 CHAPTER VII. The Mekinese ship was a cruiser, and it broke out of overdrive within the Tralee solar system just two days, four hours, and some odd minutes after Gwendolyn 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 planet fall. Bohr's long range radar picked it up before it was near enough to notify its arrival to the planet, if it intended to notify it 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. Bohr's's radar detected the cruiser and instantly cut itself off. The cry of CONTACT went through the ship and all inner doors closed, sealing the ship into sections. Bohr's 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 to the 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 the Sylva predicted. Bohr scowled and swung the Isis in 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 the Isis. 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. The Isis drove to meet the cruiser. The two vessels should be approaching each other at a rate which was the total of their speeds. Bohr's punched computer keys and got the gravitational factor at this distance from Tralee's son. He set the Isis's solar 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 radar 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 face scrambling among the echoes even get some information about the size and shape of the object examined. Not much, but some. Bohr's relaxed. Things were going well. When four other range 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. Bohr'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 amici-nise. 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 Bohr's 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 the Isis. 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 the Isis's missile. 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 anti-climax. All clear, said Bors grimly. The inner compartment doors opened. The normal sounds of 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. Through 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 fraction of a tenth of one percent, 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 and 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 and 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 sportsman-like 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. The ISIS 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 stress is involved in the propagation of radiation, of magnetism, or gravity. In this state of stress this overdrive field did not have a position. It was a 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 long before it collapsed determined in what particular somewhere it would be when it came out, but traveling 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' 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 an orbit around Glamis too. 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 met and fought and 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, the Isis, 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 do to harm the Mekinese puppets on Tralee. He'd had them publicly humiliated with 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 countdown 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. Near the sun, on the far side of its orbit, there was the planet Garen. The Isis drove 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 computation of 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 the Isis, which would work for anything between 1.5 light speeds to maximum. 1.5 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 figure out how slowly one could travel in overdrive because solar system drive took care of short distances. 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 ran 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 the 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 the ISIS with the adjusted overdrive was 1.7 flights. Now, instead of spending days in solar system drive for a planetary approach, Bors went into the new speed drive and broke out in 11 minutes, 20 seconds, and was within 100,000 miles of Garen. He'd saved two days and secured the promise of many more such valuable feats. As soon as the ISIS broke into normal space near Garen there was a call on the communicator, a familiar voice. Calling ISIS, calling ISIS, Silva calling ISIS. Bors said softly, Damn nation! For the second time, what are you doing in this place? Gwendolyn'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 Mekin-e ships, but the possibility of low-speed overdrive travel was much too important in 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 here, said Gwendolyn cheerfully, is to obey. Her communicator clicked off. The silver showed 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. The Isis floated a hundred thousand miles off Garen. There was no challenge. There was no query from the planet. But Gwendolyn 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 Mekin-e's empire which was not encouraged to trade off planet except through Mekin. Very few non-Mekin-e ships would ever land there, and therefore wouldn't be watched for. It was unlikely that a long-range radar habitually swept space off Garen. The battleship should be more alert. But again there was no danger of space-born rebellion, and the affair of Kandar might not have been brooded 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 witnessed the battleship aground to overall 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 port in 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 the Isis around 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 sun-up 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 won 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. Come up 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. End of Chapter 7 Chapter 8 of Talents Incorporated by Murray Leinster This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Talents Incorporated. Chapter 8 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 raving, hysterical hatred of men with no motive but hate. But it wasn't. The Isis could 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 spaceboats 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 battle-wagon came lumbering up to space with her missile-tubes armed and bristling, Bors withdrew the Isis. 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 the Isis's spaceboats floated in darkness. They carried ten men each, equipped with small arms and light bombs. They listened to such bits of broadcast information as came 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. The Isis came to a stop in space. The battleship rose and rose. It did not drive toward the Isis. 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 dawn line 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 disc of intolerable brilliance and heat the battleship bumbled on its way. It would seem that its commander scornfully accepted the Isis's terms 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 the Isis. Bors counted them. A ship of the Isis's class mounted 18 launching tubes. She should be able to fire 18 missiles at a time. The Mekinese ship had fired 19. If the Isis opened fire by all the previous rules of space combat she would need to use one missile to counter every one of the battleships. There would still be one left over to destroy the Isis 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 by 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 the 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 spaceboat 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? Why, what? To hell with Mekin, repeated the men from the Isis impatiently. Where's the communicator office? The civilian, trembling suddenly, pointed. Some of the landing party rushed to it. Four went in. There were 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 ship Isis. You have nothing to fear from us. We're survivors of Mekin's invasion of Kandar. You will please cooperate 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 of peace. In seven minutes and thirty seconds from the landing of the small spacecraft, a motley assortment of cars roared out of the village, heading for the capital city of Garin. 