Chapter 10
The Mekinese did not display a sporting spirit. There were four heavycruisers and eleven lighter ships of the _Horus's_ size and armament.According to current theories of space-battle tactics, two of the lightcruisers should have disposed of the _Horus_ with ease and dispatch. Itmight have seemed sportsmanlike and certainly sufficient to give the_Horus_ only two antagonists at a time, which would have been calculatedto provide odds of six hundred to one against it. Two light cruiserswould have fired eighteen missiles apiece per salvo, which would havedemanded thirty-six missiles from the _Horus_ to meet and destroy them.She couldn't put thirty-six missiles into space at one firing. She wouldhave disappeared in atomic flame at the first exchange of fire. But theMekinese were not so generous. They came up in full force loaded forbear. They obviously intended not a fight but an execution. Mekinesetactics depended heavily on fire-power of such superiority that anyenemy was simply overwhelmed.
Their maneuvering proved that they intended to follow standard operationprocedure. Light ships reached space and delayed until all were aloft.They formed themselves into a precise half-globe and plunged at topsolar-system drive toward the _Horus_. This was strictly according tothe book. If the _Horus_ chose, of course, she could refuse battle byfleeing into overdrive--which would be expected to be the regulationmany-times-faster-than-light variety. If she dared fight, the fifteenships drove on. Mekinese ships never struck lightly. The fifteen of themcould launch four hundred missiles per salvo. No single ship couldcounter such an attack. But even Mekinese would not use such stupendousnumbers of missiles against one ship unless that ship was famous; unlessrumors and reports said that it was invincible and dangerous and thehope of oppressed peoples under Mekin.
The _Horus_ received very special attention.
Then she vanished. At one instant she was in full career toward thefleet of enemies. The next instant she had wrapped an overdrive fieldabout herself and then no radar could detect her, nor could any missilepenetrate her protection.
When she vanished, the speck which indicated her position disappearedfrom the Mekinese radar-screens. The hundredth of a second in overdriveas known to the Mekinese should have put her hundreds of millions ofmiles away. But something new had been added to the _Horus_. Thehundredth of a second did not mean millions of miles of journeying. Itmeant something under three thousand, and a much more precise intervalof time could be measured and used by her micro-timer.
Therefore, at one instant the _Horus_ was some two thousand miles fromthe 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 inthe very center, the exact focus of the formation of Mekinesebattle-craft. She was at the spot a Mekinese commander would mostdevoutly wish, because it was equidistant from all his ships, and alltheir missiles should arrive at the same instant when their overwhelmingnumber could not conceivably be parried.
But it was more than an ideal position from a Mekinese standpoint. Itwas also a point which was ideal for the _Horus_, because all hermissiles would arrive at the encircling ships at the same instant. EachMekinese would separately learn--without information from anyother--that those projectiles could not be intercepted. No Mekinesewould have the advantage of watching the tactic practiced on acompanion-ship, to guide his own actions.
The _Horus_ appeared at that utterly vulnerable and wholly advantageousposition. 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 sheshowed on the Mekinese screens. The Mekinese could not believe theirinstruments. A ship which fled in overdrive could not reappear likethis! Having vanished and reappeared once, it could not duplicate thetrick. Having duplicated it....
There was more, and worse. The _Horus_ missiles were not beingintercepted. Mekinese missiles were swerving crazily to try toanticipate and destroy the curving, impossibly-moving objects that wentout from where the _Horus_ had ceased to be. They failed. Clouds of newtrajectiles appeared....
A flare like a temporary sun. Another. Another. Others....
Bors turned from the viewport and glanced at the radar-screens. Therewere thirteen vaporous glowings where ships had been. There were twodistinct blips remaining. It could be guessed that some targets had beenfired on by more than one launching-tube, leaving two ships unattackedby the _Horus's_ missiles.
Both of those ships--one a heavy cruiser--now desperately flung thecontents 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 fromoverdrive was ever present. But the _Horus_ had shifted position fivethousand miles. Bors saw one of his just-launched missiles--now acontinent away--as it went off. It accounted for one of the two Mekinesesurvivors. The radar-blip which told of that ship's existence changed tothe 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 couldnot possibly be overtaken or attacked. It had seen the _Horus's_missiles following an unpredictable course, which was duly recorded. Ithad seen the _Horus_ go into overdrive and move only hundreds of milesinstead of hundreds of millions. It had seen the _Horus_ vanish from oneplace and appear at another in the same combat area, launch missiles andvanish again before it could even be ranged.
