TheIsisapproached Traleefrom the night side, and at a time when the planet's spaceport faced the sun. Tralee was not a base for Mekinese war-craft. To the contrary, it was strictly a conquered world. It was desirable for Mekinese ships to be able to appear as if magically and without warning in its skies. There would be no far-ranging radars on the planet except at its solitary spaceport. Mekinese ships could come out of overdrive, time a solar-system-drive approach to arrive at Tralee's atmosphere in darkness, and be hovering menacingly overhead when dawn broke. Such an appearance had strong psychological effects upon the population.
Bors used the same device with modifications.
His ship plunged out of the sunrise and across half a continent, descending as it flew. When it reached the planet's capital city, there had been less than a minute between the first notification by radar and its naked-eye visibility. When it came into sight at the spaceport it was less than four thousand feet high and it went sweeping for the landing-grid at something over mach one. Its emergency-rockets roared. It decelerated smoothly and crossed the upper rim of the great, lacy metal structure with less than a hundred feet to spare. In fractions of an additional minute it was precisely aground some fifty yards from the spaceport office. Steam and smoke rose furiously from where its rocket-flames had played.
Lock-doors opened. Briskly moving landing-parties trotted across the ground toward the grid-control building. There were two ships already in the spaceport. One was a Mekinese guard-ship of approximately the armament of theIsis. Weapons trained swiftly upon it. Missiles roared across the half-mile of distance. They detonated, chemical explosives only. The Mekinese guard-ship flew apart. What remained was not truly identifiable as a former ship. It was fragments.
Bors asked curtly, "Grid office?"
The landing-party was inside. A small tumult came out of a speaker. A voice said:
"All secure in the grid office, sir."
"Hook in to planetary broadcast, declare a first-priority emergency, and run your tape," commanded Bors.
He said over the ship's speakers, "Everything going well so far. Prize crew, take the cargo-ship. Keep the crew aboard. Then report."
Ten men poured out of the grounded light cruiser's starboard port and trotted on the double toward the other ship aground. The weapons on Bors's ship did not bear upon it.
The sun shone. Clouds drifted tranquilly across the sky. Masses of smoke from the demolition-missiles that had smashed the guard-ship rose, curled and very slowly dissipated. Ten men entered the bulbous cargo-ship.
Up to now the entire affair had consumed not more than five minutes, from the appearance of a blip on a spaceport radar screen, to the beginning of a full-volume broadcast. Bors turned on the receiver and listened to the harsh voice—especially chosen from among the crew—which now came out of every operating broadcast receiver on the planet.
"Notice to the people of Tralee! There is aground on Tralee a ship with no home planet nor any loyalty except to its hatred of Mekin. We were part of the fleet of Kandar until that fleet was destroyed. Now we fight Mekin alone! We are pirates. We are outcasts. But we still have arms to defend ourselves with! We demand...."
A voice said curtly in Bors's ear, "Cargo-ship secured, sir."
"Take off on rockets and maneuver as ordered," said Bors. "Then rendezvous as arranged."
He returned his attention to the broadcast. It was a deliberately savage, painstakingly desperate, carefully terrifying message to the people of Tralee. It demanded supplies and arms on threat of destroying the city around it. A single one of its combat-missiles, as a matter of fact, could have done a good job of destruction on this metropolis.
The broadcast would be a shattering experience to men who had reconciled themselves to subjugation by the rulers of Mekin. The planet Tralee was now governed for the benefit of Mekin by the kind of men who would do such work. They knew that they could stay in office only so long as Mekin upheld them. To hear their protectors denounced if only by a single voice....
There was a monstrous roaring outside. The cargo-ship took off for the skies. It was a thousand feet high before the weapons on theIsisstirred. It seemed to those below that the pirate crew was taken unawares by the cargo-ship's escape. That was part of Bors's plan.
A weapon of the groundedIsisroared. A missile hurtled after the fugitive, and missed. It went on past its apparent target and did not even detonate at nearest proximity, as it should have done. It vanished, and the cargo-ship continuedto rise in seemingly panicky fashion. It slanted from its headlong lift, and curved away and darted for emptiness at its maximum acceleration. A second missile from the fighting-ship missed. The cargo-ship dwindled, and dwindled, and now theIsisappeared to take deliberate measurements of the distance and acceleration of its target. It might be assumed that its radars needed to be readjusted from the long-range-finding required in space, to the shorter-range measurements called for now.
Something plunged after the fleeing cargo-boat, by now merely a pin-point in the blue. The rising object moved so swiftly that it was invisible. Then it detonated, and the fumes of the explosion blotted out the fugitive. When they cleared, the sky was empty.
There had now been a lapse of less than ten minutes from the first sighting of theIsisscreaming toward the spaceport. The guard-ship had been destroyed and the cargo-ship which seemed to flee had apparently been destroyed. When someone had leisure to think, it would appear that the cargo-boat's crew had overcome the armed party which entered it and then taken the foolish course of flight.
Bors waited, listening absently. A voice:
"All clear on board the prize, sir. The cargo seems to be mostly foodstuffs, sir. Proceeding to rendezvous as ordered. Off."
Bors nodded automatically and resumed listening to the broadcast. Matters were going well. Everything had gone through with the precision of clockwork, which meant simply that Bors had planned in detail something that had never been anticipated and so had not been counter-planned. Before anyone on Tralee realized that anything had happened, everything had happened—theIsisaground, the guard-ship demolished, the grid taken over, and a fleeing cargo-ship apparently destroyed in the upper atmosphere. And a harsh voice now rasped out of loudspeakers everywhere, uttering threats, cursing Mekin—few could believe their ears—and rousinghopes which Bors knew regretfully were bound to be disappointed.
The rasping broadcast cut off in the middle of a syllable. Somebody had come to believe that he really heard what he thought he heard. Now there would be reaction. At the sunrise-line on Tralee only a handful of people were awake. They were dumbfounded. Where people breakfasted, the intentionally savage voice made food seem unimportant. Where it was midday, waves of violent emotion swept over the land.
"Call the defense forces," Bors commanded the grid office, by transmitter. "They'll be Mekinese—Mekinese-officered, anyhow. We don't want them to get ideas of attacking us, so identify us as the pirate shipIsisand order all police and garrison troops to stay exactly where they are. Say we've got all our fusion-bombs armed to go off in case of an artillery-fire hit."
This was the most valid of all possible threats against the most probable form of attack. Fusion-bombs could be used against enemies in space, or for the annihilation of a population, but they could not be used in police operations against a subject people. To coerce people one must avoid destroying them. So while a ship the size of theIsiscould—and did—carry enough confined hellfire in its missile warheads to destroy an area hundreds of miles across, the occupation troops of Mekin could not use such weapons. They needed blast-rifles for minor threats and artillery for selective destruction. In any case no sane man would try to destroy theIsisaground after an announcement that its bombs were armed, and that they were fused to explode.
