Talents, Incorporated Part 27

"There!" Bors pointed. "The king's ship's breaking out! Away over at the edge. I wonder if the Mekinese will notice!"

There were very tiny sparkles off at the side of the radar-screen. They increased in number.

There was a flash, like the sun brought near for the tenth of a second.

Another. Yet another. Then an overwhelming spout of brilliance as tens and twenties and fifties of the trajectiles went off together. It was an unbelievable sight against the stars. Missiles flamed and flashed and there seemed to be an actual sun there, now flashing brighter and now fainter, but intolerably hot and shining.

It went out, and left a vague and shining vapor behind. Then, belated missiles entered it and detonated. Their flares ceased. Then there was nothing where there had seemed to be a fleet.

"Which," said Bors, "is that!"

Then a voice spoke coldly from s.p.a.ce.

"_Connect all speakers for a message in clear_," it commanded. "_Alert all personnel for a general order._"

There was a pause. The voice spoke again.

"_s.p.a.cemen of Mekin_," it said icily. "_The fleet of Kandar is now destroyed. Kandar itself will be destroyed also as an example of the consequences of perfidy toward Mekin. But it should be a warning to others who would conspire against our world. Therefore, in part as penalty and in part as a reward to the men of the Grand Fleet, you will be allowed to land during a period of two weeks. You will be armed. You may confiscate, for yourself, anything of value you find. You are not required to exercise restraint in your actions toward the people of Kandar. They will be destroyed with their planet and no protests from such criminals will be listened to. You will be landed in groups, each on a fresh area of the planet. That is all._"

There was silence in the control room of the _Liberty_. After a long time the Pretender said very quietly, "I will not live while such beasts live. From this moment I will kill them until I am killed!"

"I suspect King Humphrey heard that," Bors said, and drew a deep breath.

"Combat alert!" he ordered crisply. "We're attacking the Mekinese fleet.

Handle your missiles smoothly and don't try to fire while we're in overdrive! We'll be going in and out.... Choose your targets and fire as we come out and while I count down. Overdrive point nine seconds. Five, four, three, two, one!"

The cosmos reeled and stomachs retched when the _Liberty_ came out in nine-tenths of a second. She was in the very midst of a concentration of the Mekinese fleet. Missiles streaked away, furiously, as Bors counted down. "Two-fifths second, five, four, three, two, one!"

More missiles shot away. Bors almost chanted, while with gestures toward the radar-screen he picked out the objects near which breakout should fall.

"Point oh five seconds." The ship went into overdrive and out. It seemed as if the universe dissolved from one appearance to another outside the viewports. "Five, four, three, two, one! Hold fire!"

The _Liberty_ came out a good ten thousand miles from its starting-point and beyond the area occupied by the enemy fleet. Three thousand miles away a flare burst among the distant stars. A second. A third. Six thousand miles away there were flashings in emptiness.

"We're doing very well," said Bors calmly into the all-speaker microphone. "A little more care with the aiming, though. And read your ranges closer! They're not intercepting our missiles. We're not aiming them right. We try it again now...."

The universe seemed to reel and one felt queasy, but there was work to be done, while a voice chanted, "Five, four, three, two, one!" Then it reeled again and the same voice continued to chant. Sometimes the crews saw where missiles. .h.i.t, but they could never be sure they were their own. Then, suddenly, the number of hits increased. They doubled and tripled and quadrupled.

"All hands!" barked Bors. "The fleet of Kandar is wading into this fight. Be careful to pick your targets! No Kandar ships! Save your missiles for the enemy!"

Someone, man-handling missiles for faster and more long-continued firing than any ship-designer ever expected, gasped, "Come on boys! Missiles for Mekin!"

It became a joke, which seemed excruciatingly funny at the time.

n.o.body saw all the battle, or even a considerable part. There was a period when the _Liberty_, alone, fought like the deadliest of gadflies. It appeared in the middle of a Mekinese sub-formation, loosed missiles and vanished before anything could be intercepted. There was no target for Mekinese bombs to home on when they got to where the _Liberty_ had been.

Then the fleet of Kandar appeared. It broke out in single ships and in pairs, and then in groups of fives and tens. The general order for the Mekinese fleet had been picked up, and the fleet of Kandar seemed to have gone mad.

