The fleet of Mekin continued in overdrive, heading for Kandar. Each second it traversed a distance equal to the span of a solar system, out to its remotest planet. A heartbeat that would begin where a pulsing Cepheid, had it been possible to see, would have seemed at its greatest brilliance, and would end where the light from that same giant star seemed dimmed almost to extinction. Of course no such observation could be made from any ship in overdrive. Each one of the many, many ugly war-machines was sealed in its own cocoon of overdrive-stressed space. Even in the armed transports that carried officials and bureaucrats and experienced police organizers to set up a puppet government on Kandar, there was not the faintest hint of anything that happened outside the individual ship. But, what might be termed the position of the fleet, changed with remarkable swiftness. It traveled light-hours between breaths. Light-days between sentences. Light-months and light-years.... But it would not arrive on Kandar for a long while yet. Not for three whole days. Chapter 4 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!_"