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Bors went into the control room, glanced about, and spoke crisply into the all-speaker microphone. "All hands attention! Bors speaking. A concentration of Mekinese ships is expected at Kandar. We shall head for that planet immediately. On the way I shall arrange for some changes in the settings of the missiles we have on board. We will fix and distribute aiming-tables for their use.

And if he, Bors, had only been properly skeptical, the fleet would have been destroyed and Kandar now occupied by the Mekinese doomed to servitude but not necessarily to annihilation and other worlds would also be safely servile. They'd still be resentful and they'd bitterly hate Mekin, but they would not have before them the monstrous vengeance now in store.

He was getting ready for the savage last battle of the space-fleet of Kandar, which would fight in the great void until it was annihilated. There was nothing else to do if one was not to submit to the arrogant tyranny that already lorded it over twenty-two subject planets and might extend itself indefinitely throughout the galaxy.

Rockets flared, deep under water. But the flames set off bombs and the rocket-nozzles cracked and were useless. A midship compartment was flooding. A forward compartment's wall caved in, and still bombs burst.... The skipper of the assassin cruiser screamed an order to fire all missiles. They were already set on target. They were pre-set for the spot where the space-navy of Kandar waited to rise.

But Mekin remained a strong and dynamic world, engaged in the endless subjugation of other worlds for a purpose nobody really remembered any more. Against such a society, a planet like Kandar was helpless. Mekin could not be placated nor satisfied with less than the subjugation and the ruin of its neighbors. For a time, Kandar had tried to arm for its own defense.

There was practically nothing going on on Kandar which was not related to the disaster for which the people of that world waited. The feel of bitterness and despair was everywhere. Broadcasting stations stayed on the air only to report monotonously that the tragic event had not yet happened.

There was something coming toward the ship that had risen from Kandar. The tracer-trails of missiles appeared against the stars. They made very pretty parabolas. That was all. The thing that was coming left a tracer-trail too. It curved preposterously. The just-risen ship furiously flung missiles at it. It did not dodge. But none of the tracer-trails intersected its own.

The most probable because most hopeless conviction seemed to be that the fleet of Mekin had been met and fought, but that it was victorious, and in retaliation for resistance it had gone away to send back swarms of grisly bomb-carriers which would drop atomic bombs in such quantity that for a thousand years to come there would be no life on Kandar.

Most of them were pretty well frustrated before Father found a use for them. But they're quite pleasant people if you don't treat them like freaks. They're not, you know." Bors had nothing to say. Until he was fifteen he'd lived on Tralee, which was then a quiet, pacific world, as Kandar had been.

He was embittered, and agitated, and in particular, he was frustrated. "It's all madness!" he protested almost hysterically. "Here we've got a firm precognition that King Humphrey's going to open parliament on Kandar next year, and there's another one " Gwenlyn said quickly, "Which you won't tell!" "Which I won't tell. But something's got to happen! Something's got to be done!