* * * *
Two hours went past in the crowded, noisy place. Thorn had been forced to swallow more of the musty, powerful fungus wine than she wanted, and she was glad when night fell outside, for Kribe was a little drunk and was giving her a candid opinion of the political situation. And a thin faced Saturnian nearly seemed to be listening.
'The Chairwoman keeps saying we've got to arm to the teeth and take territory from the inner worlds because we're poor,' Kribe declared. 'But it seems to me we're poor because we spend everything on this big fleet of battle-cruisers we've built.'
'Shut up, Kribe;'Thorn warned anxiously. 'That kind of talk will get you into trouble.'
Kribe winked at her. 'It's all right, lass. I know you feel the same way. I saw your partner choke off a laugh on our way here, when we said, ‘The Chairwoman is always right.’'
Thorn knew the peril of such talk, and determined the time had come for the Planeteers to get started, since it was already full night outside. Sua Av and Gunda rose quickly at her nod.
'We've got to be on our way, Kribe,' Thorn told the big hunter. 'Thanks a lot for what you've done for us.'
She and her two comrades started for the door. But the thin-faced Saturnian she had noticed barred their way.
'Stand where you are!' snapped this individual. 'You three and that hunter are under arrest—authority of the SP.'
As she spoke, the thin-faced Saturnian turned back her jacket to show a viridiurn badge with the dreaded emblem.
'Secret police!' gasped Kribe, her face livid.
The whole place was frozen with terror, every woman staring silently, for throughout the four worlds of the League, the secret police of Hasna Trask was a name to inspire fright.
The SP woman was drawing a pocketaudio from her jacket. So sure was she of the power of her organization's name that she had not troubled to draw a weapon.
'You'll get a year in the mines of Pluto for your subversive talk,' she told Thorn and the others with thin-lipped satisfaction. Then she spoke into the little audio. 'Forty-three-twelve calling headquarters. Send—' Thorn's fist crashed on her jaw, at that moment. The SP woman went down in a crumpled heap, and a cry of fear and horror went up from the crowd in the place.
'Come on, Kribe!' yelled Thorn, grabbing the dazed hunter's arm. She rushed out into the street, Sua Av and the Mercurian at her heels.
The four of them plunged down the dark, dingy little thoroughfare, hearing an excited roar of voices from behind. The streets were far less crowded now, and the mists had cleared a little with the stopping of the rain. The stupendous bow of the rings blazed white overhead, and Titan was rising.
'Good God, we're all in for it now!' gasped Kribe as they stopped a few blocks away. 'You hit an SP woman!'
'We'll take care of ourselves,' Thorn rapped. 'You'd better get back out into your fungus forests and stay there till this blows over.'
Kribe grasped at the suggestion eagerly. She gripped Thorn's hand a moment in her huge paw.
'Thanks for pulling me out of there, lass,' she said fervently, and then hastened away.
Thorn started with her two comrades in a run through the darker cross-streets, heading toward the huge pile of the distant citadel that frowned black against the stars.
'This is fine. This makes things perfect!' Gunda Welk was growling as they ran. 'Now we've got all the secret police in Saturnopolis looking for us. That's all we needed.'
'Shut up and keep running,' Thorn panted. 'We've got to get into the citadel before the SP net picks us up.'
'Get into the citadel?' cried the Mercurian. 'Are you still crazy enough to think we can?'
'You talk too much, Gunda,' laughed Sua Av breathlessly. 'Save your wind-you'll need it.'
They were all gasping from the strain of their efforts against the greater gravitation when Joan Thorn halted at the corner of two dark streets of warehouses, a mile from the citadel.
Thorn looked swiftly around to make sure they were unobserved, then stooped and tugged at something in the cement paving. It was a chromaloy metal plate that came loose to reveal a dark, yawning cavity below.
'Quick, down with you!' she ordered.
Bewilderedly, the Venusian and Mercurian dropped down through the aperture. Thorn followed, quickly replacing the plate above them.
They were in dank, absolute darkness, bitterly cold. But Thorn got out her fluoric flash-lamp and its little red beam showed they stood in a big cement tube at whose bottom ran a stream of icy water.
'This is one of the city's drains,' Thorn said rapidly. 'They have to have a whole network of them, to run off the water from these perpetual rains. I learned about them when I first visited Saturn with an official Earth mission, years ago before Hasna Trask came to power.
'There are drains beneath the citadel that open out into these main ones,' Thorn continued tautly. 'That's our way into the palace!'
'Up the drains?' Sua Av said startledly. 'Why, I never thought of any way as simple as that.'
It's too simple,' rasped Gunda Welk. 'Do you think these people are so dumb that they won't have planted some kind of death-trap to keep intruders from entering the citadel thus?'
Thorn's jaw hardened. 'We'll have to take that chance. Lann's in there, and this is our only way in to him.'
She started along the great drain, the red beam lighting their way. The cold, dank air and the icy water they splashed through were freezing. Shadowy things scuttled away ahead of the Planeteers, as they pushed on through the gloomy tunnels toward the guarded stronghold of the dictator.
The Three Planeteers For All Page 19