"Didn't hold--over here they add such trimmings as skinning and salt to the regular psycho routine. But none of them knew anything about me, nor about how their reports were picked up, or I'd have been dead, too. But it doesn't make any difference, Fry--we're just one week too late." "What do you mean, too late? Speed it up!" His tone was rough, but the hand he placed on her arm was gentleness itself. "I'm telling you as fast as I can. I picked up his last report day before yesterday. They have missiles just as big and just as fast as ours--maybe more so--and they are going to fire one at Atlantis tonight at exactly seven o'clock." "Tonight! Holy gods!" The man's mind raced. "Yes." Kinnexa's voice was low, uninflected. "And there was nothing in the world that I could do about it. If I approached any one of our places, or tried to use a beam strong enough to reach anywhere, I would simply have got picked up, too. I've thought and thought, but could figure out only one thing that might possibly be of any use, and I couldn't do that alone. But two of us, perhaps...." "Go on. Brief me. Nobody ever accused you of not having a brain, and you know this whole country like the palm of your hand." "Steal a ship. Be over the ramp at exactly Seven Pay Emma. When the lid opens, go into a full-power 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."