He cheered up. This was remarkably accurate. He sent the ship into standard overdrive again. Twice more, however, he stopped between stars and practiced the trick of breaking out of the new overdrive--in which his ship was undetectable--at a predetermined point. The satisfaction of successful operation almost made up for the extremely disagreeable sensations involved.

But on the eighth ship-day out from Glamis, the _Horus_ came back to unstressed s.p.a.ce with a very, very bright star burning almost straight ahead. The spectroscope confirmed that it was the sun of Meriden.

Bors sounded the action alert. Gongs clanged. Compartment-doors hissed shut.

"You know," said Bors conversationally into the all-speaker microphone and in the cushioned stillness which obtained, "you all know what we're aiming at. A food-supply for the fleet. But we've got what looks like a very useful gadget for fighting purposes. We need to test it. There's a small squadron on Meriden, ahead, so we'll take them on. It is necessary that we get _all of them_, so they can't report anything to Mekin that Mekin doesn't already know. All hands ready for action!"

In twenty minutes by the ship's clocks the _Horus_ was a bare thirty thousand miles off the planet Meriden. The new drive worked perfectly for planetary approach, at any rate. It even worked more perfectly than the twenty-minute interval implied. It had been off Meriden for five minutes then.

Mekinese fighting ships were boiling up from the atmosphere of Meriden and plunging out to s.p.a.ce to offer battle. They were surprisingly ready, reacting like hair-triggered weapons. Bors hadn't completed his challenge before they were streaking toward Meriden's sky. They couldn't have been more prompt if, say, Meriden seethed with rumors about a pirate ship in s.p.a.ce, which it was their obligation to fight.

According to the radar screens, there were not less than fifteen ships streaking out to destroy the _Horus_. Fifteen to one--interesting odds.

Bors sent the _Horus_ roaring ahead to meet them.

Part Four

Chapter 10

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 s.p.a.ce-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 s.p.a.ce 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 s.p.a.ce 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 antic.i.p.ate 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 const.i.tuted. Sweat appeared on his forehead.

Then he pressed the engine-room b.u.t.ton 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 a.s.sume 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 s.p.a.ce 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.