ely around it so that it was
like a cocoon of other-space; as if it were out of this cosmos
altogether and in another. In sober fact, of course, nothing of the sort
had happened. An overdrive field changed the physical constants of
space. The capacity of a condenser in an overdrive field was different
from that of a condenser out of it. The self-induction of a coil in an
overdrive field was not the same as in normal space. Magnetic and
gravitational fields also did not follow the same laws in stressed space
as in unstressed extension. The speed of light was different. Inertia
was different. In short, a ship could drive at many hundreds of times
the velocity of light and the laws of Einstein did not apply, because
his laws referred to space that men had not tampered with.

But though ships in overdrive had to be considered as in motion, and
though their speed had to be considered as beyond the astronomical,
there were such incredible distances to be covered that time piled up.
Aside from double stars, there were no suns yet discovered which were
less than light-years apart. The time required for travel between
inhabited planets was still comparable to the time needed for
surface-travel between continents on a world. So the fleet of Mekin,
journeying faster than the mind could imagine, nevertheless drove and
drove and drove in the blackness and darkness and isolation of each
ship's overdrive field. They had so driven for days. They would continue
to do so for days to come.

When Captain Bors burned the documents in the Ministry for Diplomatic
Affairs, the enemy fleet might have been said to be at one place. When a
submerged space-cruiser, planning assassination, was itself blown to
bits with no chance to strike back, the Mekinese fleet was approximately
somewhere else. When a cabinet meeting disheartened King Humphrey, the
fleet was much nearer to Kandar. But days of highly-tedious
eventlessness were still ahead of the war-fleet.

So Bors and Gwenlyn and Morgan got a ground-car and were driven to
Kandar's commercial spaceport. There they found the _Sylva_. It was far
larger than the usual space-yachts. There were commercial space-craft
which were no larger. But it was a workmanlike sort of ship, at that. It
had two lifeboat blisters, and there were emergency rockets for landings
where no landing-grids existed. The armored bands of overdrive-coil
shielding were massive. The _Sylva_, in fact, looked more like a service
s