"Now repeat the demand for stores," ordered Bors. "We might as well stock up. Speed is essential. We can't use stores they've time to booby-trap or poison. Give them twenty minutes to start the stuff arriving. Demand fuel, extra rocket-fuel especially. Remind them about our bombs."
He waited. Speakers beside him could inform him of any action anywhere outside or inside the ship. The landing-party in the spaceport building reported as it went through thespaceport records, picking up such information concerning Mekinese commercial regulations, identification-calls and anticipated ship-movements as might prove useful elsewhere. The rasping voice began to broadcast again. It went on for fifteen seconds and cut off.
"Tell the government broadcasting system that if they stop relaying our broadcast," said Bors, "we'll heave a bomb into the police barracks and the supply-depots."
He heard the threat issued and very soon thereafter an agitated voice announced to the people of Tralee that a pirate ship was in possession of the planet's spaceport and that it insisted upon broadcasting to the planet's people. It was considered unwise to refuse. Therefore the broadcast would continue, but of course citizens could turn off their sets.
There came a roar of anger and the harsh-voiced broadcaster returned to the air. His taped broadcast had run out. Now he bellowed such subversive profanity directed at the officials of Tralee-under-Mekin that Bors smiled sourly. It was not good for Mekinese prestige to have a subject people know that one ship could defy the empire, even for minutes. It was still less desirable to have the members of the puppet government described as dogs of particularly described breeds, of particularly described characteristics, and particular lack of legitimacy. Bors had chosen for his broadcast a man of vivid imagination and large vocabulary. He did not want theIsisto appear under discipline, lest it seem to act under orders. He wanted to create the impression of men turned pirates because everything they lived for had been destroyed, and who now were running amok among the planets Mekin had subjugated.
The broadcast was not incitement to revolt, because Bors's ship was posing as the only survivor of a planet's fleet. But it conveyed such contempt and derision and hatred of all things Mekinese that for months to come men would whisper jokes based on what anIsiscrewman had said on Tralee's air. The respect the planet's officials craved would drop below its former low level.
Time passed. Bors, of course, could not send a landing-party anywhere, lest it be sniped. He had actually accomplished the purpose for which he'd landed, the getting of a shipload of food out to space, the announcement of the destruction of Kandar's fleet and the spreading of contempt and derision for Mekin in Tralee. Now he had to keep anyone from suspecting the importance of the cargo-ship. The demand for stores was a cover-up for things already done. But that cover-up had to be completed.
Vehicles appeared at the edge of the landing-grid. Figures advanced individually, waving white flags. Bors sent men out with small arms to get their messages. These were the supplies he'd demanded. Food. Rocket-fuel. More food.
The vehicles trundled into the open and stopped. Men from theIsiswaved away the drivers and took over the trucks. They brought most of them to the ship's side. A petty-officer came into the control room and saluted.
"Sir," he said briskly. "One of the drivers told me his load of grub had time-bombs in it. The secret police use time-bombs and booby-traps here, sir, to keep the people terrified. He says the bombs will go off after we're out in space, sir."
"What did you do?" asked Bors.
"I pretended the truck stalled and I couldn't start it. Two other drivers tipped off our men. We left those trucks and some others out on the field, so the drivers wouldn't be suspected of alerting us."
"Good work," said Bors. "Better put detectors on all parcels from all trucks before bringing them aboard."
"Booby-traps can be made very tricky indeed, but when they are used by secret police...." Bors allowed himself to rage for a moment only, at the idea of that kind of terrorism practiced by a government on its supposed citizens. It would be intended to enforce the totalitarian idea that what is not commanded for the ordinary citizen to do is forbidden to him. But secret-police booby-traps and time-bombs would be standardized. He hadn't allowed time for complex, detection-proofdevices to be made. Detectors would pick out any ordinary trickery.
The harsh-voiced broadcaster continued to harangue the population of Tralee, of which the least of his words was high treason. They enjoyed the broadcast very much.
Presently Bors began to fidget. TheIsishad been aground for thirty-five minutes. He had sat in the control room that whole time, supervising a smoothly-running operation. He had had to supervise it. Nobody else could have planned and carried it out. But it was not heroic. He had the line officer's inherent scorn for administrative officers, who are necessary but not glamorous or admired. He was stuck with just that kind of duty now. But he fretted. The local officials were given time to get over their panic. They ought to be planning some counter-measure by this time.
He called the spaceport office.
"There should be a map of the city somewhere about," he said crisply. "Send it along special. Bring a communicator call-book. If you find any news-reports, new or old, we want them."
"Yes, sir," said a brisk voice. "The broadcast's right, sir?"
"It is," said Bors. "You're mining the grid set-up. We'll blow it before we leave. There's no point in letting Mekin set down transports loaded with troops to punish innocent people because they heard the Mekinese accurately described. Make 'em land on rockets and there won't be so many landing."
"Yes, sir. Will do, sir."
A click. Bors heard heavy materials being loaded aboard. Each object was being examined by a detector. The loading process stopped. Bors pressed a button.
"What happened?" he demanded.
"Looks like a booby-trapped box, sir," said a voice. "Among the supplies, sir."
"Take it off a hundred yards and riddle it," ordered Bors. "This may settle a problem for us."
"Yes, sir."
Bors fidgeted again. A messenger from the grid-control building arrived. He had a map of the capital city of Tralee.
There was an explosion. A violent one. Bors looked out a port and saw where the suspected parcel had been set up as a target a hundred yards from the ship. It had been riddled with blast-rifle bolts, and had exploded. It might not have destroyed theIsisif it had exploded in space, but it would not have done it any good.
Bors pushed the button for the loading-port compartment.
"Throw out all the stuff loaded so far," he commanded. "Some of it may be booby-trapped like that last one. We won't take a chance. Heave it all out again."
"Yes, sir."
Bors gave other orders. The harsh-voiced broadcast stopped. Bors's own voice went out on the air, steely-hard.
"Captain Bors, pirate shipIsisspeaking," he said coldly. "We demanded supplies. They were sent us—government-supplied. We have found one booby-trap included. In retaliation for this attempted assassination, we are going to lob chemical-explosive missiles into the principal government buildings of this city. We give three minutes' leeway for clerks and other persons to get clear of those buildings. The three minutes start now!"
The sun shone tranquilly on the planet Tralee. White clouds floated with infinite leisureliness across the blue sky. There was no motion of any sort within the wide, open area of the landing-grid. Over a large part of this world's surface all activity had stopped while men listened to a broadcast.
"Fifteen seconds gone," said Bors icily.
He wrote out an order and passed it for execution.
"Thirty seconds gone."
