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Remember, we heard on Norden that the dictator of Mekin consults fortune-tellers!" "Ah!" said her father. "But they're only fortune-tellers!" "One could be a Talent," said Gwenlyn worriedly, "maybe without even knowing it." There came a far-distant, roaring sound. Something silvery and glistening rose swiftly toward the sky. It dwindled to a speck. There were more roarings.
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.
But he'd have had to smash everything else in the spaceport at the same time. Therefore he'd left his two space-boats in low orbit on the night side of the planet. In thirty minutes or so they'd arrive near the spaceport, where there was a large cargo-ship loaded with foodstuffs, for Mekin. Bors wanted that cargo.
I'm sure we've sent four shiploads of food back to the fleet, besides the passenger-ship we'd rather have missed. But there's still something to be done. To confuse Mekin and keep it busy, and therefore off Kandar's neck, we have to start trouble elsewhere. From now on we are pirates pure and simple." And he headed the Horus for the planet Cassis, which was another victim of the Mekinese.
The fleet was re-supplied with food and missiles, and in one day more the major part of it would take off for Mekin. Other ships would journey, of course, to the twenty-odd, once-subject worlds. There they would they were calmly confident about it mop up any surviving Mekinese ships and enforce the surrender of Mekinese garrisons.
"Suggested," he continued, "that a part of the fleet go to Norden to buy food and bring it back. Of course Mekin wouldn't hear about it, wouldn't guess at the survival of the fleet because food was bought in such quantities! Suggested, that a part of the fleet go to some uncolonized planet and hunt meat. Try to imagine success in that venture!
But we submit ourselves to punishment for having resisted the original fleet. We admit our guilt. And we beg Mekin not to avenge that resistance upon our people, who are not guilty." Bors tried to speak, and could not. There was a sodden, utterly unresilient stillness in the room, as if all the high officers of the fleet were corpses and the king himself, though he spoke, was not less dead.
This appears to me a very gratifying development for the situation we're in." The bearded man who'd plumped for negotiation, earlier, now spoke indignantly in the War Council. "Why wasn't this revealed earlier? We could have made a demonstration and Mekin would have been wary of issuing an ultimatum! Why was this concealed until it was too late to use in negotiations with them?"
Then the electron telescope revealed a stubby, rotund cargo-ship, about to land on Mekin. Bors swore. It would be days before this tub reached Mekin on solar-system drive. But it must not report that an armed vessel had inspected it in remoteness. "We haul alongside," said Bors angrily. "Boarding-parties ready in the space-boats."
He would want to hold a cabinet meeting before he issued orders for the destruction of a space-ship that was only technically and not actually an enemy. Kandar had received an ultimatum from Mekin. An answer was required when a Mekinese fleet arrived off Kandar. Until that moment there was, in theory, no war.
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