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Talents, Incorporated

<h2>Chapter 8</h2> The trick, of course, was in the timing, and the secret was that Bors knew what he was doing, while those who opposed him did not. Bors had declared himself a pirate on Tralee, and here off Garen he'd claimed the same status. But no Mekinese, as yet, knew why he'd outlawed himself, nor his purpose in challenging a line battleship to fight. It seemed like the raving, hysterical hatred of men with no motive but hate. But it wasn't. The Isis could have sent down a missile with a limited-yield warhead if its only purpose had been to kill or to destroy. He could have blasted the warship without warning and it was unlikely that it was alert enough to send up counter-missiles in its own defense. But he'd have had to smash everything else in the spaceport at the same time. Therefore he'd left his two space-boats in low orbit on the night side of the planet. In thirty minutes or so they'd arrive near the spaceport, where there was a large cargo-ship loaded with foodstuffs, for Mekin. Bors wanted that cargo. So when the Mekinese battlewagon came lumbering up to space, with her missile-tubes armed and bristling, Bors withdrew the Isis. It was not flight. It was a move designed to make sure that when the fight began there would be no stray missiles falling on the planet. <hr class="min" /> Unseen, the Isis's space-boats floated in darkness. They carried ten men each, equipped with small arms and light bombs. They listened to such bits of broadcast information as came from the night beneath them. Boat Number One picked up a news broadcast, and when it was finished, the petty officer in command pulled free the tape that had recorded it and tucked it in his pocket. There were items of interest on it. <hr class="min" /> The Isis came to a stop in space. The battleship rose and rose. It did not drive toward the Isis. There was a maximum distance beyond which space-combat was impractical; beyond which missiles became mere blind projectiles moving almost at random and destroying each other without regard to planetary loyalties. There was also a minimum distance, below which missiles were again mere projectiles and could not greatly modify the courses on which they were launched. But there was a wide area in between, in which combat was practical. The Mekinese battleship reached a height where it could maneuver on solar-system drive without rockets. It might, of course, flick into overdrive and be gone thousands of millions of miles within seconds. But that would be flight. It would not return accurately to the scene of the fight. So overdrive could not be used as a battle tactic. It could be used only for escape. <hr class="min" /> Near the planet, where the two space-boats floated, the dawnline appeared at the world's edge. The space-boats swung about, facing backward, and applied power for deceleration. They dropped into the atmosphere and bounced out again, and in again—more deeply—and then swung once more to face along their course. They began a long, shallow, screaming descent from the farthest limits of the planet's atmosphere. <hr class="min" /> Out where the sun of Garen was a disk of intolerable brilliance and heat, the battleship bumbled on its way. It would seem that its commander scornfully accepted the Isis's terms of combat and moved contemptuously to the position where his weapons would be most deadly. His ship's launching-tubes were at the ready. It should be able to pour out a cloud of missiles. In fact, a sardonic voice came from the battleship. "Calling pirate," said the voice. "Yes," said Bors. "If you wish to surrender—" "We don't," said Bors. "I was about to say," said the sardonic voice, "that it is now too late." The radar-screen showed tiny specks darting out from that larger speck which was the battleship. They came hurtling toward the Isis. Bors counted them. A ship of the Isis's class mounted eighteen launching-tubes. She should be able to fire eighteen missiles at a time. The Mekinese ship had fired nineteen. If the Isis opened fire, by all the previous rules of space-combat, she would need to use one missile to counter every one of the battleship's, there would still be one left over to destroy the Isis—unless she fired a second spread of missiles, which was virtually impossible before she would be hit. It was mockery by the skipper of the battleship. He was doubtless much amused at the idea of toying with this small, insolent vessel. But Bors did not try to match him missile for missile. He said evenly, "Fire one. Fire two. Fire three. Fire four." He stopped at four. His four missiles went curving wildly, in the general direction, only, of the enemy. <hr class="min" /> On the planet Garen two shrieking objects came furiously to ground. Men leaped swiftly out of them and trotted toward a small town, a settlement, a group of houses hardly larger than a village. One man delayed by each grounded space-boat, and then ran to overtake the others. Local inhabitants appeared, to stare and to wonder. The two landing-parties, ten men in each, did not pause. They swarmed into the village's single street. There were ground-cars at the street-sides. The men of the landing-parties established themselves briskly. One of them seized a staring civilian by the arm. "To hell with Mekin," he said conversationally. "Where's the communicator