Even as he spoke, the usually cynical young machinist was aware that he was not talking much like himself. Once he'd denounced Arne Reynaud. But then things had been different. Retreat to Earth, in favor of which he had argued, had still been possible for everybody, then. Now all those who had remained behind were prisoners, and you had to make the best of a bad situation. You had to find hope where you could, even if its basis was only the word of a dreamy old horticulturist. He was relieved to see Anna nod agreement before she left him. "Okay, Ron," she whispered. "I'll try to endure it." Her dark eyes were misty and strange, as she continued: "And I'll say 'darling,' too, because I think you meant it as I do. Maybe you're right. I guess we should wait, before we try to escape to the hills. But I've sort of lost faith in Arne Reynaud." Ron kissed Anna then, and let her walk away toward one of the women's barracks. But all the time he was thinking of her words--lost faith. And what a tragic let-down it would be, if Arne Reynaud's scheme proved fruitless. That daring race across the void to Mars, to bring in the _Barbarian_ and its unknown cargo. The eluding of the Callistan ships by facing death in a dive into the incredible grandeur of Saturn's Rings. The sand-blasting by those tiny meteors, changing the freighter's black-painted hull, the obvious mark of a terrestrial ship, to a polished, gleaming, Acharian disguise! These things were all triumphs in themselves. But if Arne Reynaud's brown, chaffy dust, sprinkled over Titan's surface, failed to turn Callistan conquest into defeat, then all this luck and effort was for nothing! Then the Titan Colony might just as well not have been established! The frozen atmosphere and water of the far-flung world might just as well never have been thawed! The building of the sun-ray towers had been futile, then. Anna Charles and he, Ron Leiccsen, might just as well never have met and quarreled and fallen in love! For Acharians, with their gray fur and beady eyes, and harsh, mocking, inhuman laughter, would rule forever here then, and their human slaves would be worked until the last of them had dropped, or had been destroyed. So, in increasing bitterness, time passed for Ron Leiccsen, in spite of his will to be patient. It was daylight, always, of course, with the sun-globes glowing eternally, just as they had in the old days, before the conquest. The tiny sun itself would creep slowly across the sky, and set, as Titan revolved around Saturn. A great, long day, like the day of Earth's moon; for, like the latter, Titan rotated only once on its axis, every time it completed a journey around its parent planet. But all this made no difference. There was no night--only the brief sleep-periods in the ever lasting light of the Mallory towers. * * * * *