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 travelling 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 Garin felt no animosity toward pirates. They only hated meek and ease. Out in space missiles hurtled away from the small ship Isis. They did not plunge directly at the battleship. They swung crazily in wide arcs. The already-launched meek and ease missiles swerved to intercept them. They failed. More missiles erupted from the battleship, aimed to intercept. They also failed. The battleship began to fling out every missile it possessed, enough frantic effort to knock out the Isis' erratic 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 Garin. 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 upholds. 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-stare of the cargo boat. There was nobody of their party outside now. The landing-stare withdrew after them. Then monstrous, incredible masses of flame and steam burst from the bottom of the rotund spaceship. It lifted, slowly at first, but then more and more swiftly. It climbed to the sky. It became a speck, and then a moat 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 collusion 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 the Isis and 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 the Isis's class 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 its missiles 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 an 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-partied scene action, for which Bors envied them. And he'd felt ashamed because he'd 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. 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 Riley. 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 had 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 Garin 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 the ISIS was left with a solar system drive and rockets and nothing else. If the drive used only in solar systems were put on full and the ISIS headed 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-rig drive. This was final. I've got to think," said Bors heavily. He went to his own cabin. Talents incorporated couldn't improvise or pre-cognize 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 the ISIS could 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. 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 recognition in the Mekani service as in Kandars. The crew... That was the heart of the situation. The ISIS could not be salvaged. She should be destroyed. There was only one world within reach on which human beings could live. That world was Garen. The ISIS could sit down on Garen, disembark her crew, and be blown up before Mekani's 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 the ISIS's crew were captured and made to talk, he could tell enough for Mekani's mathematicians to start work with. If Logan were captured, he could tell more. He could recompute 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. Bors had arrived at the grimest decision of his life when his cabin-speaker said curtly, Captain Bors, sir, Space Yacht Silva calling, asks for you. I'm here, said Bors. Gwenlyn's voice came out of the speaker. Are you in trouble, Captain? One of our talents insists that you are. Bors swallowed. I thought you'd gone on as you were supposed to do. Yes, there is trouble, it amounts to shipwreck. How many of my men can you take off? We've lots of room, said Gwenlyn. My father kept most of the talents with him. We're heading your way, Captain. Very good, said Bors. Thank you. He was grateful but help from a woman from Gwenlyn galled him. He heard her click off and shivered. Presently the Silva was alongside. The transfer of the Isis's crew began. Bors went over the ship for the last time. The ship's log went aboard the Silva as did Logan's calculated tables for low-power overdrive. Bors made quite sure that nothing else could be recovered from the Isis. He looked strained and irritable when he finally went into one of the lifeboat blisters on the Isis, left vacant by the sacrifice of two spaceboats in the Garen cutting-out expedition. A boat from the Silva was there to receive him. Technically, said Bors, I should go down with my ship, or fly apart with it, but there's no point in being romantic. I'm the one," said his second-in-command, who will stand Court Marshall. I doubt it very much, said Bors. They can't Court Marshall you for partly accomplishing something they're in trouble for failing at. Into the boat with you. He threw a switch and entered the boat. The blister opened, the small spaceboat floated free. Its drive hummed and it drove far and away from the seemingly unharmed but completely helpless Isis. Bors looked regretfully back at the abandoned light cruiser. Sunlight glinted on its hull. Somehow a slow rotary motion had been imparted to it during the process of abandoning ship. The little fighting ship pointed as though wistfully at the stars about her, to none of which she would ever drive again. The Silva loomed up. The last spaceboat nestled into its blister and the grapples clanked. The leaves closed. When the blister air pressure showed normal and the green lights flashed and flashed, Bors got out of the boat and went to the Silva's control room. Gwenlyn was there quite casually controlling the operation of the yacht by giving suggestions to its official skipper. She turned and beamed at Bors. We'll pull off away, she observed, and make sure your time bomb works. You wouldn't want her discovered and salvaged. No, said Bors. He stood by a viewport as the Silva drove away. The Isis ceased to be a shape and became the most minute of moats. Bors looked at his watch. Not far enough yet, he said depressedly. Everything will go. The yacht drove on. Fifteen, twenty minutes at steadily increasing solar system speed. It's about due, said Bors. Gwenlyn came and stood beside him. They looked together out at the stars. There were myriads upon myriads of them, of all the colors of the spectrum, of all degrees of brightness, in every possible asymmetric distribution. There was a spark in remoteness. Instantly it was vastly more than a spark. It was a globe of deadly blue-white incandescence. It flamed brilliantly as all the Isis's fuel and all the warheads on all its unexpended missiles turned to pure energy in the hundred millionth of a second. It was many times brighter than a sun. Then it was not. And the violence of the explosion was such that there was not even glowing metal vapor where it had been. Every atom of the ship's substance had been volatized and scattered through so many thousands of cubic miles of emptiness that it did not show even as a mist. A good ship, said Bors grimly. Then he growled. I wonder if they saw that on Garen and what they thought about it. He straightened himself. How did you know we were in trouble? There's a talent, said Gwynlyn, matter of factly, who can always tell how people feel. She doesn't know what they think or why, but she can tell when they're uneasy and so on. Father uses her to tell him when people lie, when what they say doesn't match how they feel they're lying. I think, said Bors, that I'll stay away from her. But that won't do any good, will it? Gwynlyn smiled at him. It was a very nice smile. She could tell that things