CHAPTER XXIV. THE CRIMSON RAINBOW. “You shall interpret for me, child Nereid, if we wish to talk at a distance.” Rhana stood before us. “And you, Jeff Grant, are you ready? You shall see me, the great woman conqueror!” She was garbed rather differently now. At first I did not understand the reason. Ah, but I was soon to know! The same sheathlike body shield; same type of cloak; same grotesque metal headdress. But on her gray bare limbs a strip of flexible metal was fastened, hinged at the knee to bend as she walked; a metal plate like a broad collar was on her neck and shoulders. The chains that usually dangled from her wrists were gone. Along her arms, as on her legs, were strips of gray metal, wound, it seemed, with tiny white wire. She stood regarding me with impassive face. “You are ready, Jeff Grant?” “Yes.” She moved away. I thought as she walked, that her arms were joined to her body-shield by folds of black fabric. It was late afternoon. Against the fading daylight Rhana wore dark-lensed glasses. She offered a pair to me, but I refused them. She adjusted a pair on Nereid. Strange woman! Impassive, expressionless now; calmly imperturbable. Yet within her there was that obvious vanity. I should see her triumph; she wished even Nereid to witness it. We boarded the aëro. A crowd of Gian women stood silently in the passage and watched us off. We lifted gently; moved forward, up and into the afternoon twilight of the Lowlands. We were all in the forward control room. There seemed no one aboard save us who were here. Nereid and I, and Rhana; and two Gian women, and two men. One of the men was Bhool. He had no glasses. He sat crouched in a corner, shading his eyes, and did not speak. Occasionally Rhana issued him some gruff order. He moved to obey, and stumbled in the light. The others all wore the glasses. The two women were at the controls; the other man stood alert with a weapon upon Nereid and me. The control room was about twenty feet square and ten feet high to its curved cabin roof. It occupied the full width of the aëro, except for the narrow deck which flanked it on both sides. There were several wide transparent window panes. Looking forward to where the bowsprit glowed luminous ahead of us was a broad streamline window, V-shaped. The controls were there on a table--a row of small switches and domelike buttons, with an array of strange instruments of navigation on a board over them. To one side, in the front pane, a projector was mounted, a bowl-like black projector with a grid of wires across its face. Its mechanism stood separate on a table near it--a range-finder like a small telescope swung in a universal; dials, and levers, and a coil, with wires to a storage tank that lay along the wall.