ship moved on ahead.

Just at sunup where the spaceport stood, a voice growled down from outer
space.

"_Calling ground!_" it said contemptuously. "_Calling ground! This is
the last ship left of the fleet of Kandar. We're pirates now and we're
looking for trouble! There's a battleship down there. Come up and fight
or we blast you in your spaceport! Just to prove we can do it--watch!_"

Bors said, "Fire one," and a missile went off toward the planet. It was
fused to detonate at the very tip of the fringes of the planet's
atmosphere.

It did. There was light more brilliant than a thousand suns. The long
low shadows of sunrise vanished. The new-rising sun turned dim by
comparison.

The voice from space spoke with intolerable levity. "_Come up with your
missiles ready! We'll give you ten thousand miles of height. And if you
try to duck out in overdrive...._"

The voice was explicit about what it would do to the Mekinese-occupied
areas of Garen if the battleship fled.

It came up to fight. It could do nothing else.

Chapter 8

The trick, of course, was in the timing, and the secret was that Bors
knew what he was doing, while those who opposed him did not. Bors had
declared himself a pirate on Tralee, and here off Garen he'd claimed the
same status. But no Mekinese, as yet, knew why he'd outlawed himself,
nor his purpose in challenging a line battleship to fight. It seemed
like the raving, hysterical hatred of men with no motive but hate. But
it wasn't. The _Isis_ could have sent down a missile with a
limited-yield warhead if its only purpose had been to kill or to
destroy. He could have blasted the warship without warning and it was
unlikely that it was alert enough to send up counter-missiles in its own
defense. But he'd have had to smash everything else in the spaceport at
the same time.

Therefore he'd left his two space-boats in low orbit on the night side
of the planet. In thirty minutes or so they'd arrive near the spaceport,
where there was a large cargo-ship loaded with foodstuffs, for Mekin.
Bors wanted that cargo.

So when the Mekinese battlewagon came lumbering up to space, with her
missile-tubes armed and bristling, Bors withdrew the _Isis_. It was not
flight. It was a move designed to make sure that when the fight began
there would be no stray missiles falling on the planet.

* * * * *

Unseen, the _Isis's_ space-boats floated in darkness. They carried ten