He was reasonably satisfied with his landing on Tralee. With some luck,
the news of the landing of a lone survivor of the Kandarian fleet might
reach Mekin before it was aware of what had happened to its occupation
force. With a little more luck, the attention of Mekin would be devoted
more to a ship which dared to turn pirate than to Kandar itself. With
unlimited favorable fortune, Mekin might actually send ships to hunt the
_Isis_ instead of asking questions on Kandar.
But Bors made a mental note. The more time that passed before Mekin knew
what had happened, the better. So a ship or two or three might be
detached from the fleet and sent back to hang off Kandar. If a single
ship came inquiringly, it might be sniped and the news of Kandar
suppressed for a while longer. And it was conceivable that Mekin might
come to worry more about other matters than the success or failure of a
routine expansion of its empire.
The fourth planet loomed up on schedule. Bors was irritated, as often
before, by the relatively slow solar-system drive. Overdrive was
sometimes not fast enough--but solar-system drive was infuriatingly
slow. Yet one couldn't use overdrive in a solar system. Approaching a
planet on overdrive would be like trying to garage a ground-car at sixty
miles an hour. One couldn't stop where one wanted to. He wondered
vaguely if Logan, the math Talent, could handle such a problem, and
dismissed the idea. One could break a circuit with an accuracy of
microseconds, but that wouldn't be close enough for overdrive. It
wouldn't be practical.
Then the ice-sheet of Tralee's nearest neighbor planet spread out in the
vision-port's range of view. Bors called for the cargo-ship. It answered
almost immediately. It was standard practice, of course, that the site
of a meeting planned at a given planet would be wherever its poles
pointed nearest to galactic north. The cargo-ship had just arrived. It
barely responded before the _Sylva_ began to call again.
The three ships, then, joined their orbits and went swinging about the
glacier-world beneath them while they conferred.
The report from the cargo-ship was unexpectedly satisfactory. It had
been almost completely loaded, and its cargo was largely foodstuffs
intended for Mekin. Kandar's fleet-in-hiding was already subsisting on
emergency rations. This cargo of assorted frozen foods would be welcome.
Bors gave orders for it to head for Glamis immediately, in overdrive.
Communication had been three-way, and Gwenlyn said quickly;
"_Just a moment! Did you pick up any news-reports on Tralee?_"
"Hm. Yes. I'd better send them--"
"_You'd better?_" echoed Gwenlyn, scolding. "_My father stayed with the
fleet to try to explain what Talents, Incorporated can do! He kept most
of the Talents with him, for demonstrations! The Department for
Predicting Dirty Tricks is there! Don't you remember what that
Department works on? Of course you've got to send those news-reports!_"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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