The last Mekinese ship certainly carried with it the _Horus's_ tacticsand actions recorded on tape. The technicians of Mekin would set to workinstantly to duplicate them. Once they were considered possible--oncethey were recognized--they could be achieved. The combat efficiency ofthe Mekinese fleet would be increased as greatly as that of the fleet ofKandar had been,--and the overwhelming superiority of numbers wouldagain become decisive. The hopeless situation of the Kandarian fleetwould become a hundred times worse. And Mekinese counter-intelligencewould make a search for the origin of such improvements. Since Kandarwas to have been attacked and occupied, it would be a place of specialsearch.
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 Mekineseconstituted. Sweat appeared on his forehead.
Then he pressed the engine-room button and said evenly, "Prepare forstandard 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 tobe discovered.
Very shortly thereafter, the _Horus_ was in overdrive.
Traveling in such unthinkable haste, it is paradoxic that there is muchtime to spare. Bors had to occupy it. He prepared a careful and detailedaccount of exactly how the low-speed overdrive had worked, and itseffectiveness as a combat tactic. He'd distributed instructions andLogan's tables on the subject before leaving Glamis. He would be, ofcourse, most bitterly blamed for having taken on a whole squadron ofenemy ships, with the result that one had gotten away. It could be themost 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 theenemy squadron was fleeing for Mekin, too, to report to the highestpossible authority what it had seen and experienced. It would not bemuch, if at all, slower than the _Horus_. It might be faster, and mightreach the solar system of Mekin before the _Horus_ broke out there. Ithad every advantage but one. It had solar-system drive, for use within aplanetary group, and it had overdrive for use between the stars. But the_Horus_ had an intermediate drive as well, which was faster than theenemy's slow speed and slower than the fast.
Bors depended on it for the continued exis
tence of Kandar and the fleet.As the desperately tedious ship-days went by he began to have ideas--atwhich he consciously scoffed--concerning Tralee. But if anything asabsurd as those ideas came to be, there were a score of other planetswhich would have to be considered too.
He sketched out in his own mind a course of action that would bepossible to follow after breakout off Mekin. It did not follow the rulesfor sound planning, which always assume that if things can go wrong theywill. Bors could only plan for what might be done if things went right.But he could not hope. Not really. Still, he considered everypossibility, however far-fetched.
He came to first-breakout, a light-week short of Mekin. The yellow sunflamed dead ahead. He determined his distance from it with very greatcare. The _Horus_ went back into overdrive and out again, and it waswell within the system, though carefully not on the plane of itsecliptic.
Then the _Horus_ waited. She was twenty millions of miles from theplanet Mekin. Bors ordered that for intervals of up to five minutes noelectronic apparatus on the ship should be in operation. In thoseperiods of electronic silence, his radars swept all of space exceptMekin. He had no desire to have Mekin pick up radar-pulses and wonderwhat they came from. The rest of the system, though, he mapped. He foundtwo meteor-streams, and a clump of three planetoids in a nearly circularorbit, 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 sofar as radar was concerned.
It had gone into overdrive and away. Another ship came around Mekin, inorbit. It reached the spot from which the first ship had vanished. Itbegan to descend; the landing-grid had locked onto it with projectedforce-fields and was drawing it down to ground.
Bors growled to himself. It was not likely that this ship was the onehe'd pursued, sight unseen, since the end of the fight off Meriden. Butit was a possibility. If it were true, then everything that mattered toBors was lost forever.
Then a blip appeared. It was at the most extreme limit of the radar'srange. A ship had come out of overdrive near the fourth planetary orbitof this solar system.
Bors and the yeoman computer-operator figured its distance to six placesof decimals. Bors set the microsecond timer. The _Horus_ went intolow-speed overdrive and out again. Then the electron telescope revealeda stubby, rotund cargo-ship, about to land on Mekin.
Bors swore. It would be days before this tub reached Mekin onsolar-system drive. But it must not report that an armed vessel hadinspected it in remoteness.
"We haul alongside," said Bors angrily. "Boarding-parties ready in thespace-boats."
Another wrenching flicker into overdrive and through breakout withoutpause. The cargo-boat was within ten miles.
"Calling cargo-boat!" rasped Bors, in what would be the arrogant tonesof a Mekinese naval officer hailing a mere civilian ship. "Identifyyourself!"
A voice answered apologetically, "_Cargo-ship_ Empress, _sir, bound fromLoral to Mekin with frozen foods._"
"Cut your drive," snapped Bors. "Stand by for inspection! Muster yourcrews. There's a criminal trying to get ashore on Mekin. We'll checkyour hands. Acknowledge!"
