enforce its
orders somehow put it beyond forgiveness, and with the government all
those who served it willingly.

"_You'll go to Garen then?_" asked Gwenlyn.

Bors felt a sharp sting of annoyance. He had carefully kept secret the
choice of Garen Three as the next planet to be invaded by the
pseudo-pirate ship. It was upsetting to find that Gwenlyn knew about it.
Blast Talents, Incorporated!

"_The dowsing Talent_," said Gwenlyn, "_says there's a battleship
aground there. There've been some riots. The people of Garen don't like
Mekin, either. Strange? The battleship is to overawe them._"

"How do you know that?" demanded Bors.

"_The Department for Predicting Dirty Tricks was reading old
news-reports_," she told him. "_We're leaving now. 'Bye._"

"Goodbye," said Bors, and sighed, not knowing whether he felt regret or
relief.

The space-yacht _Sylva_ flicked out of sight. It had gone into
overdrive. Bors realized that he hadn't noticed which way it pointed. He
should have taken note. But he shook his head. He gave the cargo-ship
detailed orders, receiving its space-boat and what food it had been able
to bring. He sent it off to meet his fleet at Glamis.

He stayed in orbit around the fourth planet to wait for a Mekinese
fighting-ship. He began, too, to make long-range plans.

_Part Three_

Chapter 7

The Mekinese ship was a cruiser, and it broke out of overdrive within
the Tralee solar system just two days, four hours, and some odd minutes
after Gwenlyn predicted its coming. Presumably, it had made the
customary earlier breakout to correct its course and measure the
distance remaining to be run. In overdrive there was not as yet a way to
know accurately one's actual speed, and at astronomical distances small
errors piled up. Correction of line was important, too, because a course
that was even a second off arc could mount up to hundreds of thousands
of miles. But even with that usual previous breakout, the Mekinese
cruiser did not turn up conveniently close to its destination. It needed
a long solar-system drive to make its planetfall.

Bors's long-range radar picked it up before it was near enough to notify
its arrival to the planet--if it intended to notify at all. Most likely
its program was simply and frighteningly to appear overhead and
arrogantly demand the services of the landing-grid to lower it to the
ground.

Bors's radar detected the cruiser and instantly cut itself off. The cry