The _Liberty_ came out a good ten thousand miles from its starting-point and beyond the area occupied by the enemy fleet. Three thousand miles away a flare burst among the distant stars. A second. A third. Six thousand miles away there were flashings in emptiness. "We're doing very well," said Bors calmly into the all-speaker microphone. "A little more care with the aiming, though. And read your ranges closer! They're not intercepting our missiles. We're not aiming them right. We try it again now...." The universe seemed to reel and one felt queasy, but there was work to be done, while a voice chanted, "Five, four, three, two, one!" Then it reeled again and the same voice continued to chant. Sometimes the crews saw where missiles hit, but they could never be sure they were their own. Then, suddenly, the number of hits increased. They doubled and tripled and quadrupled. "All hands!" barked Bors. "The fleet of Kandar is wading into this fight. Be careful to pick your targets! No Kandar ships! Save your missiles for the enemy!" Someone, man-handling missiles for faster and more long-continued firing than any ship-designer ever expected, gasped, "Come on boys! Missiles for Mekin!" It became a joke, which seemed excruciatingly funny at the time. Nobody saw all the battle, or even a considerable part. There was a period when the _Liberty_, alone, fought like the deadliest of gadflies. It appeared in the middle of a Mekinese sub-formation, loosed missiles and vanished before anything could be intercepted. There was no target for Mekinese bombs to home on when they got to where the _Liberty_ had been. Then the fleet of Kandar appeared. It broke out in single ships and in pairs, and then in groups of fives and tens. The general order for the Mekinese fleet had been picked up, and the fleet of Kandar seemed to have gone mad. The flagship tried to fight in orthodox fashion, for a time. It depended on the attraction its missiles had for Mekinese to keep it in space. But presently it was alone, and the battle was raging confusion scattered over light-minutes, and somebody went down in to the engine room and brazed in a low-power overdrive unit--providentially made by a junior officer--and the flagship of the Kandarian fleet waded in erratically, never knowing where it would come out, but rarely failing to find a Mekinese ship to launch at. The third phase of the battle was much more of an open fight, ship against ship, except that more and more Kandarian ships were using low-power overdrive--clumsily and inefficiently, but to the very great detriment of Mekin's grand fleet. The Mekinese officers could not quite grasp that their antagonists were doing the impossible. They became confused.