The small fighting ship lifted swiftly from the surface of Kandar.  As it rose, the sky turned dark and the sun’s brilliant disk, far too bright to be looked at with unshielded eyes, became a blazing furnace that could roast unshielded flesh.  Stars appeared, shining myriads despite the sun, with every one vivid against a background of black.  The planet’s surface became a half-ball, of which a part lay in darkness.

“Co-o-ntact!” said a voice through many speakers placed throughout the fighting ship’s hull.

There was the rushing sound of compartment doors closing.  Then a cushioned silence everywhere, save for the faint, standby scratching sounds that loudspeakers always emit.

Screens lighted.  A speck moved among the stars.

“Prepare counter-missiles,” said the voice. “Proximity and track.  Fire only as missiles appear.”

The moving speck flamed and was again only a moving speck.  It ejected something which hurtled toward the ship just up from Kandar.

“Intercept one away!” said a confident voice.

The last-launched missile fled toward the first moving speck, diminishing as it went.  It swung suddenly, off course.

“Fire two!” snapped somebody somewhere.

Another object hurtled away toward the stars.

“Fire three!  Fire four!”

Far away, something came plunging toward the ship.  It did not travel in a straight line.  It curved.  It was not reasonable for a missile to travel in a curved line.  The interceptor missiles had to detect it, swing to intercept, to accelerate furiously.  The first interceptor missed.  Worse, it had lost its target.  It went wandering vaguely among the stars and was gone.

The second missed.  The voice in the speaker seemed to crack.

“Fire all missiles!  They’re turning too late!  Pull ’em up ahead of the damned thing!”

The deadly contrivances plunged away and further away into emptiness.  The third interceptor missed.  The fourth.  Tiny specks moved gracefully on the radar screen.  There was something coming toward the ship that had risen from Kandar.  The tracer-trails of missiles appeared against the stars.  They made very pretty parábolas.  That was all.  The thing that was coming left a tracer-trail too.  It curved preposterously.  The just-risen ship furiously flung missiles at it.  It did not dodge.  But none of the tracer-trails intersected its own.  All of them passed to its rear.

For the fraction of a second it was visible as an object instead of a speck.  That object swelled.

It went by.  Bors’s voice, relayed, said,

“Coup!  You’re out of action.  Right?”

The skipper of the ship just up from Kandar said grudgingly, “Hell, yes!  We threw fifteen missiles at it, and missed with every one!  This is magic!  Can we all have this before the Mekinese get here?”

“I hope so,” said Bors’s voice. “We’re trying hard, anyhow.  Will you report to ground?”

“Right,” said the speakers in the ship which had just fired fifteen missiles without a hit or interception. “Off.”

And then the compartment doors opened again and the normal sounds of a small fighting ship in space began again.

An hour later, aground, Bors said impatiently, “Half a dozen ships have checked out with me.  I sent a single dummy-warhead missile at each one.  They knew I was trying something new.  They tried interceptors.  Not one worked.  Worse, my missiles drew the interceptors off-course so they lost their original aim on the Isis.  Missiles set for variable acceleration not only can’t be intercepted but they draw interceptors off-course and are super-interceptors themselves.  I fired one dummy warhead at each target-ship.  I got six hits with six missiles.  They fired an average of twelve missiles against each of mine.  They got no intercepts or hits with seventy-two tries!  This appears to me a very gratifying development for the situation we’re in.”

The bearded man who’d plumped for negotiation, earlier, now spoke indignantly in the War Council.

“Why wasn’t this revealed earlier?  We could have made a demonstration and Mekin would have been wary of issuing an ultimatum!  Why was this concealed until it was too late to use in negotiations with them?”

“It wasn’t available until today,” Bors answered.  “It was tried, and it worked.”

An admiral said slowly, “As I understand it, this is a proposal of the hm Talents, Incorporated people.”

“No,” said Bors.  “We got the idea but couldn’t do the math.  Talents, Incorporated did the computations to make the missiles hit.”

“Why?  Why let them do the math?  There may be a counter to this device.  Perhaps Talents, Incorporated, was sent to us to get us to adopt this freakish trick.”

“Talents, Incorporated,” said Bors, “enabled us to smash a submerged Mekinese cruiser.  In giving us the necessary information, Talents, Incorporated kept the Mekinese from wiping out our space-fleet.  Talents, Incorporated Oh, the devil!”

The admiral gazed about him.