From twenty giant buildings in the city, a black tide of running figures began to pour. When they reached the street, they went on running. They wanted to get as far as possible from the buildings Bors had said would be destroyed.
"Forty-five seconds gone," said Bors implacably.
A voice spoke from the grid-control building, where menwere now placing explosives with precisely calculated effects. The voice came on microwaves to the ship.
"Sir," said the voice, "landing-grid reporting. Space-yachtSylvareports breakout from overdrive and asks coordinates for landing. Purpose of visit, pleasure-travel."
Bors swore, then smiled to himself. Gwenlyn had threatened to do something drastic!
"Say landing's forbidden," he commanded an instant later. "Advise immediate departure."
He pressed a button and said evenly:
"One minute gone! In two minutes more we send our bombs and take off."
Streets outside the government buildings were filled from building-wall to building-wall by clerks drafted to staff the incredible, arbitrary government set up on its tributary worlds by Mekin. Bors scribbled a list of buildings to be ranged on. The map from the spaceport office would help. He marked the Ministry of Police, which would contain the records essential to the operation of the planet-wide police system. Anything that happened to those records would be so much good fortune for Tralee, and so much bad for the master race and its quislings. He marked the Ministry of the Interior, which would house the machinery for requisitions of tribute to Mekin. The Ministry of Public Order would be the headquarters of the secret and the political police. It ran the forced-labor camps. It filed all anonymous accusations. It kept records on all persons suspected of the crime of patriotism. If anything happened to those records, it would be all to the good.
"Two minutes gone," said Bors.
The voice from the spaceport control building said briskly:
"Demolition charges placed, sir. Ready to evacuate and fire. Sir, the space-yachtSylvasends a message to the captain of the pirate ship. It says they'll wait."
Bors said, "Damn! All right." Then into the broadcast-microphone, "Two-and-a-half minutes. There will be no further count-down. In thirty seconds we fire missiles into governmentbuildings, in retaliation for an attempt to assassinate us with time-bombs. The next sound you hear will be our missiles arriving." He cut back to the grid-control building. "Fire all charges and report to the ship."
Almost instantly curt, crisp reports sounded nearby. The landing-party came smartly back to the airlock, while explosions continued in the building they'd left.
"Launcher-tubes train on targets," Bors commanded. He pressed another button. "Rocket-room, make ready for lift." Back to the launcher-tube communicator. "Fire missiles one, two, three, four, five, six."
There were boomings, which rose to bellowings as devastation tore away from theIsis'slaunching-tubes. Bors said irritably to the rocket-room:
"Take her up!"
And then the ship lifted on her rockets—they were not solely for emergency use, as on cargo-ships—and rushed toward the sky. As the ship mounted on its column of writhing smoke, other smoky columns spouted up. Six of them. But they were limited. They went up two thousand feet and then tended to mushroom. Bits of debris went higher and spread more widely, and for a time there were fragments of buildings and their contents flying wildly about.
But the ship went straight upward. The city and the open country beyond it shrank swiftly. The spouted smokes of explosions in the city were left behind. Mountains appeared at one horizon and a sea at another. Then the vast expanse of the planet suddenly acquired a curved edge, and the ship again went up and up—while the sky turned dark and some stars appeared in futile competition with the sun—and the surface of Tralee became visibly the near side of an enormous globe.
Then the planet became plainly what it was, a great ball floating in space, one-half of it brilliant in the sunshine and one part of it bathed in night.
Bors put on the solar-system drive and changed course. A voice came through:
"Calling pirate ship ... calling pirate ship.... Space yachtSylvacalling pirate ship...."
Bors growled into a microphone, "What the devil are you doing in this place. What's happened?"
Gwenlyn's voice, bland and amused. "Nothing happened. But we've got some news for you. Make rendezvous at the fourth planet?"
Bors swore again. That was where he was to meet the cargo-ship captured and sent aloft, supposedly destroyed on Tralee. But he drove on out, around and away from Tralee.
He was reasonably satisfied with his landing on Tralee. With some luck, the news of the landing of a lone survivor of the Kandarian fleet might reach Mekin before it was aware of what had happened to its occupation force. With a little more luck, the attention of Mekin would be devoted more to a ship which dared to turn pirate than to Kandar itself. With unlimited favorable fortune, Mekin might actually send ships to hunt theIsisinstead of asking questions on Kandar.
But Bors made a mental note. The more time that passed before Mekin knew what had happened, the better. So a ship or two or three might be detached from the fleet and sent back to hang off Kandar. If a single ship came inquiringly, it might be sniped and the news of Kandar suppressed for a while longer. And it was conceivable that Mekin might come to worry more about other matters than the success or failure of a routine expansion of its empire.
The fourth planet loomed up on schedule. Bors was irritated, as often before, by the relatively slow solar-system drive. Overdrive was sometimes not fast enough—but solar-system drive was infuriatingly slow. Yet one couldn't use overdrive in a solar system. Approaching a planet on overdrive would be like trying to garage a ground-car at sixty miles an hour. One couldn't stop where one wanted to. He wondered vaguely if Logan, the math Talent, could handle such a problem, and dismissed the idea. One could break a circuit with an accuracy of microseconds, but that wouldn't be close enough for overdrive. It wouldn't be practical.
Then the ice-sheet of Tralee's nearest neighbor planet spread out in the vision-port's range of view. Bors called for the cargo-ship. It answered almost immediately. It was standard practice, of course, that the site of a meeting planned at a given planet would be wherever its poles pointed nearest to galactic north. The cargo-ship had just arrived. It barely responded before theSylvabegan to call again.
The three ships, then, joined their orbits and went swinging about the glacier-world beneath them while they conferred.
The report from the cargo-ship was unexpectedly satisfactory. It had been almost completely loaded, and its cargo was largely foodstuffs intended for Mekin. Kandar's fleet-in-hiding was already subsisting on emergency rations. This cargo of assorted frozen foods would be welcome. Bors gave orders for it to head for Glamis immediately, in overdrive.
Communication had been three-way, and Gwenlyn said quickly;
"Just a moment! Did you pick up any news-reports on Tralee?"
"Hm. Yes. I'd better send them—"
"You'd better?" echoed Gwenlyn, scolding. "My father stayed with the fleet to try to explain what Talents, Incorporated can do! He kept most of the Talents with him, for demonstrations! The Department for Predicting Dirty Tricks is there! Don't you remember what that Department works on? Of course you've got to send those news-reports!"
Bors ordered a space-boat to come from the cargo-ship for the reports.
"Would you like to come to dinner on the yacht?" asked Gwenlyn. "You're all living on emergency rations. Nobody asked us to divide our supplies with the fleet. I can give you a nice meal."
"Better not," said Bors curtly, and mumbled thanks.