office?" "Wha—what—?" "To hell with Mekin," repeated the man from the Isis, impatiently. "Where's the communicator office?" The civilian, trembling suddenly, pointed. Some of the landing-party rushed to it. Four went in. There were the reports of blast-rifles. Smoke and the smell of burnt insulation drifted out. Others of the magically arrived men went methodically down the street, examining each ground-car in turn. One of them cupped his hands and bellowed for the information of alarmed citizens: "Attention, please! We're from the pirate ship Isis. You have nothing to fear from us. We're survivors of Mekin's invasion of Kandar. You will please co-operate with us, and no harm will come to you. Your ground-cars will be disabled so you can't report us. You will not be punished for this! Repeat: you will not be punished!" He repeated the announcement. Others of the swiftly-moving landing-parties drove the chosen ground-cars away from the streets. The remaining cars received a blaster-bolt apiece. In seven minutes and thirty seconds from the landing of the small space-craft, a motley assortment of cars roared out of the village, heading for the capital city of Garen. As the last car cleared the houses, there was a monstrous explosion. One of the space-boats flew to bits. Before the cars had vanished, there was a second explosion. Another space-boat vanished in flame and debris. The landing-party had no way to return to space. The inhabitants of the village had no way to report their coming except in person and by traveling some considerable distance on foot. They were singularly slow in making that report. The men of the space-boats had said they were pirates. The people of Garen felt no animosity toward pirates. They only hated Mekinese. <hr class="min" /> Out in space, missiles hurtled away from the small ship Isis. They did not plunge directly at the battleship. They swung crazily in wide arcs. The already-launched Mekinese missiles swerved to intercept them. They failed. More missiles erupted from the battleship, aimed to intercept. They also failed. The battleship began to fling out every missile it possessed, in a frantic effort to knock out the Isis's erratic missiles, which neither instruments nor eyes were able to follow accurately enough to establish a pattern of destination. <hr class="min" /> Half a dozen ground-cars roared through the streets of the capital city of Garen. They did not seem to be crowded. One man or at most, two, could be seen in each car, but they drove as a unit, one close behind another, at a furious pace. When they needed a clear way, the first sounded its warning-note and the others joined in as a chorus. Half a dozen sirens blaring together have an authoritative, emergency sound. The way was cleared when that imperative clarion demanded it. They swerved under the landing-grid. They raced and bounced across the clear surface which was the spaceport. There stood a giant, rotund cargo-ship, pointing skyward. There were ground-trucks still supplying cargo for its nearly filled-up holds. The six ground-cars braked, making clouds of dust. And suddenly there was not one or two men in each, but an astonishing number. They knew exactly what they were about. Five of them plunged into the ship. Others drove off the ground-trucks. Uniformed men ran from the side of the spaceport toward the ship, yelling. One ground-car started up again, rushed to the control-building, swerved sharply as a crash into it seemed inevitable, and dumped something out on the ground. It raced back to the other cars about the cargo-ship. The hold-doors were closing. The object dumped by the control-building went off. It was a chemical-explosive bomb, but its power was adequate. The wall of the building caved in. Flames leaped crazily out of the collapsed heap. The landing-field would be out of operation. The last car skidded to a stop. The two men in it ran for the boarding-stair of the cargo-boat. There was nobody of their party outside now. The landing-stair withdrew after them. Then monstrous, incredible masses of flame and steam burst from the bottom of the rotund space-ship. It lifted, slowly at first, but then more and more swiftly. It climbed to the sky. It became a speck, and then a mote at the crawling end of a trail of opaque white emergency-rocket fumes. Then it vanished. <hr class="min" /> Far out in space, there was an explosion brighter than the sun, and then a second and a third. There was a cloud of incandescent metal vapor. Presently a missile found its target-seeking microwaves reflected by the ionized metal steam. It plunged into collision with that glowing stuff. It exploded. Two or three more exploded, like the first. Others burned harmlessly. A voice said, "Cargo-ship reporting. Clear of ground. Everything going well. No casualties." "Report again when in clear space," said Bors. He waited. Several long minutes later a second report came. "Cargo-ship reporting. In clear space." "Very good work!" said Bors. "You know where to go now. Go ahead!" "Yes, sir," said the voice from space. Then it asked apologetically, "You got the battleship, sir?" The voice from space sounded as if the man who spoke were grinning. "We'll celebrate that, sir! Good to have served with you, sir." Bors swung the Isis and drove on solar-system drive to get well away from Garen. He watched the blip which was the captured ship as it seemed to