here wouldn't be room inside for the pilot.

Nonetheless, courier after courier never arrived at its destination.

And the Kerothi Fleet was being decimated by the hit-and-run tactics of
the Earth's ghost ships. And Earth never lost a ship; by the time the
Kerothi ships knew their enemy was in the vicinity, the enemy had hit
and vanished again. The Kerothi never had a chance to ready their
weapons.

In the long run, they never had a chance at all.

MacMaine waited with almost fatalistic complacence for the inevitable
to happen. When it did happen, he was ready for it.

The _Shudos_, tiny flagship of what had once been a mighty armada and
was now only a tattered remnant, was floating in orbit, along with the
other remaining ships of the fleet, around a bloated red-giant sun.
With their drives off, there was no way of detecting them at any
distance, and the chance of their being found by accident was
microscopically small. But they could not wait forever. Water could be
recirculated, and energy could be tapped from the nearby sun, but food
was gone once it was eaten.

Hokotan's decision was inevitable, and, under the circumstances, the
only possible one. He simple told them what they had already
known--that he was a Headquarters Staff officer.

"We haven't heard from Headquarters in weeks," he said at last. "The
Earth fleet may already be well inside our periphery. We'll have to go
home." He produced a document which he had obviously been holding in
reserve for another purpose and handed it to Tallis. "Headquarters
Staff Orders, Tallis. It empowers me to take command of the Fleet in
the event of an emergency, and the decision as to what constitutes an
emergency was left up to my discretion. I must admit that this is not
the emergency any of us at Headquarters anticipated."

Tallis read through the document. "I see that it isn't," he said dryly.
"According to this, MacMaine and I are to be placed under immediate
arrest as soon as you find it necessary to act."

"Yes," said Hokotan bitterly. "So you can both consider yourselves
under arrest. Don't bother to lock yourselves up--there's no point in
it. General MacMaine, I see no reason to inform the rest of the Fleet
of this, so we will go on as usual. The orders I have to give are
simple: The Fleet will head for home by the most direct possible
geodesic. Since we cannot fight, we will simply ignore attacks and keep
going as long as we last. We can do nothing else."