He ordered the cargo-ship to send as much of its stores as the space-boat could conveniently carry.
"Then how about some cigars?" asked Gwenlyn. She seemed at once amused and approving, because Bors would not indulgehimself in a really satisfying meal while his crew lived on far from appetizing emergency foodstuffs.
"No," said Bors. "No cigars either. You said you had some news for me. What is it?"
"I brought along our ship-arrival Talent," said Gwenlyn blandly. "He can only tell when a ship will arrive at the solar system where he is, so he had to come here to precognize."
Bors felt again that stubborn incredulity which Talents, Incorporated would always rouse in a mind like his.
"There'll be a ship arriving here in two days, four hours, sixteen minutes from now," said Gwenlyn matter-of-factly. "He thinks it's a fighting ship, though he can't be sure. It could be a cruiser or something like that doing mail duty, coming to deliver orders and receive reports. You can't run an empire without a regular news system, and Mekin wouldn't depend on commercial ships for government business."
"Good!" said Bors. "Thanks!"
There was a pause.
"What will you do now?"
"Try to raise the devil somewhere else," said Bors. "Try to pick up another food-ship, probably. Maybe I ought to let this ship alone, to carry news of the pirate shipIsisback to Mekin, but— No. They use booby-traps as police devices!"
It was not reasonable, but Bors could not think of missing a Mekinese warship. The idea of a government using booby-traps to enforce its orders somehow put it beyond forgiveness, and with the government all those who served it willingly.
"You'll go to Garen then?" asked Gwenlyn.
Bors felt a sharp sting of annoyance. He had carefully kept secret the choice of Garen Three as the next planet to be invaded by the pseudo-pirate ship. It was upsetting to find that Gwenlyn knew about it. Blast Talents, Incorporated!
"The dowsing Talent," said Gwenlyn, "says there's a battleship aground there. There've been some riots. The people of Garen don't like Mekin, either. Strange? The battleship is to overawe them."
"How do you know that?" demanded Bors.
"The Department for Predicting Dirty Tricks was reading old news-reports," she told him. "We're leaving now. 'Bye."
"Goodbye," said Bors, and sighed, not knowing whether he felt regret or relief.
The space-yachtSylvaflicked out of sight. It had gone into overdrive. Bors realized that he hadn't noticed which way it pointed. He should have taken note. But he shook his head. He gave the cargo-ship detailed orders, receiving its space-boat and what food it had been able to bring. He sent it off to meet his fleet at Glamis.
He stayed in orbit around the fourth planet to wait for a Mekinese fighting-ship. He began, too, to make long-range plans.
Part Three
The Mekinese shipwas a cruiser, and it broke out of overdrive within the Tralee solar system just two days, four hours, and some odd minutes after Gwenlyn predicted its coming. Presumably, it had made the customary earlier breakout to correct its course and measure the distance remaining to be run. In overdrive there was not as yet a way to know accurately one's actual speed, and at astronomical distances small errors piled up. Correction of line was important, too, because a course that was even a second off arc could mount up to hundreds of thousands of miles. But even with that usual previous breakout, the Mekinese cruiser did not turn up conveniently close to its destination. It needed a long solar-system drive to make its planetfall.
Bors's long-range radar picked it up before it was near enough to notify its arrival to the planet—if it intended to notify at all. Most likely its program was simply and frighteningly to appear overhead and arrogantly demand the services of the landing-grid to lower it to the ground.
Bors's radar detected the cruiser and instantly cut itself off. The cry of "Co-o-ntact!" went through the ship and all inner doors closed, sealing the ship into sections. Bors was already at the board in the control room. He did not accept the predictions of Talents, Incorporated as absolute truth. It bothered him that such irrational means of securing information should be so accurate. So he compromised in his own mind tothe point where, when Talents, Incorporated gave specific information, it was possible; no more. Then, having admitted so much, he acted on the mere possibility, and pretended to be surprised when it turned out to be a fact.
That was the case now. A ship had appeared in this solar system at the time the ship-arrival Talent on theSylvapredicted. Bors scowled, and swung theIsisin line between Tralee and the new arrival. He turned, then, and drove steadily out toward it. The other ship's screens would show a large blip which was the planet, and in direct line a very much smaller blip which was theIsis. The small blip might not be noticed because it was in line with the larger. If it were noticed, it would be confusing, because such things should not happen. But the cruisers of Mekin were not apt to be easily alarmed. They represented a great empire, all of whose landing-grids were safely controlled, and though there was disaffection everywhere there was no reason to suspect rebellion at operations in space.
For a long time nothing happened. TheIsisdrove to meet the cruiser. The two vessels should be approaching each other at a rate which was the total of their speeds. Bors punched computer-keys and got the gravitational factor at this distance from Tralee's sun. He set theIsis'ssolar-system drive to that exact quantity. He waited.
His own radar was now non-operative. Its first discovery-pulse would have been observed by the Mekinese duty-officer. The fact that it did not repeat would be abnormal. The duty-officer would wonder why it didn't come again.
The astrogation-radar cut off. Then a single strong pulse came. It would be a ranging-pulse. Cargo-ship radars sacrificed high accuracy for wide and deep coverage. But war-vessels carried pulse instruments which could measure distances within feet up to thousands of miles, and by phase-scrambling among the echoes even get some information about the size and shape of the object examined. Not much, but some.
Bors relaxed. Things were going well. When four other ranging-pulses arrived at second intervals, he nodded to himself.This was a warship's reaction. It could be nothing else. That officer knew that something was coming out from Tralee. It was on approximately a collision course. But a ship traveling under power should gain velocity as long as its drive was on. When traveling outward from the sun and not under power, it should lose velocity by so many feet per second to the sun's gravitational pull. Bors's ship did neither. It displayed the remarkably unlikely characteristic of absolutely steady motion. It was not normal. It was not possible. It could not have any reasonable explanation, in the mind of a Mekinese.
Which was its purpose. It would arouse professional curiosity on the cruiser, which would then waste some precious time attempting to identify it. There wouldn't be suspicion because it didn't act suspiciously. Still, it couldn't be dismissed, because it didn't behave in any recognizable fashion. The cruiser would want to know more about it; it shouldn't move at a steady velocity going outward from a sun.
In consequence, Bors got in the first shot.
He said, "Fire one!" when the Mekinese would be just about planning to turn their electron-telescope upon it. A missile leaped away from theIsis. It went off at an angle, and it curved madly, and the instrumentation of the cruiser could spot it as now there, now here, now nearer, and now nearer still. But the computers could not handle an object which not only changed velocity but changed the rate at which its velocity changed.
Missiles came pouring out of the Mekinese ship. They were infinitesimal, bright specks on the radar-screen. They curved violently in flight trying to intercept theIsis'smissile. They failed.
