The Mekinese 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 sportsmanlike 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
Mekinese were not so generous. They came up in full force loaded for
bear. They obviously intended not a fight but an execution. Mekinese
tactics depended heavily on fire-power 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 at top
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. Mekinese 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 Mekinese 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 Mekin.
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 Mekinese radar-screens. The hundredth of a second in overdrive
as known to the Mekinese 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 of 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 mind could grasp the fact of her vanishing, she was in
the very center, the exact focus of the formation of Mekinese
battle-craft. She was at the spot a Mekinese 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 Mekinese 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
Mekinese would separately learn--without information from any
other--that those projectiles could not be intercepted. No Mekinese
would have the advantage of watching the tactic practiced on a
companion-ship, to guide his own actions.
The _Horus_ appeared at that utterly vulnerable and wholly advantageous
position. She showed on the Mekinese 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 Mekinese screens. The Mekinese could not believe their
instruments. A ship which fled in overdrive could not reappear like
this! Having vanished and reappeared once, it could not duplicate the
trick. Having duplicated it....
There was more, and worse. The _Horus_ missiles were not being
intercepted. Mekinese 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
trajectiles appeared....
A flare like a temporary sun. Another. Another. Others....
Bors 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's_ missiles.
Both of those ships--one a heavy cruiser--now desperately flung the
contents of their magazines at the _Horus_.
Bors 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. Bors saw one of his just-launched missiles--now a
continent away--as it went off. It accounted for one of the two Mekinese
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 Mekinese ship was gone in overdrive. It was safe! It could
not possibly be overtaken or attacked. It had seen the _Horus's_
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 Mekinese ship certainly carried with it the _Horus's_ tactics
and actions recorded on tape. The technicians of Mekin would set to work
instantly to duplicate them. Once they were considered possible--once
they were recognized--they could be achieved. The combat efficiency of
the Mekinese 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 Mekinese counter-intelligence
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, Bors sat rigid,
his hands clenched, facing the disaster the escape of the Mekinese
constituted. Sweat appeared on his forehead.
Then he pressed the engine-room button and said evenly, "Prepare for
standard overdrive, top speed possible."
He swung the ship. He lined it up with Mekin 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. Bors 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'd distributed instructions and
Logan's 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 she drove toward Mekin. Undoubtedly the one survivor of the
enemy squadron was fleeing for Mekin, 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 Mekin 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 Mekin. It 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 Mekin. 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 Mekin. 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 radars swept all of space except
Mekin. He had no desire to have Mekin 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 Mekin 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 Mekin, 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'd pursued, sight unseen, since the end of the fight off Meriden. 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 Mekin.
Bors swore. It would be days before this tub reached Mekin on
solar-system drive. But it must not report that an armed vessel had
inspected it in remoteness.
"We haul alongside," 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!" rasped Bors, in what would be the arrogant tones
of a Mekinese naval officer hailing a mere civilian ship. "Identify
yourself!"
A voice answered apologetically, "_Cargo-ship_ Empress, _sir, bound from
Loral to Mekin with frozen foods._"
"Cut your drive," snapped Bors. "Stand by for inspection! Muster your
crews. There's a criminal trying to get ashore on Mekin. 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 onto
the airlock of the rounded, bulging tramp-ship. The second lifeboat
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 behaved 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 Mekinese
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 one," said Bors. "The skipper there is on his toes."
He watched bleakly as the _Horus's_ 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 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--specks 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 Meriden. 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, and 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 Cassis, which was another
victim of the Mekinese. It was a rocky, mountainous world with many
mines. Mekin depended on it for metal in vast quantities. The _Horus_
hovered over it and sent 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 Cassis, 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 dissention even on Dover. The landing-party was cheered from
the edge of the spaceport. 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 Tralee, 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
booby-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 exultantly. "_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 Mekin 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 Cassis, but he hadn't been suspicious then. He'd sent 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 the 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 hook-up, 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 _undestroyed_.--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, "Well 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, another in the Mekinese system itself and a squadron off
Meriden. 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 space-boat came up from the ground. The _Horus_ trained weapons on it.
Bors painstakingly arranged for its occupants to board the _Horus_ in
space-suits, which could not conceal bombs.
There were six men in the space-boat. They came into the _Horus's_
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.