The _Isis_ approached Tralee from the night side, and at a time when the
planet's spaceport faced the sun. Tralee was not a base for Mekinese
war-craft. To the contrary, it was strictly a conquered world. It was
desirable for Mekinese ships to be able to appear as if magically and
without warning in its skies. There would be no far-ranging radars on
the planet except at its solitary spaceport. Mekinese ships could come
out of overdrive, time a solar-system-drive approach to arrive at
Tralee's atmosphere in darkness, and be hovering menacingly overhead
when dawn broke. Such an appearance had strong psychological effects
upon the population.
Bors used the same device with modifications.
His ship plunged out of the sunrise and across half a continent,
descending as it flew. When it reached the planet's capital city, there
had been less than a minute between the first notification by radar and
its naked-eye visibility. When it came into sight at the spaceport it
was less than four thousand feet high and it went sweeping for the
landing-grid at something over mach one. Its emergency-rockets roared.
It decelerated smoothly and crossed the upper rim of the great, lacy
metal structure with less than a hundred feet to spare. In fractions of
an additional minute it was precisely aground some fifty yards from the
spaceport office. Steam and smoke rose furiously from where its
rocket-flames had played.
Lock-doors opened. Briskly moving landing-parties trotted across the
ground toward the grid-control building. There were two ships already in
the spaceport. One was a Mekinese guard-ship of approximately the
armament of the _Isis_. Weapons trained swiftly upon it. Missiles roared
across the half-mile of distance. They detonated, chemical explosives
only. The Mekinese guard-ship flew apart. What remained was not truly
identifiable as a former ship. It was fragments.
Bors asked curtly, "Grid office?"
The landing-party was inside. A small tumult came out of a speaker. A
voice said:
"_All secure in the grid office, sir._"
"Hook in to planetary broadcast, declare a first-priority emergency, and
run your tape," commanded Bors.
He said over the ship's speakers, "Everything going well so far. Prize
crew, take the cargo-ship. Keep the crew aboard. Then report."
Ten men poured out of the grounded light cruiser's starboard port and
trotted on the double toward the other ship aground. The weapons on
Bors's ship did not bear upon it.
The sun shone. Clouds drifted tranquilly across the sky. Masses of smoke
from the demolition-missiles that had smashed the guard-ship rose,
curled and very slowly dissipated. Ten men entered the bulbous
cargo-ship.
Up to now the entire affair had consumed not more than five minutes,
from the appearance of a blip on a spaceport radar screen, to the
beginning of a full-volume broadcast. Bors turned on the receiver and
listened to the harsh voice--especially chosen from among the
crew--which now came out of every operating broadcast receiver on the
planet.
"_Notice to the people of Tralee! There is aground on Tralee a ship with
no home planet nor any loyalty except to its hatred of Mekin. We were
part of the fleet of Kandar until that fleet was destroyed. Now we fight
Mekin alone! We are pirates. We are outcasts. But we still have arms to
defend ourselves with! We demand...._"
A voice said curtly in Bors's ear, "Cargo-ship secured, sir."
"Take off on rockets and maneuver as ordered," said Bors. "Then
rendezvous as arranged."
He returned his attention to the broadcast. It was a deliberately
savage, painstakingly desperate, carefully terrifying message to the
people of Tralee. It demanded supplies and arms on threat of destroying
the city around it. A single one of its combat-missiles, as a matter of
fact, could have done a good job of destruction on this metropolis.
The broadcast would be a shattering experience to men who had reconciled
themselves to subjugation by the rulers of Mekin. The planet Tralee was
now governed for the benefit of Mekin by the kind of men who would do
such work. They knew that they could stay in office only so long as
Mekin upheld them. To hear their protectors denounced if only by a
single voice....
There was a monstrous roaring outside. The cargo-ship took off for the
skies. It was a thousand feet high before the weapons on the _Isis_
stirred. It seemed to those below that the pirate crew was taken
unawares by the cargo-ship's escape. That was part of Bors's plan.