hesitate a very, very long time. It was aiming, of course, for Glamis, that totally useless solar system around a planet where the fleet of Kandar orbited in bitter frustration. Bors got up from his seat to loosen his muscles. He had sat absolutely tense and effectively motionless for a very long time. He ached. But he felt a sour sort of satisfaction. For a ship of the Isis's class to have challenged a battleship to combat, to have deliberately and insultingly waited for it to choose its own battle-distance, and then to let it launch its missiles first.... It was no ambush! Bors did not feel ashamed of this fight. He'd acted according to the instincts of a fighting man who gives his enemy the chance to use what weapons the enemy has chosen, and then defeats him. His second-in-command said, "Sir, the cargo-boat blip is gone. It should be in overdrive now, sir, heading for Glamis." "Then we'll follow it," said Bors. Suddenly he realized how his second-in-command must feel. The landing-party'd seen action—for which Bors envied them—and he'd felt ashamed because he stayed in the ship in what he considered safety while they risked their lives. But his second-in-command had had no share in the achievement at all. Bors had handled all controls and given all orders, even the routine ones, since before Tralee. "I think," said Bors, "I'll have a cup of coffee. Will you take over and head for Glamis?" He left the control-room, to let his subordinate handle things for a time. He'd seated himself in the mess-room when the voice of his second-in-command came through the speakers. "Going into overdrive," said the voice. "All steady. Five, four, three, two—" Bors prepared to wince. He put down his coffee cup and held himself ready for the sickening sensation. Suddenly there was the rasping, snaring crackling of a high-voltage spark. There were shouts. There were explosions and the reek of overheated metal and smoldering insulation. Then the compartment-doors closed. When Bors had examined the damage, and the emergency-purifiers had taken the smoke and smell out of the air, his second-in-command looked suicidally gloomy. "It's bad business," said Bors wryly. "Very bad business! But I should have mentioned it to you. I didn't think of it. I wouldn't have thought of it if I'd been doing the overdrive business myself." The second-in-command said bitterly; "But I knew you'd tried the new low-power overdrive! I knew it!" "I left it switched in," said Bors, "because I thought we might use it in the fight with the battleship. But we didn't." "I should have checked that it was off!" protested his second. "It's my fault!" Bors shrugged. Deciding whose fault it was wouldn't repair the damage. There'd been a human error. Bors had approached Garen on the low-power overdrive that Logan had computed for him. There was a special switch to cut it in, instead of the standard overdrive. It should have been cut out when the standard overdrive was used. But somebody in the engine-room had simply thrown the main-drive switch when preparations for overdrive travel began. When the ship should have gone into overdrive, it didn't. The two parallel circuits amounted to an effective short-circuit. Generators, condensers—even the overdrive field coils in their armored mounts outside the hull—everything blew. So the Isis was left with a solar-system drive and rockets and nothing else. If the drive used only in solar systems were put on full, and the Isis headed for Glamis, and if the food and water held out, it would arrive at that distant world in eighty-some years. It could reach Tralee in fifty. But there were emergency rations for a few weeks only. It was not conceivable that repairs could be made. This was no occasion calling for remarkable ingenuity to make some sort of jury-rigged drive. This was final. "I've got to think," said Bors heavily. He went to his own cabin. Talents, Incorporated couldn't improvise or precognize or calculate an answer to this! And all previous plans had to be cancelled. Absolutely. He dismissed at once and for all time the idea that the Isis could be repaired short of months in a well-equipped space-yard on a friendly planet. She should be blown up, after adequate pains were taken to destroy any novelties in her make-up. There were the tables of Logan's calculation. Bors found himself thinking sardonically that Logan should be shot because he had no obligation of loyalty to Kandar, and could as readily satisfy his hunger for recognition in the Mekinese service as in Kandar's. The crew.... That was the heart of the situation. The Isis could not be salvaged. She should be destroyed. There was only one world within reach on which human beings could live. That world was Garen. The Isis could sit down on Garen, disembark her crew, and be blown up before Mekinese authorities could interfere. Perhaps—possibly—her crew could try to function on Garen as marooned pirates, as outlaws, as rebels against the puppet planetary government. But they knew too much. Every man aboard knew how the interceptor-proof missiles worked. Logan might be the only man who had ever calculated the tables for their use, but if any member of the Isis's crew were captured and made to talk, he could tell enough for Mekinese mathematicians to start work with. If Logan were captured he could tell more. He could re-compute not only the tables for the missiles, but the data for