“This device,” he said precisely, “is not a tried and standard weapon.  On the other hand, the sally of our fleet is not war.  Because of our civilian population we cannot make war on Mekin!  The defiance of our fleet will be a gesture only a splendid gesture, but no more.  It should be a dignified gesture.  It would be most inappropriate for our fleet to take to space, ostensibly to say that it prefers death to surrender, and for it then to unveil a new and eccentric device which would say that the fleet was foolish enough to hope that a gadget would save it from dying and Kandar from conquest.  The fleet action should be fought with scorn of odds.  It should end its existence in a manner worthy of its traditions!”

Bors exploded, “Damnit ”

King Humphrey held up his hand and said fretfully, “As I remember it, Admiral, you have been assigned to hold together the defense forces those who either did not insist on going with the fleet, or for whom there was no room who have to be surrendered.  You talk of gestures.  But the young men who will go out in the fleet are not going there to make gestures!  They simply and furiously hate Mekin for what it is about to do.  They are going out to kill as many Mekinese as they can before they, themselves, are killed.  They would call your speech nonsense.  And I would agree with them.”

Bors said respectfully, “Yes, Majesty.  It may also be said that copies of the first Talents, Incorporated launching-data tables have already been distributed to the missile crews throughout the fleet.  More are being distributed as fast as Logan calculates them.  I don’t think you can keep our ships from trying the new missiles when the fighting starts!”

Indignantly, the bearded man said, “I protest!  This is a War Council!  If the council is to be lectured by strangers and if its orders won’t be obeyed, why hold it?”

“Why, indeed?” King Humphrey looked sternly about the council-table.  Sternness did not become him, but dignity did.  He said with dignity, “You who are to stay here have to think of dealing with a victorious Mekin.  We who are to go have to think of making our defeat count.  There is no point in further discussion.  The fleet will take off immediately.”

He rose from his seat.  The bearded man protested, “But the Mekinese aren’t here yet!  They won’t arrive until day after tomorrow!”

“You’re using Talents, Incorporated information,” objected Bors.  “And it is wise for the fleet to move off-planet at once!  You are reasonable men.  Too reasonable!  Nothing can destroy a nation so quickly as for it to fall into the hands of practical, hard-headed, reasonable men who act upon the best scientific data and the opinions of the best experts!  That happened on Tralee, and my uncle and myself are exiles and Tralee is subjugated in consequence.  But I am beginning to have hope for Kandar!”

He followed King Humphrey out of the council-room.  Fleet admirals brought up the rear.  The stodgy, dumpy figure of the king tramped onward.  It became obvious that he was bound for the ground-cars that waited to take him and those who would follow him to the launching area of the fleet.

A lean, gray, vice-admiral fell into step beside Bors.

“You don’t think things are hopeless, Captain?” he asked curiously.  “I don’t see the shred of a chance for us.  But my whole life’s been in the fleet.  Under Mekin I’d be drafted to work in a factory or serve as an under-officer on a guard-ship, one or the other!  I’d rather end in a good fight.  How can you have hope?”

Bors said grimly, “I’m not sure that I have.  But I can’t believe that nations can be saved by reasonable, practical men.  They aren’t made by them!  I’ve no hope except that acting foolishly may be wisdom.  Sometimes it is.”

“Ha!” The vice-admiral grinned wryly.  “But fortunes are made by businessmen, and only history by heroes.  No sensible man is ever a hero.  But, like you, I don’t like practical men.”

They went out-of-doors.  The king climbed sturdily into a ground-car.  It hummed away.  There was a sort of ordered confusion, and then other ground-cars began to stream away from the palace.

Morgan appeared and waved to Bors.  He hesitated, and Morgan pointed to an unofficial vehicle.  Inside, Gwenlyn was smiling cheerfully at Bors.  He found himself returning the smile, and allowed himself to be guided to her.  The ground-car rolled swiftly after the others.

“I’ve a little more Talents, Incorporated information,” said Morgan.  “It’s written down for you to read when you get to wherever you’re going.  It’s rather important.  Please be sure to read it fairly soon, it may affect the fight.”

“I’m headed for the fleet,” said Bors.  “Take me there, will you?  I wanted to say something before I left, anyhow.”

Morgan waved his hand.

“I can guess,” he said blandly.  “Deepest gratitude and all that, but the rush of events blocked any way to arrange a suitable recompense for what Talents, Incorporated has done.”

Bors blinked.  “That’s the substance of what I meant to say,” he admitted.