There was a flash of sun-bright flame very, very far away. There was a little cloud of vapor which dissipated swiftly. Then there was nothing but two or three specks moving at random, their target lost, their purpose forgotten. The fact of victory was an anticlimax.
"All clear," said Bors grimly.
The inner-compartment doors opened. The normal soundsof the ship were heard again. Bors began to calculate the data needed for the journey to Garen. There was the angle and the distance and the proper motions and the time elapsed.... He found it difficult to think in such terms. He was discontented. He'd ambushed a Mekinese cruiser. True, he'd let his own ship be seen, and the Mekinese had warning enough to launch missiles in their own defense. It was not even faintly like the ambush of a cruiser on the bottom of a Kandarian sea, waiting to assassinate a fleet when its complement went on board. But Bors didn't like what he'd just done.
The figures wouldn't come out right. Impatiently, he sent for Logan. The mathematical Talent came into the control room.
"Will you calculate this for me?" Bors asked irritably.
Logan glanced casually at the figures and wrote down the answer. Instantly. Without thought or reflection. Instantly!
Bors couldn't quite believe it. The distance between the two stars was a rounded-off number, of course. The relative proper motion of the two stars had a large plus-or-minus bugger factor. The time-lapse due to distance had a presumed correction and there was a considerable probable error in the speed of translation of the ship during overdrive. It was a moderately complicated equation, and the computation of the probable error was especially tricky. Bors stared at it, and then stared at Logan.
"That's the answer to what you have written there," said Logan condescendingly, "but your figures are off. I've been talking to your computer men. They've given me the log figures on past overdrive jumps and the observed errors on arrival. They're systematic. I noticed it at once."
Bors said, "What?"
"There's a source of consistent error," Logan said patiently. "I found the values to correct it, then I found the source. It's in your overdrive speed."
Bors blinked. Speed in overdrive could not be computed exactly. The approximation was very close—within a fractionof a tenth of one per cent—but when the distance traveled was light-years the uncertainty piled up.
"If you use these figures," said Logan complacently—and he scribbled figures swiftly—"you'll get it really accurate."
Having finished writing the equation, he wrote the solution. Bors asked suspicious questions. Logan answered absently. He knew nothing about overdrive. He didn't understand anything but numbers and he didn't know how he did what he did with them. But he'd worked backward from observed errors in calculation and found a way to keep them out of the answer. And he'd done it all in his head. It was unbelievable—yet Bors believed.
"I'll try your figures," he said. "Thanks."
Logan went proudly away, past an orderly bringing cups of coffee to the control room. Bors aimed the ship according to the calculation Logan had given him, scrupulously setting the breakout timer to the exact figure listed.
He was still uncomfortable about the destruction of the Mekinese cruiser when he said curtly, "Overdrive coming!" He'd have preferred a more sportsmanlike type of warfare. He faced the old, deplorable fact that fighting men had had to adjust to throughout the ages; one can fight an honorable enemy honorably, but against some men scruples count as handicaps.
"Swine!" growled Bors. "They'll make us like them!" Then into the microphone he said, "Five, four, three, two, one...."
He pressed the overdrive button. The sensation of going into overdrive was acutely uncomfortable, as always. Bors swallowed squeamishly and took his cup of coffee.
TheIsis, then, lay wrapped in a cocoon of stressed space. Its properties included the fact that its particular type of stress could travel much more swiftly than the stresses involved in the propagation of radiation, of magnetism, or gravity. And this state of stress—this overdrive field—did not have a position. Itwasa position. The ship inside it could not be said to be in the real cosmos at all, but when the field collapsed it would be somewhere, and the way it pointed, and how longbefore collapse, determined in what particular somewhere it would be when it came out. But travel in overdrive was tedious.
As civilization increases man's control of the cosmos, it takes the fun out of it. In prehistoric days a man who had to hunt animals or go hungry may often have gone hungry, but he was never bored by the sameness of his meals. A man who traveled on horseback often got to his destination late, but he was not troubled with ennui on the way. In overdrive, Bors's ship traveled almost with the speed of thought, but there was absolutely nothing to think about while journeying. Not about the journey, anyhow.
While the ship drove on, however, the cargo-ship seized on Tralee made its way toward Glamis and a meeting with the fleet, then gloomily sweeping in orbit around Glamis Two. The food it carried would raise men's spirits a little, but it would not solve the problem of what the fleet was to do. Morgan, on the flagship, expounded the ability of his Talents to perform the incredible, but nobody could find any application of the incredible to the fix the fleet was in. On Kandar, the population knew that there had been a battle off the gas-giant planet, but they did not know the result. The Mekinese fleet had not come. The fleet of Kandar had not returned. The caretaker government met in council and desperately made guesses. It arrived at no hopeful conclusion whatever. The most probable—because most hopeless—conviction seemed to be that the fleet of Mekin had been met and fought, but that it was victorious, and in retaliation for resistance it had gone away to send back swarms of grisly bomb-carriers which would drop atomic bombs in such quantity that for a thousand years to come there would be no life on Kandar.
The light cruiser, theIsis, was unaware of these frustrations. It remained in overdrive, where absolutely nothing happened.
Bors reviewed his actions and could not but approve of them tepidly. He'd sent food to the fleet, he'd destroyed two enemy fighting ships and he'd done what he could to harm the Mekinese puppets on Tralee. He'd had them publicly humiliatedwith well-chosen epithets. He'd destroyed the records and archives of the secret political police.... Many people on Tralee already blessed him, without knowing who he was. There might yet be hope of better days.
But all things end, even journeys at excessively great multiples of the speed of light. The overdrive timer rang warning bells. Taped breakout notifications sounded from speakers throughout the ship. There was a count-down of seconds, and the abominably unpleasant sensation of breakout, and the ship was in normal space again.
There was the sun of Garen, burning peacefully in a vast void with millions of minute, unwinking lights in the firmament all about it. There was a gas-giant planet, a mere fifteen million miles away. Further out there were the smaller, frozen worlds. Nearer the sun, on the far side of its orbit, there was the planet Garen.
TheIsisdrove for that planet, while Bors tried to decide whether the remarkable accuracy of this breakout was due to accident or to Logan's computations.
Logan appeared as Bors was gloomily contemplating the days needed to reach Garen on solar system drive, because overdrive was too fast. Logan looked offhand and elaborately casual, but he fairly glowed with triumph.
"I found out the fact behind the bugger factor, Captain," he said condescendingly. "The speed of a ship in overdrive varies as the change in mass to the minus fourth. Your computers couldn't tell that! Here's a table for calculating the speed of a ship in overdrive according to its mass and the strength of the overdrive field."
"Fine," said Bors without enthusiasm.