A weapon of the grounded _Isis_ roared. A missile hurtled after the
fugitive, and missed. It went on past its apparent target and did not
even detonate at nearest proximity, as it should have done. It vanished,
and the cargo-ship continued to rise in seemingly panicky fashion. It
slanted from its headlong lift, and curved away and darted for emptiness
at its maximum acceleration. A second missile from the fighting-ship
missed. The cargo-ship dwindled, and dwindled, and now the _Isis_
appeared to take deliberate measurements of the distance and
acceleration of its target. It might be assumed that its radars needed
to be readjusted from the long-range-finding required in space, to the
shorter-range measurements called for now.
Something plunged after the fleeing cargo-boat, by now merely a
pin-point in the blue. The rising object moved so swiftly that it was
invisible. Then it detonated, and the fumes of the explosion blotted out
the fugitive. When they cleared, the sky was empty.
There had now been a lapse of less than ten minutes from the first
sighting of the _Isis_ screaming toward the spaceport. The guard-ship
had been destroyed and the cargo-ship which seemed to flee had
apparently been destroyed. When someone had leisure to think, it would
appear that the cargo-boat's crew had overcome the armed party which
entered it and then taken the foolish course of flight.
Bors waited, listening absently. A voice:
"_All clear on board the prize, sir. The cargo seems to be mostly
foodstuffs, sir. Proceeding to rendezvous as ordered. Off._"
Bors nodded automatically and resumed listening to the broadcast.
Matters were going well. Everything had gone through with the precision
of clockwork, which meant simply that Bors had planned in detail
something that had never been anticipated and so had not been
counter-planned. Before anyone on Tralee realized that anything had
happened, everything had happened--the _Isis_ aground, the guard-ship
demolished, the grid taken over, and a fleeing cargo-ship apparently
destroyed in the upper atmosphere. And a harsh voice now rasped out of
loudspeakers everywhere, uttering threats, cursing Mekin--few could
believe their ears--and rousing hopes which Bors knew regretfully were
bound to be disappointed.
The rasping broadcast cut off in the middle of a syllable. Somebody had
come to believe that he really heard what he thought he heard. Now there
would be reaction. At the sunrise-line on Tralee only a handful of
people were awake. They were dumbfounded. Where people breakfasted, the
intentionally savage voice made food seem unimportant. Where it was
midday, waves of violent emotion swept over the land.
"Call the defense forces," Bors commanded the grid office, by
transmitter. "They'll be Mekinese--Mekinese-officered, anyhow. We don't
want them to get ideas of attacking us, so identify us as the pirate
ship _Isis_ and order all police and garrison troops to stay exactly
where they are. Say we've got all our fusion-bombs armed to go off in
case of an artillery-fire hit."
This was the most valid of all possible threats against the most
probable form of attack. Fusion-bombs could be used against enemies in
space, or for the annihilation of a population, but they could not be
used in police operations against a subject people. To coerce people one
must avoid destroying them. So while a ship the size of the _Isis_
could--and did--carry enough confined hellfire in its missile warheads
to destroy an area hundreds of miles across, the occupation troops of
Mekin could not use such weapons. They needed blast-rifles for minor
threats and artillery for selective destruction. In any case no sane man
would try to destroy the _Isis_ aground after an announcement that its
bombs were armed, and that they were fused to explode.
"Now repeat the demand for stores," ordered Bors. "We might as well
stock up. Speed is essential. We can't use stores they've time to
booby-trap or poison. Give them twenty minutes to start the stuff
arriving. Demand fuel, extra rocket-fuel especially. Remind them about
our bombs."
He waited. Speakers beside him could inform him of any action anywhere
outside or inside the ship. The landing-party in the spaceport building
reported as it went through the spaceport records, picking up such
information concerning Mekinese commercial regulations,
identification-calls and anticipated ship-movements as might prove
useful elsewhere. The rasping voice began to broadcast again. It went on
for fifteen seconds and cut off.
"Tell the government broadcasting system that if they stop relaying our
broadcast," said Bors, "we'll heave a bomb into the police barracks and
the supply-depots."
