Chapter 1_Talents, Incorporated

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[Cover Illustration]

Bors felt as if he'd been hit over the head. This was ridiculous! He'd

planned and carried out the destruction of that warship because the

information of its existence and location was _verified_ by a

magnetometer.

But, if he'd known _how_ the information had been obtained--if he'd

known it had been _guessed at_ by a discharged spaceport employee, and a

paranoid personality, and a man who used a hazel twig or something

similar--if he'd known _that_, he'd never have dreamed of accepting it.

He'd have dismissed it flatly!

* * * * *

Aficionados of science fiction recognize and respect MURRAY LEINSTER as

a writer of rare talent. His ingenuity of plot, his technical know-how

and flight of imagination in TALENTS, INCORPORATED will go far to

increase his stature and popularity as an exciting and thought-provoking

storyteller.

AVON BOOK DIVISION

The Hearst Corporation

572 Madison Avenue--New York 22, N.Y.

_TALENTS,

INCORPORATED_

Murray

Leinster

Published by arrangement with the author.

Printed in the U.S.A.

Transcriber's Note:

Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.

typographical errors have been corrected without note. Subscript

characters are shown within {braces}.

TALENTS, INCORPORATED

_Part One_

Chapter 1

Young Captain Bors--who impatiently refused to be called anything

else--was strangely occupied when the communicator buzzed. He'd ripped

away the cord about a thick parcel of documents and heaved them into the

fireplace of the office of the Minister for Diplomatic Affairs. A fire

burned there, and already there were many ashes. The carpet and the

chairs of the cabinet officer's sanctum were coated with fine white

dust. As the communicator buzzed again, Captain Bors took a fireplace

tool and stirred the close-packed papers to looseness. They caught and

burned instead of only smouldering.

The communicator buzzed yet again. He brushed off his hands and pressed

the answer-stud.

He said bleakly: "Diplomatic Affairs. Bors speaking."

The communicator relayed a voice from somewhere else with an astonishing

fidelity of tone.

"_Spaceport, sir. A ship just broke out of overdrive. We don't identify

its type. One ship only, sir._"

Bors said grimly;

"You'd recognize a liner. If it's a ship from the Mekinese fleet and

stays alone, it could be coming to receive our surrender. In that case

play for time and notify me."

"_Yes, sir.--One moment! It's calling, sir! Here it is--._"

There was a clicking, and then there came a voice which had the curious

quality of a loudspeaker sound picked up and relayed through another

loudspeaker.

"_Calling ground! Calling ground! Space-yacht_ Sylva _reports arrival

and asks coordinates for landing. Our mass is two hundred tons standard.

Purpose of visit, pleasure-travel._"

A pause. The voice from the spaceport:

"_Sir?_"

Captain Bors said impatiently, "Oh, let him down and see if he knows

anything about the Mekinese. Then advise him to go away at once. Tell

him why."

"_Yes, sir._"

A click. Young Captain Bors returned to his task of burning papers.

These were the confidential records of the Ministry for Diplomatic

Affairs. Captain Bors wore the full-dress uniform of the space navy of

the planet Kandar. It was still neatly pressed but was now smudged with

soot and smeared with ashes. He had burned a great many papers today.

Elsewhere in the Ministry other men were burning other documents. The

other papers were important enough; they were confidential reports from

volunteer- and paid-agents on twenty planets. In the hands of

ill-disposed persons, they could bring about disaster and confusion and

interplanetary tension. But the ones Captain Bors made sure of were

deadly.

He burned papers telling of conditions on Mekin itself. The authors of

such memoranda would be savagely punished if they were found out. Then

there were papers telling of events on Tralee. If it could be said that

he were more painstakingly destructive than average about anything,

Captain Bors was about them. He saw to it that they burned to ashes. He

crushed the ashes. He stirred them. It would be unthinkable that such

morsels could ever be pieced together and their contents even guessed

at.

He went on with the work. His jaunty uniform became more smeared and

smudged. He gave himself no rest. There were papers from other planets

now under the hegemony of Mekin. Some were memoranda from citizens of

this planet, who had traveled upon the worlds which Mekin dominated as

it was about to dominate Kandar. They, especially had to be pulverized.

