, and there were naked,
twisted girders. The dangling underwater camera faithfully reported what
it saw by the light that was lowered with it. But there was no
space-cruiser. There were only the rather small fragments of what had
been one a little while before.

Captain Bors went back to the palace. He was savagely pleased. He and
the air-fleet men had done something. They'd had some satisfaction.
They'd killed some Mekinese and ruined a plan to assassinate the Kandar
fleet. But they'd only gotten an immediate satisfaction. Kandar was
still to be conquered. Nothing important had changed.

Bors made his way to the king's study. He entered. King Humphrey the
Eighth and the Pretender of Tralee were listening doubtfully to a stout
man. The man was Morgan.

He stopped talking and blinked at Captain Bors. The captain ignored
royal etiquette and spoke to him without first greeting the king.

"The ship was there, as you said. We smashed it. Thank you. Is there any
more information you can give us?"

Chapter 2

At the spaceport, carefully selected persons filed onto the space-liner
_Vestis_. It was not officially believed that the other three great
chartered ships would arrive before the Mekinese fleet. It was, in fact,
rather likely that none of the information given by Talents,
Incorporated was ever believed until the event confirmed the prediction.
In the case of the first liner, those who went on board had been chosen
by a strict principle of priority. Men who would merely be imprisoned
when Mekin took over had no privilege of escape. Not yet. Those who were
destined for execution as soon as a quisling government was formed, were
also not entitled to depart on the liner. But those who had
conspicuously supported King Humphrey in his resistance to intimidation;
those who had encouraged others to object to concessions which could
only be forerunners of other concessions; those who had spoken and
written and labored to spread information about the facts of life under
Mekin, would not merely be imprisoned or executed. They would be
tortured. So they were entitled to first chance at escape.

The space-liner blasted off some six hours after its arrival. It
vanished blessedly into overdrive where it could not be intercepted. It
headed for the far-away world of Trent, where its passengers would be
allowed to land as refugees and where, doubtless, they would speak
bitterly about Mekin for all the rest of their lives.