He heard the threat issued and very soon thereafter an agitated voice
announced to the people of Tralee that a pirate ship was in possession
of the planet's spaceport and that it insisted upon broadcasting to the
planet's people. It was considered unwise to refuse. Therefore the
broadcast would continue, but of course citizens could turn off their
sets.
There came a roar of anger and the harsh-voiced broadcaster returned to
the air. His taped broadcast had run out. Now he bellowed such
subversive profanity directed at the officials of Tralee-under-Mekin
that Bors smiled sourly. It was not good for Mekinese prestige to have a
subject people know that one ship could defy the empire, even for
minutes. It was still less desirable to have the members of the puppet
government described as dogs of particularly described breeds, of
particularly described characteristics, and particular lack of
legitimacy. Bors had chosen for his broadcast a man of vivid imagination
and large vocabulary. He did not want the _Isis_ to appear under
discipline, lest it seem to act under orders. He wanted to create the
impression of men turned pirates because everything they lived for had
been destroyed, and who now were running amok among the planets Mekin
had subjugated.
The broadcast was not incitement to revolt, because Bors's ship was
posing as the only survivor of a planet's fleet. But it conveyed such
contempt and derision and hatred of all things Mekinese that for months
to come men would whisper jokes based on what an _Isis_ crewman had said
on Tralee's air. The respect the planet's officials craved would drop
below its former low level.
Time passed. Bors, of course, could not send a landing-party anywhere,
lest it be sniped. He had actually accomplished the purpose for which
he'd landed, the getting of a shipload of food out to space, the
announcement of the destruction of Kandar's fleet and the spreading of
contempt and derision for Mekin in Tralee. Now he had to keep anyone
from suspecting the importance of the cargo-ship. The demand for stores
was a cover-up for things already done. But that cover-up had to be
completed.
Vehicles appeared at the edge of the landing-grid. Figures advanced
individually, waving white flags. Bors sent men out with small arms to
get their messages. These were the supplies he'd demanded. Food.
Rocket-fuel. More food.
The vehicles trundled into the open and stopped. Men from the _Isis_
waved away the drivers and took over the trucks. They brought most of
them to the ship's side. A petty-officer came into the control room and
saluted.
"Sir," he said briskly. "One of the drivers told me his load of grub had
time-bombs in it. The secret police use time-bombs and booby-traps here,
sir, to keep the people terrified. He says the bombs will go off after
we're out in space, sir."
"What did you do?" asked Bors.
"I pretended the truck stalled and I couldn't start it. Two other
drivers tipped off our men. We left those trucks and some others out on
the field, so the drivers wouldn't be suspected of alerting us."
"Good work," said Bors. "Better put detectors on all parcels from all
trucks before bringing them aboard."
"Booby-traps can be made very tricky indeed, but when they are used by
secret police...." Bors allowed himself to rage for a moment only, at
the idea of that kind of terrorism practiced by a government on its
supposed citizens. It would be intended to enforce the totalitarian idea
that what is not commanded for the ordinary citizen to do is forbidden
to him. But secret-police booby-traps and time-bombs would be
standardized. He hadn't allowed time for complex, detection-proof
devices to be made. Detectors would pick out any ordinary trickery.
The harsh-voiced broadcaster continued to harangue the population of
Tralee, of which the least of his words was high treason. They enjoyed
the broadcast very much.
Presently Bors began to fidget. The _Isis_ had been aground for
thirty-five minutes. He had sat in the control room that whole time,
supervising a smoothly-running operation. He had had to supervise it.
Nobody else could have planned and carried it out. But it was not
heroic. He had the line officer's inherent scorn for administrative
officers, who are necessary but not glamorous or admired. He was stuck
with just that kind of duty now. But he fretted. The local officials
were given time to get over their panic. They ought to be planning some
counter-measure by this time.
He called the spaceport office.
"There should be a map of the city somewhere about," he said crisply.
"Send it along special. Bring a communicator call-book. If you find any
news-reports, new or old, we want them."