Every confidential document in the Ministry for Diplomatic Affairs was

in the process of destruction, but Captain Bors in person destroyed

those which would cause most suffering if read by the wrong persons.

In other ministries and other places similar holocausts were under way.

There was practically nothing going on on Kandar which was not related

to the disaster for which the people of that world waited. The feel of

bitterness and despair was everywhere. Broadcasting stations stayed on

the air only to report monotonously that the tragic event had not yet

happened. The small space-navy of Kandar waited, aground, to take the

king and some other persons on board at the last moment. When the

Mekinese navy arrived--or as much of it as was needed to make resistance

hopeless--the end for Kandar would have come. That was the impending

disaster. If it came too soon, Bors's task of destruction couldn't be

completed as was wished. In such a case this Ministry and all the others

would hastily be doused with incendiary material and fired, and it would

desperately be hoped that all the planet's records went up in the

flames.

Captain Bors flung more and more papers on the blaze. He came to an end

of them.

The communicator buzzed, again. He answered once more.

"_Sir, the space-yacht_ Sylva _is landed. It comes from Norden and has

no direct information about the Mekinese. But there's a man named Morgan

with a very important letter for the Minister for Diplomatic Affairs.

It's from the Minister for Diplomatic Affairs on Norden._"

Bors said sardonically, "Maybe he should wait a few days or hours and

give it to the Mekinese! Send him over if he wants to take the chance,

but warn him not to let anybody from his yacht leave the spaceport!"

"_Yes, sir._"

Bors made a quick circuit of the Ministry building to make sure the rest

of the destruction was thoroughly carried out. He glanced out of a

window and saw the other ministries. From their chimneys thick smoke

poured out--the criminal records were being incinerated in the Ministry

of Police. Tax records were burning in the Ministry of Finance.

Educational information about Kandarian citizens flamed and smoked in

the Ministry of Education. Even voting and vehicle-registry lists were

being wiped out of existence by flames and the crushing of ashes at

appropriate agencies. The planet's banks were completing the

distribution of coin and currency, with promissory notes to those

depositors they could not pay in full, and the real-estate registers

were open so individuals could remove and hide or destroy their titles

to property. The stockholders' books of corporations were being burned.

Small ships parted with their wares and took promises of payment in

return. The planet Kandar, in fact, made ready to receive its

conquerors.

It was not conquered yet, but there could be no hope.

Bors was in the act of brushing off his hands again, in a sort of

symbolic gesture of completion, when a ground-car stopped before the

Ministry. A stout man got out. A rather startlingly pretty girl

followed. They advanced to the door of the Ministry.

Presently, Captain Bors received the two visitors. His once-jaunty

uniform looked like a dustman's. He was much more grim than anybody his

age should ever be.

"Your name is Morgan," he said formidably to the stout man. "You have a

letter for the Minister. He's not here. He's gathering up his family. If

anyone's in charge, I am."

The stout man cheerfully handed over a very official envelope.

Bors said caustically, "I don't ask you to sit down because everything's

covered with ash-dust. Excuse me."

He tore open the envelope and read its contents. His impatience

increased.

"In normal times," he said, "I'm sure this would be most interesting.

But these are not normal times. I'm afraid--"

"I know! I know!" said the stout man exuberantly. "If times were normal

I wouldn't be here! I'm president and executive director of Talents,

Incorporated. From that letter you'll see that we've done very

remarkable things for different governments and businesses. I'd like to

talk to someone with the authority to make a policy decision. I want to

show what we can do for you."

"It's too late to do anything for us," said Bors. "Much too late. We

expect the Mekinese fleet at any instant. You'd better go back to the

spaceport and take off in your yacht. They're going to take over this

planet after a slight tumult we expect to arrange. You won't want to be

here when they come."

Morgan waved a hand negligently.

"They won't arrive for four days," he said confidently. "That's Talents,

Incorporated information. You can depend on it! There's plenty of time

to prepare before they get here!" He smiled, as if at a joke.

Young Captain Bors was not impressed. He and all the other officers of

the Kandarian defense forces had searched desperately for something that

could be done to avert the catastrophe before them. They'd failed to

find even the promise of a hope. He couldn't be encouraged by the

confidence of a total stranger,--and a civilian to boot. He'd taken

refuge in anger.

