hat I believe,
they'll crave action."

There was a space-boat at the flagship's lock. Bors and his uncle
entered. Those already in the boat were young men in the nondescript
clothing of ship-workers. They grinned proudly at Bors when he took his
seat.

"I don't know whether you know, sir," said the young man at the
space-boat's controls, "but we heard about your revolt, sir, and we were
about at the limit so we--"

"I stopped at Deccan," Bors said briefly. "They told me about you. Do
you want action against Mekin?"

"Yes, sir!" It was a chorus.

"You'll get it," said Bors. "I'll try you out on a concentration of
Mekin ships that should be turning up at Kandar. How are you equipped
for repairs and changes?"

"We left Cela for a test trip, sir," said the young man at the controls.
There were grins behind him. He chuckled. "Naturally we had materials to
repair anything that went wrong on a trial run!"

"I've got some new settings for missiles," said Bors, "which make them
hard to dodge. And we'll want to set up a special overdrive control,
which makes it easy to dodge Mekinese ones. We can attend to it on the
way to Kandar. How many aboard?"

He asked other curt questions. They answered. What Bors asked was what a
commanding officer would need to know about a new ship, and his new
followers realized it. They had been exultant and triumphant when he
entered the space-boat. In the brief time needed to get to the _Liberty_
they became ardently confident.

His reception was undisciplined but enthusiastic. He made a hurried
inspection. The _Liberty_ had started out with a skeleton crew of
shipyard workers and no stores or arms. The ranks were now filled with
volunteers from Deccan and elsewhere, and its storage-rooms fairly
bulged with foodstuffs. Bors, however, really relaxed only once. That
was when he saw the filled racks of missiles. On Deccan they'd been
lavish in their gifts to the rebel space-ship.

Bors went into the control room, glanced about, and spoke crisply into
the all-speaker microphone.

"All hands attention! Bors speaking. A concentration of Mekinese ships
is expected at Kandar. We shall head for that planet immediately. On the
way I shall arrange for some changes in the settings of the missiles we
have on board. We will fix and distribute aiming-tables for their use.
We will stop twice on the way for target practice. Much more than your
lives or mine depends on how well you do your work. We'll