"_Yes, sir_," said a brisk voice. "_The broadcast's right, sir?_"
"It is," said Bors. "You're mining the grid set-up. We'll blow it before
we leave. There's no point in letting Mekin set down transports loaded
with troops to punish innocent people because they heard the Mekinese
accurately described. Make 'em land on rockets and there won't be so
many landing."
"_Yes, sir. Will do, sir._"
A click. Bors heard heavy materials being loaded aboard. Each object was
being examined by a detector. The loading process stopped. Bors pressed
a button.
"What happened?" he demanded.
"_Looks like a booby-trapped box, sir_," said a voice. "_Among the
supplies, sir._"
"Take it off a hundred yards and riddle it," ordered Bors. "This may
settle a problem for us."
"_Yes, sir._"
Bors fidgeted again. A messenger from the grid-control building arrived.
He had a map of the capital city of Tralee.
There was an explosion. A violent one. Bors looked out a port and saw
where the suspected parcel had been set up as a target a hundred yards
from the ship. It had been riddled with blast-rifle bolts, and had
exploded. It might not have destroyed the _Isis_ if it had exploded in
space, but it would not have done it any good.
Bors pushed the button for the loading-port compartment.
"Throw out all the stuff loaded so far," he commanded. "Some of it may
be booby-trapped like that last one. We won't take a chance. Heave it
all out again."
"_Yes, sir._"
Bors gave other orders. The harsh-voiced broadcast stopped. Bors's own
voice went out on the air, steely-hard.
"Captain Bors, pirate ship _Isis_ speaking," he said coldly. "We
demanded supplies. They were sent us--government-supplied. We have found
one booby-trap included. In retaliation for this attempted
assassination, we are going to lob chemical-explosive missiles into the
principal government buildings of this city. We give three minutes'
leeway for clerks and other persons to get clear of those buildings. The
three minutes start now!"
The sun shone tranquilly on the planet Tralee. White clouds floated with
infinite leisureliness across the blue sky. There was no motion of any
sort within the wide, open area of the landing-grid. Over a large part
of this world's surface all activity had stopped while men listened to a
broadcast.
"Fifteen seconds gone," said Bors icily.
He wrote out an order and passed it for execution.
"Thirty seconds gone."
From twenty giant buildings in the city, a black tide of running figures
began to pour. When they reached the street, they went on running. They
wanted to get as far as possible from the buildings Bors had said would
be destroyed.
"Forty-five seconds gone," said Bors implacably.
A voice spoke from the grid-control building, where men were now
placing explosives with precisely calculated effects. The voice came on
microwaves to the ship.
"_Sir_," said the voice, "_landing-grid reporting. Space-yacht_ Sylva
_reports breakout from overdrive and asks coordinates for landing.
Purpose of visit, pleasure-travel._"
Bors swore, then smiled to himself. Gwenlyn had threatened to do
something drastic!
"Say landing's forbidden," he commanded an instant later. "Advise
immediate departure."
He pressed a button and said evenly:
"One minute gone! In two minutes more we send our bombs and take off."
Streets outside the government buildings were filled from building-wall
to building-wall by clerks drafted to staff the incredible, arbitrary
government set up on its tributary worlds by Mekin. Bors scribbled a
list of buildings to be ranged on. The map from the spaceport office
would help. He marked the Ministry of Police, which would contain the
records essential to the operation of the planet-wide police system.
Anything that happened to those records would be so much good fortune
for Tralee, and so much bad for the master race and its quislings. He
marked the Ministry of the Interior, which would house the machinery for
requisitions of tribute to Mekin. The Ministry of Public Order would be
the headquarters of the secret and the political police. It ran the
forced-labor camps. It filed all anonymous accusations. It kept records
on all persons suspected of the crime of patriotism. If anything
happened to those records, it would be all to the good.
"Two minutes gone," said Bors.
The voice from the spaceport control building said briskly:
"_Demolition charges placed, sir. Ready to evacuate and fire. Sir, the
space-yacht_ Sylva _sends a message to the captain of the pirate ship.
