d on Tralee. But he drove on out,
around and away from Tralee.

He was reasonably satisfied with his landing on Tralee. With some luck,
the news of the landing of a lone survivor of the Kandarian fleet might
reach Mekin before it was aware of what had happened to its occupation
force. With a little more luck, the attention of Mekin would be devoted
more to a ship which dared to turn pirate than to Kandar itself. With
unlimited favorable fortune, Mekin might actually send ships to hunt the
_Isis_ instead of asking questions on Kandar.

But Bors made a mental note. The more time that passed before Mekin knew
what had happened, the better. So a ship or two or three might be
detached from the fleet and sent back to hang off Kandar. 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. Overdrive was
sometimes not fast enough--but solar-system drive was infuriatingly
slow. Yet one couldn't use overdrive in a solar system. Approaching a
planet on overdrive would be like trying to garage a ground-car at sixty
miles an hour. One couldn't stop where one wanted to. He wondered
vaguely if Logan, the math Talent, could handle such a problem, and
dismissed the idea. One could break a circuit with an accuracy of
microseconds, but that wouldn't be close enough for overdrive. It
wouldn't be practical.

Then the ice-sheet of Tralee's nearest neighbor planet spread out in the
vision-port's range of view. Bors called for the cargo-ship. It answered
almost immediately. It was standard practice, of course, that the site
of a meeting planned at a given planet would be wherever its poles
pointed nearest to galactic north. The cargo-ship had just arrived. It
barely responded before the _Sylva_ began to call again.

The three ships, then, joined their orbits and went swinging about the
glacier-world beneath them while they conferred.

The report from the cargo-ship was unexpectedly satisfactory. It had
been almost completely loaded, and its cargo was largely foodstuffs
intended for Mekin. Kandar's fleet-in-hiding was already subsisting on
emergency rations. This cargo of assorted frozen foods would be welcome.
Bors gave ord