The pretty girl said suddenly, "Captain, at least we can reassure you on

one thing. Your government chartered four big liners to remove

government officials and citizens who'll be on the Mekinese black list.

You're worried for fear they won't get here in time. But my father--"

The stout man looked at his watch.

"Ah, yes! You don't want the fleet cluttered up with civilians when it

takes to space! I'm happy to tell you it won't be. The first of your

four liners will break out of overdrive in--hm--three minutes, twenty

seconds. Two others will arrive tomorrow, one at ten minutes after noon,

the other three hours later. The last will arrive the day after, at

about sunrise here."

Bors went a trifle pale.

"I doubt it. It's supposed to be a military secret that such ships are

on the way. Since you know it, I assume that the Mekinese do, too. In

effect, you seem to be a Mekinese spy. But you can hardly do any more

harm! I advise you to go back to your yacht and leave Kandar

immediately. If our citizens find out you are spies, they will literally

tear you to pieces."

He looked at them icily. The stout man grinned.

"Listen, your h-- Captain, listen to me! The first liner will report

inside of five minutes. That'll be a test. Here's another. There's a

Mekinese heavy cruiser aground on Kandar right now! It's on the sea

bottom fifty fathoms down, five miles magnetic north-north-east from

Cape Farnell! You can check that! The cruiser's down there to lob a

fusion bomb into your space-fleet when it starts to take off for the

flight you're planning--to get all the important men on Kandar in one

smash! That's Talents, Incorporated information! It's a free sample. You

can verify it without it costing you anything, and when you want more

and better information--why--we'll be at the spaceport ready to give it

to you. And you will want to call on us! That's Talents, Incorporated

information, too!"

He turned and marched confidently--almost grandly--out of the room. The

girl smiled faintly at Bors.

"He left out something, Captain. That cruiser-- It could hardly act

without information on when to act. So there's a pair of spies in a

little shack on the cape. They've got an underwater cable going under

the sand beach and out and down to the space-cruiser. They're watching

the fleet on the ground with telescopes. When they see activity around

it, they'll tell the cruiser what to do." Then she smiled more broadly.

"Honestly, it's true! And don't forget about the liner!"

She followed her father out of the room. Outside, as they got into the

waiting ground-car, she said to her father, "If he smiled, I think I'd

like him."

But Bors did not know that at the time. He would probably not have paid

any attention if he had. Kandar was about to be taken over by the

Mekinese, as his own Tralee had been ten years before, and other planets

before that. Mekin was making an empire after an ancient tradition,

which scorned the idea of incorporating other worlds into its own

governmental system--which was appalling--but merely made them subjects

and satellites and tributaries.

Bors had been born on Tralee, which he remembered as a tranquil world of

glamor and happiness. But he was on Kandar now. He served in its

space-navy, and he foresaw Kandar becoming what Tralee had become. He

felt such hatred and rebellion toward Mekin, that he could not notice a

pretty girl. He was getting ready for the savage last battle of the

space-fleet of Kandar, which would fight in the great void until it was

annihilated. There was nothing else to do if one was not to submit to

the arrogant tyranny that already lorded it over twenty-two subject

planets and might extend itself indefinitely throughout the galaxy.

He moved to verify again the complete pulverizing of the ashes in the

fireplace.

The communicator buzzed. He pressed the answer button. A voice said,

"_Sir, the space-liner_ Vestis _reports breakout from overdrive. Now

driving for port. Message ends._"

Bors's eyes popped wide. He'd heard exactly that only minutes ago! It

could be coincidence, but it was a very remarkable one. The man Morgan

had come to him to tell him that. If he'd come for some other reason,

and merely made a guess, it could be coincidence. But he'd come only to

tell Bors that he could be useful! And it was impossible, at a

destination-port, to know when a ship would break out of overdrive!

Einstein's data on the anomalies of time at speeds near that of light

naturally did not apply to overdrive speeds above it. Nobody could

conceivably predict when a ship from many light-years away would arrive!

But Morgan had! It was impossible!

He'd said something else that was impossible, too. He'd said there was a

Mekinese cruiser on the sea-floor of Kandar, where it could blast all

the local fleet--which was ready to fight but vulnerable to a single

fusion-bomb. If such a thing happened, the impending disaster would be

worse than intolerable. To Bors it would mean dying without a chance to

strike even the most futile of blows at the enemy.