had gone wrong with the ship, she observed, because of the way you felt. But I've forbidden her ever to tell when someone lies to me or anything like that. I don't want to know people's feelings when they want to hide them. Fine, said Bors, I feel better. Standing so close to Gwynlyn, he also felt light-headed. She smiled at him again, as if she understood. We'll head for Glamis now, she said. The situation there should have changed a great deal because of what you've done. It would be my kind of luck, said Bors half-joking, for it to have changed for the worse. It had. End of Chapter 8 Chapter 9 of Talents Incorporated by Murray Leinster This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Talents Incorporated. Chapter 9 The decision, said King Humphrey VIII stubbornly, is exactly what I have said. In full war-council it has been agreed that the fleet, through a new use of missiles, is a stronger fighting force than ever before. This was evidenced in the late battle and no one questions it. But it is also agreed that we remain hopelessly outnumbered. We are in a position where we simply cannot fight. For us to have fought would probably have been forgiven if we had been wiped out in the recent battle, preferably with only slight loss to the Mekinese. We offered battle expecting exactly that. Unfortunately we annihilated the fleet that was to have occupied Kandar. In consequence, we have had to pretend that we were destroyed along with them. And if we are discovered to be alive, and certainly if we offer to fight, Kandar will be exterminated as a living world, to punish us and as a warning to future victims of the Mekinese. Yes, Majesty, Bohr said through tight lips. But may I point out? I know what you want to point out, the King broke in irritably. With the help of these talents-incorporated people, you've worked out a new battle tactic you want to put into practice. You've explained it to the war-council. The war-council has decided that it is too risky. We cannot gamble the lives of the people on Kandar. We have not the right to expose them to Mekinese vengeance. I agree, Majesty, said Bohr's, but at the same time the King leaned back in his chair. I don't like it any better than you do, he said, peevishly. I expected to get killed in a space battle, not very gloriously, but at least with self-respect. Unfortunately, we had bad luck. We won the fight. I do not like what we have to do in consequence, but we have to do it. Bohr's bit his lips. He liked and respected King Humphrey, as he had respect and affection for his uncle, the pretender of Traylee. Both were honest and able men who'd been forced to learn the disheartening lesson that some things are impossible. But Bohr's believed that King Humphrey had learned the lesson too well. Your plan, Majesty, he said after a moment, to send me out again to capture food-ships if I can. Obviously, said the King. The idea being, Bohr's went on, that if I can get enough food for the fleet so it can make a journey of several hundreds of light-years, it is necessary to go a long way, the King confirmed unhappily. We need to take the fleet to where Meakin is only a name, and Kandar, not even that. Where, you will disband the fleet? Yes. And hope that Meakin will not take vengeance anyhow for the fight the fleet has already put up. The King said heavily, It will be a very long time before word drifts back that the fleet of Kandar did not die in battle. It may never come. If it does, it will come as a vague rumour, as an idle tale, as absurd gossip about a fleet whose home-planet may not even be remembered when the tales are told. There will be trivial stories about a fleet which abandoned the world it should have defended, and fled so far that its enemies did not bother to follow. If the tale reaches Meakin, it may not be believed. It may not ever be linked to Kandar. And if some day it is believed, by then Kandar will be long occupied. Perhaps it will be resigned to its status. It will be a valuable subject world. Meakin will not destroy it merely to punish scattered, forgotten men who will never know that they have been punished. And you want me, repeated Bors, to find the stores of food that will let the fleet travel to Oblivion. Yes, said the King again. He looked very weary. In a sense, of course, we will simply be doing what we set out to do, to throw away our lives. We intended to do that. We are doing no more now. Bors said grimly. I'm not sure. But I will obey orders, Majesty. Do you object if I pass out the details of the new device among some junior officers? I speak of the way to compute overdrive speed exactly, and how to vary it. It could help the fleet to stay together, even in overdrive. The King shrugged. That would be desirable. I do not object. I'll do it then, Majesty, said Bors. I'll be assigned a new ship. I'd like the same crew. I'll do my best in a new part of the Meakinese Empire this time. Yes, said the King drearily. Don't make a pattern of raids that would suggest that you have a base. You understand. It is impossible to use more than one ship. Naturally, agreed Bors. One more suggestion, Majesty. A ship could be sent back to Kandar, not to land, but to watch. If a single Meakinese ship went there to ask questions, it could be destroyed perhaps, which would gain us time. I will think about it, said the King doubtfully. Maybe it has occurred to someone else. I will see. Meantime, you will go to the Admiral for a new ship, and then do what you can to find provisions for the fleet. It is not good for us to merely stay here waiting for nothing. Even action toward our own disappearance is preferable. Bors saluted. He went to the office of the Admiral. The Commander-in-Chief of the Kandarian fleet was making an inspection to maintain tight discipline in the absence of hope. A young Vice Admiral was on duty in the Admiral's stead. He regarded Bors with approval. He listened with attention and agreed with most of what Bors had to say. I'll push the idea of a sentry over Kandar, he said confidentially. I'll make it two ships or three and take command. I want to send some of my engineer officers to get the details of that low-power overdrive. A very pretty tactical idea. It should be spread throughout the fleet. It will help, Bors said with irony, when we go so far away that we'll never be heard of any more. Eh? the Vice Admiral looked at him blankly. Oh, perhaps. You wouldn't be likely to pick up a cargo ship loaded with Mekinese missiles, would you? We could adapt them to our use. If I did, Bors answered, I suspect that somehow that ship would land itself on Mekin and blow up as it touched ground. The Vice Admiral raised his eyebrows. Bors saluted quickly and left. Presently he was back on the Sylva. His new command would be supplied with extra missiles from other ships. Despite the fleet action against the Mekinese, there was not yet a shortage of such ammunition. When a missile could not be intercepted, and itself did not try to intercept, the economy of missiles was great. In the battle of the gas-giant planet, the fleet had fired no more than three or four missiles for every enemy ship destroyed. Morgan took Bors aside. I'm going to keep Logan here this trip. I'm working on the commanders. I need him. And our talent for detecting lies, she was the one who knew you were in trouble, Gwenlyn tells me, is very necessary. I was hampered by not having her while Gwenlyn was away, but she did a good job for you. Bors shrugged. He did not like depending upon talents. He still wasn't inclined toward acceptance of what he considered the occult. Now he said, I am duly grateful, but it's just as well. My mind doesn't work in a way to understand these talents of yours. I admit everything, but I'm afraid I don't really