“We’ll take it up later,” Morgan told him.  “We’ll get in touch with you after the battle.”

“I doubt it,” said Bors.  “I’m not likely to be around.”

Gwenlyn laughed a little.

“What’s so amusing?” asked Bors.  “I don’t mean to strike an attitude, but I do hate everything Mekin stands for, and I’ve a chance to throw a brick at it.  The price may be high but throwing the brick is necessary!”

“We,” said Gwenlyn, “have Talents, Incorporated information, some of which is in that letter Father gave you.  Our Department for Predicting Dirty Tricks has been busy.  You’ll see.  But we’ve other information, too.”

Bors frowned at her.  He put the letter away.

“More information and you’ll see me after the fight.  You’re not telling me you know the future?”

Morgan waved a cigar.

“Of course not!  That’s nonsense!  If one knew the future, one could change it, and then it wouldn’t be what one knew!  You haven’t had any prophecies from me!  Prophecy’s absurd!  All we’ve told you is about events whose probability approaches unity.”

“But ”

“What Father means,” Gwenlyn told him, “is that you can’t be told beforehand about anything you can prevent, because if you can prevent it you can make your knowledge false.  So it isn’t knowledge.  What we want to say, though, is that we aren’t through.”

“Why not?”

“I’m going to retire,” said Morgan blandly.  “But I want to do something first that I can gloat over later.”

“He wants,” added Gwenlyn, “to repose in the satisfaction of his vanity.”  She laughed again at her father’s expression.

“Seriously, Captain, we wanted to give you the letter and to ask you not to be surprised if we turn up somewhere.  There’s a Talent,” she added, “a young boy who can find people.  He doesn’t know how he does it, but....  We’ll find you!”

The ground-car turned in at the fleet’s take-off ground.  The normal interstellar traffic of a planet, of course, was handled by a spaceport, with ships brought down to ground and lifted out to space again by the force-fields generated in a giant landing-grid.  But a war-fleet could not depend solely on ground installations.  The fighting ships of Kandar were allowed to use the planet’s spaceport only for special reasons.  Emergency rocket take-offs and landings were necessary training for war conditions anyhow.  So the take-off ground was pitted and scarred with burnt-over circles, where no living thing grew and where very often the clay beneath the humus top-layer was vitrified by rocket-flames.

A guard at the gate brought the ground-car to a halt.

“War alert,” said Bors.  “Only known officers and men admitted here.  It’s not worth arguing about.”

He got out of the car and shook hands.

“I still regret,” he told Morgan, “that we’ve had no chance to do something in return for the information you’ve given us.”  To Gwenlyn he said obscurely, “I’m glad I didn’t know you sooner.”

He turned and walked briskly into the fenced-off area.  Behind him, Morgan looked inquisitively at his daughter.

“What was that he just said?”

“He’s glad he didn’t know me sooner,” said Gwenlyn.  She looked smugly pleased.  “Considering everything, it was a very nice thing to say.  I like him even if he doesn’t smile.”

Morgan did not seem enlightened.  “It doesn’t make sense to me.”

“That’s because you are my father,” said Gwenlyn.  She stirred restlessly.  She was no longer smiling.  “I hope Talents, Incorporated information isn’t wrong this time!  Remember, we heard on Norden that the dictator of Mekin consults fortune-tellers!”

“Ah!” said her father.  “But they’re only fortune-tellers!”

“One could be a Talent,” said Gwenlyn worriedly, “maybe without even knowing it.”

There came a far-distant, roaring sound.  Something silvery and glistening rose swiftly toward the sky.  It dwindled to a speck.  There were more roarings.  Three more silvery, glistening objects flung themselves heavenward, leaving massive trails of seemingly solid smoke behind them.  Then there were bellowings.  Larger ships rose up.  As the din of their rising began to diminish, there were louder, booming uproars and other silvery objects seemed to fling themselves toward the sky.

Then thunder rolled, and huge shapes plunged in their turn toward the heavens.  The space-fleet of Kandar left its native world.  It departed in the formation used for space maneuvering, much like the tactical disposition of a column of marching soldiers in doubtful territory.  There was a “point” in advance of all the rest, to be the first to detect or be fired on by an enemy.  Then flankers reached straight out, and to the right and left, and then an advance-guard, and then the main force with a rear-guard behind it.

