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"It will help," Bors said with irony, "when we go so far away that we'll never be heard of any more." "Eh?" The vice-admiral looked at him blankly. "Oh. Perhaps. You wouldn't be likely to pick up a cargo-ship loaded with Mekinese missiles, would you? We could adapt them to our use."
Why was the Turk obliged to change it into grain and load a cargo-ship with it, which would take a month and a half for its voyage, and have to struggle with storms, eddies, rocks, and shallows which might be delayed by quarantine and custom-houses when he could have carried his treasure with him in his knapsack, and by making his way cautiously on foot over mountain and river, could have reached Hungary safely in a couple of weeks?
Its first discovery-pulse would have been observed by the Mekinese duty-officer. The fact that it did not repeat would be abnormal. The duty-officer would wonder why it didn't come again. The astrogation-radar cut off. Then a single strong pulse came. It would be a ranging-pulse. Cargo-ship radars sacrificed high accuracy for wide and deep coverage.
"Better not," said Bors curtly, and mumbled thanks. He ordered the cargo-ship to send as much of its stores as the space-boat could conveniently carry. "Then how about some cigars?" asked Gwenlyn. She seemed at once amused and approving, because Bors would not indulge himself in a really satisfying meal while his crew lived on far from appetizing emergency foodstuffs. "No," said Bors.
It seemed to those below that the pirate crew was taken unawares by the cargo-ship's escape. That was part of Bors's plan. A weapon of the grounded Isis roared. A missile hurtled after the fugitive, and missed. It went on past its apparent target and did not even detonate at nearest proximity, as it should have done. It vanished, and the cargo-ship continued to rise in seemingly panicky fashion.
He said over the ship's speakers, "Everything going well so far. Prize crew, take the cargo-ship. Keep the crew aboard. Then report." Ten men poured out of the grounded light cruiser's starboard port and trotted on the double toward the other ship aground. The weapons on Bors's ship did not bear upon it. The sun shone. Clouds drifted tranquilly across the sky.
But he shook his head. He gave the cargo-ship detailed orders, receiving its space-boat and what food it had been able to bring. He sent it off to meet his fleet at Glamis. He stayed in orbit around the fourth planet to wait for a Mekinese fighting-ship. He began, too, to make long-range plans. Part Three
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.
We are pirates. We are outcasts. But we still have arms to defend ourselves with! We demand...." A voice said curtly in Bors's ear, "Cargo-ship secured, sir." "Take off on rockets and maneuver as ordered," said Bors. "Then rendezvous as arranged." He returned his attention to the broadcast. It was a deliberately savage, painstakingly desperate, carefully terrifying message to the people of Tralee.
Masses of smoke from the demolition-missiles that had smashed the guard-ship rose, curled and very slowly dissipated. Ten men entered the bulbous cargo-ship. Up to now the entire affair had consumed not more than five minutes, from the appearance of a blip on a spaceport radar screen, to the beginning of a full-volume broadcast.
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