Gwenlyn sat down. She regarded Bors with amus.e.m.e.nt.

"I think the Captain's halfway unconvinced again, Father."

"I'm not unconvinced," said Bors grimly. "I'm desperate. It's not easy either to ignore what's happened or to believe that it will continue.

And I--well--if the Mekinese fleet does arrive, I don't want to miss going with our fleet to meet it."

"You won't miss anything, Captain," said Morgan happily. "Have a cigar.

Gwenlyn, do you think I should--"

"Let me," said Gwenlyn. "I know how the Captain feels. I'm an outsider, too. I haven't any talent--fortunately! Sit down, Captain."

Bors seated himself. Morgan offered a cigar. He seemed too impatient and much too pleased to be able to sit down himself. Bors lighted the cigar; at the first puff he removed it and looked at it respectfully.

Such cigars were not easy to come by.

"I think," said Gwenlyn amiably, "that Father himself has a talent, which makes him not too easy to get along with. But it has had some good results. I hope it will have more here. The whole business is unbelievable, though, unless you think of some very special facts."

Bors nodded. He puffed again and waited.

"He told you some of it," said Gwenlyn. "About the ship arrival Talent and the dowser. There've always been such people with gifts that n.o.body's ever understood, but that are real. Only they've always been considered freaks. They feel that they're remarkable--and they are--and they want people to recognize this. But they've never had a function in society. They've been _denied_ all function. Take the Mathematical Talent! He can do any sort of mathematics in his head. Any sort! He used to hire out to work computers, and he always got discharged because he did the computations in his head instead of using the machines. He was always right, and he was proud of his ability. He wanted to use it! But n.o.body'd let him. He was a miserable misfit until Father found him and hired him."

Bors nodded again, but his forehead wrinkled.

"Talents, Incorporated is merely an organization, created by my father, to make use of people who can do things ordinarily impossible, and probably unexplainable, but which exist nevertheless. There are more talents than Father has gathered, of course. But what good are their gifts to them? No good at all! They're considered freaks. So Father gathered them together as he found them. First, of course, he needed capital. So he used them to make money. Then he began to do useful things with them, since n.o.body else did. Now he's brought them here to help."

Bors said painfully, "They don't all have the same gift."

"No," agreed Gwenlyn.

"And there are limits to their talents?"

"Naturally!"

Morgan broke in, amused. "Gwenlyn insists that I have the talent of finding and using talents."

"A mild talent, Father," said Gwenlyn. "Not enough to make you revolting. But--"

A door opened. A tweedy man with a small mustache stood in the doorway.

"I believe I'm wanted?" he said offhandedly.

Morgan introduced him. His name was Logan. He was the lightning calculator, the mathematical talent of Talents, Incorporated. Bors shook his hand. The tweedy man sat down. He drew out a pipe and began to fill it with conscious exact.i.tude. He looked remarkably like a professor of mathematics who modestly pretended to be just another commuter. He dressed the part: slightly untidy hair; bulldog pipe; casual, expensive sports shoes.

"I understand," he said negligently, "that you want some calculations made."

"I'm told I do," said Bors, hara.s.sedly. "But I don't know what they are."

"Then how can I make them?" asked Logan with lifted eyebrows.

"Naturally," said Morgan, "you'll find out the kind of calculations he needs, that he can't get anywhere else. That'll be the kind he needs from you."

"Hm," said Logan. He blew a smoke-ring, thoughtfully. "Where do you use calculations in s.p.a.ce-travel?"

"Everywhere," said Bors. "But we've computers for it. And they're quite adequate."

Logan shrugged. "Then what do you need me for?"

"You tell me!" said Bors, nettled. "Certainly we don't need calculations for s.p.a.ce-travel. We've no long journey in mind. We're simply going to go out and do some fighting when the Mekinese fleet gets here."

Logan blew another smoke-ring.

"What calculations do you use in s.p.a.ce-fighting?"

"Courses and distances," said Bors. He could see no sense in this, but he went on. "Allowing for acceleration and deceleration in setting our missiles on targets. Allowing for the motion of the targets. Again we have computers for this. In practice they're too good! If we send a missile at a Mekinese ship, they set a computer on it, and it computes a course for a counter-missile which explodes and destroys our missile when it's within a certain distance of it."

"Then your missile doesn't hit," said Logan.

"All too often, it doesn't," admitted Bors.

"Then their missiles don't hit either."

"If they send a hundred missiles at us, they're cancelled out if we send a hundred to destroy them. Unfortunately, if they send more than we can counter, we get wiped out."

Bors found his throat going dry. This, of course, was what he'd desperately been denying to himself. It was the fundamental reason for a total lack of hope. The history of warfare is the history of rivalry between attack and defense. In the matter of missiles in s.p.a.ce, there was a stalemate. One missile fired in attack could always be destroyed by another fired in defense. It was an arithmetic balance. But it meant that three ships could always destroy two, and four ships three. In the s.p.a.ce-fight ahead, there would be at least ten Mekinese ships to every one from Kandar. The sally of Kandar's fleet would not be a rush into battle, but an advance into annihilation. "What we need," said Bors desperately, "is a means to compute courses for our missiles so they'll hit, and that the enemy can't counter-compute--so that his missiles can't compute how to change course in order to cancel ours out."

He was astonished as the words left his mouth. This was what was needed, of course. But then he realized that it couldn't be done.

Logan blew a smoke-ring.

"Mechanical computers," he said, "have limits. They're designed to calculate a trajectory with constant acceleration or no acceleration.

But that's all."

Bors frowned. "What else could there be?"

"Changing acceleration," said Logan condescendingly. "A mechanical computer can't compute that. But I can."

Bors continued to frown. One part of his mind a.s.sured him that the statement that mechanical computers could not calculate trajectories of missiles with changing acceleration was incorrect. But the rest of his mind tried to imagine such a trajectory. He couldn't. In practice, men do not have to handle the results of variable acceleration as c.u.mulative effects.

"I think," said Bors carefully, "that if you can do that--"

Logan blew a smoke-ring more perfect than any that had gone before.

"I'll calculate some tables," he said modestly. "You can use them on your computer-results. Then if you arrange your missiles to change their acceleration as they go, the Mekinese missiles can't intercept them."

He waved his hand with the grand air of someone a.s.suring a grammar-grade pupil that multiplication tables were quite reliable and could be used with confidence. But his eyes fixed themselves on Bors's face. As the Captain realized the implications of his statement, the eyes of the Mathematical Talent of Talents, Incorporated shone with gratified vanity.

"We'll go out in a couple of tin cans," said Bors fiercely, "and try this out with dummy warheads!"

Gwenlyn said quickly, "Marvelous! Marvelous, Logan!"