It says they'll wait._"
Bors said, "Damn! All right." Then into the broadcast-microphone,
"Two-and-a-half minutes. There will be no further count-down. In thirty
seconds we fire missiles into government buildings, in retaliation for
an attempt to assassinate us with time-bombs. The next sound you hear
will be our missiles arriving." He cut back to the grid-control
building. "Fire all charges and report to the ship."
Almost instantly curt, crisp reports sounded nearby. The landing-party
came smartly back to the airlock, while explosions continued in the
building they'd left.
"Launcher-tubes train on targets," Bors commanded. He pressed another
button. "Rocket-room, make ready for lift." Back to the launcher-tube
communicator. "Fire missiles one, two, three, four, five, six."
There were boomings, which rose to bellowings as devastation tore away
from the _Isis's_ launching-tubes. Bors said irritably to the
rocket-room:
"Take her up!"
And then the ship lifted on her rockets--they were not solely for
emergency use, as on cargo-ships--and rushed toward the sky. As the ship
mounted on its column of writhing smoke, other smoky columns spouted up.
Six of them. But they were limited. They went up two thousand feet and
then tended to mushroom. Bits of debris went higher and spread more
widely, and for a time there were fragments of buildings and their
contents flying wildly about.
But the ship went straight upward. The city and the open country beyond
it shrank swiftly. The spouted smokes of explosions in the city were
left behind. Mountains appeared at one horizon and a sea at another.
Then the vast expanse of the planet suddenly acquired a curved edge, and
the ship again went up and up--while the sky turned dark and some stars
appeared in futile competition with the sun--and the surface of Tralee
became visibly the near side of an enormous globe.
Then the planet became plainly what it was, a great ball floating in
space, one-half of it brilliant in the sunshine and one part of it
bathed in night.
Bors put on the solar-system drive and changed course. A voice came
through:
"_Calling pirate ship ... calling pirate ship.... Space yacht_ Sylva
_calling pirate ship...._"
Bors growled into a microphone, "What the devil are you doing in this
place. What's happened?"
Gwenlyn's voice, bland and amused. "_Nothing happened. But we've got
some news for you. Make rendezvous at the fourth planet?_"
Bors swore again. That was where he was to meet the cargo-ship captured
and sent aloft, supposedly destroyed on Tralee. But he drove on out,
around and away from Tralee.
He was reasonably satisfied with his landing on Tralee. With some luck,
the news of the landing of a lone survivor of the Kandarian fleet might
reach Mekin before it was aware of what had happened to its occupation
force. With a little more luck, the attention of Mekin would be devoted
more to a ship which dared to turn pirate than to Kandar itself. With
unlimited favorable fortune, Mekin might actually send ships to hunt the
_Isis_ instead of asking questions on Kandar.
But Bors made a mental note. The more time that passed before Mekin knew
what had happened, the better. So a ship or two or three might be
detached from the fleet and sent back to hang off Kandar. If a single
ship came inquiringly, it might be sniped and the news of Kandar
suppressed for a while longer. And it was conceivable that Mekin might
come to worry more about other matters than the success or failure of a
routine expansion of its empire.
The fourth planet loomed up on schedule. Bors was irritated, as often
before, by the relatively slow solar-system drive. Overdrive was
sometimes not fast enough--but solar-system drive was infuriatingly
slow. Yet one couldn't use overdrive in a solar system. Approaching a
planet on overdrive would be like trying to garage a ground-car at sixty
miles an hour. One couldn't stop where one wanted to. He wondered
vaguely if Logan, the math Talent, could handle such a problem, and
dismissed the idea. One could break a circuit with an accuracy of
microseconds, but that wouldn't be close enough for overdrive. It
wouldn't be practical.
Then the ice-sheet of Tralee's nearest neighbor planet spread out in the
vision-port's range of view. Bors called for the cargo-ship. It answered
almost immediately. It was standard practice, of course, that the site
of a meeting planned at a given planet would be wherever its poles
pointed nearest to galactic north. The cargo-ship had just arrived. It
barely responded before the _Sylva_ began to call again.