accept anything. It's perfectly reasonable, protested Morgan. The facts fit together. I'm no hand at working out theories. I deal in facts. But the facts do make sense. Bors found himself looking at the door of the family room where Morgan had taken him. He recognized that he was waiting for Gwenlyn to enter. He turned back to Morgan. They don't make sense to me, he said dourly. You have a precognizer, you say. He foresees the future. I admit that he has. But the future is uncertain. It can't be foreseen unless it's preordained. And in that case we are only puppets imagining that we're free agents. But there would be no reason in such a state of things. Morgan settled himself luxuriously in a self-adjusting chair. He thrust a cigar on Bors and lighted up zestfully. I've been waiting to spout about that, he observed, even though I'm no theoretician. Look here, what is true? What is truth? What's the difference between a false statement and a true one? Bors's eyes wandered to the door again. He drew them back. One so and the other isn't, he said. No, said Morgan. Truth is an accordance, an agreement between an idea and a fact. If I toss a coin I can make two statements. I can say it will come up heads or I can say that it will come up tails. One sentence is true and one is false. A precognizer simply knows which statement is true. I don't, but he does. It's still prophecy, objected Bors. Oh, no, protested Morgan. A precognizer talent doesn't prophesy. All he can do is recognize that an idea he has now matches an event that will happen presently. He can't extract ideas from the future. He can only judge the truth or falsity of ideas that occur to him. He has to think something before he can know it is true. He does not get information from the future. He can only know that the idea he has now matches something that will happen later. He can detect a matching, an agreement. Perhaps it's a mental vibration of some sort. But that's all. I asked if I would capture a cargo ship on Tralee. And I said I didn't know. Of course I said so. How could anybody know such a thing except by pure accident? A precognizer might think of 999 ways in which you might try to capture that ship. They could all be wrong. He might say you wouldn't capture it. But you might try a thousandth way that he hadn't thought of. All he can know is that some idea he has concocted matches some instinct stares and he knows it's true. That's why one man can precognize dirty tricks. His mind works that way. We've got a woman who knows infallibly who's going to marry whom. That's why the ship arrival precognizer can say a ship's coming in. His mind works on such things and he has a talent besides. There are definite limits then. What is there that's real and hasn't limits? demanded Morgan. The door opened and Gwendolyn came in. Bors rose, looking pleased. I'm telling him the facts of life about precognition, Morgan told her. I think he understands now. I don't agree, said Bors. Gwendolyn said amusedly. Two of our talents want to talk to you, Captain. You might say that they want to measure you for rumours. They what? demanded Bors startled. The talent who predicts dirty tricks, said Gwendolyn, is going to work with the woman who broadcasts daydreams. They'll be our department of propaganda. Bors said, uncertainly. But there's no point in propaganda. It's determined. I know, said Morgan complacently. The high brass has made a decision. A perfectly logical decision, too, once you grant their premises. But they assume that talents incorporated, given some cooperation, of course, lacks the ability to change the situation. That they're mistaken. Father hopes, said Gwendolyn amuably, to modify the situation so their assumptions will lead logically to a different conclusion. Apparently they're going to change their minds. Bors objected. But you can't know the future. Our pre-cogniser, our pre-cogniser for special events, said Gwendolyn, got the notion that a year from now King Humphrey should open Parliament on Kandar if everything is straightened out. The notion became a pre-cognition. We don't know how it can come about, but it does seem to imply a change of plan somewhere. Bors found himself indominably skeptical. But he said, Ah, that's the pre-cognition you mentioned on Kandar, that the fleet wouldn't be wiped out and everybody killed. No, said Gwendolyn. That was another one. I'd rather not tell you about it. It might be unpleasant. I'll tell you later. Bors shrugged. All right. You said I'm to be measured for rumours. Bring on your tape measures. Morgan beamed at him. Gwendolyn went to the door and opened it. An enormously fat woman came in, moving somehow sinuously in spite of her bulk. She gave Bors a glance he could not fathom. It was sentimental, languishing and holy and utterly approving. He felt a momentary appalled suspicion which he dismissed in something close to panic. It couldn't be that he was faded. Then the arrogant man with rings came in. He'd been identified as the talent for predicting dirty tricks. Bors remembered that he had a paranoid personality inclined toward infinite suspiciousness and that he'd been in jail for predicting crimes that were later committed. Gwendolyn says, propaganda, said Morgan, but I prefer to think of these two talents as our department for disseminating truthful seditious rumours. You've met harms. The man waved his hand, his rings glittering. But I didn't tell you about Madame Porvis. She has the extraordinary talent of contagious fantasy. It is remarkably rare. She can daydream and others contract her dreamings as if they were spread by germs. The fat woman bridled. She still regarded Bors with a melting gaze. Again he felt a startled unease. It's been a great trial to me, she said in a peculiarly childish voice. I had such trouble before I knew what it was. Er, trial, asked Bors apprehensively. When I was just an overweight adolescent, she told him archly, I daydreamed about my school's best athlete. Presently I found that my shocked fellow students were gossiping to each other that he'd acted as I daydreamed. Other girls would look at him because they said he was madly in love with me. The arrogant man with the rings made a scornful sound. He hated me, said Madame Porvis ruefully, because the gossip made him ridiculous and it was only people picking up my daydreams. She looked at Morgan. He nodded in encouragement. Years later, she said to Bors, I grew romantic about an actor. He was not at all talented, but I daydreamed that he was and also brilliant and worshiped by millions. Soon everybody seemed to believe it was true because I daydreamed it. He was given tremendous contracts and then I dared to daydream that he met and was fascinated by me. Immediately there was gossip that it had happened. When he denied that he knew me and he didn't and when he saw my picture and said he didn't want to I was crushed. I wove beautifully tragic fantasies about myself as pining away and dying because of his cruelty and soon it was common gossip that I had. She sighed. He was considered a villain because I daydreamed of him that way. His career was ruined. I've had to be very careful about my daydreams ever since. Madame Porvis's talent, Morgan said proudly, is all the more remarkable because she realized herself that she had it. She lets ideas pop into her head and presently they pop into other people's heads and you have first-class rumours running madly about. When her fantasies contain elements of truth so do the rumours, you see. It's most interesting, admitted boars, but... Now Harms, said Morgan, reads news reports. He's specialized on those brought back by Gwenlyn and by you. He guesses at the news behind the news and he knows when he's hit it. He'll tell Madame Porvis