Part 6 (1/2)

”It's nothing,” said Logan modestly.

But it was a very great deal. Bors, impatient to try it out, nevertheless realized that Logan hadn't made the suggestion out of a brilliant perception of a solution to a problem in ballistics, but because he thought in terms of mathematical processes. He didn't think of a new missile operation, but a new kind of computation. And he reveled in the fact that he had showed off his brilliance.

In the ground-car on the way to the fleet, Bors said helplessly to Gwenlyn, ”I'm not the right man to be the liaison with you people. But this might make us a pretty costly conquest for Mekin! With luck, we may trade them s.h.i.+p for s.h.i.+p! They won't miss the s.h.i.+ps they lose, but it'll be a lot of satisfaction to us!”

”You expect to be killed,” Gwenlyn said flatly.

”My uncle,” explained Bors, ”considers that he should have gotten killed when Mekin took over Tralee. It would have set a good example. Since we didn't do it for Tralee, we'll do it for Kandar. The king's going along too. After all, that's one of the things kings are for.”

”To get killed?”

”When necessary,” Bors told her. ”Kandar shouldn't surrender even though there will be at least ten Mekinese to one Kandarian.”

She smiled at him, very oddly.

”I suspect,” she said, ”that not everybody on the fleet will be killed.

I'm sure of it. In fact, as my father would say, that's Talents, Incorporated information!”

Bors frowned worriedly.

The fleet of Mekin continued in overdrive, heading for Kandar. Each second it traversed a distance equal to the span of a solar system, out to its remotest planet. A heartbeat that would begin where a pulsing Cepheid, had it been possible to see, would have seemed at its greatest brilliance, and would end where the light from that same giant star seemed dimmed almost to extinction. Of course no such observation could be made from any s.h.i.+p in overdrive. Each one of the many, many ugly war-machines was sealed in its own coc.o.o.n of overdrive-stressed s.p.a.ce.

Even in the armed transports that carried officials and bureaucrats and experienced police organizers to set up a puppet government on Kandar, there was not the faintest hint of anything that happened outside the individual s.h.i.+p. But, what might be termed the position of the fleet, changed with remarkable swiftness. It traveled light-hours between breaths. Light-days between sentences. Light-months and light-years....

But it would not arrive on Kandar for a long while yet. Not for three whole days.

Chapter 4

The small fighting s.h.i.+p lifted swiftly from the surface of Kandar. As it rose, the sky turned dark and the sun's brilliant disk, far too bright to be looked at with uns.h.i.+elded eyes, became a blazing furnace that could roast uns.h.i.+elded flesh. Stars appeared, s.h.i.+ning myriads despite the sun, with every one vivid against a background of black. The planet's surface became a half-ball, of which a part lay in darkness.

”_Co-o-ntact!_” said a voice through many speakers placed throughout the fighting s.h.i.+p's hull.

There was the rus.h.i.+ng sound of compartment doors closing. Then a cus.h.i.+oned silence everywhere, save for the faint, standby scratching sounds that loudspeakers always emit.

Screens lighted. A speck moved among the stars.

”_Prepare counter-missiles_,” said the voice. ”_Proximity and track.

Fire only as missiles appear._”

The moving speck flamed and was again only a moving speck. It ejected something which hurtled toward the s.h.i.+p just up from Kandar.

”_Intercept one away!_” said a confident voice.

The last-launched missile fled toward the first moving speck, diminis.h.i.+ng as it went. It swung suddenly, off course.

”_Fire two!_” snapped somebody somewhere.

Another object hurtled away toward the stars.