He hesitated a long minute. Morgan's errand had been to make a

prediction and give a warning, to gain credence for what he could do

later. The prediction was fulfilled. But the warning....

An enemy cruiser in ambush on Kandar was a possibility that simply

hadn't been considered--hadn't even occurred to anyone. But once it was

mentioned it seemed horribly likely. There was no time for a search at

random, but if Morgan had been right about one thing he might have some

way to know about another.

Bors gave curt orders to his subordinates in the work of

record-destruction. He went out of the building to the greensward mall

that lay between the ministries of the government, and headed for the

palace at its end. The government of Kandar was not one of great pomp

and display. There was a king, to be sure, but nobody could imagine the

perspiringly earnest King Humphrey the Eighth as a tyrant. There were

titles, it was true, but they were life appointments to the planet's

legislative Upper House. Kandar was a tranquil, quaint, and very happy

world. There were few industries, and those were small. Nobody was

unduly rich, and most of its people were contented. It was a world with

no history of bloodshed--until now.

Bors brushed absently at his uniform as he walked the two hundred yards

to the palace. He abstractedly acknowledged the sentries' salutes as he

entered. Much of the palace guard had been sent away, and most of the

palace's small staff would hide from the Mekinese. The aggressors had a

nasty habit of imposing special humiliations upon citizens who'd been

prominent before they were conquered.

He went unannounced into King Humphrey's study, where the monarch

conferred dispiritedly with Captain Bors's uncle, the exiled Pretender

of Tralee, who listened with interest. The king was talking doggedly to

his old friend.

"No. You're mistaken. You'll have my written order to distribute the

bullion in the Treasury to all the cities, to be shared as evenly as

possible by all the people. The Mekinese can't blame you for obeying an

order of your lawful king before they unlawfully seize the kingdom!"

Captain Bors said curtly, "Majesty, the first of the four liners is in.

Two more will arrive tomorrow and the last at sunrise the day after. The

Mekinese will be here two days later."

King Humphrey and Captain Bors's uncle stared at him.

"And," said Bors, "the same source of information says there's a

Mekinese cruiser waiting underwater off Cape Farnell to lob a fusion

bomb at the fleet as it's ready to lift."

King Humphrey said, "But nobody can possibly know that two liners will

come tomorrow! One hopes so, of course. But one can't know! As for a

cruiser, submerged, there's been no report of it."

"The information," said Captain Bors, "came from Talents, Incorporated.

It's sample information, given free. The first item has checked. He came

with a letter from a cabinet minister on Norden."

Bors handed it to the Pretender of Tralee.

"Mmmm," he said thoughtfully. "I've heard of this Talents, Incorporated.

And on Norden, too! Phillip of Norden mentioned it to me. A man named

Morgan had told him that Talents, Incorporated had secured information

that an atom bomb--a fission bomb as I remember, and quite small--had

been set to assassinate him as he laid a cornerstone. The information

turned out to be correct. Phillip of Norden and some thousands of his

subjects would have been killed. The assassins were really going to

extremes. As I remember, Morgan wouldn't accept money for the warning.

He _did_ accept a medal."

"I think," said Bors, "I think I shall investigate what he said about a

Mekinese ship in hiding. You've no objection, Majesty?"

King Humphrey the Eighth looked at the Pretender. One was remarkably

unlike the other. The King was short and stocky and resolute, as if to

overcome his own shortcomings. The pretender was lean and gray, with the

mild look of a man who has schooled himself to patience under

frustration. He nodded. King Humphrey shook his head.

"Very well," said Bors. "I'll borrow a flier and see about it."

He left the palace. There was already disorganization everywhere. The

planetary government was in process of destroying all the machinery by

which Kandar had been governed, as if to make the Mekinese improvise a

government anew. They would make many blunders, of course, which would

be resented by their new subjects. There would be much fumbling, which

would keep the victims of their conquest from regarding them with

respect. And there would be the small tumult Bors had said was in

preparation. The king and the Kandarian fleet would fight, quite

hopelessly and to their own annihilation, when the Mekinese fleet

appeared. It would be something Kandar would always remember. It was

likely that she would not be the most docile of the worlds conquered by

Mekin. The Mekinese would always and everywhere be resented. But on

Kandar they would also be despised.