the facts, she'll weave them into a fantasy and they'll spread like wildfire. Of course, she can't plant new subjects in people's minds. But anybody who's ever heard of Meakin will pick up her fantasies about graft and inefficiency in its government, riots against Meakin, and so on. However, one wants not only to spread seditious rumours about villains but also about, say, pirates who go about fighting Meakin. Tell her stories about your men, if you like. Anything that's material for heroic defiance fantasies against Meakin. Boars found himself stubbornly resisting the idea. It might be that there was such a thing as precognition in the form Morgan had described. There might be such a thing as contagious fantasy. But, on the other hand... I give up, he said. I won't deny it and I can't believe it. I'll go about my business of piracy. But you, sir," he turned to Morgan, you've got to keep Gwenlyn from taking risks. True, said Morgan, she could have some very unpleasant experiences. I'll be more stern with her. Gwenlyn did not seem alarmed. One more thing, Boars added. They say the dictator of Meakin is superstitious that he patronizes fortune-tellers. Suppose one of them is a talent. Suppose he gets pre-ignized information. I worry about that, admitted Morgan. But I know that I have effective talents. There's no evidence that he has. He might have a talent whose talent is confusing our talents, Boars said with some sarcasm. Morgan grinned tolerantly. Talk to these two. We've got some firm pre-ignitions that make things look bad for Meakin. He left the room. Gwenlyn remained listening with interest when the conversation began and now and then saying something of no great importance. But her presence kept Boars from feeling altogether like a fool. Madame Porvis looked at him with languishing, sentimental eyes. Harms watched him accusingly. Their questions were trivial. Boars told about the landings on Tray-Lee and on Guerin. Morgan asked for details that would help her picture feats of daring do. Boars hesitated and did not quite tell her about the truck-drivers on Tray-Lee who volunteered the information that their loads were booby-trapped. But he did stress the fact that the populations of dominated planets were on the thin edge of revolt. The suspicious talent asked very little. He listened frowning. When it was over and they'd gone, the fat woman again somehow managing a gate which could only be called sinuous, Boars said abruptly, What's this event you know of a year ahead? King Humphrey opening Parliament on Kandar, said Gwenlyn pleasantly. There's another, said Boars, which implies specifically that I'll still be alive. That, said Gwenlyn, that's another one. I won't talk about it. It implies that my father's going to retire from talents incorporated. Boars fumed. I don't like this prediction business, he said. It still seems to hint that we're not free agents. Tell me, he said apprehensively, That precognition about me. It doesn't include Madame Porvis. Gwenlyn laughed. No, definitely no. Boars grunted. Then he managed to grin. In that case, I'll go pilfer some provision so the fleet will be prepared to do what you tell me it won't, but which it has to be prepared to do. I suppose I'll be back. I suppose so, said Gwenlyn, smiling. She gave him her hand. He left. He shook his head as he made his way to the Sylva's spaceboat blister. He had it immediately taken to his new ship. It was a light cruiser of the same class as the Isis. It would, of course, seem to be the same ship, and it had nearly the same crew aboard. No one of Morgan's freakish talents was included this time, and Boars felt more than a little relieved. He inspected everything and made sure his drive engineers were more tractable than they'd been on the Isis. He meant to build another low-power overdrive at once. He cleared for departure with the flagship. He was swinging the ship toward his first destination when a call came from the Sylva. He was asked for. He went to a screen. He preferred to see Gwenlyn when he talked to her. She was there. I have a memo for you, she said briskly. There are cargo ships aground on Cassus and Dover. There is a sort of patrol squadron of warships aground on Meridan. Nothing on Avino. Are you recording this? I won't forget it, he said. Then here's the situation on each of the subject worlds so far as cargo ships and fighting ships are concerned. Our Douser can tell about them. Remember, this doesn't apply to ships in overdrive. We can't pre-cognize anything about them unless we're at the destination they're heading for, and then only the time of arrival. And the Douser's information is strictly as of this moment. Bors nodded. Her tone was absolutely matter of fact. Bors was almost convinced. She read off a list of statements with pains taking clarity. She'd evidently had the Douser go over the list of twenty-two dominated planets. Bors told himself that the events she reported were possibilities that might somehow be true. Most of the Mekinese grand fleet, she finished, is aground on Mekin itself. It's probably there for inspection and review or some such ceremony. There's no way to tell. But it's there. And that's the latest talents incorporated information. As my father says, you can depend on it. All right, said Bors. Thanks. Then he added gruffly. Take care of yourself. She smiled at him and clicked off. Bors was confused because he couldn't quite believe that other matters could be predicted. The new ship, the Horus, sped away in overdrive, leaving the fleet in orbit around the useless planet Glamis. Glamis was in a favorable state just now. It was a lush green, almost from pole to pole, save where its seas showed a darker, muddy bottom color. It would look inviting to colonists. But at any time its sun could demonstrate its variability and turn it into a cloud-covered world of steaming prospective jungle. Or in a slightly shorter time turn it to a glacier world. The vegetation on Glamis was remarkable. The planet, though, was of no use to humanity because it was unpredictable. The Horus ran in overdrive for two days while a low-power unit was built in its engine room to go in parallel to the normal overdrive. But there was a double-throw switch in the line now. Either the standard, multiple light-speed overdrive could be used, or the newer and vastly slower one, but not both together. The ship came out of overdrive in absolute emptiness with no sun anywhere nearby. She was surrounded on every hand by uncountable distant stars. The new circuit was braised in. It had a micro-timer included in its design. With its certain, limited timing capacity it could establish or break a contact within the thousandth of a microsecond. Bors made tests, target practice of a sort. He let out a metal foil balloon which inflated itself, making a sphere some forty feet in diameter. In the new low-speed overdrive he drew away from it for a limited number of microseconds. He measured the distance run. He made other runs, again measuring. From ten thousand miles away he made a return hop to the target balloon and came out within a mile of it. He cheered up. This was remarkably accurate. He sent the ship into standard overdrive again. Twice more, however, he stopped between stars and practiced the trick of breaking out of the new overdrive in which his ship was undetectable at a predetermined point. The satisfaction of successful operation almost made up for the extremely disagreeable sensations involved. But on the eighth ship-day out from Glamis the Horus came back to unstressed space with a very, very bright star burning almost straight ahead. The spectroscope confirmed that it was the son of Meridan. Bors sounded the action alert. Gongs clanged. Compartment doors hissed shut. You know, said