"And to go with it," said Logan, his voice indifferent, but his eyes shining proudly, "just for my own amusement, I computed a complete table of overdrive speeds for this particular ship, with different strengths of field. They run from one point five light-speeds up to the maximum your equipment will give. You have to correct for changes of mass, of course."
Bors was not quite capable of enthusiasm over the computationof tables of complex figures. He simply could not share Logan's thrill of achievement in the results of the neat rows of numerals. Nor had he struggled unduly to grasp the implication of Logan's explanation.
Instead, he said politely, "Very nice. Thank you very much."
Logan's eyes ceased to shine. His wounded pride made him defiant.
"Nobody else anywhere could have worked out that table!" he said stridently. "Nobody! Morgan said you'd appreciate my work! He said you needed my talent! But what good do you see in it? You think I'm a freak!"
Bors realized that he'd been tactless. Logan's experiences before Talents, Incorporated had made him unduly sensitive. He'd done something of which he was proud, but Bors didn't appreciate its magnitude. Logan reacted to the frustration of his vanity.
"Hold it!" said Bors. "I'm not unappreciative. I'm stupid and worried about something. You just figured an overdrive jump for me that's the most accurate I ever heard of! But I'm desperate for time and we've got to spend two days in solar-system drive because we can't make an overdrive hop of less than light-days! So we're losing forty-eight hours or more."
Logan said as stridently as before:
"But I just showed you you don't have to! Cut the field-strength according to that table."
Bors was jolted. It was suddenly self-evident. Logan had said he'd figured a table of overdrive fields for theIsiswhich would work for anything between one point five light-speeds to maximum. One point five light-speeds!
It was one of those absurdities in technology that so often go so long before they are noticed. During the development of overdrive, it had been the effort of every technician to get the fastest possible drive. It was known that with a given mass and a given field-strength, one could get an effective speed of an unbelievable figure. Men had spent their lives trying to increase that figure. But nobody'd ever tried to find out howslowlyone could travel in overdrive, because solar-system drive took care ofshortdistances!
"Wait a minute!" said Bors, staring. "Do you really mean I can drive this ship under two light-speeds in overdrive?"
"Look at the table!" said Logan, trembling with anger. "Look at it! You'll find the figures right there!"
Bors looked. Then he stood up quickly. He left the ship in the care of his second-in-command and plunged into a highly technical discussion with its engineers.
He ran into violent objections. The whole purpose of overdrive was high speed between stars. The engineers insisted that one had to use the strongest possible field. If the field were made feeble, it would become unstable. Everybody knew that the field had to be of maximum strength.
"We'll try minimum," said Bors coldly. "Now let's get to work!"
He had to do much of the labor himself, because the engineers found it necessary to stop at each stage of the effort to explain why it should not be done. He had almost to battle to get an auxiliary circuit paralleling the main overdrive unit, with a transformer to bring down voltage, and a complete new power-supply unit to be cut into the overdrive line while leaving the standard ready for use without delay.
He went back to the control room. He took a distance-reading on the huge planet off to port. He threw on the new, low-power overdrive field. He held it for seconds and broke out. It was still in sight.
The speed of theIsis, with the adjusted overdrive, was one point seven lights.
Now, instead of spending days in solar-system drive for planetary approach, Bors went into the new-speed drive and broke out in eleven minutes twenty seconds, and was within a hundred thousand miles of Garen. He'd saved two days and secured the promise of many more such valuable feats.
As soon as theIsisbroke to normal space near Garen, there was a call on the communicator. A familiar voice;
"CallingIsis!CallingIsis! SylvacallingIsis!"
Bors said softly, "Damnation! For the second time, what are you doing in this place?"
Gwenlyn's voice laughed.
"Traveling for pleasure, Captain Bors! I've news for you. We were allowed to land and then told to leave again. There's a warship down below. I told you about it before. It's still there. There's a huge cargo-ship, too, and there are riots because it's almost finished loading with requisitioned foodstuffs for Mekin. Mekin is—would you believe it?—unpopular on Garen!"
"Very well," said Bors. "I'll see what can be done. Will you carry a message for me?"
"Happy to oblige, Captain!"
"Tell them that—" Then Bors stopped short. It was not probable that the fleet wave-form and frequency were known to Mekinese ships. But the possibility of low-speed overdrive travel was much too important a military secret to risk under any circumstances. He said, "I'll be along very shortly with some highly encouraging news."
"Who do I tell this to?"
"I name no names on microwaves," he told her. "Get going, will you?"
"To hear," said Gwenlyn cheerfully, "is to obey."
Her communicator clicked off. TheSylvashowed on a radar-screen, but had not been near enough to be sighted direct. The blip shot out from the planet.
Bors growled to himself. TheIsisfloated a hundred thousand miles off Garen. There was no challenge. There was no query from the planet. But Gwenlyn said that there were riots down below. They could be serious enough to absorb the attention usually given to routine. But there was another reason for this inattention. Garen was a part of the Mekinese empire which was not encouraged to trade off-planet except through Mekin. Very few non-Mekinese ships would ever land there, and therefore wouldn't be watched for. It was unlikely that along-range radar habitually swept space off Garen. The battleship should be more alert, but again there was no danger of space-borne rebellion, and the affair of Kandar might not have been bruited so far away.
But the spaceport would respond to calls, certainly. Bors considered these circumstances. A large cargo-ship loaded with foodstuffs requisitioned to be sent to Mekin. A population which had been rebellious before—witness the battleship aground to overawe resistance—and now was rioting.
Bors called for the extra members of his crew. He uncomfortably outlined the action he had in mind. There was one part that he disliked. He had to stay on board ship. The important action, as he saw it, would take place elsewhere. It was so obviously painful for him to outline a course of action in which other men must take risks he couldn't share, that his men regarded him with pleased affection which he did not guess at. In the end he asked for twenty volunteers, and got fifty.
He swung theIsisaround to the night side of the planet. Its two port blisters opened and two boats floated free in the orbit Bors had established. The ship moved on ahead.
Just at sunup where the spaceport stood, a voice growled down from outer space.
"Calling ground!" it said contemptuously. "Calling ground! This is the last ship left of the fleet of Kandar. We're pirates now and we're looking for trouble! There's a battleship down there. Come up and fight or we blast you in your spaceport! Just to prove we can do it—watch!"
Bors said, "Fire one," and a missile went off toward the planet. It was fused to detonate at the very tip of the fringes of the planet's atmosphere.
It did. There was light more brilliant than a thousand suns. The long low shadows of sunrise vanished. The new-rising sun turned dim by comparison.
The voice from space spoke with intolerable levity. "Comeup with your missiles ready! We'll give you ten thousand miles of height. And if you try to duck out in overdrive...."
The voice was explicit about what it would do to the Mekinese-occupied areas of Garen if the battleship fled.
It came up to fight. It could do nothing else.