The three ships, then, joined their orbits and went swinging about the
glacier-world beneath them while they conferred.
The report from the cargo-ship was unexpectedly satisfactory. It had
been almost completely loaded, and its cargo was largely foodstuffs
intended for Mekin. Kandar's fleet-in-hiding was already subsisting on
emergency rations. This cargo of assorted frozen foods would be welcome.
Bors gave orders for it to head for Glamis immediately, in overdrive.
Communication had been three-way, and Gwenlyn said quickly;
"_Just a moment! Did you pick up any news-reports on Tralee?_"
"Hm. Yes. I'd better send them--"
"_You'd better?_" echoed Gwenlyn, scolding. "_My father stayed with the
fleet to try to explain what Talents, Incorporated can do! He kept most
of the Talents with him, for demonstrations! The Department for
Predicting Dirty Tricks is there! Don't you remember what that
Department works on? Of course you've got to send those news-reports!_"
Bors ordered a space-boat to come from the cargo-ship for the reports.
"_Would you like to come to dinner on the yacht?_" asked Gwenlyn.
"_You're all living on emergency rations. Nobody asked us to divide our
supplies with the fleet. I can give you a nice meal._"
"Better not," said Bors curtly, and mumbled thanks.
He ordered the cargo-ship to send as much of its stores as the
space-boat could conveniently carry.
"_Then how about some cigars?_" asked Gwenlyn. She seemed at once amused
and approving, because Bors would not indulge himself in a really
satisfying meal while his crew lived on far from appetizing emergency
foodstuffs.
"No," said Bors. "No cigars either. You said you had some news for me.
What is it?"
"_I brought along our ship-arrival Talent_," said Gwenlyn blandly. "_He
can only tell when a ship will arrive at the solar system where he is,
so he had to come here to precognize._"
Bors felt again that stubborn incredulity which Talents, Incorporated
would always rouse in a mind like his.
"_There'll be a ship arriving here in two days, four hours, sixteen
minutes from now_," said Gwenlyn matter-of-factly. "_He thinks it's a
fighting ship, though he can't be sure. It could be a cruiser or
something like that doing mail duty, coming to deliver orders and
receive reports. You can't run an empire without a regular news system,
and Mekin wouldn't depend on commercial ships for government business._"
"Good!" said Bors. "Thanks!"
There was a pause.
"_What will you do now?_"
"Try to raise the devil somewhere else," said Bors. "Try to pick up
another food-ship, probably. Maybe I ought to let this ship alone, to
carry news of the pirate ship _Isis_ back to Mekin, but-- No. They use
booby-traps as police devices!"
It was not reasonable, but Bors could not think of missing a Mekinese
warship. The idea of a government using booby-traps to enforce its
orders somehow put it beyond forgiveness, and with the government all
those who served it willingly.
"_You'll go to Garen then?_" asked Gwenlyn.
Bors felt a sharp sting of annoyance. He had carefully kept secret the
choice of Garen Three as the next planet to be invaded by the
pseudo-pirate ship. It was upsetting to find that Gwenlyn knew about it.
Blast Talents, Incorporated!
"_The dowsing Talent_," said Gwenlyn, "_says there's a battleship
aground there. There've been some riots. The people of Garen don't like
Mekin, either. Strange? The battleship is to overawe them._"
"How do you know that?" demanded Bors.
"_The Department for Predicting Dirty Tricks was reading old
news-reports_," she told him. "_We're leaving now. 'Bye._"
"Goodbye," said Bors, and sighed, not knowing whether he felt regret or
relief.
The space-yacht _Sylva_ flicked out of sight. It had gone into
overdrive. Bors realized that he hadn't noticed which way it pointed. He
should have taken note. But he shook his head. He gave the cargo-ship
detailed orders, receiving its space-boat and what food it had been able
to bring. He sent it off to meet his fleet at Glamis.
He stayed in orbit around the fourth planet to wait for a Mekinese
fighting-ship. He began, too, to make long-range plans.
_Part Three_