Read The Overlords of War for Free Online

walking off and just dumping her. It’s very insulting.”
    She smiled again and he relaxed. Without being able to say why, he felt he could trust this girl. If it was really her duty to make strangers welcome, she had plainly been selected with great care.
    He turned his head and saw for the second time the enormous pyramidal mushroom of Dyoto, seeming to balance on the two glittering columns of the twin vertical river. The sea, in great slow heaves that indicated a vast ocean beyond, came to gnaw at an endless beach. The sky was almost empty. A faint iridescence, like the ill-defined cloud above a waterfall, surrounded the summit of the city.
    “What do you want to know about me?” he asked suddenly.
    “About your past, nothing, Mr. Corson,” she answered. “It’s your future which concerns us.”
    “Why?”
    “You honestly don’t know?”
    He shut his eyes for a moment. “No. I don't know anything about my future.”
    “I see.” A pause. “Would you like some smoke?”
    She was offering him an oval case. Curious, he took from it a cigarette-like tube, set it to his lips, and sucked, expecting it to light of its own accord. But nothing happened. Antonella held an igniter toward him, and at the moment when it uttered its flame a brief and very bright light dazzled him.
    “What are you planning to do?” the girl asked in a soft voice.
    He passed his hand across his eyes and filled his lungs with smoke. Amazing! This was genuine tobacco—if he hadn’t forgotten what that tasted like after smoking the sad dried seaweed which had taken its place in a world at war.
    “Get off this planet,” he said impulsively, and at once bit his lip, too late. A luminous spot was floating before his eyes as though the brilliant reflection the metal shell of the igniter had flashed onto his retinas had stamped them with a tiny and indecipherable design. He suddenly caught on and crushed the cigarette out against the side of the vessel. He pressed his fingers on his eyelids so hard that he saw rockets, whole salvoes of them, and nova stars. His right hand slid toward his gun. That flash from the igniter had not just been a reflection. Its hypnotic effect, probably combined with a drug in the cigarette, had been intended to make him talk. So much for his combat reflexes! They must have been dulled by the placidity of Dyoto. Still, his training had made him able to resist attacks on this level.
    “You’re very tough, Mr. Corson,” Antonella said in a calm tone. “But I doubt whether you’re tough enough to get off this world.” “Why didn’t you cog that your little trick would fail?” He heard his voice harsh with anger.
    “Who said it had failed?” She was smiling as pleasantly as when she invited him on board.
    “All I said was that I plan to quit this planet. Is that all you wanted to know?”
    “Maybe. Now we’re sure it really is your intention.’'
    “And are you going to try and stop me?”
    “I don’t see how we can. You’re armed and dangerous. We merely wish to advise against it.”
    “In my own interests, of course.”
    “Of course.”
    The floater was losing height and speed. Above a small stream it halted, sank down, landed gently on sand. Its rim subsided like melting wax. Antonella jumped to the ground and stretched herself, sketching a dance step.
    “Romantic here, isn’t it?” she said, picking up a polyhedral shell that might have belonged to a sea urchin. An alien sea urchin, Corson reminded himself. After weighing it in her hand for a moment, she tossed it into the waves which were washing around her bare feet.
    “So you don’t like this world?”
    Corson shrugged. “It’s a little decadent for my taste. Too mysterious beneath its placid surface.”
    “I imagine you prefer war, violence, plenty of action. Maybe you’ll find some of that if you stay, though.”
    “Love and war?” he said sarcastically, recalling what he had said to Floria.
    “Love? Why not?”
    She had lowered