The trick, of course, was in the timing, and the secret was that Bors knew what he was doing, while those who opposed him did not. Bors had declared himself a pirate on Tralee, and here off Garen he'd claimed the same status. But no Mekinese, as yet, knew why he'd outlawed himself, nor his purpose in challenging a line battleship to fight. It seemed like the raving, hysterical hatred of men with no motive but hate. But it wasn't. TheIsiscould have sent down a missile with a limited-yield warhead if its only purpose had been to kill or to destroy. He could have blasted the warship without warning and it was unlikely that it was alert enough to send up counter-missiles in its own defense. But he'd have had to smash everything else in the spaceport at the same time.
Therefore he'd left his two space-boats in low orbit on the night side of the planet. In thirty minutes or so they'd arrive near the spaceport, where there was a large cargo-ship loaded with foodstuffs, for Mekin. Bors wanted that cargo.
So when the Mekinese battlewagon came lumbering up to space, with her missile-tubes armed and bristling, Bors withdrew theIsis. It was not flight. It was a move designed to make sure that when the fight began there would be no stray missiles falling on the planet.
Unseen, theIsis'sspace-boats floated in darkness. They carried ten men each, equipped with small arms and light bombs. They listened to such bits of broadcast information ascame from the night beneath them. Boat Number One picked up a news broadcast, and when it was finished, the petty officer in command pulled free the tape that had recorded it and tucked it in his pocket. There were items of interest on it.
TheIsiscame to a stop in space. The battleship rose and rose. It did not drive toward theIsis. There was a maximum distance beyond which space-combat was impractical; beyond which missiles became mere blind projectiles moving almost at random and destroying each other without regard to planetary loyalties. There was also a minimum distance, below which missiles were again mere projectiles and could not greatly modify the courses on which they were launched.
But there was a wide area in between, in which combat was practical. The Mekinese battleship reached a height where it could maneuver on solar-system drive without rockets. It might, of course, flick into overdrive and be gone thousands of millions of miles within seconds. But that would be flight. It would not return accurately to the scene of the fight. So overdrive could not be used as a battle tactic. It could be used only for escape.
Near the planet, where the two space-boats floated, the dawnline appeared at the world's edge. The space-boats swung about, facing backward, and applied power for deceleration. They dropped into the atmosphere and bounced out again, and in again—more deeply—and then swung once more to face along their course. They began a long, shallow, screaming descent from the farthest limits of the planet's atmosphere.
Out where the sun of Garen was a disk of intolerable brilliance and heat, the battleship bumbled on its way. It would seem that its commander scornfully accepted theIsis'sterms of combat and moved contemptuously to the position where his weapons would be most deadly. His ship's launching-tubes were at the ready. It should be able to pour out a cloud of missiles. In fact, a sardonic voice came from the battleship.
"Calling pirate," said the voice.
"Yes," said Bors.
"If you wish to surrender—"
"We don't," said Bors.
"I was about to say," said the sardonic voice, "that it is now too late."
The radar-screen showed tiny specks darting out from that larger speck which was the battleship. They came hurtling toward theIsis. Bors counted them. A ship of theIsis'sclass mounted eighteen launching-tubes. She should be able to fire eighteen missiles at a time. The Mekinese ship had fired nineteen. If theIsisopened fire, by all the previous rules of space-combat, she would need to use one missile to counter every one of the battleship's, there would still be one left over to destroy theIsis—unless she fired a second spread of missiles, which was virtually impossible before she would be hit.
It was mockery by the skipper of the battleship. He was doubtless much amused at the idea of toying with this small, insolent vessel. But Bors did not try to match him missile for missile. He said evenly,
"Fire one. Fire two. Fire three. Fire four."
He stopped at four. His four missiles went curving wildly, in the general direction, only, of the enemy.
On the planet Garen two shrieking objects came furiously to ground. Men leaped swiftly out of them and trotted toward a small town, a settlement, a group of houses hardly larger than a village. One man delayed by each grounded space-boat, and then ran to overtake the others. Local inhabitants appeared, to stare and to wonder. The two landing-parties, ten men in each, did not pause. They swarmed into the village's single street. There were ground-cars at the street-sides. The men of the landing-parties established themselves briskly. One of them seized a staring civilian by the arm.
"To hell with Mekin," he said conversationally. "Where's the communicator office?"
"Wha—what—?"
"To hell with Mekin," repeated the man from theIsis, impatiently. "Where's the communicator office?"
The civilian, trembling suddenly, pointed. Some of the landing-party rushed to it. Four went in. There were the reports of blast-rifles. Smoke and the smell of burnt insulation drifted out. Others of the magically arrived men went methodically down the street, examining each ground-car in turn. One of them cupped his hands and bellowed for the information of alarmed citizens:
"Attention, please! We're from the pirate shipIsis. You have nothing to fear from us. We're survivors of Mekin's invasion of Kandar. You will please co-operate with us, and no harm will come to you. Your ground-cars will be disabled so you can't report us. You will not be punished for this! Repeat: you will not be punished!"
He repeated the announcement. Others of the swiftly-moving landing-parties drove the chosen ground-cars away from the streets. The remaining cars received a blaster-bolt apiece. In seven minutes and thirty seconds from the landing of the small space-craft, a motley assortment of cars roared out of the village, heading for the capital city of Garen. As the last car cleared the houses, there was a monstrous explosion. One of the space-boats flew to bits. Before the cars had vanished, there was a second explosion. Another space-boat vanished in flame and debris. The landing-party had no way to return to space. The inhabitants of the village had no way to report their coming except in person and by traveling some considerable distance on foot. They were singularly slow in making that report. The men of the space-boats had said they were pirates. The people of Garen felt no animosity toward pirates. They only hated Mekinese.
Out in space, missiles hurtled away from the small shipIsis. They did not plunge directly at the battleship. They swung crazily in wide arcs. The already-launched Mekinese missiles swerved to intercept them. They failed. More missiles erupted from the battleship, aimed to intercept. They alsofailed. The battleship began to fling out every missile it possessed, in a frantic effort to knock out theIsis'serratic missiles, which neither instruments nor eyes were able to follow accurately enough to establish a pattern of destination.
Half a dozen ground-cars roared through the streets of the capital city of Garen. They did not seem to be crowded. One man or at most, two, could be seen in each car, but they drove as a unit, one close behind another, at a furious pace. When they needed a clear way, the first sounded its warning-note and the others joined in as a chorus. Half a dozen sirens blaring together have an authoritative, emergency sound. The way was cleared when that imperative clarion demanded it.
They swerved under the landing-grid. They raced and bounced across the clear surface which was the spaceport. There stood a giant, rotund cargo-ship, pointing skyward. There were ground-trucks still supplying cargo for its nearly filled-up holds.
