During the journey Bors only endured being alive. All this disaster was ultimately his fault. The fleet's survival was due to his work with Talents, Incorporated. The raids of a single ship—which now would have such disastrous results—were the fruits of his suggestion, the consequence of his actions.
Talents, Incorporated was involved, to be sure, but only because he'd allowed it to be. He should have realized that Madame Porvis would work havoc if her talent was as described. No mere romantic daydreamer would fashion fantasies with military secrecy in mind and security as a principle. Everything was betrayed. Everything was ruined. And if he, Bors, had only been properly skeptical, the fleet would have been destroyed and Kandar now occupied by the Mekinese—doomed to servitude but not necessarily to annihilation—and other worlds would also be safely servile. They'd still be resentful and they'd bitterly hate Mekin, but they would not have before them the monstrous vengeance now in store.
Bors, in fact, felt guilty because he was still alive.
There was only one small thing he could still try to set aright. He could insist that Morgan take Gwenlyn far away from the dangerous possibility that Mekin might somehow find her. He had to make Morgan see the need for it. If necessary, he would convince King Humphrey that a royal order must be issued to send the Sylva light-centuries away, before the Mekinese empire began to restore itself to devastated calm—if that process hadn't already begun.
Mekin had its grand fleet assembled and ready. If convincing and, unfortunately, truthful rumors ran about Mekin, as elsewhere, concerning the fleet and Bors's attempts to hide it, then their dictator need only give a single order and the grand fleet would lift off. When it found Kandar unoccupied it would leave Kandar dead. Then it would seek out the fleet, and destroy it, and then it would move from one to another of its rebellious tributaries and take revenge upon them....
And Bors could only hope to salvage the life of one girl from the wreckage of everything that human beings prefer to believe in. He could only hope to send Gwenlyn away—if he was not already too late.
The Horus broke out into normal space twelve days after leaving Deccan. The untrustworthy sun of Glamis still shone brightly. The inner planet revolved about it with one side glowing low red heat and the other side piled high with frozen atmosphere. The useless outer planet remained a lush green, save for its seas. And the fleet still circled it from pole to pole.
Bors had himself ferried to the flagship by space-boat, because what he had to report was too disheartening to be spoken where all the fleet might hear. Gwenlyn met him at the flagship's airlock. She looked very glad, as if she'd been uneasy about him.
"Call for a boat," Bors commanded her curtly, "to take you to the Sylva. Go on board with anybody else who belongs on it, your father, anybody. I'm going to ask the king to insist that the Sylva get away from here—fast! Before the Mekinese turn up."
Gwenlyn shook her head, her eyes searching his face.