edictions as Madame Porvis thinks scandals! And
they're just as crazy! But he _is_ a Talent and they have to be right!"

Bors said, "You're going to take Gwenlyn away from here,--and fast!"

Morgan paid no attention. He was embittered, and agitated, and in
particular, he was frustrated.

"It's all madness!" he protested almost hysterically. "Here we've got a
firm precognition that King Humphrey's going to open parliament on
Kandar next year, and there's another one--"

Gwenlyn said quickly, "Which you won't tell!"

"Which I won't tell. But something's got to happen! Something's got to
be done! And this crazy Talent gives me a crazy precognition and looks
proud because I can't make sense of it! What the hell can you make out
of a precognition that Mekin will be defeated when an enemy fleet
submits to destruction, lying still in space? There's no sense to it!
_My_ Talents wouldn't think of anything idiotic like that! They've got
better sense! But when this lunatic said it, they could precognize it
too! It's so! They couldn't think of it themselves, but when this
Mekinese Talent does, they know it's true. But it can't be!"

Bors said coldly, "The fleet's going to be destroyed, certainly. If that
will defeat Mekin. But Gwenlyn is not to stay aboard to be destroyed
with it! How are you going to get her away?"

"The king's waiting for the _Sylva_ to come back," Morgan said
indignantly, "so he'll know--my ship-arrival Talent went to find out--if
the Mekin fleet's going to Kandar, and when. He insists that if they
know the fleet exists, they know where it is and will come here looking
for it. But Madame Porvis couldn't have told that in her daydreaming.
She didn't _know_ what planet we're circling! She couldn't have spread
that fact by contagion!"

"She spread plenty more!" said Bors. "Her daydreams were too damned
true!"

Gwenlyn said, "It's a contradiction in terms for a fleet to win a battle
by letting itself be destroyed. Perhaps the Captain--"

"It's also a contradiction in terms," said Bors bitterly, "for all our
troubles to come because we won a victory. Now we regret that we weren't
all killed. But it's madness for the king to propose to get us all
slaughtered in hope of rousing the Mekinese better nature!"

"Maybe you can resolve it, Captain," said Gwenlyn thoughtfully. "Could
it be that it isn't a contradiction but only a paradox?"

Bors spread his hands helplessly. Of all times and circumstances, this
p