"_Yes, sir_," said the apologetic voice. "_Obeying, sir._"
Bors fretted. The space-boats left the _Horus's_ side. One clamped ontothe airlock of the rounded, bulging tramp-ship. The second lifeboathovered nearby. The first boat broke contact and the second hooked on.The second boat broke contact. Both came back to the _Horus_.
The screen before Bors lighted up. One of his own crewmen nodded out ofit.
"_All clear, sir_," said his voice briskly. "_They behaved like lambs,sir. No arms. We've locked them in a cargo hold._"
"You know what to do now," said Bors.
"_Yes, sir. Off._"
Ten miles away the cargo-boat swung itself about. Suddenly it was gone.It was on the way to Glamis and the fleet.
Another hour of watching. Another blip. It was another cargo-carrierlike the first. As the other had done, it meekly permitted itself to beboarded by what it believed were mere naval ratings of the Mekinesespace-fleet, searching for a criminal who might be on board. Like thefirst ship, it was soon undeceived. Again like the first, it vanishedfrom emptiness, and it would be heading for the fleet in its monotonouscircling of Glamis.
The third blip, though, was a light cruiser. The _Horus_ appeared fromnowhere close beside it and its communicator began to scream ingibberish. It would be an official report, scrambled and taped, to betransmitted to ground on the first instant there was hope of itsreception.
"Fire one," said Bors. "The skipper there is on his toes."
He watched bleakly as the _Horus's_ missile arched in its impossibletrajectory, as the light cruiser flung everything that could be gottenout to try to stop it, while its transmitter shrieked gibberish to thestars.
There was a blinding flash of light. Then nothing.
"He got out maybe fifteen seconds of transmission," said Bors somberly,"which may or may not be picked up from this distance, and may or maynot tell anything. He got a tape ready while he was in overdrive, withplenty of time for the job. My guess is that he'd take at least fifteenseconds to identify his ship, give her code number, her skipper, andsuch things. I hope so...."
But for minutes he was irresolute. He'd send his own minutely detailedreport back to Glamis on the second captured ship. He did not need toreturn to report in person. He hadn't yet sent back provisions enoughfor the intended voyage of the fleet. The solar system of Mekin was anespecially well-stocked hunting-ground for such marauders as Bors andhis crew declared themselves to be--so long as word did not get toground on Mekin.
But it did not get down. From time to time--at intervals of a fewhours--specks appeared in emptiness. Mekin monopolized the off-planettrade of its satellite world. There would be many times thespace-traffic here that would be found off any other planet in theMekinese empire.
One ship got to ground unchallenged. By pure accident it came out ofoverdrive within half a million miles of Mekin. To have attacked itwould have been noted. But he got two more cargo-ships. Then he foundthe _Horus_ alongside a passenger-ship. But it couldn't be allowed toground, to report that it had been stopped by an armed ship. Aprize-crew took it off to Glamis.
Bors made a formal announcement to his crew. "I think," he told themover the all-speaker circuit, "that we got the ship which could havereported our action off Meriden. I'm sure we've sent four shiploads offood back to the fleet, besides the passenger-ship we'd rather havemissed. But there's still something to be done. To confuse Mekin andkeep it busy, and therefore off Kandar's neck, we have to start troubleelsewhere. From now on we are pirates pure and simple."
And he headed the _Horus_ for the planet Cassis, which was anothervictim of the Mekinese. It was a rocky, mountainous world with manymines. Mekin depended on it for metal in vast quantities. The _Horus_hovered over it and sent down a sardonic challenge. One missile came upin defiance. But it was badly aimed and Bors ignored it. Then voicescalled to him, sharp with excitement. He heard shots and shouting and avoice said feverishly that rebels on Cassis, who had been fighting inthe streets, had rushed a transmitter to welcome the enemies of Mekin.
Bors had one light cruiser and merely a minimum crew for it. He couldn'tbe of much help to insurrectionists. Then he heard artillery-fire overthe communicator, and voices gasped that the Mekinese garrison wascharging out of its highly-fortified encampment. Bors sent down amissile to break the back of the counter-attack. Then the communicatorgave off the sound of gunfire and men in battle, and presently yells oftriumph.
He took the _Horus_ away. Its arrival and involvement in the revolt waspure accident. It was no part of any thought-out plan. But he was wrylyrelieved when he had convinced himself that Mekin needed the products ofthis world too much to exterminate its population with fusion-bombs.
More days of travel in overdrive tedium. Bors was astounded andappalled. Interference here would only make matters worse. The _Horus_went on.
