their bodies, and the steel shell of their ship were still unriddled, before he remembered why. The murk of cosmic powder swallowed them, until the Callistan battle-craft, and the stars themselves, were lost to view. Ahead, through the observation bay, only a yellowish, foggy light showed--sunshine penetrating deep into the hurtling substance of the Rings. Uncountable billions of minute particles, whirling in eternal moon-paths around the gigantic if tenuous mass of Saturn. "They can't shoot at us now," Anna shouted, straining her voice so that it might be heard above the hail-like clamor, and the gigantic hissing, soughing sound--like blowing sand--that dinned within the vessel. "They can't even see to shoot at us, through all this dust! And even if they dared follow us, they couldn't find us! But how can it be, Ron? All these meteors are traveling at planetary velocities--maybe twenty or thirty miles a second! Small as most of them are, they should still tear through the steel armor of the _Barbarian_, as though it was butter! How is it that we're still alive?" Ron was conscious of the bigness of the question, and yet the simplicity of the answer now. "Nothing to it!" he shouted back. "We approached Saturn from the right. It rotates in the same direction as does the Earth--to the right, if you consider that down lies toward the southern hemisphere, and that up, of course, lies toward the northern. So do the Rings. With but one exception, the direction of rotation is the same everywhere, for all the bodies in the solar system. And now space ships equal and exceed the velocities of planets and meteors. The _Barbarian_ was moving at many miles per second, too, paralleling the Rings, and going the same way. I adjusted our velocity a little, so that the difference between it, and that of the Rings, is very small. Relativity, Anna. And now that we've plunged into Saturn's cosmic belts, the difference in speed gives the meteors only enough relative momentum to make a lot of noise, when they strike our ship. They can't puncture us." * * * * *