Bors conversationally into the all-speaker microphone and in the cushion stillness which obtained. You all know what we're aiming at. A food supply for the fleet. But we've got what looks like a very useful gadget for fighting purposes. We need to test it. There's a small squadron on Meridan ahead, so we'll take them on. It is necessary that we get all of them, so they can't report anything to Meakin that Meakin doesn't already know. All hands ready for action. In twenty minutes by the ship's clocks the Horus was a bare thirty thousand miles off the planet Meridan. The new drive worked perfectly for planetary approach at any rate. It even worked more perfectly than the twenty-minute interval implied. It had been off Meridan for five minutes then. Meakin's fighting ships were boiling up from the atmosphere of Meridan and plunging out to space to offer battle. They were surprisingly ready, reacting like hair-triggered weapons. Bors hadn't completed his challenge before they were streaking toward Meridan's sky. It had been more prompt if, say, Meridan seeded with rumors about a pirate ship in space, which it was their obligation to fight. According to the radar screens there were not less than fifteen ships streaking out to destroy the Horus. Fifteen to one. Interesting odds. Bors sent the Horus roaring ahead to meet them. End of chapter nine. CHAPTER X The meakinese did not display a sporting spirit. There were four heavy cruisers and eleven lighter ships of the Horus's size and armament. According to current theories of space battle tactics, two of the light cruisers should have disposed of the Horus with ease and dispatch. It might have seemed sportsman-like and certainly sufficient to give the Horus only two antagonists at a time, which would have been calculated to provide odds of six hundred to one against it. Two light cruisers would have fired eighteen missiles apiece per salvo, which would have demanded thirty-six missiles from the Horus to meet and destroy them. She couldn't put thirty-six missiles into space at one firing. She would have disappeared in atomic flame at the first exchange of fire. But the meakinese were not so generous. They came up in full force, loaded for bear. They obviously intended not a fight, but an execution. Meakinese tactics depended heavily on firepower of such superiority that any enemy was simply overwhelmed. Their maneuvering proved that they intended to follow standard operation procedure. Light ships reached space and delayed until all were aloft. They formed themselves into a precise half-globe and plunged atop Solar System Drive toward the Horus. This was strictly according to the book. If the Horus chose, of course, she could refuse battle by fleeing into overdrive, which would be expected to be the regulation many times faster than light variety. If she dared fight, the fifteen ships drove on. Meakinese ships never struck lightly. The fifteen of them could launch four hundred missiles per salvo. No single ship could counter such an attack. But even meakinese would not use such stupendous numbers of missiles against one ship unless that ship was famous. Unless rumors and reports said that it was invincible and dangerous and the hope of oppressed peoples under Meakin. The Horus received very special attention. Then she vanished. At one instant she was in full career toward the fleet of enemies. The next instant she had wrapped an overdrive field about herself and then no radar could detect her, nor could any missile penetrate her protection. When she vanished the speck which indicated her position disappeared from the Meakinese radar screens. The hundredth of a second in overdrive, as known to the Meakinese, should have put her hundreds of millions of miles away. But something new had been added to the Horus. The hundredth of a second did not mean millions of miles journeying. It meant something under three thousand, and a much more precise interval of time could be measured and used by her micro-timer. Therefore, at one instant the Horus was some two thousand miles from the lip of the half-globe of enemy ships. Then she was not anywhere. Then, before the mine could grasp the fact of her vanishing, she was in the very center, the exact focus of the formation of Meakinese Battlecraft. She was at the spot a Meakinese commander would most devoutly wish, because it was equidistant from all his ships, and all their missiles should arrive at the same instant when their overwhelming number could not conceivably be parried. But it was more than an ideal position from a Meakinese standpoint. It was also a point which was ideal for the Horus, because all her missiles would arrive at the encircling ships at the same instant. Each Meakinese would separately learn, without information from any other, that those projectiles could not be intercepted. No Meakinese would have the advantage of watching the tactic practiced on a companionship to guide his own actions. The Horus appeared at that utterly vulnerable and wholly advantageous position. She showed on the Meakinese screens. They launched missiles. The Horus launched missiles. The Horus disappeared. She reappeared, beyond and behind the half-globe formation. Again she showed on the Meakinese screens. The Meakinese could not believe their instruments. A ship which fled an overdrive could not reappear like this. Having vanished and reappeared once, it could not duplicate the trick. Having duplicated it... This was more and worse. The Horus missiles were not being intercepted. Meakinese missiles were swerving crazily to try to anticipate and destroy the curving, impossibly moving objects that went out from where the Horus had ceased to be. They failed. Clouds of new projectiles appeared. A flare like a temporary sun. Another. Another. Others. Boars turned from the viewport and glanced at the radar screens. There were thirteen vaporous glowings where ships had been. There were two distinct blips remaining. It could be guessed that some targets had been fired on by more than one launching tube, leaving two ships unattacked by the Horus' missiles. Both of those ships, one a heavy cruiser, now desperately flung the contents of their magazines at the Horus. Boars heard his voice snapping coordinates. Launch all missiles at those two targets, he commanded. Fire. Overdrive coming. Five. Four. Three. Two. The intolerable discomfort of entry and immediate breakout from overdrive was ever present. But the Horus had shifted position five thousand miles. Boars saw one of his just-launched missiles, now a continent away, as it went off. It accounted for one of the two Meakinese survivors. The radar blip which told of that ship's existence changed to the vaguely vaporous glow of incandescent gas. The other blip went out. No flare of a bomb. Nothing. It went out. So the last Meakinese ship was gone in overdrive. It was safe. It could not possibly be overtaken or attacked. It had seen the Horus' missiles following an unpredictable course which was duly recorded. It had seen the Horus go into overdrive and move only hundreds of miles instead of hundreds of millions. It had seen the Horus vanish from one place and appear at another in the same combat area. Launch missiles and vanish again before it could even be ranged. The last Meakinese ship certainly carried with it the Horus' tactics and actions recorded on tape. The technicians of Meakin would set to work instantly to duplicate them. Once they were considered impossible, once they were recognized, they could be achieved. The combat efficiency of the Meakinese fleet would be increased as greatly as that of the fleet of Kandar had been, and the overwhelming superiority of numbers would again become decisive. The hopeless situation of the Kandarian fleet