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The centrifugal force caused by the spinning ship gave an effective pull of less than one Earth gravity, but the weird twists caused by the Coriolis forces made motion and orientation difficult. Besides, the ship was spinning slightly on her long axis as well as turning end-for-end. MacMaine stood there for a moment, trying to think. He had expected to die.
"It's like fighting ghosts," MacMaine said in a hushed voice. For the first time, he felt a feeling of awe that was almost akin to fear. What had he done? In another sense, that same question was in the mind of the Kerothi. "Have you any notion at all what they are doing or how they are doing it?" asked Tallis gently. "None," MacMaine answered truthfully. "None at all, I swear to you."
"They don't even behave like Earthmen," said the fourth Kerothi, a thick-necked officer named Ossif. "They not only outfight us, they outthink us at every turn. Is it possible, General MacMaine, that the Earthmen have allies of another race, a race of intelligent beings that we don't know of?" He left unsaid the added implication: "And that you have neglected to tell us about?"
"The application of stress, you say, is not civilized. Not, perhaps, according to your definition of" he used the English word "cifiliced. No. Not cifiliced but it works." Again he smiled. "I said that I have become soft since I have been here, but I fear that your civilization is even softer." "A man can lie, even if his arms are pulled off or his feet crushed," MacMaine said stiffly.
MacMaine went up the ramp with the captain scrambling up behind him. Tallis was just stepping into the commander's cabin as the two men entered the air lock. MacMaine didn't see him again until the ship was twelve minutes on her way nearly five billion miles from Earth and still accelerating. He identified himself at the door and Tallis opened it cautiously.
The switch which cut off the soft white light from the glow plates did not cut off the infrared radiation which enabled his hosts to watch him while he slept. Every sound was heard and recorded. But none of that bothered MacMaine. On the contrary, he was glad of it. He wanted the Kerothi to know that he had no intention of escaping or hatching any plot against them.
As a matter of cold fact, very few of the officers were in anyway comparable to Tallis not even the Fleet men. The more MacMaine learned of the Kerothi, the more he realized just how lucky he had been that it had been Tallis, and not some other Kerothi general, who had been captured by the Earth forces.
In only three cases was the estimate of your losses higher than the actual losses. Actually, we'd be fools to turn you down. We have everything to gain and nothing to lose." "I felt the same way a year ago," said MacMaine. "Even being watched all the time will allow me more freedom than I had on Earth if the Board of Strategy is willing to meet my terms." Tallis chuckled. "They are.
MacMaine took a deep breath, held it, and let it out slowly. His shakes subsided to a faint, almost imperceptible quiver. "The captain doesn't know our destination. He was told that he would receive secret instructions from you." His voice, he noticed thankfully, was almost normal. He reached into his uniform jacket and took out an official-looking sealed envelope. "These are the orders.
He was probably the only officer in the place who did that, he knew; the others treated the alien general as though he were a criminal. Worse, they treated him as though he were a petty thief or a common pickpocket criminal, yes, but of a definitely inferior type. General Tallis, as always, stood and returned the salute. "Cut mawnik, Cunnel MacMaine," he said.
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