The six ground-cars braked, making clouds of dust. And suddenly there was not one or two men in each, but an astonishing number. They knew exactly what they were about. Five of them plunged into the ship. Others drove off the ground-trucks. Uniformed men ran from the side of the spaceport toward the ship, yelling. One ground-car started up again, rushed to the control-building, swerved sharply as a crash into it seemed inevitable, and dumped something out on the ground. It raced back to the other cars about the cargo-ship. The hold-doors were closing.
The object dumped by the control-building went off. It was a chemical-explosive bomb, but its power was adequate. The wall of the building caved in. Flames leaped crazily out of the collapsed heap. The landing-field would be out of operation.
The last car skidded to a stop. The two men in it ran for the boarding-stair of the cargo-boat. There was nobody of their party outside now. The landing-stair withdrew after them.
Then monstrous, incredible masses of flame and steam burst from the bottom of the rotund space-ship. It lifted, slowlyat first, but then more and more swiftly. It climbed to the sky. It became a speck, and then a mote at the crawling end of a trail of opaque white emergency-rocket fumes. Then it vanished.
Far out in space, there was an explosion brighter than the sun, and then a second and a third. There was a cloud of incandescent metal vapor. Presently a missile found its target-seeking microwaves reflected by the ionized metal steam. It plunged into collision with that glowing stuff. It exploded. Two or three more exploded, like the first. Others burned harmlessly.
A voice said, "Cargo-ship reporting. Clear of ground. Everything going well. No casualties."
"Report again when in clear space," said Bors.
He waited. Several long minutes later a second report came.
"Cargo-ship reporting. In clear space."
"Very good work!" said Bors. "You know where to go now. Go ahead!"
"Yes, sir," said the voice from space. Then it asked apologetically, "You got the battleship, sir?"
The voice from space sounded as if the man who spoke were grinning.
"We'll celebrate that, sir! Good to have served with you, sir."
Bors swung theIsisand drove on solar-system drive to get well away from Garen. He watched the blip which was the captured ship as it seemed to hesitate a very, very long time. It was aiming, of course, for Glamis, that totally useless solar system around a planet where the fleet of Kandar orbited in bitter frustration.
Bors got up from his seat to loosen his muscles. He had sat absolutely tense and effectively motionless for a very long time. He ached. But he felt a sour sort of satisfaction. For a ship of theIsis'sclass to have challenged a battleship to combat, to have deliberately and insultingly waited for it to choose its own battle-distance, and then to let it launch itsmissiles first.... It was no ambush! Bors did not feel ashamed of this fight. He'd acted according to the instincts of a fighting man who gives his enemy the chance to use what weapons the enemy has chosen, and then defeats him.
His second-in-command said, "Sir, the cargo-boat blip is gone. It should be in overdrive now, sir, heading for Glamis."
"Then we'll follow it," said Bors. Suddenly he realized how his second-in-command must feel. The landing-party'd seen action—for which Bors envied them—and he'd felt ashamed because he stayed in the ship in what he considered safety while they risked their lives. But his second-in-command had had no share in the achievement at all. Bors had handled all controls and given all orders, even the routine ones, since before Tralee.
"I think," said Bors, "I'll have a cup of coffee. Will you take over and head for Glamis?"
He left the control-room, to let his subordinate handle things for a time. He'd seated himself in the mess-room when the voice of his second-in-command came through the speakers.
"Going into overdrive," said the voice. "All steady. Five, four, three, two—"
Bors prepared to wince. He put down his coffee cup and held himself ready for the sickening sensation.
Suddenly there was the rasping, snaring crackling of a high-voltage spark. There were shouts. There were explosions and the reek of overheated metal and smoldering insulation. Then the compartment-doors closed.
When Bors had examined the damage, and the emergency-purifiers had taken the smoke and smell out of the air, his second-in-command looked suicidally gloomy.
"It's bad business," said Bors wryly. "Very bad business! But I should have mentioned it to you. I didn't think of it. I wouldn't have thought of it if I'd been doing the overdrive business myself."
The second-in-command said bitterly;
"But I knew you'd tried the new low-power overdrive! I knew it!"
"I left it switched in," said Bors, "because I thought we might use it in the fight with the battleship. But we didn't."
"I should have checked that it was off!" protested his second. "It's my fault!"
Bors shrugged. Deciding whose fault it was wouldn't repair the damage. There'd been a human error. Bors had approached Garen on the low-power overdrive that Logan had computed for him. There was a special switch to cut it in, instead of the standard overdrive. It should have been cut out when the standard overdrive was used. But somebody in the engine-room had simply thrown the main-drive switch when preparations for overdrive travel began. When the ship should have gone into overdrive, it didn't. The two parallel circuits amounted to an effective short-circuit. Generators, condensers—even the overdrive field coils in their armored mounts outside the hull—everything blew.
So theIsiswas left with a solar-system drive and rockets and nothing else. If the drive used only in solar systems were put on full, and theIsisheaded for Glamis, and if the food and water held out, it would arrive at that distant world in eighty-some years. It could reach Tralee in fifty. But there were emergency rations for a few weeks only. It was not conceivable that repairs could be made. This was no occasion calling for remarkable ingenuity to make some sort of jury-rigged drive. This was final.
"I've got to think," said Bors heavily.
He went to his own cabin.
Talents, Incorporated couldn't improvise or precognize or calculate an answer to this! And all previous plans had to be cancelled. Absolutely. He dismissed at once and for all time the idea that theIsiscould be repaired short of months in a well-equipped space-yard on a friendly planet. She should be blown up, after adequate pains were taken to destroy any novelties in her make-up. There were the tables of Logan's calculation. Bors found himself thinking sardonically that Logan should be shot because he had no obligation of loyalty to Kandar, and could as readily satisfy his hunger for recognitionin the Mekinese service as in Kandar's. The crew....
That was the heart of the situation. TheIsiscould not be salvaged. She should be destroyed. There was only one world within reach on which human beings could live. That world was Garen. TheIsiscould sit down on Garen, disembark her crew, and be blown up before Mekinese authorities could interfere. Perhaps—possibly—her crew could try to function on Garen as marooned pirates, as outlaws, as rebels against the puppet planetary government. But they knew too much. Every man aboard knew how the interceptor-proof missiles worked. Logan might be the only man who had ever calculated the tables for their use, but if any member of theIsis'screw were captured and made to talk, he could tell enough for Mekinese mathematicians to start work with. If Logan were captured he could tell more. He could re-compute not only the tables for the missiles, but the data for low-power overdrive which would make any fleet invincible.
And there was the Kandarian fleet. If its existence became known, it would mean the destruction of Kandar. Every soul of all its millions would die with every tree and blade of grass, every flower, beast and singing bird, even the plankton in its seas.