would become a hundred times worse, and Meakinese counterintelligence would make a search for the origin of such improvements. Since Kandar was to have been attacked and occupied, it would be a place of special search. The only unsuspected source, of course, would be Talents Incorporated. For a full minute after the enemy ship's disappearance, Bohr sat rigid, his hands clenched, facing the disaster the escape of the Meakinese constituted. Sweat appeared on his forehead. Then he pressed the engine room button and said evenly, Prepare for standard overdrive, as top speed possible. He swung the ship. He lined it up with Meakin itself, which, of course, was the one place where it would be most fatal for a ship from Kandar to be discovered. Very shortly thereafter the Horus was in overdrive. Traveling in such unthinkable haste, it is paradoxic that there is much time to spare. Bohr's had to occupy it. He prepared a careful and detailed account of exactly how the low-speed overdrive had worked, and its effectiveness as a combat tactic. He distributed instructions and logans' tables on the subject before leaving Glamis. He would be, of course, most bitterly blamed for having taken on a whole squadron of enemy ships with the result that one had gotten away. It could be the most decisive of catastrophes. But he made his report with precision. For seven successive ship days there was no event whatever on the Horus as he drove toward Meakin. Undoubtedly the one survivor of the enemy squadron was fleeing for Meakin too, to report to the highest possible authority what it had seen and experienced. It would not be much if at all slower than the Horus. It might be faster, and might reach the solar system of Meakin before the Horus broke out there. It had every advantage but one. It had solar system drive, for use within a planetary group, and it had overdrive for use between the stars. But the Horus had an intermediate drive as well, which was faster than the enemy's slow speed and slower than the fast. Bors depended on it for the continued existence of Kandar and the fleet. As the desperately tedious ship days went by he began to have ideas at which he consciously scoffed concerning Tralee. But if anything as absurd as those ideas came to be, there were a score of other planets which would have to be considered too. He sketched out in his own mind a course of action that would be possible to follow after breakout off Meakin. He did not follow the rules for sound planning, which always assume that if things can go wrong they will. Bors could only plan for what might be done if things went right. But he could not hope, not really. Still he considered every possibility, however, far-fetched. He came to first breakout a light week short of Meakin. The yellow sun flamed dead ahead. He determined his distance from it with very great care. The Horus went back into overdrive and out again, and it was well within the system, though carefully not on the plane of its ecliptic. Then the Horus waited. She was twenty millions of miles from the planet Meakin. Bors ordered that for intervals of up to five minutes no electronic apparatus on the ship should be in operation. In those periods of electronic silence his radar swept all of space except Meakin. He had no desire to have Meakin pick up radar pulses and wonder what they came from. The rest of the system, though, he mapped. He found two meteor streams and a clump of three planetoids in a nearly circular orbit, and he spotted a ship just lifted from Meakin by its landing grid. It went out to five planetary diameters and flicked out of existence so far as radar was concerned. It had gone into overdrive and away. Another ship came around Meakin, in orbit. It reached the spot from which the first ship had vanished. It began to descend. The landing grid had locked onto it with projected force fields and was drawing it down to ground. Bors growled to himself. It was not likely that this ship was the one he pursued, sight unseen since the end of the fight off Meridan. But it was a possibility. If it were true, then everything that mattered to Bors was lost forever. Then a blip appeared. It was at the most extreme limit of the radar's range. A ship had come out of overdrive near the fourth planetary orbit of this solar system. Bors and the yeoman computer operator figured its distance to six places of decimals. Bors set the microsecond timer. The Horus went into low-speed overdrive and out again. Then the electron telescope revealed a stubby, rotund cargo ship about to land on Meakin. Bors swore. It would be days before this tub reached Meakin on solar system drive. But it must not report that an armed vessel had inspected it in remoteness. We haul along side, said Bors angrily. Boarding parties, ready in the space boats. Another wrenching flicker into overdrive and through breakout without pause. The cargo boat was within ten miles. Calling cargo boat, rassed Bors, in what would be the arrogant tones of a Meakinese naval officer hailing a mere civilian ship. Identify yourself. A voice answered apologetically. Cargo ship, impris, sir, bound from Laurel to Meakin with frozen foods. Cut your drive, snapped Bors. Stand by for inspection. Muster your cruise. There's a criminal trying to get ashore on Meakin. We'll check your hands. Acknowledge. Yes, sir," said the apologetic voice. Obeying, sir. Bors fretted. The space boats left the Horus's side. One clamped on to the airlock of the rounded, bulging trap ship. The second life boat hovered nearby. The first boat broke contact and the second hooked on. The second boat broke contact. Both came back to the Horus. The screen before Bors lighted up. One of his own crewmen nodded out of it. All clear, sir," said his voice briskly. They behave like lambs, sir. No arms. We've locked them in a cargo hold. You know what to do now, said Bors. Yes, sir, off. Ten miles away the cargo boat swung itself about. Suddenly it was gone. It was on the way to Glamis and the fleet. Another hour of watching. Another blip. It was another cargo carrier, like the first. As the other had done, it meekly permitted itself to be boarded by what it believed were mere naval ratings of the Meakinese space fleet, searching for a criminal who might be on board. Like the first ship it was soon undeceived. Again like the first, it vanished from emptiness and it would be heading for the fleet in its monotonous circling of Glamis. The third blip, though, was a light cruiser. The Horus appeared from nowhere close beside it and its communicator began to scream in gibberish. It would be an official report, scrambled and taped, to be transmitted to ground on the first instant there was hope of its reception. Fire won, said Bors. The skipper there is on his toes. He watched bleakly as the Horus' missile arched in its impossible trajectory, as the light cruiser flung everything that could be gotten out to try to stop it, while its transmitter shrieked gibberish to the stars. There was a blinding flash of light, then nothing. He got out maybe fifteen seconds of transmission, said Bors somberly, which may or may not be picked up from this distance and may or may not tell anything. He got a tape ready while he was in overdrive, with plenty of time for the job. My guess is that he'd take at least fifteen seconds to identify his ship, give her code number, her skipper, and such things. I hope so. But for minutes he was irresolute. He'd send out his own minutely detailed report back to Glamis on the second captured ship. He did not need to return to report in person. He hadn't yet sent back provisions enough for the intended voyage of the fleet. The solar system of Mekin was an especially well-stocked hunting ground for such marauders as Bors and his crew