Bors found the ground-cars which waited to carry the king and those who

would accompany him, to the fleet when the time came. He commandeered a

ground-car and a driver. He ordered himself driven to the

atmosphere-flier base of the fleet.

On the way the driver spoke apologetically. "Captain, sir, I'd like to

say something."

"Say it," said Bors.

"I'm sorry, sir, but I've got a wife and children. Even for their sakes,

sir. I mean, if it wasn't for them I'd--I'd be going with the fleet.

I--wanted to explain--"

"Why you're staying alive?" asked Bors. "You shouldn't feel apologetic.

Getting killed in the fleet ought to follow at least the killing of a

few Mekinese. There should be some satisfaction in that! But if you stay

here your troubles still won't be over, and there'll be very little

satisfaction in what you'll go through. What the fleet will do will be

dramatic. What you'll do won't. You'll have the less satisfying role. I

think the fleet is taking the easy way out."

The driver was silent for a long time as he drove along the strangely

unfrequented highways. Just before the ground-car reached the air base,

he said awkwardly, "Thank you, sir."

When he brought the car to a stop, he got out quickly to offer a very

stiff military salute.

Bors went inside. He found men with burning eyes conferring feverishly.

An air force colonel said urgently, "Sir, please advise us! We have our

orders, but there's nearly a mutiny. We don't want to turn anything over

to the Mekinese--after all, no matter what the king has commanded, once

the fleet had lifted off, there can be no punishment if we destroy our

planes and blast our equipment! Will you give us an unofficial--"

Bors broke in quickly.

"I may be able to give you a chance at a Mekinese cruiser. Can you lend

me a plane with civilian markings and a pilot who's a good photographer?

I'll need a magnetometer to trail, too. There's a rather urgent

situation coming up."

The men stared at him.

He explained the possibility of a Mekinese space-cruiser lying in fifty

fathoms off Cape Farnell. He did not say where the information came

from. Even to men as desperate as these, Talents, Incorporated

information would not seem credible without painstaking explanation.

Bors was by no means sure that he believed it himself, but he wanted to

so fiercely that he sounded as if some Mekinese spy or traitor had

confessed it.

The feeling of tenseness multiplied, but voices grew very quiet. No man

spoke an unnecessary word. In minutes they had made complete

arrangements.

When the atmosphere-flier took off down the runway, wholly deceptive

explanations were already being made. It was said that the

atmosphere-fliers were to load bombs for demolition because the king was

being asked for permission to bomb all mines and bridges and railways

and docks that would make Kandar a valuable addition to the Mekinese

empire. Everything was to be destroyed before the conquerors came to

ground. The destruction would bring hardship to the citizens--so the

story admitted--but the Mekinese would bring that anyhow. And they

shouldn't profit by what Kandar's people had built for themselves.

The point was, of course, to get bombloads aboard planes with no chance

of suspicion by spy or traitor of the actual use intended for them.

Meanwhile, Bors flew in an atmosphere-flier which looked like a private

ship and explained his intentions to the pilot, so that the small plane

did not go directly to the spot five miles offshore that the mysterious

visitors had mentioned, to make an examination of the sea bottom.

Instead, it flew southward. It did not swing out to sea for nearly fifty

miles. It went out until it was on a line between a certain small island

where many well-to-do people had homes, and the airport of the planet's

capital city. Then it headed for that airport.

It flew slowly, as civilian planes do. By the time the sandy beaches of

a cape appeared, it was quite convincingly a private plane bringing

someone from a residential island to the airport of Kandar City. If a

small object trailed below it, barely above the waves, suspended by the

thinnest of wires, it was invisible. If the plane happened to be on a

course that would pass above a spot north-northeast from the tip of the

cape, a spot calculated from information given by Talents, Incorporated,

it seemed entirely coincidental. Nobody could have suspected anything

unusual; certainly nothing likely to upset the plans of a murderous

totalitarian enemy. One small and insignificant civilian plane shouldn't

be able to prevent the murder of a space-fleet, a king and the most

resolute members of a planet's population!

