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The sun flared and flamed and writhed in emptiness. The great gas-giant planet rolled through space in splendid state, its moonlets spinning gracefully about its bulk. The oxygen-atmosphere planet to sunward was visible only as a crescent, but the mottlings on its lighted part changed as it revolved seas and islands and continents receiving the sunlight as it turned.
While he slept, the world wagged on and the cosmos continued on its normal course. The two moons of Earth one natural and one artificial swung in splendid circles about. The red spot of Jupiter and the bands on that gas-giant world moved in orderly fashion about its circumference.
It was a smaller fleet in every class of ships, but it was compact and controlled and it made slashing plunges through the dispersed and confused enemy. With ordinary missiles three ships could always destroy two, and four could destroy three. But in the battle of the gas-giant planet, where there was fighting the Kandarians were never less than two to one.
In the control room, Bors watched out of a direct-vision port, giving occasional glances to the screens. There were flecks of light from innumerable stars. Then the shining cloud-bank of the gas-giant planet went black. Screens showed all of the fleet each blip with a nimbus about it which identified it as a friend, not a foe. There was the blip of the leading ship, the "point" of the formation.
Jamison said obviously from a blister-port where he swung a squat star-telescope from one object to another: "Noo-o-o. That's a gas-giant. We'd be squashed if we landed there though that big moon looks promising. I think we'd better try yonder." "Okay," said Jones in a flat voice. "Center on the next one in, Al, and we'll toddle over." Cochrane felt the ship swinging in emptiness.
But the morale on board was superb and the weapons were to put it mildly inspiring of hope. The Liberty broke out of overdrive and the sun of Kandar shone fiery yellow in emptiness. The gas-giant planet had moved in its orbit. It was more evenly in line than before with a direct arrival-path for a fleet from Mekin.
The electron telescope could detect its larger planets, especially a gas-giant fifth-orbit world of high albedo. Calhoun had his four students estimate its distance again, pointing out the difference that could be made in breakout position if the Med Ship were mis-aimed by as much as one second of arc. "And now," he said briskly, "we'll have coffee. I'm going to graduate you as pilots.
It had a just-perceptible disk. Close to it, infinitely small, there was a speck of light which seemed somehow like a star. Cochrane squinted at it. He thought of the great gas-giant world he'd seen out a port on the way here. It had an attendant moon-world which itself had icecaps and seas and continents. He called Jamison. "I think that's the planet," agreed Jamison. "We passed close by it.
When a missile could not be intercepted and itself did not try to intercept, the economy of missiles was great. In the battle of the gas-giant planet, the fleet had fired no more than three or four missiles for every enemy ship destroyed. Morgan took Bors aside. "I'm going to keep Logan here this trip. I'm working on the commanders. I need him.
He relaxed. Gwenlyn tried to read. She did not succeed. She was excessively nervous. Bors was not. The fleet re-formed itself well out from Kandar. It made for a rendezvous over a pole of the gas-giant planet which was the fourth planet from Kandar's sun. It was almost, but not quite in line with that yellow star toward the base, from which the Mekinese flotilla would come.
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