There was a c
argo-ship aground on Dover, and the _Horus_ threatenedbombs and a space-boat went down and brought it up. That ship also wentaway to Glamis where the fleet was accumulating an inconvenient numberof prisoners. The fact that the capture of this ship only added to thatnumber made Bors realize that King Humphrey would be especiallydisturbed about the passengers on the liner sent back from Mekin. Unlessthey were murdered, sooner or later they would reveal the facts aboutthe Fleet. And King Humphrey was a highly conscientious man.
There was dissention even on Dover. The landing-party was cheered fromthe edge of the spaceport. Bors could not understand. He tried to guesswhat was going on in the Mekinese empire. He could not know whether ornot disaster had yet struck Kandar. He could only hope that there wereships lurking near it, ready to use the recent technical combatimprovements against any single Mekinese ship that might appear, so noreport would be carried back. But it seemed to him that utter andcomplete catastrophe was inevitable.
He reflected unhappily about Tralee, and wondered what the Pretender,his uncle, really thought about his loosing of chemical-explosivemissiles against puppet government buildings there. He found himselfworrying again about the truck drivers who'd warned his men ofbooby-traps in the supplies they delivered. He hoped they hadn't beencaught.
The _Horus_ arrived at Deccan, and called down the savage message ofchallenge.
There came a tumultuous, roaring reply.
"_Captain Bors!_" cried a voice from the ground exultantly. "_Land andwelcome! We didn't hope you'd come here, but you're a thousand timeswelcome! We've smashed the garrison here, Captain! We rose days ago andwe hold the planet! We'll join you! Come to ground, sir! We can supplyyou!_"
Bors went tense all over. He'd been called by name! If he was known byname on _this_ world--twenty light-years from Mekin and thirty-five fromKandar--then everything was lost.
"Can you send up a space-boat?" he asked in a voice he did notrecognize. "I'd like to have your news."
It must be a trap. It was possible that there'd been revolt on Deccan;he'd found proof of rebellion elsewhere. There'd been claims of revolton Cassis, but he hadn't been suspicious then. He'd sent down a missileto help the self-proclaimed rebels there. Now he wondered desperately ifhe'd been tricked there as, it was all too likely, he would be here.There'd been reported fighting on Avino. There was cheering for his menon Dover, and he might have landed there. But there were too manycoincidences, far too many.
He waited, fifty thousand miles high, with the ship at combat-alert. Hefelt cold all over. Somehow, news had preceded him. It was garbledtruth, but there was enough to make his spine feel like ice.
He spoke over the all-speaker hook-up, in a voice he could not keepsteady by any effort of will.
"All hands attention," he said heavily. "I just called ground. We havehad a reply calling me by name. You will see the implication. It lookslike somehow the Mekinese have managed to send word ahead of us. They'vefound out that no one can stand against us. They know we have new anddeadly weapons. Probably there have been orders given to lure us toground by the pretense of a successful revolt. It would be hoped that wecan be fooled to the point where we will land and our ship can becaptured _undestroyed_.--That's the way it looks."
He swallowed, with difficulty.
"If that's so," he said after an instant, "you can guess what's beendone about Kandar. The grand fleet was assembled on Mekin. It could havegone to Kandar...."
He swallowed again. Then he said savagely, "Well make sure first. If theworst has happened we'll take our fleet and head for Mekin and pour downevery ounce of atomic explosive we've got. We may not be able to turnits air to poison, but if there are survivors, they won't celebrate whatthey did to Kandar!"
He clicked off. His fists clenched. He paced back and forth in thecontrol room. He almost did not wait to make sure. Almost. But he hadnever seen a Mekinese fighting man face to face. He'd gone into exilewith his uncle when that unhappily reasonable man let Tralee surrenderrather than be bombed to depopulation. He'd served in the Kandarian navywithout ever managing to be in any port when a Mekinese ship was in.He'd fought in the battle off Kandar, he'd destroyed a Mekinese cruiseroff Tralee, another in the Mekinese system itself and a squadron offMeriden. But he had never seen a Mekinese fighting-man face to face.Filled with such hatred as he felt, he meant to do so now.
A space-boat came up from the ground. The _Horus_ trained weapons on it.Bors painstakingly arranged for its occupants to board the _Horus_ inspace-suits, which could not conceal bombs.
There were six men in the space-boat. They came into the _Horus's_control room and he saw that they were young, almost boys. When theylearned that he was Captain Bors, they looked at him with shining,admiring, worshipping eyes. It could not be a trick. It could not be atrap. He was incredulous.
The message from the ground was true.
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