Captain Bors flew the ship. The official pilot used an electron camera,

giving a complete and overlapping series of pictures of the shore five

miles away with incredible magnification and detail.

The magnetometer-needle flicked over. Its findings were recorded. As

the plane went on it returned to a normal reading for fifty fathoms of

seawater.

Half an hour later the seemingly private plane landed at the capital

airport. Another half-hour, and its record and pictures were back at the

air base, being examined and computed by hungry-eyed men.

Just as the pretty Morgan girl had said, there was a shack on the very

tip of the cape. It was occupied by two men. They loafed. And only an

electron camera could have used enough magnification to show one man

laughing, as if at something the other had said. The camera proved--from

five miles away--that there was no sadness afflicting them. One man

laughed uproariously. But the rest of the planet was in no mood for

laughter.

The magnetometer recording showed that a very large mass of magnetic

material lay on the ocean bottom, fifty fathoms down. Minute

modifications of the magnetic-intensity curve showed that there was

electronic machinery in operation down below.

Bors made no report to the palace. King Humphrey was a conscientious and

doggedly resolute monarch, but he was not an imaginative one. He would

want to hold a cabinet meeting before he issued orders for the

destruction of a space-ship that was only technically and not actually

an enemy. Kandar had received an ultimatum from Mekin. An answer was

required when a Mekinese fleet arrived off Kandar. Until that moment

there was, in theory, no war. But, in fact, Kandar was already conquered

in every respect except the landing of Mekinese on its surface. King

Humphrey, however, would want to observe all the rules. And there might

not be time.

The air force agreed with Bors. So squadron after squadron took off from

the airfield, on courses which had certain things in common. None of

them would pass over a fisherman's shack on Cape Farnell. None could

pass over a spot five miles north-north-east magnetic from that cape's

tip, where the bottom was fifty fathoms down and a suspicious magnetic

condition obtained. One more thing unified the flying squadrons: At a

given instant, all of them could turn and dive toward that fifty-fathom

depth at sea, and they would arrive in swift and orderly succession.

This last arrangement was a brilliant piece of staff-work. Men had

worked with impassioned dedication to bring it about.

But only these men knew. There was no sign anywhere of anything more

remarkable than winged squadrons sweeping in a seemingly routine

exercise about the heavens. Even so they were not visible from the cape.

The horizon hid them.

For a long time there was only blueness overhead, and the salt smell of

the sea, and now and again flights of small birds which had no memory of

the flight of their ancestors from ancient Earth. The planet Kandar

rolled grandly in space, awaiting its destiny. The sun shone, the sun

set; in another place it was midnight and at still another it was early

dawn.

But from the high blue sky near the planet's capital, there came a

stuttering as of a motor going bad. If anyone looked, a most minute

angular dot could be seen to be fighting to get back over the land from

where it had first appeared, far out at sea. There were moments when the

stuttering ceased, and the engine ran with a smooth hum. Then another

stutter.

The plane lost altitude. It was clear that its pilot fought to make

solid ground before it crashed. Twice it seemed definitely lost. But

each time, at the last instant, the motor purred--and popped--and the

plane rose valiantly.

Then there was a detonation. The plane staggered. Its pilot fought and

fought, but his craft had no power at all. It came down fluttering, with

the pilot gaining every imaginable inch toward the sandy shore. It

seemed certain that he would come down on the white beach unharmed, a

good half-mile from the fisherman's shack on the cape. But--perhaps it

was a gust of wind. It may have been something more premeditated. One

wing flew wildly up. The flier seemed to plunge crazily groundward. At

the last fraction of a second, the plane reeled again and crashed into

the fisherman's shack before which, from a distance of five miles, a man

had been photographed, laughing.

Timbers splintered. Glass broke musically. Then there were thuds as men

leaped swiftly from the plane and dived under the still-falling

roof-beams. There were three, four, half a dozen men in fleet uniforms,

with blasters in their hands. They used the weapons ruthlessly upon a

civilian who flung himself at an incongruously brand-new signalling

apparatus in a corner of the shattered house. A second man snarled and

savagely lunged at his attackers; he was also blasted as he tried to

reach the same device.

There was no pause. Over the low ground to the west a flight of bombers

appeared, bellowing. In mass formation they rushed out above the sea.

