The message from the ground was true.

Chapter 11

The news as Bors got it from the men of Deccan was remarkable for two reasons: that so much of it was true, and that all of it was glamorized and romanticized and garbled. It was astonishing to find any relation at all between such fabulously romantic tales and the facts, because there was no way for news to travel between solar systems except on ships, and no ships had carried stories like these!

Here on Deccan, the shining-eyed young men _knew_ that Bors had landed on Tralee and on Garen. They _knew_ that there was a fleet in being which had fought and annihilated a Mekinese task-force many times its size.

To the Captain, their knowledge was undiluted catastrophe!

They admired Bors because they believed he commanded that fleet, which he now had in hiding while he flashed splendidly about the subjugated worlds, performing prodigious feats of valor and destruction, half pirate and half hero. The story had it that he'd been driven from his native Tralee by the invaders, and that now he fought Mekin in magnificent knight-errantry, and that it was _he_ who'd set alight the flame of rebellion on so many worlds.

Bors listened, and was numbed. He heard references to the fight off Meriden, and the temporary escape of one of his enemies, and that he'd pursued it to the solar system of Mekin itself and there destroyed it while Mekin watched, helpless to interfere.

The distortion of facts was astounding. But the mere existence of facts at this distance was impossible! Then Bors found himself thinking that these tales sounded like fantasies or daydreams, and he went white. He knew what had happened.

Just before he'd left the fleet, he'd talked to a fat woman and a scowling man who, together, made up the Talents, Incorporated brand new Department for Disseminating Truthful Seditious Rumors, so that rumors of a high degree of detail got started, n.o.body knew how. If such rumors spread, and everybody heard them, n.o.body would doubt them. It was appallingly probable that the fighting on Ca.s.sis and Avino and Deccan had no greater justification in reason than that an enormously fat woman romantically pictured such things as resulting from the derring-do of one Captain Bors, of whom she thought sentimentally and glamorously and without much discrimination.

But she'd daydreamed about the fleet, too! And that it had destroyed a Mekinese squadron many times its size....

He heard the leader of the young men from Deccan speaking humorously.

"Your revolt, sir," he told Bors, "is spreading everywhere! On Cela, sir, there are great s.p.a.ce-ship yards, where they build craft for the Mekinese navy. Not long ago they finished one and it went out to s.p.a.ce for a trial run. It didn't come back. Sabotage. Everybody knew it. The Mekinese raged. A little while later they finished another ship. But the Mekinese were smart! They sent it off for its trial run with only Celans on board. If there were sabotage this time, it wouldn't be Mekinese who died in s.p.a.ce! But that ship didn't come back either! It touched down here, sir, three weeks ago, and we supplied it with food and missiles and some of us joined it. It went off to try to find you."

"I'd better--go after it," said Bors, dry-throated. "It could blunder into trouble. At best--"

The youthful leader of Deccan's revolt grinned widely.

"It's got plenty of missiles," he told Bors. "It can take care of itself! And it has plenty of food. We even gave them target-balloons to practice launching missiles on. We've been storing up missiles to lay an ambush for a Mekinese squadron if one comes by. A lot of us joined the ship, though."

"In any case," said Bors, with the feel of ashes in his throat, "I'll track it down so it can join the fleet."

He could not bring himself to tell these confident and admiring young men that there was no hope and never had been; that the tales of his achievements were only partly true and that they had popped into people's minds because a very fat woman far away indulged in daydreams and fantasies.

They wouldn't have understood. If they had, they wouldn't have believed.

He found that he savagely resisted the conviction himself. But there was no other way for such garbled tales with such a substratum of fact to be spread among the stars. And whoever spread them knew of events up to the last news sent back by Bors, but nothing after that. Undoubtedly, Talents, Incorporated's Department for Disseminating Truthful Seditious Rumors had been at work on Mekin, but the damage done elsewhere was a thousand times greater than any benefit done there.

It was too late to repair the damage, here or anywhere else. This planet and all the rest were too far committed to rebellion ever to be forgiven by Mekin. Mekin would take revenge. It was not pleasant to think about.

So the _Horus_ departed, and traveled in high-speed overdrive for ship-days seemingly without end, toward Glamis. It knew nothing that happened outside its own coc.o.o.n of overdrive field. It knew nothing of any of the thousands of myriads of stars, whose planetary systems offered unlimited room for humanity to live in freedom and without fear.

During the journey Bors only endured being alive. All this disaster was ultimately his fault. The fleet's survival was due to his work with Talents, Incorporated. The raids of a single ship--which now would have such disastrous results--were the fruits of his suggestion, the consequence of his actions.

