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.