told I do," said Bors, harassedly. "But I don't know what they
are."

"Then how can I make them?" asked Logan with lifted eyebrows.

"Naturally," said Morgan, "you'll find out the kind of calculations he
needs, that he can't get anywhere else. That'll be the kind he needs
from you."

"Hm," said Logan. He blew a smoke-ring, thoughtfully. "Where do you use
calculations in space-travel?"

"Everywhere," said Bors. "But we've computers for it. And they're quite
adequate."

Logan shrugged. "Then what do you need me for?"

"You tell me!" said Bors, nettled. "Certainly we don't need calculations
for space-travel. We've no long journey in mind. We're simply going to
go out and do some fighting when the Mekinese fleet gets here."

Logan blew another smoke-ring.

"What calculations do you use in space-fighting?"

"Courses and distances," said Bors. He could see no sense in this, but
he went on. "Allowing for acceleration and deceleration in setting our
missiles on targets. Allowing for the motion of the targets. Again we
have computers for this. In practice they're too good! If we send a
missile at a Mekinese ship, they set a computer on it, and it computes a
course for a counter-missile which explodes and destroys our missile
when it's within a certain distance of it."

"Then your missile doesn't hit," said Logan.

"All too often, it doesn't," admitted Bors.

"Then their missiles don't hit either."

"If they send a hundred missiles at us, they're cancelled out if we send
a hundred to destroy them. Unfortunately, if they send more than we can
counter, we get wiped out."

Bors found his throat going dry. This, of course, was what he'd
desperately been denying to himself. It was the fundamental reason for a
total lack of hope. The history of warfare is the history of rivalry
between attack and defense. In the matter of missiles in space, there
was a stalemate. One missile fired in attack could always be destroyed
by another fired in defense. It was an arithmetic balance. But it meant
that three ships could always destroy two, and four ships three. In the
space-fight ahead, there would be at least ten Mekinese ships to every
one from Kandar. The sally of Kandar's fleet would not be a rush into
battle, but an advance into annihilation. "What we need," said Bors
desperately, "is a means to compute courses for our missiles so they'll
hit, and that the enemy can't counter-compute--so that his missiles
can't compute how