ve checked that it was off!" protested his second. "It's my
fault!"

Bors shrugged. Deciding whose fault it was wouldn't repair the damage.
There'd been a human error. Bors had approached Garen on the low-power
overdrive that Logan had computed for him. There was a special switch to
cut it in, instead of the standard overdrive. It should have been cut
out when the standard overdrive was used. But somebody in the
engine-room had simply thrown the main-drive switch when preparations
for overdrive travel began. When the ship should have gone into
overdrive, it didn't. The two parallel circuits amounted to an effective
short-circuit. Generators, condensers--even the overdrive field coils in
their armored mounts outside the hull--everything blew.

So the _Isis_ was left with a solar-system drive and rockets and nothing
else. If the drive used only in solar systems were put on full, and the
_Isis_ headed for Glamis, and if the food and water held out, it would
arrive at that distant world in eighty-some years. It could reach Tralee
in fifty. But there were emergency rations for a few weeks only. It was
not conceivable that repairs could be made. This was no occasion calling
for remarkable ingenuity to make some sort of jury-rigged drive. This
was final.

"I've got to think," said Bors heavily.

He went to his own cabin.

Talents, Incorporated couldn't improvise or precognize or calculate an
answer to this! And all previous plans had to be cancelled. Absolutely.
He dismissed at once and for all time the idea that the _Isis_ could be
repaired short of months in a well-equipped space-yard on a friendly
planet. She should be blown up, after adequate pains were taken to
destroy any novelties in her make-up. There were the tables of Logan's
calculation. Bors found himself thinking sardonically that Logan should
be shot because he had no obligation of loyalty to Kandar, and could as
readily satisfy his hunger for recognition in the Mekinese service as
in Kandar's. The crew....

That was the heart of the situation. The _Isis_ could not be salvaged.
She should be destroyed. There was only one world within reach on which
human beings could live. That world was Garen. The _Isis_ could sit down
on Garen, disembark her crew, and be blown up before Mekinese
authorities could interfere. Perhaps--possibly--her crew could try to
function on Garen as marooned pirates, as outlaws, as rebels against the
puppet planetary government. But th