Far to the right and high up, a second formation of man-made birds

appeared suddenly. It dived steeply from invisibility toward the water.

Over the horizon to the left there came V's of bomber-planes, one after

another, by dozens and by hundreds. More planes roared above the

shattered shack. They came in columns. They came in masses. From the

heavens above and over the ground below and from the horizon that rimmed

the world, the planes came. Planes from one direction crossed a certain

patch of sea.

They were not wholly clear of it when planes from another part of the

horizon swept over the same area, barely wave-tip high. Planes from the

west raced over this one delimited space, and planes from the north

almost shouldered them aside, and then planes from the east covered that

same mile-square patch of sea, and then more planes from the south....

They followed each other in incredible procession, incredibly precise.

The water on that mile-square space developed white dots, which always

vanished but never ceased. Spume-spoutings leaped up three feet, or ten,

or twenty and disappeared, and then there were others which spouted up

one yard, or two, or ten. There were innumerable temporary whitecaps.

The surface became pale from the constant churning of new foam-patches

before the old foam died.

Then, with absolute abruptness, the planes flew away from the one square

mile of sea. The late-comers climbed steeply. Abruptly, behind them,

there were warning booms. Then monstrous masses of spray and bubbles

and blue water leaped up three hundred feet, four hundred feet, five....

A square mile of ocean erupted as the planes climbed up and away from

it. There were bombs in the ocean--some had sunk down deep. Others

followed in close succession. Many, many burdens of bombs had been

dropped into the sea as plane-fleet after plane-fleet went by.

The sea exploded in monstrous columns. Ton, half-ton and two-ton bombs

began to detonate, fifty fathoms down. The Mekinese duty-officer below

had just learned that the spies' signalling device was cut off, when a

detonation lifted the hull of the Mekinese cruiser and shook it

violently. Another twisted its tail and crushed it. A bomb hit sea

bottom a quarter-mile away. More bombs exploded still nearer, in close

contact with the giant hull. A two-ton bomb clanked into contact with

its metal plating and burst.

The cruiser's duty-officer, cowering, thrust over the emergency-lever

which would put the ship through pre-recorded commands faster than

orders could be spoken.

Rockets flared, deep under water. But the flames set off bombs and the

rocket-nozzles cracked and were useless. A midship compartment was

flooding. A forward compartment's wall caved in, and still bombs

burst.... The skipper of the assassin cruiser screamed an order to fire

all missiles. They were already set on target. They were pre-set for the

spot where the space-navy of Kandar waited to rise.

They did not. One missile was blasted as the cover of its launcher-tube

opened. Another was blown in half when partly out of its tube and a

third actually rammed a sinking bomb and vanished with it when it

exploded.

The huge thing under the sea heaved itself up blindly. It reached the

surface. But it was shattered and rent and dying, and planes dived

vengefully upon it and blasted apart whatever could be seen in the

roaring foam. So the blinded, suffering thing of metal only emptied

itself of air and went down to the bottom again, where more bombs ripped

and tore it.

The atmosphere-fliers of Kandar swung in a gigantic, ballooning circle

about the spot where they had dropped a good fraction of a ton of bombs

to the square yard. But nothing stirred there any more. Still, the

planes flew in a great, deadly band about it until a flitterboat came

out from shore and lowered a camera and a light by long, long cords.

There was no space-cruiser at the bottom of the sea. There was evidence

of one, yes. There were patches of plating, and there were naked,

twisted girders. The dangling underwater camera faithfully reported what

it saw by the light that was lowered with it. But there was no

space-cruiser. There were only the rather small fragments of what had

been one a little while before.

Captain Bors went back to the palace. He was savagely pleased. He and

the air-fleet men had done something. They'd had some satisfaction.

They'd killed some Mekinese and ruined a plan to assassinate the Kandar

fleet. But they'd only gotten an immediate satisfaction. Kandar was

still to be conquered. Nothing important had changed.

Bors made his way to the king's study. He entered. King Humphrey the

Eighth and the Pretender of Tralee were listening doubtfully to a stout

man. The man was Morgan.

He stopped talking and blinked at Captain Bors. The captain ignored

royal etiquette and spoke to him without first greeting the king.

"The ship was there, as you said. We smashed it. Thank you. Is there any

more information you can give us?"