The flagship tried to fight in orthodox fashion, for a time. It depended on the attraction its missiles had for Mekinese to keep it in s.p.a.ce. But presently it was alone, and the battle was raging confusion scattered over light-minutes, and somebody went down in to the engine room and brazed in a low-power overdrive unit--providentially made by a junior officer--and the flagship of the Kandarian fleet waded in erratically, never knowing where it would come out, but rarely failing to find a Mekinese ship to launch at.

The third phase of the battle was much more of an open fight, ship against ship, except that more and more Kandarian ships were using low-power overdrive--clumsily and inefficiently, but to the very great detriment of Mekin's grand fleet. The Mekinese officers could not quite grasp that their antagonists were doing the impossible. They became confused.

The fourth phase of the battle consisted of mopping-up operations in which individual ships were hunted down and destroyed by the simple process of a Kandarian ship seeming to materialize from nowhere a mile or half a mile from an enemy, launching one missile and seeming to dematerialize again and vanish.

Very few Mekinese ships went into overdrive. Probably most of them didn't believe what was happening. Perhaps four ships, out of the entire grand fleet, escaped.

Later, of course, there was embarra.s.sment all around. King Humphrey the Eighth landed on Kandar to a.s.sure his people that they were no longer in danger. He was embarra.s.sed because he was a victor in spite of himself.

The fleet officers were embarra.s.sed because Bors had been forced out of the fleet, and had literally tricked them into battle.

Bors, too, was embarra.s.sed. There was the admiration displayed by junior officers of the fleet. He had become, very unwillingly, a model for young s.p.a.ce-navy officers. They tried to pattern themselves after him in all ways, even to the angle at which they wore their hats. He squirmed when they looked at him with shining-eyed respect.

He was embarra.s.sed, also, by the necessary revelation to the _Liberty's_ crew that he was neither the leader of a rebellion nor in command of a fleet; nor that he had performed quite all the fabulous feats credited to him. He had to explain that he'd only commanded two ships, the _Isis_ and the _Horus_, one of which had to be destroyed, and that when the _Liberty_ placed itself under his command he'd just been forced to resign his commission from King Humphrey. The young men who'd fought under him were unimpressed.

The fleet was re-supplied with food and missiles, and in one day more the major part of it would take off for Mekin. Other ships would journey, of course, to the twenty-odd, once-subject worlds. There they would--they were calmly confident about it--mop up any surviving Mekinese ships and enforce the surrender of Mekinese garrisons. And they would gather emissaries to be carried to the fleet as it rode in orbit about Mekin. The fleet and the representatives of the twenty-two worlds, together, would firmly rearrange the government and the policies and the ambitions of Mekin.

There was still the matter of Gwenlyn. 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.

Gwenlyn found Bors secluded in the palace, waiting until it was time to board ship and head for Mekin. Her father accompanied her.

"I've come to say goodbye," she said gently. "We've done what we came for."

"I still don't understand why you came," said Bors, who would much rather have said something else. "We can't possibly do anything adequate in return. Why _did_ you come?"

He turned to Morgan, who answered blandly, "One of our Talents precognized an event. We had to come here and help it to happen. Gwenlyn was doubtful, but she's come around."

"What was it?"

"It hasn't happened yet," said Morgan. He produced a cigar and lighted it. "Gwenlyn, shall I tell him?"

"Don't you dare!" said Gwenlyn hotly.

Bors said unhappily, "I'm sorry you're going away, Gwenlyn. If things were--different, I--I--"

"You what?" asked Morgan. "By the way! One of our Talents has precognized that your uncle's going back to Tralee as its king again.

Largely on your account. You're his heir, aren't you?"

Bors blinked.

"Hero," said Morgan, waving his hand. "Twenty-two planets adoring you, believing you brought Mekin down single-handed. Aching to work with you, follow you, admire you. Naturally, Tralee wants your uncle back. Then they'll have you. Of course," he added complacently, "our Department for Disseminating Truthful Seditious Rumors had something to do with it. But that was necessary wartime propaganda. And you didn't let anybody down."

Then he said peevishly, "Not until now!"

Bors gaped. He looked at Gwenlyn. Her cheeks were crimson. Revelation struck Bors like a blow.

"I don't believe it!" he said, staring at her. He said more loudly, "I don't believe it!"

"d.a.m.nit," said Morgan indignantly. "She didn't believe it either! She said she'd come here because she was curious, nothing more. But that particular Talent's never missed yet! She just plain _knows_ every time who--"

"Hush!" said Gwenlyn fiercely. "Goodbye."