"_All ships attention! With old-style missiles we could do everything we've accomplished so far. But the Mekinese are refusing battle now.

They'll begin to slip away in overdrive if we keep chopping them down in groups. We have to give them a chance or they'll run away. The new missile system works perfectly. All ships break formation. Find your own Mekinese. Blast them!_"

Bors said in a conversational voice, "There are three Mekin ships yonder. They look like they're willing to start something. We'll take them on."

He pointed carefully to a spot on the screen. His small ship swung away from the rest of the fleet. It plunged toward a battleship and two heavy cruisers who had joined forces and appeared to attempt to rally the still-stronger-than-Kandar invaders.

They became objects rather than specks upon the screens. They were visible things on the direct-vision ports. Something flashed, and rushed toward the little Kandarian s.p.a.ce-can.

"Fire one, two, three," Bors ordered.

Things hurtled on before him. A screen showed that the missiles first fired by the enemy went off-course, chasing the later-fired missiles from the _Isis_. The Mekinese shots had automatically become interceptors when Kandarian missiles attacked their parent ships. But they couldn't antic.i.p.ate a curved course and their built-in computers weren't designed to handle a rate of change of acceleration. The three Mekinese ships ceased to exist.

"Let's head yonder," said Bors.

He pointed again, on the screen. Within the radar's range there were hundreds of tiny blips. Some were marked with a nimbus apiece. They were friends. Many, many more were not.

The Mekinese fleet, too, could determine its own numbers in comparison to the defending fleet. Pride and rage swept through Mekinese commanders, as they saw the Kandarians deliberately break up their formation to get their ships down to the level of the enemy. It was unthinkable for a Mekinese ship to refuse single combat! And when two and three could combine against a single ship of Kandar....

The invaders had reason to fight, rather than slip into overdrive. They still outnumbered the ships from Kandar. And for a Mekinese commander to flee the battle area without having engaged or fired on an antagonist would be treason. No man who fled without fighting would stay alive.

There had to be a recording of battle offered or accepted, or the especially merciless court-martial system of Mekin would take over.

There was one problem, however, for the Mekinese skippers. When they engaged a ship from Kandar, they died. Still, no ship left the scene of the battle to report defeat.

It was absolute and complete. It was not only a defeat. It was annihilation. The Mekinese fleet was destroyed to the last ship, even to the armed transports carrying bureaucrats and police to set up a new government on Kandar. Those ships which dared not run away without a token fight, discovered the fleet of Kandar wasn't fighting a token battle. It had started out to be just that, but somehow the plans had changed when the fighting started. For the aggressors, it was disaster.

When his fleet rea.s.sembled, King Humphrey issued a general order to all ships. He read it in person, his voice strained and dead and hopeless.

"_I have to express my admiration for the men of my fleet_," he said drearily. "_An unexampled victory over unexampled odds is not only in keeping with the best traditions of the armed forces of Kandar, but raises those traditions to the highest possible level of valor and devotion. If it were not that in winning this victory we have doomed our home world to destruction, I would be as happy as I am, reluctantly, proud...._"

_Part Two_

Chapter 5

n.o.body had ever found any use for the Glamis solar system. There was a sun of highly irregular variability. There were two planets, of which the one farther out might have been useful for colonization except that it was subject to extreme changes of climate as its undependable sun burned brightly or dimly. The nearer planet was so close to its primary that it had long ceased to rotate. One hemisphere, forever in sunshine, remained in a low, red heat. Its night hemisphere, in perpetual darkness, had radiated away its heat until there were mountains of frozen atmosphere piled above what should have been a mineral surface.

It was a matter of record that a hundred standard years before, a ship had landed there and mined oxygen-containing snow, which its air apparatus was able to refine so the crew could breathe while they finished some rather improbable repairs and could go on to more hospitable worlds.

The farther-out planet was sometimes a place of green vegetation and sprawling seas, and sometimes of humid jungles with most of its oceans turned to a cloud-bank of impenetrable thickness. Also, sometimes, it was frozen waste from pole to pole. The vegetation of that planet had been studied with interest, but the world itself was simply of no use to anybody. Even the sun of the Glamis system was regarded with suspicion.

The fleet of Kandar made rendezvous at the galactic-north pole of the second planet. On arrival the ma.s.sed cruisers and battleships went into orbit. The smaller craft went on a scouting mission, verifying that there was no new colony planted, that there was no man-made radiation anywhere in the system, that there was no likelihood of the fleet's presence--or for that matter its continued existence--becoming known to anybody not of its ship-crews.

The scout-ships came back, reporting all clear. The great ships drew close to one another and small s.p.a.ce-boats shuttled back and forth, taking commanders and captains and vice-admirals to the ship, which, by convention, was commanded by King Humphrey VIII of Kandar.

