Read Triplanetary for Free Online

dive, beam Artomenes—if I had a second before they blanketed my wave—and meet their rocket head-on in their own launching-tube."
    This was stark stuff, but so tense was the moment and so highly keyed up were the two that neither of them saw anything out of the ordinary in it.
    "Not bad, if we can't figure out anything better. The joker being, of course, that you didn't see how you could steal a ship?"
    "Exactly. I can't carry blasters. No woman in Norheim is wearing a coat or a cloak now, so I can't either. And just look at this dress! Do you see any place where I could hide even one?"
    He looked, appreciatively, and she had the grace to blush.
    "Can't say that I do," he admitted. "But I'd rather have one of our own ships, if we could make the approach. Could both of us make it, do you suppose?"
    "Not a chance. They'd keep at least one man inside all the time. Even if we killed everybody outside, the ship would take off before we could get close enough to open the port with the outside controls."
    "Probably. Go on. But first, are you sure that you're in the clear?"
    "Positive." She grinned mirthlessly. "The fact that I am still alive is conclusive evidence that they didn't find out anything about me. But I don't want you to work on that idea if you can think of a better one. I've got passports and so on for you to be anything you want to be, from a tube man up to an Ekoptian banker. Ditto for me, and for us both, as Mr. and Mrs."
    "Smart girl." He thought for minutes, then shook his head. "No possible way out that I can see. The sneak-boat isn't due for a week, and from what you've said it probably won't get here. But you might make it, at that. I'll drop you somewhere ..."
    "You will not," she interrupted, quietly but definitely. "Which would you rather—go out in a blast like that one will be, beside a good Atlantean, or, after deserting him, be psychoed, skinned, salted, and still alive—drawn and quartered?"
    "Together, then, all the way," he assented. "Man and wife. Tourists—-newlyweds—from some town not too far away. Pretty well fixed, to match what we're riding in. Can do?"
    "Very simple." She opened a compartment and selected one of a stack of documents. "I can fix this one up in ten minutes. We'll have to dispose of the rest of these, and a lot of other stuff, too. And you had better get out of that leather and into a suit that matches this passport photo."
    "Right. Straight road for miles, and nothing in sight either way. Give me the suit and I'll change now. Keep on going or stop?"
    "Better stop, I think," the girl decided. "Quicker, and we'll have to find a place to hide or bury this evidence."
    While the man changed clothes, Kinnexa collected the contraband, wrapping it up in the discarded jacket. She looked up just as Phryges was adjusting his coat. She glanced at his armpits, then stared.
    "Where are your blasters?" she demanded. "They ought to show, at least a little, and even I can't see a sign of them."
    He showed her.
    "But they're so tiny! I never saw blasters like that!"
    "I've got a blaster, but it's in the tail pocket. These aren't. They're air-guns. Poisoned needles. Not worth a damn beyond a hundred feet, but deadly close up. One touch anywhere and the guy dies right then. Two seconds max."
    "Nice!" She was no shrinking violet this young Atlantean spy. "You have spares, of course, and I can hide two of them easily enough in leg-holsters. Gimme, and show me how they work."
    "Standard controls, pretty much like blasters. Like so." He demonstrated, and as he drove sedately down the highway the girl sewed industriously.
    The day wore on, nor was it uneventful. One incident, in fact—the detailing of which would serve no useful purpose here—was of such a nature that at its end:
    "Better pin-point me, don't you think, on that ramp?" Phryges asked, quietly. "Just in case you get scragged in one of these brawls and I don't?"
    "Oh! Of course! Forgive me, Fry—it slipped my mind completely that you