The take-off area became invisible under a monstrous, roiling mountain of smoke, from which threads of vapor reached to emptiness.  It became impossible to hear oneself talk; it was unlikely that one could have heard a shot, as the heavy ships took off.  But presently there were only lesser clamors and then mere roarings after them, and the last of the rocket-boomings died away.  The smoke remained, rolling very slowly aside.  Then there were unexpected détonations.  As the rocket-fume mist dissolved, the détonations were explained.  Every building in the fleet’s home area, the sunken fuel-tanks, the giant rolling gantries every bit of ground equipment for the servicing of the fleet was methodically and carefully being blown to bits.  The fleet was not expected back.

The ships rose above the atmosphere, and rose still higher, and the planet Kandar became a gigantic ball which filled an enormous part of the firmament.  Then there were cracklings of communicators, and orders flittered through emptiness in scrambled and re-scrambled broadcasts of gibberish which came out as lucid commands in the control-rooms of the ships.  Then, first, the point, then the advanced flankers, and then the main fleet, line by line and rank by rank every ship drove on outward under top-speed solar-system drive.

The last of the four chartered space-liners, come to take refugees away before the Mekinese arrived, saw the disappearance of the ships in the rear of the fleet’s formation.  The liner was lowered to the ground by the landing-grid.  It reported what it had seen.  Those who were entitled to depart on it crowded aboard.  With the fleet gone, panic began.

Morgan had to spend lavishly to get copies of the news reports that the liner had brought along as a matter of course.  He took them back to the Sylva, where a frowning man with rings on his fingers read them with dark suspicion.  Presently, triumphantly, he dictated predictions of dirty tricks from indications in the news.

Morgan returned to what he’d called the family room of the yacht.  He relaxed.  Gwenlyn tried to read.  She did not succeed.  She was excessively nervous.

Bors was not.  The fleet re-formed itself well out from Kandar.  It made for a rendezvous over a pole of the gas-giant planet which was the fourth planet from Kandar’s sun.  It was almost, but not quite in line with that yellow star toward the base, from which the Mekinese flotilla would come.  The fleet went into a polar orbit around that gigantic planet, which was useless to mankind because its atmosphere was partly gaseous ammonia and partly methane.

The cosmos paid no attention.  An unstable sol-type star in Cygnus collapsed abruptly and a number of otherwise promising planets became unfit for human exploitation.  In Andromeda, a super-nova flared.  The light of its explosion would not reach Kandar for very many thousands of years.  The largest comet in the galaxy reached perihelion, and practically outshone the sun it circled.  Nobody saw it, because nobody lived there.  On a dreary, red-sky planet in Mousset, a thing squirmed heavily out of a stagnant sea and blinked stupidly at the remarkable above-water cosmos it had discovered.  Suns flamed and spouted flares.  Small dark stars became an infinitesimal fraction of a degree colder.  There was a magnetic storm in the photosphere of a sun which was not supposed to have such things.

The war-fleet of Kandar, in very fine formation, flowed in its polar orbit around the fourth planet out from Kandar’s sun.  In carefully scrambled and re-scrambled communications, certain ships were authorized to modify the settings of Mark 13 missiles in this exact fashion, to remove their warheads, and to diverge in pairs from the fleet proper.  They were to familiarize themselves with the results of making the acceleration of such missiles variable during flight.  They would use the supplied data-tables to compute firing constants for given ranges and relative speeds.  They would, of course, return to formation to permit other ships the same practice with the new method of missile handling.

Bors read the letter from Talents, Incorporated.  It gave an exact time for the breakout of the Mekinese fleet.  The rest consisted mostly of specific warnings from the Talents, Incorporated Department for Predicting Dirty Tricks.  It listed certain things to be looked for among the ships of the fleet.  The information was like the news of an enemy ship aground on Kandar; it was self-evidently plausible once one thought of it.  Mekin was ruled and its military practices governed by men with the instincts of conspirators, using other men with the psychopathological impulses which make for spies.  They thought of devices neither statesmen nor fighting men would have invented.  But a paranoid Talent could think of them, and know that they were true.

As a result of the warnings, the flagship was found to have been somehow equipped, by Mekin, with a tiny, special microwave transmitter which used a frequency not usual on Kandar.  It was, in effect, a radio beacon on which enemy missiles could home.  Also, the lead ship of a cruiser-squadron had been mysteriously geared to reveal its exact position, course and speed while in space.  There were other concealed devices.  Some would make the controls of predetermined ships useless when beams of specific frequency and form were trained upon them.

