"
"I think they have been trying to keep us apart," she continued,
"for whenever you have been off duty one of the older women of Tars
Tarkas' retinue has always arranged to trump up some excuse to get
Sola and me out of sight. They have had me down in the pits below
the buildings helping them mix their awful radium powder, and make
their terrible projectiles. You know that these have to be
manufactured by artificial light, as exposure to sunlight always
results in an explosion. You have noticed that their bullets
explode when they strike an object? Well, the opaque, outer coating
is broken by the impact, exposing a glass cylinder, almost solid,
in the forward end of which is a minute particle of radium powder.
The moment the sunlight, even though diffused, strikes this powder
it explodes with a violence which nothing can withstand. If you
ever witness a night battle you will note the absence of these
explosions, while the morning following the battle will be filled at
sunrise with the sharp detonations of exploding missiles fired the
preceding night. As a rule, however, non-exploding projectiles are
used at night." [I have used the word radium in describing this
powder because in the light of recent discoveries on Earth I believe
it to be a mixture of which radium is the base.
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