"Right." If Fossten suspected that the Tyrant was somewhat less than frank, he did not show it, and the conversation became strictly technical.
"We must not strike until we are completely ready," was Kinnison's first statement, and he repeated it so often thereafter during the numerous conferences with the chiefs of staff that it came almost to be a slogan.
The prime minister did not know that Kinnison's main purpose was to give the Patrol plenty of time to make Klovia utterly impregnable. Fossten knew nothing of the Patrol's sunbeam, to which even the mightiest fortress possible for man to build could offer scarcely more resistance than could the lightest, the most fragile pleasure yacht.
Hence he grew more and more puzzled, more and more at a loss week by week, as Tyrant Gannel kept on insisting upon building up the strongest, the most logically perfect Grand Fleet which all the ability of their pooled brains could devise. Once or twice he offered criticisms and suggestions which, while defensible according to one theory, would actually have weakened Grand Fleet's striking power. These offerings Gannel rejected flatly; insisting, even to an out-and-out break with his co-administrator if necessary, upon the strongest possible armada.
The Tyrant wanted, and declared that he must and would have, more and bigger of everything. More and heavier flying fortresses, more and stronger battleships and superdreadnoughts, more and faster cruisers and scouts, more and deadlier weapons.
"We want more of everything than our operations officers can possibly handle in battle," he declared over and over; and he got them. Then:
"Now, you operations officers, learn how to handle them!" he commanded.
Even the prime minister protested at that, but it was finally accomplished. Fossten was a real thinker, as was Kinnison, and between them they worked out a system. It was crudeness and inefficiency incarnate in comparison with the Z9M9Z, but it was so much better than anything previously known to Boskonia's High Command that everyone was delighted. Even the suspicious and cynical Fossten began to entertain some doubts as to the infallibility of his own judgment.
And these doubts grew apace as the Tyrant drilled his Grand Fleet. He drove the personnel unmercifully, especially the operations officers; as relentlessly as he drove himself. He simply could not be satisfied, his ardor and lust for efficiency were insatiable. His reprimands were scathingly accurate; officer after officer he demoted bitingly during ever more complicated, ever more inhumanly difficult maneuvers; until finally he had what were unquestionably his best men in those supremely important positions. Then, one day: