n overdrive, because
solar-system drive took care of _short_ distances!

"Wait a minute!" said Bors, staring. "Do you really mean I can drive
this ship under two light-speeds in overdrive?"

"Look at the table!" said Logan, trembling with anger. "Look at it!
You'll find the figures right there!"

Bors looked. Then he stood up quickly. He left the ship in the care of
his second-in-command and plunged into a highly technical discussion
with its engineers.

He ran into violent objections. The whole purpose of overdrive was high
speed between stars. The engineers insisted that one had to use the
strongest possible field. If the field were made feeble, it would become
unstable. Everybody knew that the field had to be of maximum strength.

"We'll try minimum," said Bors coldly. "Now let's get to work!"

He had to do much of the labor himself, because the engineers found it
necessary to stop at each stage of the effort to explain why it should
not be done. He had almost to battle to get an auxiliary circuit
paralleling the main overdrive unit, with a transformer to bring down
voltage, and a complete new power-supply unit to be cut into the
overdrive line while leaving the standard ready for use without delay.

He went back to the control room. He took a distance-reading on the huge
planet off to port. He threw on the new, low-power overdrive field. He
held it for seconds and broke out. It was still in sight.

The speed of the _Isis_, with the adjusted overdrive, was one point
seven lights.

Now, instead of spending days in solar-system drive for planetary
approach, Bors went into the new-speed drive and broke out in eleven
minutes twenty seconds, and was within a hundred thousand miles of
Garen. He'd saved two days and secured the promise of many more such
valuable feats.

As soon as the _Isis_ broke to normal space near Garen, there was a call
on the communicator. A familiar voice;

"_Calling_ Isis! _Calling_ Isis! Sylva _calling_ Isis!"

Bors said softly, "Damnation! For the second time, what are you doing in
this place?"

Gwenlyn's voice laughed.

"_Traveling for pleasure, Captain Bors! I've news for you. We were
allowed to land and then told to leave again. There's a warship down
below. I told you about it before. It's still there. There's a huge
cargo-ship, too, and there are riots because it's almost finished
loading with requisitioned foodstuffs for Mekin. Mekin is--would you
believe it?--unpopular on