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It was aiming, of course, for Glamis, that totally useless solar system around a planet where the fleet of Kandar orbited in bitter frustration. Bors got up from his seat to loosen his muscles. He had sat absolutely tense and effectively motionless for a very long time. He ached. But he felt a sour sort of satisfaction.
There was one problem, however, for the Mekinese skippers. When they engaged a ship from Kandar, they died. Still, no ship left the scene of the battle to report defeat. It was absolute and complete. It was not only a defeat. It was annihilation. The Mekinese fleet was destroyed to the last ship, even to the armed transports carrying bureaucrats and police to set up a new government on Kandar.
There will be trivial stories about a fleet which abandoned the world it should have defended, and fled so far that its enemies did not bother to follow it. If the tale reaches Mekin, it may not be believed. It may not ever be linked to Kandar. And if some day it is believed, by then Kandar will be long occupied. Perhaps it will be resigned to its status. It will be a valuable subject world.
It was irritating to realize that he expected Gwenlyn and her father to turn up, with their Talents, when absolutely nobody outside of the fleet could possibly imagine where the fleet had gone. On Kandar it must be assumed, by now, that it was dead. His ship's boat clanked into position in the lifeboat blister. The valves closed on it.
But, in fact, Kandar was already conquered in every respect except the landing of Mekinese on its surface. King Humphrey, however, would want to observe all the rules. And there might not be time. The air force agreed with Bors. So squadron after squadron took off from the airfield, on courses which had certain things in common. None of them would pass over a fisherman's shack on Cape Farnell.
There was a murmur, which could not be said to be either agreement or disagreement. The king looked about him. "We cannot continue to fight!" he said sternly, "not unless we can defend Kandar which we can't as against the Mekinese main fleet. We were prepared to sacrifice our lives to earn respect for our world, and to leave a tradition behind us.
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.
On Kandar, the population knew that there had been a battle off the gas-giant planet, but they did not know the result. The Mekinese fleet had not come. The fleet of Kandar had not returned. The caretaker government met in council and desperately made guesses. It arrived at no hopeful conclusion whatever.
The Sylva came down on Kandar, of course, where Morgan swaggered happily, pointing out the indispensable help given to Kandar by Talents, Incorporated. Bors reminded King Humphrey that Morgan collected medals, and he was duly invested with sundry glittering decorations, which would have staggered a lesser man.
Then there were flashes brighter than the stars. A Kandar cruiser blew up soundlessly. But far, far away other things detonated, and what had been proud structures of steel and beryllium, armed and manned, became mere incandescent vapor. A third clumping of Mekinese ships. The Kandarian fleet overwhelmed it; overrode it; used exactly the tactics the Mekinese might have used.
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