Once the basic idea was discovered, it was possible to make sure that all such enemy-supplied equipment was out of operation.  The fleet was still in no promising situation, with a ten-to-one disadvantage.  But it could not have put up even the beginning of a fight, had these spy-installed devices remained undiscovered.

Bors said carefully, by scrambled and re-scrambled communicator, “Majesty, I’m beginning to be less than despairing.  If they expect our ships either to have been destroyed aground, or to be made helpless the instant combat begins, we may give them a shock.  We hoped to smash them ship for ship.  Finding out their tricks in advance may give us that!  And if our missiles work as they’ve promised, we may get two for one!”

King Humphrey’s voice was dogged. “I will settle for anything but surrender!  From an honorable enemy I would take severe terms rather than see my spacemen die.  But I would do nobody any good by yielding to Mekin!”

Bors clicked off.  He looked at a clock.  The prediction from Talents, Incorporated was that the Mekinese fleet would break out of overdrive at 11.19 hours astronomical time.

He went over his ship.  His crew was by no means depressed.  There had been a terrific lift in spirits when dummy-warheaded missiles made theoretic hits, though fifteen interceptors tried to stop them.  The crewmen now tended elaborately to explain the process.  A part of the trick was the curved path along which the re-set missiles flashed.  Such courses alone could never be computed by an unwarned enemy under battle conditions.  But the all-important thing was that the missiles changed their acceleration as they drove.  That couldn’t be solved and the solution put into practice during one fleet-action.  Once the enemy had experienced it, they could later duplicate it without doubt, but it would still be impossible to counter.

So Bors’s men were cheerful to the point of gaiety.  They would fight magnificently because they were thinking of what they would do to the enemy instead of what the enemy might do to them.  If enemy crews had been assured that the fleet was half defeated before the fight began, to find the fleet not crippled by spy-set devices would be startling.  To find them fighting like fiends would be alarming.  And if Bors grimly repeated to himself, if the modified missiles worked as well in battle as in target practice....

He turned in and, despite his tensions, fell asleep immediately and slept soundly.  When he awoke he felt curiously relaxed.  It took him a moment to realize he had dreamed about Gwenlyn.  He couldn’t remember what he had dreamed, but he knew it was comfortable and good.  He wouldn’t let himself dwell on it, however.  There was work to be done.

It was singularly like morning on a planet.  The ship was spotless, immaculate.  There was the fresh smell of growing things in the air.  To save tanked oxygen the air-room used vegetation to absorb CO and excess moisture from the breathing of the crew.  There was room to spare everywhere, because unlike aircraft and surface ships, the size of a space-ship made no difference in its speed.  There was no resistance due to size.  Only the mass counted.  So there was spaciousness and freshness and something close to elation on Bors’s ship on the day it was to fight for the high satisfaction of getting killed.

Bors saw to it that his men breakfasted heartily.

“We’ve got a party ahead,” he told the watch at mess.  “Eat plenty but give the other watch a chance to fill up, too.”

Somebody said cheerfully, “The condemned men ate a hearty breakfast, sir?”

Bors grinned.

“The breakfast we can be sure of.  The condemned part we’ll have something to say about that.  Some Mekinese wouldn’t have good appetites if they knew what’s ahead of them.  One word!  Don’t waste missiles!  There are a lot of Mekin ships.  We’ve got to make each missile count!”

There was laughter.  He went to the control room.  He checked with the clock.  Shortly after the other watch was back at its stations he calculated carefully.  The enemy fleet would break out of overdrive short of Kandar, of course.  It would have broken out once before, to correct its line and estimate the distance to its destination.  It would have assembled itself at that breakout point, but it would still arrive in a disorderly mob.  One’s point of arrival could not be too closely figured at the high speeds of overdrive.  So when the Mekinese came, they would not be in formation.

Bors called the flagship, when the gas-giant planet was in line and a barrier against the radio waves.  King Humphrey’s voice came from the speaker by Bors’s side.

“Bors?  What?”

“Majesty,” said Bors.  “Talents, Incorporated says the enemy fleet will break out of overdrive in just about ten minutes.  We’re out here waiting for it, instead of aground as they’ll expect.  They’ll break out in complete confusion.  Even with great luck, they’ll lose time assembling into combat formation.  Being out here, we may be able to hit them before they’re organized.”

A pause.

“I’ve been discussing tactics with the high command,” said the king’s voice. “There’s some dispute.  The classic tactic is to try for englobement.”

