Free Space Gypsies by Murray Leinster

happened?” he demanded fiercely.
    It was singular that he held her close, and this was the first time they’d ever acted other than decorously, but it was not the occasion for romantic speeches. He kissed her and repeated as fiercely as before, “What’s happened? What’s the matter? What’s wrong?”
    “There’s a—whine in the sky,” she said shakily. “The—the receiver picked it up. I heard it! It’s like—what you said was a slug-ship…”
    She didn’t try to release herself. He asked grimly, “How long ago?”
    “N-not long. Maybe five minutes…”
    “Then we’ve some time. If it was landing, it’d be down now. It’s making one orbit to slow down. A low orbit could take around ninety minutes. We’ve got to get Ketch and your father.”
    He kissed her and moved toward the control room. He came back and kissed her again. He vanished. Karen put her hand to her throat. She’d been frightened. But Howell had held her close and kissed her, and now her fears were dissipated. The reason for them was in no wise diminished, but nevertheless her eyes shone a little. And it could have been said that any two people of suitable age, thrown together as they had been these past three months, would either dislike each other excessively or care for each other a great deal. Karen would have denied it. She was quite sure that if she and Howell had never known each other, and their eyes had met on a crowded street, they’d have known what she was now sure of.
    Howell threw the switch of the yacht’s outside siren. Space-liners were not equipped with such gadgets as sirens, but yachts found them desirable. Landing as yachtsmen did on worlds only other yachtsmen frequented, there was need of an audible signal to guide exploring parties and hunters back to the little ships that went everywhere with no thought of danger.
    The yacht’s siren went “ Whiro-o-o! ” It would be hearable for miles. Howell came back. He put his arms around Karen again.
    “That’ll fetch them,” he said confidently. He kissed her and said, “I’ve been wanting to do this for a long time.”
    She said unevenly, “I’ve—been wanting you to.”
    “We won’t tell them for now.”
    “No… not for now…”
    It was insanity, of course. The Marintha was crippled and unarmed, and there was a slug-ship descending for a landing somewhere partway around this world. And slug-ships shot on sight at vessels like the Marintha . They made booby traps to murder humans, and there could be no doubt that the landing slug-ship would make the space-yacht a target for monstrous blaster-bolts of which one had already crippled her past repair.
    The state of things offered no excuse for hope, unless it was that three-quarters of a mile away there were four dummies made from clothing of the Marintha ’s crew. They lay, those dummies, in a blasted area in which nothing grew. If the slug-ship should notice them—which was doubtful—it might assume that all those who travelled in the Marintha had been killed and the yacht needn’t be destroyed before examination. But if it didn’t act on that assumption…
    The siren wailed again. The sound would carry over the jungles of an unnamed planet, over hills and hollows, beating upon mountain-flanks and reflected from precipices. Breen and Ketch would hear it and assuredly hasten back. But in the meantime, Karen felt the magnificent uplift of spirit which comes to a girl when she becomes admittedly the most important thing in a chosen man’s life.
    They talked pure romantic nonsense, which was doubly foolish because there were things urgently needing to be done. But none of the things that needed to be done were really possible; therefore it would have been quadruply foolish to put aside their sudden and urgent rejoicing in each other’s existence. It would last, it seemed, for only a very short time, but that was all the more reason to rejoice while it was still possible.
    The siren wailed again. Its