Captain Bors got to the conference late. There were some grave faces about the conference room, but there were also some whose expressions were unregenerate and grimly satisfied. As he entered the room the king was speaking.

"I don't deny that it was a splendid victory, but I'm saying that our victory was a catastrophe! To begin with, we happened to hit the Mekinese fleet when it was dispersed and disorganized. That was great good fortune--_if_ we'd wanted a victory. The enemy was scattered over light-minutes of s.p.a.ce. His ships could not act as a ma.s.sed, maneuverable force. They were simply a mob of fighting ships who had to fight as individuals against our combat formation."

"Yes, Majesty," said the gray vice-admiral, "but even when we broke formation--"

"Again," said the king, more fretfully still, "I do not deny that the fighting ability of our ships was multiplied by the new way of using missiles. What I do say is that if we'd come upon the Mekinese fleet in combat formation instead of dispersed; if we'd attacked them when they were ready for us, it would be doubtful that we'd have been so disastrously successful! Say that the new missile settings gave each of our ships fire-power as effective as two or three or five of the enemy.

The enemy was ten to one! If we hadn't hit them when they were in confusion, we'd have been wiped out. And if we'd hit their fleet anyhow, we'd be dead. We did not hit the main fleet. We annihilated a division of it, a small part. We are still hopelessly inferior to the vast Mekinese fleet."

Bors took a seat at the rear of the room.

A stout rear-admiral said somberly, "We hope we annihilated it, Majesty.

There's no report of any ship fleeing in overdrive. But if any did escape, its report would lead to an immediate discovery of the exact improvement in our missiles. I am saying, Majesty, that if one enemy ship escaped that battle, we can look for all the enemy ships to be equipped with revised missiles like ours."

Bors raised his voice. "May I speak?"

"Ah," said the king. "Bors. By all means."

"I make two points," said Bors with reserve. "One is that the Mekinese are as likely to think our missiles captured theirs as that they were uncomputable. Missile designers have been trying for years to create interceptors which capture enemy missiles. The Mekinese may decide we've accomplished something they've failed at, but they're not likely to think we've accomplished something they never even thought of!"

Voices babbled. A pompous voice said firmly that n.o.body would be so absurd. Several others said urgently that it was very likely. All defense departments had research in progress, working on the capture of enemy missiles. If it were accomplished, ships could be destroyed as a matter of routine.

Bors waited until the king thumped on the table for silence.

"The second thing I have to say, Majesty, is that there can be no plans made until we know what we have to do. And that depends on what Mekin thinks has happened. Maybe no enemy ship got home. Maybe some ships took back inaccurate reports. It would be very uncomfortable for them to report the truth. Maybe they said we had some new and marvellous weapon which no fleet could resist. In that case, we are in a very fine position."

The king said gloomily, "You think of abominably clever things, Captain.

But I am afraid we've been too clever. If Mekin ma.s.ses its entire fleet to destroy us, they can do it, new missile-system or no new missile-system! We have somehow to keep them from resolving to do just that!"

"Which," said Bors, "may mean negotiation. But there's no point in negotiating unless you know what your enemy thinks you've got. We could have Mekin scared!"

There was a murmur, which could not be said to be either agreement or disagreement. The king looked about him.

"We cannot continue to fight!" he said sternly, "not unless we can defend Kandar--which we can't as against the Mekinese main fleet. We were prepared to sacrifice our lives to earn respect for our world, and to leave a tradition behind us. We must still be prepared to sacrifice even our vanity."

The vice-admiral said, "But one sacrifices, Majesty, to achieve. Do you believe that Mekin will honor any treaty one second after it ceases to be profitable to Mekin?"

"That," said the king, "has to be thought about. But Bors is right on one point. We should come to no final conclusion without information--"

"Majesty," Bors interrupted. His words came slowly, as if an idea were forming as he spoke. "The enemy may have no news at all. They may know they've been defeated, but they'd _never_ expect _our_ freedom from loss. Why couldn't a single Kandarian ship turn up at some port where its appearance would surely be reported to Mekin? It could pose as the sole survivor of our fleet, which would indicate that the rest of us were wiped out in the battle. If we _had_ all been wiped out, there'd be no point in their fusion-bombing Kandar. Certainly they expected us to be destroyed. One surviving ship can prove that we _have_ been!"

The king's expression brightened.

"Ah! And we can go and intern ourselves--"

There was a growl. The pompous voice said, "We would gain time, Majesty.

Our fear is that Mekin may feel it must avenge a defeat. But if one ship claims to be the sole survivor of our fleet, it announces a Mekinese victory. That is a highly desirable thing!"

The king nodded.