“I want to point out, Majesty,” Bors interrupted urgently, “that when we cross the north pole again, we’re apt to detect the fleet signalling frantically to itself, sorting itself out, trying to get into some sort of order.  It’ll be stirred up as if with a spoon.  But if we come around the planet’s pole and they don’t expect us to be out here waiting for them we’ll be in combat-ready formation.  We may be able to tear into them as an organized unit before they can begin to co-operate with each other.”

A longer pause.  Then King Humphrey said grimly;

“There is one weak point in your proposal, Bors.  Only one.  It is that Talents, Incorporated may be wrong about the time of breakout.  The more I think, the less I believe in what they have done, or even what I saw!  But we’ll be prepared, however unlikely your idea.  We’ll be ready.”

He clicked off.  Only minutes later, the combat-alert order came through.  In the next ten minutes, Bors’s ship hummed for five, was quiet for three, and then, two minutes early, all inner compartment doors closed quietly and there was that muffled stillness which meant that everybody was ready for anything that might happen.

In the control room, Bors watched out of a direct-vision port, giving occasional glances to the screens.  There were flecks of light from innumerable stars.  Then the shining cloud-bank of the gas-giant planet went black.  Screens showed all of the fleet each blip with a nimbus about it which identified it as a friend, not a foe.  There was the blip of the leading ship, the “point” of the formation.  There were the flanking ships and all the martial array of the fleet.

Then the screens sparkled with seemingly hundreds of blips which seemed to swirl and spin and whirl again in total and disordered confusion.

Gongs clanged.  A voice said, “Co-o-ntact!  Enemy fleet ahead.  Wide dispersion.  They’re milling about like gnats on a sunny day!”

A curt and authoritative and well-recognized voice snapped, “All ships keep formation on flagship.  Course coordinates....” The voice gave them. “There’s a clump of enemy ships beginning to organize!  We hit them!”

The fleet of Kandar came around the gas-giant world and flung itself at the fleet of Mekin.  It seemed that everything was subject to intolerable delay.  For long, sweating, unbearable minutes nothing happened except that the fleet of Kandar went hurtling through space with no sensation or direct evidence of motion.  The gas-giant planet dwindled, but not very fast.  The bright specks on the screens which were enemy ships seemed to separate as they drew nearer.  But all happened with infinite and infuriating deliberation.

It was worth waiting for.  There was truly a clumping of enemy ships ahead.  Some of them were less than ten miles apart.  In a two-hundred-mile sphere there were forty ships.  They’d been moving to consolidate themselves into a mutually assisting group.  What they accomplished was the provision of a fine accumulation of targets.  Before they could organize themselves, the Kandarian fleet swept through them.  It vastly outnumbered them in this area.

It smashed them.  Bombs flashed in emptiness.  There were gas-clouds and smoke-clouds which stayed behind in space as the fleet went on.

“New coordinates,” said the familiar authoritative voice.  It gave them. “There’s another enemy condensation.  We hit it!”

The fleet swung in space.  It drove on and on and on.  Interminable time passed.  Then there were flashes brighter than the stars.  A Kandar cruiser blew up soundlessly.  But far, far away other things detonated, and what had been proud structures of steel and beryllium, armed and manned, became mere incandescent vapor.

A third clumping of Mekinese ships.  The Kandarian fleet overwhelmed it; overrode it; used exactly the tactics the Mekinese might have used.  It ruthlessly made use of its local, concentrated strength.  It was outnumbered in the whole battle area by not less than ten to one.  But the Mekinese fleet was scattered.  Where it struck, the Kandarian fleet was four and five, and sometimes twenty, ships to one.

It was a smaller fleet in every class of ships, but it was compact and controlled and it made slashing plunges through the dispersed and confused enemy.  With ordinary missiles three ships could always destroy two, and four could destroy three.  But in the battle of the gas-giant planet, where there was fighting the Kandarians were never less than two to one.  They were surrounded by enemies, but when those enemies tried to gather together for strength, the mass of murderously-fighting ships of Kandar swung upon the incipient group and blasted it.

Nearly half the Mekinese fleet was out of action before Bors’s ship fired a single missile.  He’d sat in the skipper’s chair, and from time to time, the course of all the fleet was changed, and he saw that his ship kept its place rigidly in formation.  But he had given not one order out of routine before the enemy strength was half gone.  Then the communicator said coldly: 

“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 space-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 anticipate 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 reassembled, 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....”