"The decision," said King Humphrey the Eighth, stubbornly, "is exactly what I have said. In full war council it has been agreed that the fleet, through a new use of missiles, is a stronger fighting force than ever before. This was evidenced in the late battle and no one questions it. But it is also agreed that we remain hopelessly outnumbered. We are in a position where we simply cannot fight! For us to have fought would probably have been forgiven if we had been wiped out in the recent battle—preferably with only slight loss to the Mekinese. We offered battle expecting exactly that. Unfortunately, we annihilated the fleet that was to have occupied Kandar. In consequence we have had to pretend that we were destroyed along with them. And if we are discovered to be alive, and certainly if we offer to fight, Kandar will be exterminated as a living world, to punish us and as a warning to future victims of the Mekinese."

"Yes, Majesty," Bors said through tight lips. "But may I point out—"

"I know what you want to point out," the king broke in irritably. "With the help of these Talents, Incorporated people, you've worked out a new battle tactic you want to put into practice. You've explained it to the War Council. The War Council has decided that it is too risky. We cannot gamble the lives of the people on Kandar. We have not the right to expose them to Mekinese vengeance!"

"I agree, Majesty," said Bors, "but at the same time—"

The king leaned back in his chair.

"I don't like it any better than you do," he said peevishly. "I expected to get killed in a space-battle—not very gloriously, but at least with self-respect. Unfortunately we had bad luck. We won the fight. I do not like what we have to do in consequence, but we have to do it!"

Bors bit his lips. He liked and respected King Humphrey, as he had respect and affection for his uncle, the Pretender of Tralee. Both were honest and able men who'd been forced to learn the disheartening lesson that some things are impossible. But Bors believed that King Humphrey had learned the lesson too well.

"You plan, Majesty," he said after a moment, "to send me out again to capture food-ships if I can."

"Obviously," said the king.

"The idea being," Bors went on, "that if I can get enough food for the fleet so it can make a journey of several hundreds of light-years—"

"It is necessary to go a long way," the king confirmed unhappily. "We need to take the fleet to where Mekin is only a name and Kandar not even that."

"Where you will disband the fleet—"

"Yes."

"And hope that Mekin will not take vengeance anyhow for the fight the fleet has already put up."

The king said heavily, "It will be a very long time before word drifts back that the fleet of Kandar did not die in battle. It may never come. If it does, it will come as a vague rumor, as an idle tale, as absurd gossip about a fleet whose home planet may not even be remembered when the tales are told. There will be trivial stories about a fleet which abandoned the world it should have defended, and fled so far that its enemies did not bother to follow it. If the tale reaches Mekin, it may not be believed. It may not ever be linked to Kandar. And if some day it is believed, by then Kandar will be long occupied. Perhaps it will be resigned to its status. It will be a valuable subject world. Mekin will not destroy it merely to punish scattered, forgotten men who will never know that they have been punished."

"And you want me," repeated Bors, "to find the stores of food that will let the fleet travel to—oblivion."

"Yes," said the king again. He looked very weary. "In a sense, of course, we will simply be doing what we set out to do—to throw away our lives. We intended to do that. We are doing no more now."

Bors said grimly, "I'm not sure. But I will obey orders, Majesty. Do you object if I pass out the details of the new device among some junior officers? I speak of the way to compute overdrive speed exactly and how to vary it. It could help the fleet to stay together, even in overdrive."

The king shrugged. "That would be desirable. I do not object."

"I'll do it then, Majesty," said Bors. "I'll be assigned a new ship. I'd like the same crew. I'll do my best, in a new part of the Mekinese empire, this time."

"Yes," said the king drearily. "Don't make a pattern of raids that would suggest that you have a base. You understand, it is impossible to use more than one ship...."

"Naturally," agreed Bors. "One more suggestion, Majesty. A ship could be sent back to Kandar—not to land but to watch. If a single Mekinese ship went there to ask questions, it could be destroyed, perhaps. Which would gain us time."

"I will think about it," said the king doubtfully. "Maybe it has occurred to someone else. I will see. Meantime you will go to the admiral for a new ship. And then do what you can to find provisions for the fleet. It is not good for us to merely stay here waiting for nothing. Even action toward our own disappearance is preferable."

