The mess-officer looked hara.s.sed at the news of fifty additional crewmen to be fed.

"Principles of prudence and common sense," said Bors, "don't apply any more. We'll feed them somehow."

He went back to the control-room. When Morgan appeared, beaming expansively, Bors was again unsurprised to see Gwenlyn with him. Logan, the Mathematics Talent, followed in their wake, looking indifferently about him.

"We wiped out the fleet headed for Kandar," Bors observed. "I don't suppose that's news, to you?"

Morgan cheerfully shook his head.

"And we're in considerably more trouble than before. Is that news?"

"No," admitted Morgan. "It's reasonable for you to be."

"Then, d.a.m.nit, I'm going off on a pirating-news-gathering-food-raiding cruise alone," said Bors. "Is that news?"

"We brought Logan," said Morgan, "to go with you. He'll be useful.

That's Talents--"

"--Incorporated information and I can depend on it," said Bors dourly.

"In plain common sense the odds are rather high against my accomplishing anything, such as coming back."

Morgan looked at his daughter. He grinned.

"We heard gloom from him the other day before a certain s.p.a.ce-battle, didn't we?" He turned back to Bors. "Look, Captain. Our Talents don't prophesy. Precognition simply says that when there are so many thousand ways an event in the future can happen, then, in one of those several thousand ways, it will. Precognition doesn't say which way. It doesn't say how. Especially, it doesn't say why. But we have a very firm precognition by a very reliable Talent that you'll be alive and doing something very specific a year from now. So we a.s.sume you won't be permanently killed in the meantime."

"But anything else can happen?"

"More or less," admitted Morgan.

"What will happen?"

"We don't know!" said Morgan again. "Someday I may take you aside and explain the facts of precognition and other talents as I understand them. I'm probably quite wrong. But I do know better than to try to pry certain kinds of information from my Talents. Right now--"

"I'm going to try to capture a, what you might call a tribute-ship, loaded with food for Mekin."

"Tralee," said Morgan with finality. "You'll try there."

"Will I capture a food-ship there?" asked Bors.

"How the devil would I know?" Morgan snapped.

"You asked the wrong question," said Gwenlyn cheerfully. "If you asked if there's a cargo-ship down on Tralee, loading foodstuffs for Mekin, there can be an answer to that."

"Is there?"

"At the moment, yes," Morgan answered. "So the dowsing Talent says."

"Then I'll go there," said Bors.

"I thought you might," said Morgan. He looked at his daughter.

"May I come along?" asked Gwenlyn. "With an a.s.sortment of Talents? My father's going to have long conferences with the king. He'll need some Talents here to work out things. But I could go along on your ship with a few of the others. We could help a lot."

"No!" said Bors grimly.

"I thought not," said Morgan. "Very well. Logan, you'll help Captain Bors, I'm sure."

The math Talent said offhandedly;

"Any calculations he needs, of course."

He looked about him with a confident, modestly complacent air.

Bors walked with Morgan and his daughter to the airlock. He turned to Gwenlyn. "I don't mean to be ungallant, refusing to let you run risks."

"I'm flattered but annoyed," Gwenlyn answered. "It means I'll have to take drastic measures. Luck!"

She and her father went into the _Sylva's_ s.p.a.ce-boat. The blister doors closed. Bors went back to the control room. He began to set up the computations for astrogation from the sun of Glamis to the sun of Tralee. He shortly heard the sound of arrivals via the _Isis's_ airlock. Presently, his second-in-command reported fifty additional hands aboard. They included astrogators, drive-engineers and a.s.sorted specialists.

After clearance with the flagship, the little warship aimed with painstaking exact.i.tude at Tralee's sun, making due allowance for its proper motion, Glamis's proper motion, the length of time the light he aimed by had been on its way, the distance, and the _Isis's_ travel-rate in overdrive.

Presently Bors said, "Overdrive coming!" and counted down. After "one"

he pressed a b.u.t.ton. There was the singularly unpleasant sensation of going into overdrive. Then the small fighting ship was alone in its coc.o.o.n of warped and twisted s.p.a.ce. Until it came out again, there was no possible way by which any message could reach it or its existence be detected or proved. Theory said, in fact, that the cosmos could explode and a ship in overdrive would be unaware of the fact so long as it stayed in overdrive.

But Bors's light cruiser came out where the sun of Tralee was a disk of intolerable brilliance, and all the stars in every direction looked exactly as usual.

Chapter 6

The _Isis_ approached Tralee from the night side, and at a time when the planet's s.p.a.ceport 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 s.p.a.ceport. 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 s.p.a.ceport 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 s.p.a.ceport 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 s.p.a.ceport. 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.