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So overdrive could not be used as a battle tactic. It could be used only for escape. Near the planet, where the two space-boats floated, the dawnline appeared at the world's edge. The space-boats swung about, facing backward, and applied power for deceleration. They dropped into the atmosphere and bounced out again, and in again more deeply and then swung once more to face along their course.
The great ships drew close to one another and small space-boats shuttled back and forth, taking commanders and captains and vice-admirals to the ship, which, by convention, was commanded by King Humphrey VIII of Kandar. Captain Bors got to the conference late. There were some grave faces about the conference room, but there were also some whose expressions were unregenerate and grimly satisfied.
"Cut your drive," snapped Bors. "Stand by for inspection! Muster your crews. There's a criminal trying to get ashore on Mekin. We'll check your hands. Acknowledge!" "Yes, sir," said the apologetic voice. "Obeying, sir." Bors fretted. The space-boats left the Horus's side. One clamped onto the airlock of the rounded, bulging tramp-ship. The second lifeboat hovered nearby.
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.
"They are constructing a fleet of huge space-boats, all heavily armed, intending to cross over to Hafen and Holl, and conquer the Capellans." Powart glanced keenly around the table. "This is all that has been received. Evidently our men were prevented from sending any more. I expect nothing further. It remains for us to decide, at once, what we should do."
So when the Mekinese battlewagon came lumbering up to space, with her missile-tubes armed and bristling, Bors withdrew the Isis. It was not flight. It was a move designed to make sure that when the fight began there would be no stray missiles falling on the planet. Unseen, the Isis's space-boats floated in darkness. They carried ten men each, equipped with small arms and light bombs.
Bors went over the ship for the last time. The ship's log went aboard the Sylva, as did Logan's calculated tables for low-power overdrive. Bors made quite sure that nothing else could be recovered from the Isis. He looked strained and irritable when he finally went into one of the lifeboat blisters on the Isis left vacant by the sacrifice of two space-boats in the Garen cutting-out expedition.
The men of the space-boats had said they were pirates. The people of Garen felt no animosity toward pirates. They only hated Mekinese. Out in space, missiles hurtled away from the small ship Isis. They did not plunge directly at the battleship. They swung crazily in wide arcs. The already-launched Mekinese missiles swerved to intercept them. They failed.
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."
One of the space-boats flew to bits. Before the cars had vanished, there was a second explosion. Another space-boat vanished in flame and debris. The landing-party had no way to return to space. The inhabitants of the village had no way to report their coming except in person and by traveling some considerable distance on foot. They were singularly slow in making that report.
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