United States or Portugal ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
But the computers could not handle an object which not only changed velocity but changed the rate at which its velocity changed. Missiles came pouring out of the Mekinese ship. They were infinitesimal, bright specks on the radar-screen. They curved violently in flight trying to intercept the Isis's missile. They failed. There was a flash of sun-bright flame very, very far away.
He'd fought in the battle off Kandar, he'd destroyed a Mekinese cruiser off Tralee, another in the Mekinese system itself and a squadron off Meriden. But he had never seen a Mekinese fighting-man face to face. Filled with such hatred as he felt, he meant to do so now. A space-boat came up from the ground. The Horus trained weapons on it.
Will you carry a message for me?" "Happy to oblige, Captain!" "Tell them that " Then Bors stopped short. It was not probable that the fleet wave-form and frequency were known to Mekinese ships. But the possibility of low-speed overdrive travel was much too important a military secret to risk under any circumstances. He said, "I'll be along very shortly with some highly encouraging news."
"Majesty " "We have to sacrifice," said the king in a leaden voice, "not only our lives but our self-respect, to try to gain something less than the total annihilation of Kandar. We shall tell the Mekinese that we will return to Kandar and form up in space. If they send a small force to accept our surrender, they shall have it. If they prefer to destroy us, they can do that also.
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.
They were surrounded by enemies, but when those enemies tried to gather together for strength, the mass of murderously-fighting ships of Kandar swung upon the incipient group and blasted it. Nearly half the Mekinese fleet was out of action before Bors's ship fired a single missile.
At the sunrise-line on Tralee only a handful of people were awake. They were dumbfounded. Where people breakfasted, the intentionally savage voice made food seem unimportant. Where it was midday, waves of violent emotion swept over the land. "Call the defense forces," Bors commanded the grid office, by transmitter. "They'll be Mekinese Mekinese-officered, anyhow.
There would be many times the space-traffic here that would be found off any other planet in the Mekinese empire. One ship got to ground unchallenged. By pure accident it came out of overdrive within half a million miles of Mekin. To have attacked it would have been noted. But he got two more cargo-ships. Then he found the Horus alongside a passenger-ship.
When a submerged space-cruiser, planning assassination, was itself blown to bits with no chance to strike back, the Mekinese fleet was approximately somewhere else. When a cabinet meeting disheartened King Humphrey, the fleet was much nearer to Kandar. But days of highly-tedious eventlessness were still ahead of the war-fleet.
"I don't understand it either, but you'll agree that since my precognizer said no ship but Bors's is coming here and he precognized every one of the prizes before they arrived you'll concede that the Mekinese aren't coming here. So you're going out to meet them." He saw Bors, and breathed an audible sigh of relief. "Bors!" he said in a changed tone. "I'm glad you're back!"
Word Of The Day