declared themselves to be, so long as word did not get to ground on Mekin. But it did not get down. From time to time, at intervals of a few hours, specs appeared in emptiness. Mekin monopolized the off-planet trade of its satellite world. There would be many times the space traffic here that would be found off any other planet in the Mekinese Empire. One ship got to ground unchallenged. By pure accident it came out of overdrive within half a million miles of Mekin. To have attacked it would have been noted. But he got two more cargo ships. Then he found the Horus alongside a passenger ship. But it couldn't be allowed to ground to report that it had been stopped by an armed ship. A prize crew took it off to Glamis. Bors made a formal announcement to his crew. I think, he told them over the all-speaker circuit, that we got the ship which could have reported our action off Meridan. I'm sure we've sent four shiploads of food back to the fleet besides the passenger ship we'd rather have missed. But there's still something to be done. To confuse Mekin and keep it busy, therefore, off Kandar's neck, we have to start trouble elsewhere. From now on, we are pirates, pure and simple. And he headed the Horus for the planet Cassus, which was another victim of the Mekinese. It was a rocky, mountainous world with many mines. Mekin depended on it for metal and vast quantities. The Horus hovered over it and sat down a sardonic challenge. One missile came up in defiance. But it was badly aimed, and Bors ignored it. Then voices called to him, sharp with excitement. He heard shots and shouting, and a voice said feverishly, that rebels on Cassus, who had been fighting in the streets, had rushed a transmitter to welcome the enemies of Mekin. Bors had one light cruiser and merely a minimum crew for it. He couldn't be of much help to insurrectionists. Then he heard artillery fire over the communicator, and voices gasped that the Mekinese garrison was charging out of its highly fortified encampment. Bors sent down a missile to break the back of the counter-attack. Then the communicator gave off the sound of gunfire and men in battle, and presently yells of triumph. He took the Horus away. Its arrival and involvement in the revolt was pure accident. It was no part of any thought-out plan. But he was wryly relieved when he had convinced himself that Mekin needed the products of this world too much to exterminate its population with fusion bombs. More days of travel in overdrive tedium. Bors was astounded and appalled. Interference here would only make matters worse. The Horus went on. There was a cargo ship aground on Dover, and the Horus threatened bombs, and a space boat went down and brought it up. That ship also went away to Glamis, where the fleet was accumulating an inconvenient number of prisoners. The fact that the capture of this ship only added to that number made Bors realize that King Humphrey would be especially disturbed about the passengers on the liner sent back from Mekin. Unless they were murdered, sooner or later they would reveal the facts about the fleet, and King Humphrey was a highly conscientious man. There was dissension even on Dover. The landing-party was cheered from the edge of the space-port. Bors could not understand. He tried to guess what was going on in the Mekinese Empire. He could not know whether or not disaster had yet struck Kandar. He could only hope that there were ships lurking near it, ready to use the recent technical combat improvements against any single Mekinese ship that might appear, so no report would be carried back. But it seemed to him that utter and complete catastrophe was inevitable. He reflected unhappily about Tre Lee, and wondered what the pretender, his uncle, really thought about his loosing of chemical explosive missiles against puppet government buildings there. He found himself worrying again about the truck-drivers who'd warned his men of buoy traps in the supplies they delivered. He hoped they hadn't been caught. The Horus arrived at Deccan, and called down the savage message of challenge. There came a tumultuous, roaring reply. "'Captain Bors,' cried a voice from the ground exultedly, "'land and welcome. We didn't hope you'd come here, but you're a thousand times welcome. We've smashed the garrison here, Captain. We rose days ago, and we hold the planet. We'll join you. Come to ground, sir. We can supply you.' Bors went tense all over. He'd been called by name. If he was known by name on this world, twenty light-years from Meakin and thirty-five from Kandar, then everything was lost. "'Can you send up a space boat?' he asked in a voice. He did not recognize. "'I'd like to have your news.' "'It must be a trap. It was possible that there'd been revolt on Deccan. He'd found proof of rebellion elsewhere. There'd been claims of revolt on Cassus, but he hadn't been suspicious then. He'd set down a missile to help the self-proclaimed rebels there. Now he wondered desperately if he'd been tricked there, as it was all too likely, he would be here. There'd been reported fighting on Avino. There was cheering for his men on Dover, and he might have landed there, but there were too many coincidences, far too many. He waited fifty thousand miles high with a ship-at-combat alert. He felt cold all over. Somehow news had preceded him. It was garbled truth, but there was enough to make his spine feel like ice. He spoke over the all-speaker hookup in a voice he could not keep steady by any effort of will. "'All hands, attention,' he said, heavily. "'I just called ground. "'We have had a reply calling me by name. "'You will see the implication.' "'It looks like, somehow, the Mekinese have managed to send word ahead of us. "'They've found out that no one can stand against us. "'They know we have new and deadly weapons. "'Probably there have been orders given to lure us to ground "'by the pretense of a successful revolt. "'It would be hoped that we can be fooled to the point where we will land "'and our ship can be captured, undistroyed. "'That's the way it looks.' He swallowed, with difficulty. "'If that's so,' he said, after an instant, "'you can guess what's been done about Kandar. "'The Grand Fleet was assembled on Mekin. "'It could have gone to Kandar.' He swallowed again. Then he said savagely, "'We'll make sure first. "'If the worst has happened, we'll take our fleet and head for Mekin "'and pour down every ounce of atomic explosive we've got. "'We may not be able to turn its air to poison, "'but if there are survivors, "'they won't celebrate what they did to Kandar.'" He clicked off. His fists clenched. He paced back and forth in the control room. He almost did not wait to make sure. Almost. But he had never seen a Mekinese fighting man face to face. He'd gone into exile with his uncle, when that unhappily reasonable man let Tralee surrender rather than be bombed to depopulation. He'd served in the Kandarian Navy without ever managing to be in any port when a Mekinese ship was in. He'd fought in the battle off Kandar. He'd destroyed a Mekinese cruiser off Tralee, either in the Mekinese system itself and a squadron off Meridan. But he had never seen a Mekinese fighting man face to face. Filled with such hatred as he felt, he meant to do so now. A spaceboat came up from the ground. The Horus trained weapons on it. Bors pains takingly arranged for its occupants to board the Horus in spacesuits which could not conceal bombs. There were six men in the spaceboat. They came into the Horus' control room and he saw that they were young, almost boys. When they learned that he was Captain Bors, they looked at him with shining, admiring, worshipping eyes. It could not be a trick. It could not be a trap. He was incredulous. The message from the ground was true.