Talents, Incorporated was involved, to be sure, but only because he'd allowed it to be. He should have realized that Madame Porvis would work havoc if her talent was as described. No mere romantic daydreamer would fashion fantasies with military secrecy in mind and security as a principle. Everything was betrayed. Everything was ruined. And if he, Bors, had only been properly skeptical, the fleet would have been destroyed and Kandar now occupied by the Mekinese--doomed to servitude but not necessarily to annihilation--and other worlds would also be safely servile. They'd still be resentful and they'd bitterly hate Mekin, but they would not have before them the monstrous vengeance now in store.

Bors, in fact, felt guilty because he was still alive.

There was only one small thing he could still try to set aright. He could insist that Morgan take Gwenlyn far away from the dangerous possibility that Mekin might somehow find her. He _had_ to make Morgan see the need for it. If necessary, he would convince King Humphrey that a royal order must be issued to send the _Sylva_ light-centuries away, before the Mekinese empire began to restore itself to devastated calm--if that process hadn't already begun.

Mekin had its grand fleet a.s.sembled and ready. If convincing and, unfortunately, truthful rumors ran about Mekin, as elsewhere, concerning the fleet and Bors's attempts to hide it, then their dictator need only give a single order and the grand fleet would lift off. When it found Kandar unoccupied it would leave Kandar dead. Then it would seek out the fleet, and destroy it, and then it would move from one to another of its rebellious tributaries and take revenge upon them....

And Bors could only hope to salvage the life of one girl from the wreckage of everything that human beings prefer to believe in. He could only hope to send Gwenlyn away--if he was not already too late.

The _Horus_ broke out into normal s.p.a.ce twelve days after leaving Deccan. The untrustworthy sun of Glamis still shone brightly. The inner planet revolved about it with one side glowing low red heat and the other side piled high with frozen atmosphere. The useless outer planet remained a lush green, save for its seas. And the fleet still circled it from pole to pole.

Bors had himself ferried to the flagship by s.p.a.ce-boat, because what he had to report was too disheartening to be spoken where all the fleet might hear. Gwenlyn met him at the flagship's airlock. She looked very glad, as if she'd been uneasy about him.

"Call for a boat," Bors commanded her curtly, "to take you to the _Sylva_. Go on board with anybody else who belongs on it, your father, anybody. I'm going to ask the king to insist that the _Sylva_ get away from here--fast! Before the Mekinese turn up."

Gwenlyn shook her head, her eyes searching his face.

"The _Sylva's_ not here. It's gone to Kandar as a sort of dispatch-boat."

Bors groaned.

"Then I'll try to get another ship a.s.signed to take you away," he said formidably. "Maybe one of the captured cargo-ships I sent back."

"No," said Gwenlyn. "They're going to be released. They'll go to Mekin, and we _couldn't_ go there!"

Bors groaned again. Then he said savagely, "Wait here for me. I'll arrange something as soon as I've seen the king."

He strode down the corridor to King Humphrey's cabin. A sentry came to attention. Bors pa.s.sed through a door. The king and half a dozen of the top-ranking officers of the fleet were listening apathetically to Morgan, at once vexed and positive and uncertain.

"But you can't ignore it!" protested Morgan. "I don't understand it either, but you'll agree that since my precognizer said no ship but Bors's is coming here--and he precognized every one of the prizes before they arrived--you'll concede that the Mekinese aren't coming here. So you're going out to meet them."

He saw Bors, and breathed an audible sigh of relief.

"Bors!" he said in a changed tone. "I'm glad you're back!"

Bors said grimly, "Majesty, I've very bad news."

King Humphrey shrugged. He spoke in a listless voice.

"I doubt it differs from ours. You captured a pa.s.senger-liner off Mekin, you will remember. You sent it here. When it arrived we found that all its pa.s.sengers knew that Kandar was not occupied and that the fleet sent to capture it had not reported back."

"My news is worse," said Bors. "The continued existence of our fleet, and the fact that it defeated a Mekinese force, is common knowledge on at least five planets--all of them now in revolt against Mekin."

The king's expression had reached the limit of reaction to disaster. It did not change. He looked almost apathetic.

"Mekin," he said dully, "sent a second squadron to Kandar to investigate the rumors of defeat. We have a very tiny force there--three ships. Of course our ships won't attack the Mekinese, but they might as well.

Knowing that we destroyed their first fleet and that we still live, Mekin will a.s.suredly retaliate."

"And not only on Kandar," said Bors. "On Tralee and Garen and Ca.s.sis and Meriden--"

Morgan interrupted.