The only unsuspected source, of course, would be Talents, Incorporated.
For a full minute after the enemy ship's disappearance, Bors sat rigid, his hands clenched, facing the disaster the escape of the Mekinese constituted. Sweat appeared on his forehead.
Then he pressed the engine-room button and said evenly, "Prepare for standard overdrive, top speed possible."
He swung the ship. He lined it up with Mekin itself, which, of course, was the one place where it would be most fatal for a ship from Kandar to be discovered.
Very shortly thereafter, the Horus was in overdrive.
Traveling in such unthinkable haste, it is paradoxic that there is much time to spare. Bors had to occupy it. He prepared a careful and detailed account of exactly how the low-speed overdrive had worked, and its effectiveness as a combat tactic. He'd distributed instructions and Logan's tables on the subject before leaving Glamis. He would be, of course, most bitterly blamed for having taken on a whole squadron of enemy ships, with the result that one had gotten away. It could be the most decisive of catastrophes. But he made his report with precision.
For seven successive ship-days there was no event whatever on the Horus, as she drove toward Mekin. Undoubtedly the one survivor of the enemy squadron was fleeing for Mekin, too, to report to the highest possible authority what it had seen and experienced. It would not be much, if at all, slower than the Horus. It might be faster, and might reach the solar system of Mekin before the Horus broke out there. It had every advantage but one. It had solar-system drive, for use within a planetary group, and it had overdrive for use between the stars. But the Horus had an intermediate drive as well, which was faster than the enemy's slow speed and slower than the fast.
Bors depended on it for the continued existence of Kandar and the fleet. As the desperately tedious ship-days went by he began to have ideas—at which he consciously scoffed—concerning Tralee. But if anything as absurd as those ideas came to be, there were a score of other planets which would have to be considered too.
He sketched out in his own mind a course of action that would be possible to follow after breakout off Mekin. It did not follow the rules for sound planning, which always assume that if things can go wrong they will. Bors could only plan for what might be done if things went right. But he could not hope. Not really. Still, he considered every possibility, however far-fetched.
He came to first-breakout, a light-week short of Mekin. The yellow sun flamed dead ahead. He determined his distance from it with very great care. The Horus went back into overdrive and out again, and it was well within the system, though carefully not on the plane of its ecliptic.