Bors saluted. He went to the office of the admiral. The commander-in-chief of the Kandarian fleet was making an inspection, to maintain tight discipline in the absence of hope. A young vice-admiral was on duty in the admiral's stead. He regarded Bors with approval. He listened with attention, and agreed with most of what Bors had to say.

"I'll push the idea of a sentry over Kandar," he said confidentially. "I'll make it two ships or three and take command. I want to send some of my engineer officers to get the details of that low-power overdrive. A very pretty tactical idea! It should be spread throughout the fleet."

"It will help," Bors said with irony, "when we go so far away that we'll never be heard of any more."

"Eh?" The vice-admiral looked at him blankly. "Oh. Perhaps. You wouldn't be likely to pick up a cargo-ship loaded with Mekinese missiles, would you? We could adapt them to our use."

"If I did," Bors answered, "I suspect that somehow that ship would land itself on Mekin and blow up as it touched ground."

The vice-admiral raised his eyebrows. Bors saluted quickly and left.

Presently he was back on the Sylva. His new command would be supplied with extra missiles from other ships. Despite the fleet action against the Mekinese, there was not yet a shortage of such ammunition. When a missile could not be intercepted and itself did not try to intercept, the economy of missiles was great. In the battle of the gas-giant planet, the fleet had fired no more than three or four missiles for every enemy ship destroyed.

Morgan took Bors aside.

"I'm going to keep Logan here this trip. I'm working on the commanders. I need him. And our Talent for Detecting Lies,—she was the one who knew you were in trouble, Gwenlyn tells me—is very necessary. I was hampered by not having her while Gwenlyn was away. But she did a good job for you!"

Bors shrugged. He did not like depending upon Talents. He still wasn't inclined toward acceptance of what he considered the occult. Now he said, "I'm duly grateful, but it's just as well. My mind doesn't work in a way to understand these Talents of yours. I admit everything, but I'm afraid I don't really accept anything."

"It's perfectly reasonable," protested Morgan. "The facts fit together! I'm no hand at working out theories; I deal in facts. But the facts do make sense!"

Bors found himself looking at the door of the family room, where Morgan had taken him. He realized that he was waiting for Gwenlyn to enter. He turned back to Morgan.

"They don't make sense to me," he said dourly. "You have a precognizer, you say. He foresees the future. I admit that he has. But the future is uncertain. It can't be foreseen unless it's pre-ordained, and in that case we're only puppets imagining that we're free agents. But there would be no reason in such a state of things!"

Morgan settled himself luxuriously in a self-adjusting chair. He thrust a cigar on Bors and lighted up zestfully.

"I've been wanting to spout about that," he observed, "even if I'm no theoretician. Look here! What is true? What is truth? What's the difference between a false statement and a true one?"

Bors's eyes wandered to the door again. He drew them back.

"One's so and the other isn't," he said.

"No," said Morgan. "Truth is an accordance—an agreement—between an idea and a fact. If I toss a coin, I can make two statements. I can say it will come up heads, or I can say that it will come up tails. One sentence is true and one is false. A precognizer simply knows which statement is true. I don't, but he does."

"It's still prophecy," objected Bors.

"Oh, no!" protested Morgan. "A precognizer-talent doesn't prophesy! All he can do is recognize that an idea he has now matches an event that will happen presently. He can't extract ideas from the future! He can only judge the truth or falsity of ideas that occur to him. He has to think something before he can know it is true. He does not get information from the future! He can only know that the idea he has now matches something that will happen later. He can detect a matching—an agreement—perhaps it's a mental vibration of some sort. But that's all!"

"I asked if I would capture a cargo-ship on Tralee—"

"And I said I didn't know! Of course I said so! How could anybody know such a thing except by pure accident? A precognizer might think of nine hundred and ninety-nine ways in which you might try to capture that ship. They could all be wrong. He might say you wouldn't capture it. But you might try a thousandth way that he hadn't thought of! All he can know is that some idea he has concocted matches—some instinct stirs, and he knows it's true! That's why one man can precognize dirty tricks. His mind works that way! We've got a woman who knows, infallibly, who's going to marry whom! That's why the ship-arrival precognizer can say a ship's coming in. His mind works on such things, and he has a talent besides!"

"There are definite limits, then."

"What is there that's real and hasn't limits?" demanded Morgan.

The door opened and Gwenlyn came in. Bors rose, looking pleased.

"I'm telling him the facts of life about precognition," Morgan told her. "I think he understands now."

"I don't agree," said Bors.

Gwenlyn said amusedly, "Two of our Talents want to talk to you, Captain. You might say that they want to measure you for rumors."

"They what?" demanded Bors, startled.

"The Talent who predicts dirty tricks," said Gwenlyn, "is going to work with the woman who broadcasts daydreams. They'll be our Department of Propaganda."

Bors said uncertainly, "But there's no point in propaganda! It's determined."

"I know!" said Morgan complacently. "The high brass has made a decision. A perfectly logical decision, too, once you grant their premises. But they assume that Talents, Incorporated, given some co-operation, of course, lacks the ability to change the situation. In that they're mistaken."

"Father hopes," said Gwenlyn amiably, "to modify the situation so their assumptions will lead logically to a different conclusion. Apparently they're going to change their minds!"

Bors objected. "But you can't know the future!"

"Our precognizer—our Precognizer for Special Events," said Gwenlyn, "got the notion that a year from now King Humphrey should open parliament on Kandar, if everything is straightened out. The notion became a precognition. We don't know how it can come about, but it does seem to imply a change of plans somewhere!"

Bors found himself indomitably skeptical. But he said, "Ah! That's the precognition you mentioned on Kandar—that the fleet wouldn't be wiped out and everybody killed."

"No-o-o," said Gwenlyn. "That was another one. I'd rather not tell you about it. It might be—unpleasant. I'll tell you later."

Bors shrugged.

"All right. You said I'm to be measured for rumors? Bring on your tape-measures!"

Morgan beamed at him. Gwenlyn went to the door and opened it. An enormously fat woman came in, moving somehow sinuously in spite of her bulk. She gave Bors a glance he could not fathom. It was sentimental, languishing and wholly and utterly approving. He felt a momentary appalled suspicion which he dismissed in something close to panic. It couldn't be that he was fated—

Then the arrogant man with rings came in. He'd been identified as the Talent for Predicting Dirty Tricks. Bors remembered that he had a paranoid personality, inclined toward infinite suspiciousness, and that he'd been in jail for predicting crimes that were later committed.

"Gwenlyn says propaganda," said Morgan, "but I prefer to think of these two Talents as our Department for Disseminating Truthful Seditious Rumors. You've met Harms." The man waved his hand, his rings glittering. "But I didn't tell you about Madame Porvis. She has the extraordinary talent of contagious fantasy. It is remarkably rare. She can daydream, and others contract her dreamings as if they were spread by germs."

The fat woman bridled. She still regarded Bors with a melting gaze. Again he felt startled unease.

"It's been a great trial to me," she said in a peculiarly childish voice. "I had such trouble, before I knew what it was!"

"Er—trial?" asked Bors apprehensively.

"When I was just an overweight adolescent," she told him archly, "I daydreamed about my school's best athlete. Presently I found that my shocked fellow-students were gossiping to each other that he'd acted as I daydreamed. Other girls wouldn't look at him because they said he was madly in love with me."

The arrogant man with the rings made a scornful sound.

"He hated me," said Madame Porvis, ruefully, "because the gossip made him ridiculous, and it was only people picking up my daydreams!"

She looked at Morgan. He nodded encouragement.

"Years later," she said to Bors, "I grew romantic about an actor. He was not at all talented, but I daydreamed that he was, and also brilliant and worshipped by millions. Soon everybody seemed to believe it was true! Because I daydreamed it! He was given tremendous contracts, and—then I dared to daydream that he met and was fascinated by me! Immediately there was gossip that it had happened! When he denied that he knew me,—and he didn't—and when he saw my picture and said he didn't want to, I was crushed. I wove beautifully tragic fantasies about myself as pining away and dying because of his cruelty,—and soon it was common gossip that I had!" She sighed. "He was considered a villain, because I daydreamed of him that way. His career was ruined. I've had to be very careful about my daydreams ever since."