low-power overdrive which would make any fleet invincible. And there was the Kandarian fleet. If its existence became known, it would mean the destruction of Kandar. Every soul of all its millions would die with every tree and blade of grass, every flower, beast and singing bird, even the plankton in its seas. Bors had arrived at the grimmest decision of his life when his cabin speaker said curtly: "Captain Bors, sir. Space-yacht Sylva calling. Asks for you." "I'm here," said Bors. Gwenlyn's voice came out of the speaker. "Are you in trouble, Captain? One of our Talents insists that you are." Bors swallowed. "I thought you'd gone on as you were supposed to do. Yes. There is trouble. It amounts to shipwreck. How many of my men can you take off?" "We've lots of room!" said Gwenlyn. "My father kept most of the Talents with him. We're heading your way, Captain." "Very good," said Bors. "Thank you." He was grateful, but help from a woman—from Gwenlyn!—galled him. He heard her click off, and shivered. Presently the Sylva was alongside. The transfer of the Isis's crew began. Bors went over the ship for the last time. The ship's log went aboard the Sylva, as did Logan's calculated tables for low-power overdrive. Bors made quite sure that nothing else could be recovered from the Isis. He looked strained and irritable when he finally went into one of the lifeboat blisters on the Isis left vacant by the sacrifice of two space-boats in the Garen cutting-out expedition. A boat from the Sylva was there to receive him. "Technically," said Bors, "I should go down with my ship, or fly apart with it. But there's no point in being romantic!" "I'm the one," said his second-in-command, "who will stand court-martial!" "I doubt it very much," said Bors. "They can't court-martial you for partly accomplishing something they're in trouble for failing at. Into the boat with you!" He threw a switch and entered the boat. The blister opened. The small space-boat floated free. Its drive hummed and it drove far and away from the seemingly unharmed but completely helpless Isis. Bors looked regretfully back at the abandoned light cruiser. Sunlight glinted on its hull. Somehow a slow rotary motion had been imparted to it during the process of abandoning ship. The little fighting ship pointed as though wistfully at all the stars about her, to none of which she would ever drive again. The Sylva loomed up. The last space-boat nestled into its blister and the grapples clanked. The leaves closed. When the blister air-pressure showed normal and green lights flashed and flashed, Bors got out of the boat and went to the Sylva's control-room. Gwenlyn was there, quite casually controlling the operation of the yacht by giving suggestions to its official skipper. She turned and beamed at Bors. "We'll pull off a way," she observed, "and make sure your time-bomb works. You wouldn't want her discovered and salvaged." "No," said Bors. He stood by a viewport as the Sylva drove away. The Isis ceased to be a shape and became the most minute of motes. Bors looked at his watch. "Not far enough yet," he said depressedly. "Everything will go." The yacht drove on. Fifteen—twenty minutes at steadily increasing solar-system speed. "It's about due," said Bors. Gwenlyn came and stood beside him. They looked together out at the stars. There were myriads upon myriads of them, of all the colors of the spectrum, of all degrees of brightness, in every possible asymmetric distribution. There was a spark in remoteness. Instantly it was vastly more than a spark. It was a globe of deadly, blue-white incandescence. It flamed brilliantly as all the Isis's fuel and the warheads on all its unexpended missiles turned to pure energy in the hundred-millionth of a second. It was many times brighter than a sun. Then it was not. And the violence of the explosion was such that there was not even glowing metal-vapor where it had been. Every atom of the ship's substance had been volatilized and scattered through so many thousands of cubic miles of emptiness that it did not show even as a mist. "A good ship," said Bors grimly. Then he growled. "I wonder if they saw that on Garen and what they thought about it!" He straightened himself. "How did you know we were in trouble?" "There's a Talent," said Gwenlyn matter-of-factly, "who can always tell how people feel. She doesn't know what they think or why. But she can tell when they're uneasy and so on. Father uses her to tell him when people lie. When what they say doesn't match how they feel, they're lying." "I think," said Bors, "that I'll stay away from her. But that won't do any good, will it?" Gwenlyn smiled at him. It was a very nice smile. "She could tell that things had gone wrong with the ship," she observed, "because of the way you felt. But I've forbidden her ever to tell when someone lies to me or anything like that. I don't want to know people's feelings when they want to hide them." "Fine!" said Bors. "I feel better." Standing so close to Gwenlyn, he also felt light-headed. She smiled at him again, as if she understood. "We'll head for Glamis now," she said. "The situation there should have changed a great deal because of what you've done." "It would be my kind of luck," said Bors half joking, "for it to have changed for the worse." It had. <hr /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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