increased as greatly as that of the fleet of
Kandar had been,--and the overwhelming superiority of numbers would
again become decisive. The hopeless situation of the Kandarian fleet
would become a hundred times worse. And Mekinese counter-intelligence
would make a search for the origin of such improvements. Since Kandar
was to have been attacked and occupied, it would be a place of special
search.

The only unsuspected source, of course, would be Talents, Incorporated.

For a full minute after the enemy ship's disappearance, Bors sat rigid,
his hands clenched, facing the disaster the escape of the Mekinese
constituted. Sweat appeared on his forehead.

Then he pressed the engine-room button and said evenly, "Prepare for
standard overdrive, top speed possible."

He swung the ship. He lined it up with Mekin itself, which, of course,
was the one place where it would be most fatal for a ship from Kandar to
be discovered.

Very shortly thereafter, the _Horus_ was in overdrive.

Traveling in such unthinkable haste, it is paradoxic that there is much
time to spare. Bors had to occupy it. He prepared a careful and detailed
account of exactly how the low-speed overdrive had worked, and its
effectiveness as a combat tactic. He'd distributed instructions and
Logan's tables on the subject before leaving Glamis. He would be, of
course, most bitterly blamed for having taken on a whole squadron of
enemy ships, with the result that one had gotten away. It could be the
most decisive of catastrophes. But he made his report with precision.

For seven successive ship-days there was no event whatever on the
_Horus_, as she drove toward Mekin. Undoubtedly the one survivor of the
enemy squadron was fleeing for Mekin, too, to report to the highest
possible authority what it had seen and experienced. It would not be
much, if at all, slower than the _Horus_. It might be faster, and might
reach the solar system of Mekin before the _Horus_ broke out there. It
had every advantage but one. It had solar-system drive, for use within a
planetary group, and it had overdrive for use between the stars. But the
_Horus_ had an intermediate drive as well, which was faster than the
enemy's slow speed and slower than the fast.

Bors depended on it for the continued existence of Kandar and the fleet.
As the desperately tedious ship-days went by he began to have ideas--at
which he consciously scoffed--concerning Tralee. But if anything as
absurd as those