"Madame Porvis's talent," Morgan said proudly, "is all the more remarkable because she realized herself that she had it. She lets ideas pop into her head and presently they pop into other people's heads and you have first-class rumors running madly about. When her fantasies contain elements of truth, so do the rumors. You see?"

"It's most interesting," admitted Bors. "But—"

"Now Harms," said Morgan, "reads news-reports. He's specialized on those brought back by Gwenlyn and by you. He guesses at the news behind the news—and he knows when he's hit it. He'll tell Madame Porvis the facts, she'll weave them into a fantasy and they'll spread like wildfire. Of course she can't plant new subjects in people's minds. But anybody who's ever heard of Mekin will pick up her fantasies about graft and inefficiency in its government. Riots against Mekin, and so on. However, one wants not only to spread seditious rumors about villains, but also about—say—pirates who go about fighting Mekin. Tell her stories about your men, if you like. Anything that's material for heroic defiance-fantasies against Mekin."

Bors found himself stubbornly resisting the idea. It might be that there was such a thing as precognition in the form Morgan had described. There might be such a thing as contagious fantasy. But on the other hand—

"I give up," he said. "I won't deny it and I can't believe it. I'll go about my business of piracy. But you, sir," he turned to Morgan, "you've got to keep Gwenlyn from taking risks!"

"True," said Morgan. "She could have some very unpleasant experiences. I'll be more stern with her."

Gwenlyn did not seem alarmed.

"One more thing," Bors added. "They say the dictator of Mekin is superstitious, that he patronizes fortune-tellers. Suppose one of them is a Talent? Suppose he gets precognized information?"

"I worry about that," admitted Morgan. "But I know that I have effective Talents. There's no evidence that he has."

"He might have a Talent whose talent is confusing our Talents," Bors said with some sarcasm.

Morgan grinned tolerantly.

"Talk to these two. We've got some firm precognitions that make things look bad for Mekin."

He left the room. Gwenlyn remained, listening with interest when the conversation began, and now and then saying something of no great importance. But her presence kept Bors from feeling altogether like a fool. Madame Porvis looked at him with languishing, sentimental eyes. Harms watched him accusingly.

Their questions were trivial. Bors told about the landings on Tralee and on Garen. The woman asked for details that would help her picture feats of derring-do. Bors hesitated, and did not quite tell her about the truck drivers on Tralee who volunteered the information that their loads were booby-trapped. But he did stress the fact that the populations of dominated planets were on the thin edge of revolt. The suspicious Talent asked very little. He listened, frowning.

When it was over and they'd gone—the fat woman again somehow managing a gait which could only be called sinuous—Bors said abruptly, "What's this event you know of, a year ahead?"

"King Humphrey opening parliament on Kandar," said Gwenlyn pleasantly.

"There's another," said Bors, "which implies specifically that I'll still be alive."

"That?" said Gwenlyn. "That's another one. I won't talk about it. It implies that my father's going to retire from Talents, Incorporated."

Bors fumed.

"I don't like this prediction business," he said. "It still seems to hint that we're not free agents. Tell me," he said apprehensively. "That precognition about me, it doesn't include Madame Porvis?"

Gwenlyn laughed. "No. Definitely no!"

Bors grunted. Then he managed to grin.

"In that case I'll go pilfer some provisions so the fleet will be prepared to do what you tell me it won't, but which it has to be prepared to do. I suppose I'll be back?"

"I hope so," said Gwenlyn, smiling.

She gave him her hand. He left. He shook his head as he made his way to the Sylva's space-boat blister. He had it immediately taken to his new ship. It was a light cruiser of the same class as the Isis. It would, of course, seem to be the same ship, and it had nearly the same crew aboard. No one of Morgan's freakish Talents was included this time, and Bors felt more than a little relieved. He inspected everything and made sure his drive-engineers were more tractable than they'd been on the Isis. He meant to build another low-power overdrive at once.

He cleared for departure with the flagship. He was swinging the ship toward his first destination when a call came from the Sylva. He was asked for. He went to a screen. He preferred to see Gwenlyn when he talked to her. She was there.

"I've a memo for you," she said briskly. "There are cargo-ships aground on Cassis and Dover. There is a sort of patrol-squadron of warships aground on Meriden. Nothing on Avino. Are you recording this?"

"I won't forget it," he said.

"Then here's the situation on each of the subject worlds so far as cargo-ships and fighting ships are concerned. Our dowser can tell about them. Remember, this doesn't apply to ships in overdrive! We can't precognize anything about them unless we're at the destination they're heading for, and then only the time of arrival. And the dowser's information is strictly as of this moment."

Bors nodded. Her tone was absolutely matter-of-fact. Bors was almost convinced.

She read off a list of statements with painstaking clarity. She'd evidently had the dowser go over the list of twenty-two dominated planets. Bors told himself that the events she reported were possibilities that might somehow be true.

"Most of the Mekinese grand fleet," she finished, "is aground on Mekin itself. It's probably there for inspection and review or some such ceremony. There's no way to tell. But it's there. And that's the latest Talents, Incorporated information. As my father says, you can depend on it."

"All right," said Bors. "Thanks." Then he added gruffly, "Take care of yourself."

She smiled at him and clicked off. Bors was confused because he couldn't quite believe that other matters could be predicted.

The new ship, the Horus, sped away in overdrive, leaving the fleet in orbit around the useless planet Glamis. Glamis was in a favorable state just now. It was a lush green almost from pole to pole, save where its seas showed a darker, muddy, bottom-color. It would look inviting to colonists. But at any time its sun could demonstrate its variability and turn it into a cloud-covered world of steaming prospective jungle, or in a slightly shorter time turn it to a glacier-world. The vegetation on Glamis was remarkable. The planet, though, was of no use to humanity because it was unpredictable.

The Horus ran in overdrive for two days while a low-power unit was built in its engine-room, to go in parallel to the normal overdrive. But there was a double-throw switch in the line, now. Either the standard, multiple light-speed overdrive could be used, or the newer and vastly slower one, but not both together. The ship came out of overdrive in absolute emptiness with no sun anywhere nearby. She was surrounded on every hand by uncountable distant stars. The new circuit was brazed in. It had a micro-timer included in its design. Within its certain, limited timing-capacity, it could establish or break a contact within the thousandth of a microsecond.

Bors made tests, target-practice of a sort. He let out a metal-foil balloon which inflated itself, making a sphere some forty feet in diameter. In the new low-speed overdrive he drew away from it for a limited number of microseconds. He measured the distance run. He made other runs, again measuring. From ten thousand miles away he made a return-hop to the target-balloon and came out within a mile of it.

He cheered up. This was remarkably accurate. He sent the ship into standard overdrive again. Twice more, however, he stopped between stars and practiced the trick of breaking out of the new overdrive—in which his ship was undetectable—at a predetermined point. The satisfaction of successful operation almost made up for the extremely disagreeable sensations involved.

But on the eighth ship-day out from Glamis, the Horus came back to unstressed space with a very, very bright star burning almost straight ahead. The spectroscope confirmed that it was the sun of Meriden.

Bors sounded the action alert. Gongs clanged. Compartment-doors hissed shut.

"You know," said Bors conversationally into the all-speaker microphone and in the cushioned stillness which obtained, "you all know what we're aiming at. A food-supply for the fleet. But we've got what looks like a very useful gadget for fighting purposes. We need to test it. There's a small squadron on Meriden, ahead, so we'll take them on. It is necessary that we get all of them, so they can't report anything to Mekin that Mekin doesn't already know. All hands ready for action!"

In twenty minutes by the ship's clocks the Horus was a bare thirty thousand miles off the planet Meriden. The new drive worked perfectly for planetary approach, at any rate. It even worked more perfectly than the twenty-minute interval implied. It had been off Meriden for five minutes then.

Mekinese fighting ships were boiling up from the atmosphere of Meriden and plunging out to space to offer battle. They were surprisingly ready, reacting like hair-triggered weapons. Bors hadn't completed his challenge before they were streaking toward Meriden's sky. They couldn't have been more prompt if, say, Meriden seethed with rumors about a pirate ship in space, which it was their obligation to fight.

According to the radar screens, there were not less than fifteen ships streaking out to destroy the Horus. Fifteen to one—interesting odds.

Bors sent the Horus roaring ahead to meet them.

Part Four